Randidly adjusted his grip on his spear as he stood before Shal with his master’s blood on his spear. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. There was so much he wanted to say to Shal. A dozen powerful emotions were bound together in Randidly’s heart, rendering him almost numb from the conflicting desires he held.

He shook slightly from their violence, holding onto his spear for dear life.

In addition, he understood Shal’s intentions in initially stating that the only manner of conversation between them should be their spears. And Randidly’s very specific adherence to that request was one of the reasons that Shal’s face was steadily warping with fury. Because while Shal had naturally elevated his battle power by relying on images and other Skills, Randidly had continued to rival him solely with Ripple of Amenonuhoko.

Part of the reason was that Randidly could grow to this capability was that his understanding of his own spearmanship Skill had been shallow. This battle, as he immersed himself in that Skill and the vibrant natural energy it could wield, quickly allowed Randidly to generate a pseudo-image just from Skill usage and movement. The power generated wouldn’t hold a candle to Yggdrasil, the Grim Chimera, or the Stillborn Phoenix on its own, but it was a tool Randidly could gradually incorporate into his arsenal in the future.

And since his Signs of the Spear Phantom and 7 Kata of the Ashen Spear had been disassembled and incorporated into other Skills, this was was the best tool to force Shal to meet him directly. Five minutes ago, especially after hearing Shal ask him to show him how much he had grown, he would have said that his master would never balk before a challenge.

However… Randidly’s imageless spear remained alone on this battlefield, while Shal was dominated by the slightly fuzzy light of an image. What did Shal see in his first few moves that had shifted his attitude…?

“Let’s see your limits, boy. Because you have not yet seen mine!” Shal hissed. Still wielding his comically long spear, he stepped forward and flicked the weapon in complex arcs. Randidly sighed inwardly while raising Acri in front of him.

Was it… disappointment that Randidly felt now, looking at Shal? His spear was quick and powerful, but there was no soul to it. The blows were hollow. The man whose spear always charged forward seemed completely transfigured.

Yet even if he was confused, Randidly prepared to fight.

His senses hummed. Nether flows and image manifestations moved together within his body, heightening his awareness to the point that the surroundings seemed surreal. After chasing Shal for so long, to find him here and have the meeting riddle with confusing undertones... Randidly wasn’t surprised he now wielded more power than Shal; with his Stats, he would be floored if the other man could stand toe to toe with him.

Yet in terms of spirit...

Randidly blinked slowly as Shal stepped forward and swung his spear. The world he witnessed was raw and painful. And in that strange land of perception and bleeding color, Randidly followed the thin lines of Ripple of Amenonuhoko and cut upward. The ground ruptured at his call, brutally smashing upward to intercept Shal’s spear.

Shal’s eyes flashed and he flicked his spear again. The weapon twisted and constricted around the stone pillar, crushing it to pebbles. In the next instant, Shal stepped forward and swept his spear across the ground at Randidly.

If you think this is enough to face me… Randidly grinned, his mouth curling with rage.

He didn’t retreat before the oncoming strike, simply adjusting his spear and thrusting forward again to deflect the attack. The enormous river of natural energy that was flowing with Randidly’s movements clashed directly with the sweep. Both movements were redirected slightly, allowing Randidly to step forward to within striking distance of Shal. He fluidly raised his spear again.

Shal’s eyes blazed with golden light. His body accelerated forward, bringing the butt of his spear toward the bridge of Randidly’s nose. Randidly sidestepped the strike and spun Acri’s head to once more be trained on Shal’s chest. In terms of grace and fluidity, Ripple of Amenonuhoko was preternaturally gifted; there wasn’t even the slightest hitch in his adjustment.

“You continue to dither?” Shal snorted, twisting his spear and hopping a half-step backward. The intensity of the image he released bloomed into something unruly and vicious. Shal’s enormous weapon curled between them for a split second then exploded directly toward Randidly’s chest. The radiant image of a massive snake with a wide-open mouth zipped toward him.

Randidly adjusted the vector of his strike and met the image directly. His muscles exploded with force and channeled those energies through his joints before surging through his spear.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

This time, Randidly grimaced and was forced to retreat a single step. Sure enough, contesting an image directly is difficult.

But… you can’t keep running, can you Shal?

Even as Shal exploded into motion and whipped that radiant viper’s head toward Randidly’s lower body, Randidly’s resolve remained unshaken. His pupils minutely picked apart the details of the image in front of him. He considered himself relatively adept when it came to image combination, so he could easily see the sledge-hammer-esque touch of the Image Cooperation Path in Shal’s form. If this abomination of an image was the feeble screen that kept them from talking, Randidly would gladly tear it down.

Randidly’s toes pressed against the ground as he leaned forward. He brought his spear horizontally to knock aside Shal’s attack. Rather than waiting for the perfect line from Ripple of Amenonuhoko, Randidly simply struck physically. His knocked Shal’s offensive aside and followed up by stepping forward and attacking Shal directly.

Shal twisted his spear to bring the large weapon under control so fast that even Randidly was impressed. He spread out his hands across the shaft of his spear and then brought his weapon upward to knock Randidly’s thrust off target. But just as soon as the weapons touched, Randidly pivoted and mirrored Shal’s earlier attack, allowing the blade of the spear to be pushed upward and instead bringing the butt of the weapon brutally forward at Shal’s face.

In terms of movements, they would have been mirror images, but the followthrough was starkly different.

Shal couldn’t shift to defend himself in time, but his heroic image flared to life instead. There was a brief second Randidly where stared into the chiseled jaw of a hero of Tellus. Randidly narrowed his eyes. In the next moment, he brutally smashed that image to pieces and sent Shal careening backward.

Randidly’s master smashed and rolled across the ground for a full second before finding his bearings and hopping to his feet. Even then, Shal’s feet dug long trenches in the ground while he dispersed the momentum Randidly had imparted upon him.

Randidly adjusted his stance, but his eyes were drawn to his spear. He blinked. Perhaps because he hadn’t cut through one of the wiggling lines in his earlier blows, the number of such lines running around the tip of his spear had nearly doubled. In addition, the complex interactions between the lines had shifted. An entire whirlpool of ethereal lines clustered around the tip of his spear.

Of course… I can always splash around and create small ripples… but if I continue to gather my momentum before striking...

The brief shift in Randidly’s attention allowed Shal to reestablish himself. Of course, Shal’s pride took prickled at being given this opportunity. The three-eyed man’s face creased into a furious grimace. “Do you truly take me so lightly…?”

Randidly focused back forward. “Your image-”

“Is none of your concern.” Shal snarled. Then that stitched together image pulsed with power. As Shal forced his Willpower to intensify the energy in the image, the flaws became clearer and clearer to see. That heroic figure manifested in a flash of golden light, but the heroism slowly seeped out of the image. The snake undulated wildly, losing the organic flow of its movements. The ethereal nature of the Spear Phantom just made Shal seem weak and insubstantial.

The final composition looked cartoonish, drawn in an exaggerated manner for effect. There was no substance to it.

Yet still, Randidly had to admit that Shal’s Willpower was formidable. His master launched himself forward and his spear strike seared the air with its passage. His image reverberations were enough to quiet some of the surrounding battles. Randidly raised his spear, ignoring the accumulating lines of his Skill. Acri hummed in his hands and Randidly could sense the spear’s question.

Randidly shook his head slightly. Even if fighting like this makes me sad, I can’t flinch. Because… a fight against his pupil is not what Shal is fighting, right now. He seems someone or something else across from him...

Shal’s golden viper streaked forward, leading with its fangs. Randidly’s left foot and the head of Acri moved in tandem, shearing forward to meet the image.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMM!

With Shal’s mental reinforcement, Randidly was forced backward again as the ground beneath his feet was shattered. Before he could even reestablish his stance, Shal spun and brought the spear around in a diagonal slash. Randidly’s right foot pushed lightly off the ground and he moved forward and to the left, escaping from the slash my circling Shal. As he did so, Randidly could gradually sense the natural momentum he was gathering.

Shal’s weapon ripped apart the stone slope, sending debris flying. In the next instant, he surged forward and brought his spear upward, just ripping it through the ground in Randidly’s direction. While the golden viper rumbled up through the ground at him, Randidly unleashed a blindingly fast thrust to impact the shaft of Shal’s spear. The natural energy swirling around Randidly slammed into Shal’s image, forcing even the reinforced image to pause for a brief moment.

Randidly then used the rebound from the impact to instantly transition the attack into a thrust at Shal. Shal’s torso blazed with heroic energy, but before Randidly’s Grim Intuition and Fidelity of the Ascendant Moirae, it wasn’t enough. Randidly found the blurred stitching between his images and cut directly through with natural energy.

Even without utilizing one of Ripple of Amenonuhoko’s lines, he advanced with blades of wind howling in his wake. Shal jerked to the side to avoid Randidly’s thrust, but the wind smashed him backward.

In a remarkable display of dexterity, Shal planted his right foot and turned all that momentum into a pivot that brought the two fighters closer to one another.

Randidly raised his spear as Shal adjusted himself, but when Shal’s eyes locked onto Acri, Randidly simply let go of the spear with his left hand and jabbed. He felt Shal’s nose break beneath his metal knuckles, even as Shal’s neck snapped backward from the force. Randidly took another step forward, cutting the space between them to a fourth of a meter. The natural energy of his spear blasted outward at Randidly’s will, knocking Shal off his feet and sending him tumbling.

“Sometimes a spear isn’t enough,” Shal swayed as he rose back to his feet. For a second his image dimmed, but then it flared back to life, with even more intensity than before. Randidly’s mouth twitched to see that his master had abandoned the air of heroism around his person. In addition, the Spear Phantom took a backseat. Only the Spear that was a Snake remained as a blazing challenge. The golden viper slithered through the air, watching Randidly with black eyes. “Sometimes you need the right sort of life. And by the time you realize what life you needed, it is too late to live any way but through self-destruction.”

Randidly’s heart trembled. Somehow, he knew those words weren’t necessarily meant for him.

Shal’s image continued to change as the man’s shoulders heaved with massive, lung-bursting breaths. The details bled into the surrounding air. About twenty meters to their left, a rhinoceros crashed into a ticking clock, shaking the entirety of the stone slope. However, neither Randidly nor Shal reacted. Randidly tightened his grip on Acri, which now seemed to be wearing a crown of spectral lines. In his ear, he could hear the wind above him and the stone beneath whispering to him. He ignored those voices, focusing on the red eyes of his master.

“We are shaped, Randidly. And sometimes our makers are flawed.” Shal said solemnly.

Despite knowing that he should speak solely with his spear, Randidly allowed frustration to pry open his mouth. But no sooner had he done so than Shal shook his head in disgust. “Freedom is an illusion held by the strong. But come. Let’s both seek our limits.”

Yet at that last comment, Randidly’s head began to boil. His grip on Acri tightened even further. Following the steaming lines of his emotions, he growled at Shal. “Do you think you are the only one who was shaped? Get out of your own way and just fight me.”

Randidly could practically see the tiny capillaries in Shal’s sclera pop and burst at his words. By this point, the golden coloring had completely drained out of Shal’s serpent spear. But if anything, the blurry grey weapon was even more ominous than its radiant predecessor. The details might be obscured, but the purpose was not.

Even Randidly could only hiss and bring Acri frantically up to block Shal’s first thrust. And after the first one, he had to block a half dozen more.