Just outside the now-familiar forest, Yoshika stood with her team—her friends. The time had finally come to test herself against her strongest rival, and Yoshika was beyond nervous. Despite what Yue had said to her last night, or the fact that Jia had fought her to a standstill, Hayakawa remained in Yoshika’s mind as a nearly insurmountable obstacle. Hayakawa was the pinnacle of a mountain that Yoshika strived to reach—always within sight, yet ever out of her grasp. Today, that was going to change. Yoshika was whole, she had her team supporting her, and she had the artifact that she’d created—tailored towards one of her greatest needs.

Yet all she could feel was a pervasive, oppressing sense of dread. It had returned again that morning and refused to go away. Usually, the feeling would fade after a few moments, but this time it only grew stronger with each passing moment. Perhaps Yue was right, Yoshika thought, and it was simply her own anxiety amplified by the supernatural strength of her soul. It certainly seemed to fit the moment.

On the opposite side of the forest, she sensed her foe. Hayakawa Kaede and her team. Friends and classmates, really—for all that Hayakawa seemed to be allergic to the word. Yoshika enjoyed gossiping with Hana, and looked forward to hearing how her date with Satou went. Miyata was annoying, but after a year in the same class together, she’d gotten used to his toadying. Ozaki and Tokuda...well, she didn’t really know those two. Still, today they were enemies, and Yoshika had to think of them as such.

Hayakawa didn’t bother exchanging words with her team—she knew that Yoshika could sense them, and would no doubt have established their strategy well in advance, as Yoshika’s team had. It wasn’t difficult to guess at the strategy that Hayakawa would employ. She had overwhelming force, and knew that it was impossible to evade detection. A full-out assault was essentially her only option.

Yoshika took steadying breaths as she waited for the signal to begin, trying to suppress that strange sense of unease. She decided that she needed to spend some time apart, in order to spend time together. It was an odd thought, but she missed Jia and Eui—even though she was them. Yoshika had spent more time as ‘herself’ in the past week than the entire rest of her existence combined, and she’d gotten as much out of it as she was going to. Yoshika knew now what she was best at—fighting, cultivating, meditating, and the occasional self-reflection. More importantly, she knew what she was bad at—living.

Paradoxically, it was lonely being Yoshika. She felt a constant sense of intimate satisfaction at being whole, but found herself longing for her own company. Of course, she could cuddle her bodies up together or hold conversations with herself, but it wasn’t the same. This would be Yoshika’s last day of constantly maintaining her connection, she decided. She would find some excuse to get out of the house, and Jia would take Eui out on a date—or vice versa, not that it mattered. If the feeling of dread she was experiencing was a result of stress, then she’d just have to take some time off. She felt a bit better already just from the anticipation.

Returning her thoughts to the present, Yoshika quickly reviewed her team’s formation. The fight was quickly going to become a brawl, and the early moments of the fight would be crucial in defining the momentum of the battle. Her own bodies would lead from the front, ready to meet Hayakawa head on and prevent any early eliminations. Dae and Eunae would be in the center of the formation, ready to intercede wherever they were needed while also preparing the trap to stop Hayakawa’s Weightless Fist. Finally, Yue would be in the back, using her song and dance to sow as much confusion in the enemy ranks as possible, while Rika used her clones to protect and support the mages.

One last surprise was positioned at the front, slightly ahead of Jia and Eui. Something that Rika and Yue had worked on together over the last few days—a special qi clone that would hopefully earn Yoshika’s team the initiative in their upcoming fight. Eunae had objected to it at first, but after some convincing, she agreed to the idea. The clone was a perfect replica of Seong Eunae, complete with ghostly green flames hovering above each of her three fox tails, and her bright blue gaze staring straight ahead.

Eunae’s power was an open secret. Relatively few students actually knew what her gaze did, while half the academy just thought she was blind thanks to Rika’s pranks. Hayakawa and most of her team shared a class with Eunae, and there was absolutely no way that she wasn’t aware of it, or that she hadn’t accounted for it in her planning. Of course, it was also well known that Eunae refused to use her power against other people, but it wasn’t really a bluff that one could afford to call. At the very least, Yoshika was convinced that the illusion would give Hayakawa pause, and her team was poised to take advantage of that hesitation.

To Yoshika’s surprise, when the announcement came, it was Magus Hwang’s voice, rather than Grand Magus Do Hye.

“Greetings, students and visitors. The Grand Magus is currently indisposed, and so it falls to me to introduce the next battle. I understand that this match is highly anticipated, as it features many students who have had a great impact throughout the tournament. It’s no coincidence that these two teams have many of the top performers from the previous divisions. It might also be considered a rematch, of sorts, between the single-combat finalists, Miss Hayakawa and Miss Lee—each the captains of their respective teams. Perhaps, after a contentious final, we will now see a more decisive result in the second meeting!”

Yoshika sighed—Magus Hwang didn’t lack enthusiasm, but he managed to make everything he said sound like a lecture, and simply didn’t share his rival's flair for the dramatic. It wasn’t enough to dampen her excitement, but she couldn’t help but feel that they’d already had the best person for the job. As she got ready to move at a moment’s notice, she idly wondered what was keeping Do Hye so busy that he could no longer continue announcing the tournament—he had seemed to be enjoying himself.

“Without further pretense, let the battle commence!”

She surged forward, all thoughts abandoned except for those that pertained to the battle at hand. Her team moved at the same time, keeping pace as they had practiced over the last several months. It was no surprise to Yoshika that Hayakawa’s team was headed straight towards her at top speed, with Hayakawa herself leading the charge. That suited her just fine—one way or another, this would be a short fight.

As the two groups began to converge in the center of the forest, the false Eunae charged ahead, tossing illusory flames to meet the opposing team, and glaring down anyone who dared look at her. Hayakawa’s team began to scatter, crying out in dismay as they avoided the illusion. Only Hayakawa Kaede herself was unmoved, calling out to rally her team as she ran straight past the illusion without a moment of hesitation.

“It’s a bluff! Don’t let yourselves get distracted!”

Her team began to regroup, emboldened by her words, but the damage had been done and they were out of formation. Already, Dae and Eunae were throwing terrain-altering spells and harassing them with artillery. It wouldn’t be eliminating anyone unless they were careless, but it did slow them down enough to exacerbate their broken formation. Hayakawa herself recognized the threat and tried to target the mages, but Yoshika stood in her way.

In a perfect world, Yoshika would quickly eliminate Hayakawa before systematically dismantling the rest of her team, but reality was rarely so kind. Jia’s body sprang forward to meet Hayakawa with lightning steps. Mimicking her usual fighting style of spear-hand strikes aimed at pressure points, she infused her left hand with Eui’s destruction, preparing to take advantage of Hayakawa’s habit of just ignoring the lighter strikes that failed to land on a pressure point. Whether it was battle instinct or caution after seeing Yoshika’s previous match against Kasai Hanako, Hayakawa was no longer willing to accept grazing blows from Jia, expertly dodging each strike with a speed that beggared belief.

The upside to Hayakawa’s less aggressive fighting style was that it dramatically reduced her opportunities to counterattack—the downside was that it created a stalemate between Hayakawa and Yoshika that would allow the rest of her team to catch up. Or it would, if Yoshika was limited to only a single body. With her Claws of Heaven helping to stabilize and regulate the lightning ki within Eui’s body, she was able to catch up to the fight with Hayakawa using Jia’s lightning steps. It wasn’t nearly as fast as Jia’s body, but much faster than Eui would have been otherwise.

Suddenly outnumbered, Hayakawa went entirely on the defensive before doing the last thing that Yoshika would have expected from her—she retreated. Without a moment of hesitation, Hayakawa disengaged from the fight and fled back towards her team. Yoshika cursed herself for assuming that her opponents would keep playing into her hands. Hayakawa was smart—she didn’t charge forward and fight her enemies head on out of pride or overconfidence, she did it because it was the most efficient way to dispatch her foes. Yoshika had assumed that Hayakawa would never run because she’d never seen her need to.

Yoshika unleashed a pair of lightning bolts at Hayakawa’s fleeing form. One was parried by her superb reflexes and a burst of ki, while the other—the one from Eui—was ignored entirely. Hayakawa cried out in shock and pain as the bolt struck her. Whether she had expected it to be weaker coming from Eui, or simply been unable to block both attacks, Yoshika wasn’t certain, but it provided them with the opening they needed to catch her off guard with their next attack.

Hayakawa whirled around in order to flee with all haste back towards her team, and immediately met the eyes of the fake Eunae. She jerked back in surprise, and then froze, her eyes growing hazy and unfocused. Yue’s voice rang out, the words coming out as if they were lyrics to a song.

“Now! I can’t hold this for long!”

The rest of Yoshika’s team hadn’t been idle, and the brief skirmish had stalled Hayakawa just enough to allow them to catch up. Even though she knew it was an illusion, Hayakawa had been startled enough by meeting Eunae’s gaze that it had created an opening in her soul, something for Yue’s song to grasp onto, even if Hayakawa couldn’t hear it.

Eunae—the real one—took advantage of the opening to throw one of her three ghostly flames at Hayakawa. One of her few weaknesses, a spiritual attack like Eunae’s soulfire could potentially take Hayakawa out of the fight early, and their trap had worked almost perfectly. The fireball arced through the air towards Hayakawa’s still form before Yue cried out through gritted teeth.

“I can’t—!”

The light returned to Hayakawa’s eyes and she immediately saw the fireball hurtling towards her—but it was too late. She didn’t have time to avoid it anymore. It was the best outcome Yoshika could have hoped for—an early elimination of Hayakawa seemed to be in sight. With her characteristic decisiveness, Hayakawa dropped into a familiar stance and Yoshika’s eyes widened. No! It was impossible, she hadn’t had enough time to gather her ki!

Yoshika accelerated her thoughts with Absolute Awareness just in time for Hayakawa to explode into a frenzy of movement. Somehow, she had already mastered the ability that Ienaga had demonstrated to them so recently—the ability to immediately harness the latent power of her embodied ki. With the rest of the world almost frozen, Hayakawa slipped around the illusory copy of Eunae and pushed it into her place. Then, rather than turning around and attacking Yoshika’s team, she continued her flight back towards her own, smashing down the walls that had stymied them.

Once again, Yoshika was impressed by Hayakawa’s caution. Though they might not have been able to stop her, Hayakawa was wary of Yoshika’s Absolute Awareness and Dae’s gravity trap, and had taken into account the possibility that she too might have learned to harness her embodied ki. Rather than risk getting caught in a six on one fight, she had chosen not to underestimate her opponents and fled back towards her own team and reset the fight on her own terms. Worse than that, Yoshika realized as she had time to process the one unusual thing that Hayakawa had done. She’d found a weakness in their attack, an opening that she could use to turn their own trap against them, and there wasn’t anything that Yoshika could do to stop it.

Yoshika let her thoughts return to a normal pace and winced as the soulfire struck the doppelganger. She had hoped to be wrong, but her worst fears were realized as Rika dropped to the floor, screaming in agony at the same time as the fake Eunae. The soulfire was a spiritual attack, and Rika’s doppelgangers were projections of her soul. It was a critical weakness to Rika’s technique that none of them had realized until now—but Hayakawa had. Once again, Yoshika had to curse herself for underestimating her rival. Hayakawa’s ability with spiritual arts and magic was low, but she didn’t shirk her studies, and her knowledge was just as good as Yoshika’s, if not better.

“Oh ancestors! Rika, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize!”

Eunae stopped to fuss over Rika, and suddenly the tables were turned as Hayakawa began regrouping with her team while Yoshika was forced to make hard decisions.

“Eunae, leave her be! Yue, you stay behind and help her. Rejoin the fight the moment Rika’s safe from permanent injury.”

Yue nodded tightly, and ran over to help Rika fight off the spiritual attack. Eunae glanced between them urgently and began to protest.

“But I can stop the attack much more—”

Yoshika grimaced. She hated herself for it, but she had to make the decision.

“We need you for the gravity trap! We can afford to spare Yue, not you. Let’s go!”

After only a moment of hesitation, Eunae followed, leaving Yue to take care of Rika’s injuries. Though she hadn’t been officially eliminated, Rika was probably out of the fight, and without Yue’s song to confound them, Hayakawa’s team had completely regrouped. They would have the close quarters brawl that Yoshika had expected, but outnumbered and without Rika to support their mages. In other words, a complete disaster.

As Hayakawa’s team approached, Yoshika’s team held their ground and prepared the gravity spell that would stop Hayakawa’s Weightless Fist. Dae used terrain altering spells to slow down the enemy and fortify their position, while Yoshika and Eunae unloaded on them with offensive magic. Lightning bolts, ice spears, and even one of Eunae’s two remaining balls of soulfire wore their opponents down before the inevitable clash. One of their opponents—Tokuda—went down to a particularly well-placed lightning bolt before the clash. Unfortunately that still left them outnumbered, and though they had something of an advantage against the mainly martial-arts specialized team, Hayakawa’s overwhelming influence was more than enough to make up for it.

As they clashed, Yoshika defended Dae and Eunae from attacks, while the mages took advantage of the terrain to keep their distance as they rained down spells. Yoshika had by now accumulated enough lightning ki in Jia’s body to hold her transformation in reserve, but she was unwilling to spend it haphazardly, as it would exhaust Jia’s body—she needed to wait for the right time. The trap was set, but Hayakawa wasn’t biting. She stayed at the edges of the fight, striking at Yoshika opportunistically, and preventing her from landing any decisive blows that might eliminate another of Hayakawa’s team.

The fight wasn’t going well. Yoshika was constantly stymied by Hayakawa, while Hanako protected the team from spells with her shields and Ozaki used his corrosion-element technique to destroy the fortifications that Dae had constructed, slowly limiting their movements. Hayakawa wasn’t using her ultimate technique, and at the rate they were going she wouldn’t need to.

Things took a sudden turn when Satou managed to tag Dae with his gravity tether technique. Dae’s inability to retreat forced Yoshika to commit to protecting him, which left Eunae more open. Hayakawa capitalized on that and went after Eunae, seeing the potential for an elimination. Yoshika intercepted her with Jia, but that left Eui and Dae alone against the other four opponents. Without Jia’s full speed, Eui wasn’t able to fend off so many opponents at once, and though she managed to smash through Miyata’s body hardening technique and score another elimination, Dae was overpowered and taken out of the fight in exchange.

As if she had been waiting for that exact moment, Hayakawa lowered her stance and prepared to finish the fight with her ultimate technique. Yoshika held her breath as she realized that Hayakawa had made a mistake—she had been assuming that the gravity trap was entirely dependent on Dae, but the spell was being maintained by Yoshika, Dae, and Eunae together—his loss wasn’t enough to stop it entirely. Yoshika once more accelerated her thoughts as Hayakawa launched herself towards Eunae—and froze in place. Her expression turned to shock, and then resignation as she realized her error. The gravity trap hadn’t been enough to completely stop her, but it slowed her down more than enough for Yoshika to counter her with the Lightning God Transformation.

Yoshika released the lightning ki she had been storing in Jia’s body, and slammed into a nearly helpless Hayakawa with the full force of her technique. The first blow smashed Hayakawa into the ground with enough force that she bounced back up, grimacing in pain. It was a cathartic reflection of the first time Jia and Hayakawa had dueled, but she wasn’t finished yet. Yoshika followed up with a kick that sent the airborne Hayakawa hurtling helplessly into her own teammates. Hanako was bowled over by the unexpected living projectile, and in the confusion, Yoshika used Eui’s body to deliver a pinpoint, lightning-empowered pressure point strike to Satou’s temple, dropping him instantly.

Only Ozaki remained standing, but there was more than enough energy left in Jia’s body to turn into a living bolt of lightning and put him down before he’d even had a chance to react to the chaos. In little more than the span of a few eyeblinks, Hayakawa’s team had been completely wiped out. Hayakawa herself rose unsteadily to her feet, wiping blood from the corners of her mouth as she assessed the situation. Her entire team floored, with Jia and Eui panting for breath, Eunae threatening her with the last orb of ghostly flame, and Yan Yue running towards them from the distance, moments away from catching up.

Hayakawa squinted her eyes shut, took a deep breath, then let out a frustrated sigh and held up her hands in surrender.

“I yield. Well fought, Lee Jia—you’ve completely defeated me.”