As Yuna stepped up to the chariots parked outside of the Winter Wars resort, she brought along an air of inevitability with her. She focused inwards, utterly unaware of Lera's approach as she counted her breathesj quietly, finetuning her body and spirit for the one battle that she had been waiting for for months by this point. The chariot lifted off with a ghostly quietness as Lera opened her mouth slightly and watched her departure. She wasn't exactly expecting a casual chitchat before all of this started. But seeing how Matty, Braka, and Yuna's close relationship with one another, and the defeat of the previous two at the hands of Fatera and Ver, of course, Yuna would try to do whatever she could to win this battle. This is not about sportsmanship anyway. It never had been. It's all about strength, and only strength. Lera clenched her fingers together as her entire body tensed up. Then, all of that tension erupted when Ver poked her on the cheek. "Breathe, Lera. Relax." Ver said, lowering her voice, "Fight in your way, and your element. Find her weaknesses, and ruthlessly exploit it." Lera smiled and nodded thanks. Then, she marched forward as Fatera waved from behind. That's true. She may not be a natural-born monster like Fatera or Ver, but she still has her own way of fighting. She could still be strong in her very own way. I hope you are watching, Wu... Lera thought as she placed her fingers along the sides of the chariot. The chariot lifted off with a gentle shake, and it shot straight up into the air before taking her high into the mountains along the snowy ridge. All of the previous battles were fought in vastly different locations throughout the mountain, and there is no guessing where the chariot is taking them. As it flew past the frozen lake and the field of rocks, the chariots then made a sharp turn and headed towards the forest with rows of maple trees. Each of them is spread out with three meters of white in between, giving enough space for close-quarter combat, yet not enough for her to set up for any large-scale Casts. As the chariot approached further, she noticed a circle of light that indicated the combat area before a shield was set up around the perimeter. Her skin tingled as the chariot emerged from one side of the shield, and she reached back and touched it before the chariot sank all the way in, the feeling of hardness and smoothness lingering on the young Caster's mind nonetheless. "That's my shield Cast, young Lera." Principal Khan's voice came through a projection that's attached to the top of the shield's dome. "It's really cool." She said, complimenting instinctually before her face turned red in embarrassment. Of course it's cool! That's the principal of the Infinite Academy she's just so casually talking to and complimenting! "Hahaha, let's hope you don't hate me after this battle then." Principal Khan laughed, "There is no disqualification for leaving the shield, as none of you will be able to anyway. So with that said, let the battle begin!" Lera's chariot glowed before it was separated into countless individual strands of the Wave. Then, it flowed around an invisible track in the air before looping around her wrist, creating the thin silvery bracelet that looked like one of the counterfeit jewelry from the flea markets back at home. Lera swung her arms around a few times, and the bracelet felt completely weightless despite its looks. Despite its look, it likely wouldn't affect the way she fights. As her foot slowly melts into the snow, Lera gently taps on the Book of Casts beside her hips, waking it with a surge of the Wave before deploying the Rapid Layering Cast onto her environments in all directions. As the lines of Cast swam and melted individual paths from underneath the layers of snow, Principal Khan's eyes lit up before he gently waved his fingers and added a layer of Wave vision in the form of a pair of glasses. With the help of that, he's able to directly visualize the local flow of the Wave, altered and monitored by Lera's Casts. "How...fascinating..." As Principal Khan read into the spiraling patterns emanating around Lera as its center, her Wave subtly infusing into the environment, he couldn't help but draw his attention elsewhere as Yuna and her highly concentrated Wave that looked like molten lava wave from an erupting volcano tore through the forest, leaving tracks of destruction behind. Lera's Cast is subtle and quiet, and it was layered in to blend with the local flow of the Wave, making it incredibly difficult to detect for all but the most seasoned Wave users. Its reach covered nearly half of the area underneath the dome, and the variants of the Scouting Eyes helped Lera get a hold of Yuna's positioning before her eyes and ears ever caught on. But as her eyes and ears did catch on, Lera realized that she will be the sole recipient of Yuna's colossal fury. It sounded like the heavens were cracked open, and the earth was torn apart by a raging monster who knew nothing besides destruction. Though unlike the destruction brought forth by Kaire Jin's slow stompy footsteps that quake the earth, Yuna's approach were more frantic, high-octane...and furious. "I WILL FINISH YOU IN A SINGLE BLOW!" Yuna declared, her dashing figure splitting a sky-scraping maple tree into halves before she chopped down with her hand at the ground where she sensed Lera's presence to be. But there was absolutely nothing. "Is that all you are going to use?" Lera responded, her voice coming out from all around Yuna as she stood from the crater of her own creation. "You fucking coward." Yuna said, spinning around as her red messily cut hair danced in the air behind her with an immense amount of Wave filling in her body to the brim. A faint figure of a white tiger surrounded her body as its head tracked with Yuna's skull, "Show yourself!" Lera didn't respond. Instead, the earth underneath Yuna started peeling away from the surface and rolling in towards Yuna before she became buried alive by the earth, starting with the crater she made during her explosive entry. "Waste of time!" Yuna said, surging up through the earth before the arms of vines shot out from all around her and bound her arms and legs together. Then, those vines joined into a single strand before slamming Yuna down hard on the ground. As she grunted in pain, the vines then picked her up and send her wiping out through layers of trees. "This...this is pure domination from Lera!" Fatera's jaws dropped before Yuna finally broke free of Lera's bind, tearing the vines apart and landing in a soft roll onto the snow. Then, she coated her body within the faint projection of the white tiger once again. She had been using her Wave-detection abilities to try to track down Lera, and for some reason, it was like trying to track down a ghost in the night. All Wave users are taught to use their internal Wave sensing abilities as an additional way of seeing the world, yet it felt as if Yuna's looking through a cloud of fog where there are multiple shadows of Lera within it. Either she is extremely masterful at controlling and concealing her own flow of the Wave, or...she's far weaker in the Wave than Yuna had given her credit for. She is so weak that her own presence became insignificant within the local Wave field. And that also explains why she had been avoiding her ever since the start of the fight. Yuna smiled, her fingers reaching out as she stepped deeper into the fog of Wave, her eyes closed and her body fully open and receptive to the calls of the Wave. If Lera's relying on the fact that she can conceal herself among the various small concentrations of the Wave locally, Yuna will just have to destroy each and every one of those 'Wave shadows'. Then, Lera would have had nowhere to hide. "Surging Tiger Style: Pathing Lightness..." Yuna murmured, the concentration of the Wave within her body shifting towards her feet before she moved suddenly. At blinding speeds, she dashed across the forests like a ball of lightning, heading towards each of the nodes within Lera's Cast Array and destroying it with a single punch. That's how Lera has been hiding in plain sight. By controlling her own Wave and enhancing the flow of the Wave within her own array through careful redirection of the naturally occurring Wave, she's able to draw more power into her Cast than if she relied on her own rerserves. Then, each of the key nodes within her Cast array would have had same level of Wave as her, hiding her essentially from Wave sensing abilities. This takes advantage of how Wu blends in with the environment by having no Wave at all, but takes it to another level. However, there is a major drawback to this state, as her position would be exposed once again whenever she uses another Cast and the level of her own Wave exceeds that of the rest of the Cast array. Unless, she is somehow able to use all of her Casts with minimal Wave, and that's exactly what the Cast array allows her to do. Everything's so perfectly arranged, so poetic, so...prestine. As Yuna unleashed her path of devastation through half of the forest like a mindless beast, Lera tracked her movements through the various nodes of the Cast Array on her Book of Casts, and she slowly shifted the concentration of the Wave, guiding her deeper and deeper into the trap that she has specially prepared for her. Then, as Yuna kicked through yet another junction of the Cast array and opened her eyes, everything around her lit up before an explosion swallowed her whole. "This...is not even close..." Fatera said, scratching her head, "I didn't know Lera's Casting had grown this much?" "To be honest, it's just an annoying style to fight against..." Ver shivered as she imagined having to go up against the hit-and-run tactics of Lera, "Without knowing where she is, there is no battle, no fight, only her toying her opponents..." "But what happens if she is found?" Fatera asked, "Eventually, she will have to face them head-on." "Yeah..." Ver said, rubbing her chin as she watched closely. It is clear from Yuna's physicality and Lera's past history fighting against Channelers that the scale of battle will rapidly tilt in Yuna's favor once she finds Lera. However, if she can avoid fighting her and wear her down before then, then Lera's chance of winning is far greater. "YOU CAN DO THIS, YUNA!" Matty said through gritted teeth, gripping his sheets tightly as Braka moaned awake after his surgery. His mind was still dazed, and he muttered something inaudible. "Yuna...sama..." Braka murmured as Matty turned to him with surprise. He had never once referred to Yuna as a "sama", despite that phrase being used in his culture as a sign of respect. But after today...something's changed. Nothing will be the same after today, and Matty would much rather live in a future where Yuna is a winner. "Come on...girl...show your strength to the entire world, show it to us, to your sect...to your father..."