A paragraph from the second book ran through Victor’s head as he watched the display unfold.

“...Among the least appreciated, yet most potent abilities available to Storm-soul Cultivators is the ability to rectify internal imbalances, replicating the natural role of the Thundergods upon which their cultivation method relies, merely within the human being rather than a storm cloud. If a Storm-soul Cultivator develops this branch of their path, it becomes nearly impossible for any deleterious effect that relies upon directly inducing an imbalance to take hold. While nearly every True Path, through some method or another, renders the practitioner highly resistant to such tampering, a Storm-soul Cultivator is particularly difficult to affect with simplistic poisons and curses.”

“Combine this with a trait such as Metabolic Alkahest, and all but the most potent or sophisticated of poisons become worthless.”

And that ability to force flesh back into a semblance of its rightful form… That had been described earlier in the same book, a unique trait gained from the alchemically purified Azothic essence of something called a… A necro-something. He couldn’t recall, and frankly, didn’t care to try remembering at the moment. Something felt off about the way Zelsys fought. It was nothing like what he’d seen back in the forest, and it certainly fell short of how she was described in the books. There was a… Stiltedness to it, still. An intentional inefficiency, one that went deeper than that hair trick.

“...Is she sandbagging?” he muttered, more to himself than as an actual question, but it prompted a real answer from Zefaris.

“Of course she is. It couldn’t be more obvious that the knight captain has something that he thinks will instantly win him the fight, so he’s misguidedly trying to put on a show before he plays his winning card. That said, he’s not even using a breathing technique…”

They clashed again in an open exchange of blows, but the knight captain was somehow not only not slowing down, but speeding up. Victor had been just barely able to follow his movements until now, but instead of weakening, the more Zelsys beat on him, the harder he fought. As if the mere mention of it had spurred him on to use it, Von Wickten seemingly got his breathing under control out of nowhere, hissing much like a False Drake would as gusts of blue flame began to issue from his mouth and nostrils with each breath.

It was then that he at last caught Zelsys off-guard, feinting an upward slash only to turn the strike into a swift thrust.

The knight captain’s flaming sword passed right between one of her lower pairs of ribs on the left side, obviously having been aimed at her heart. Unfortunately, he had underestimated the preternatural toughness of her flesh, and his blade got stuck halfway through her lung. Zel’s first thought was angling her torso in order to trap the blade, but… The wound was clean. The sword had passed through a nonvital region without ripping or puncturing anything of true importance, and so, she stepped forward, fully impaling herself upon the knight captain’s now-sputtering sword.

Staring eye to eye, the flame of his exhalations washing over her face, her face twisted into a grin that sprouted more from amusement than the thrill of a real fight, Zelsys took a few moments to revel in this. She knew it would soon end, that he would soon grow desperate enough to play his gambit, and that she would have to put in some actual effort to put him in his place.

“Another mistake: A precise strike doesn’t do anything if you don’t hit a weak point… And I don’t have many.”

Even as thin rivulets of black blood ran down from the entry and exit points, her Engine Breathing didn’t stop or even slow down. What she had done stunned not just the spectators, but the knight captain himself, albeit for only a moment - but a moment was all she needed to grapple her opponent and animate three of her braids. Blue-white tendrils slithered down their lengths as hideous, beastly heads of congealed lightning formed around their tips, each braid coming alive as though a serpent, briefly coiling back in apparent examination of their prey-to-be before they opened their maws and lunged into Von Wickten’s unarmored chest, burrowing between his ribs in a horrific undulating motion.

They seared his flesh and gouged horrible wounds between his ribs, with one actually penetrating into his chest cavity before the knight captain finally decided to swallow his pride, let go of his weapon, and create some distance by leaping backwards.

“I am… Truly impressed, southerner,” the knight captain uttered between heaving breaths. There was no respect in his tone, only barely-suppressed anger. “But it wouldn’t do if I let myself be humiliated like this. Take this as an honor, for none have seen this before and lived!”

Zelsys could’ve interrupted him, just as he could've interrupted her when she had gone off on monologuing tangents, but she didn’t want to. If she stopped him from playing his ace, he - and those who wished to undermine her victory - would have something to latch onto, an easy excuse. That, and… She was terribly curious to see what he would do.

His pupils contracted to hair-thin lines, then vanished completely, giving way to a subtle, but unmistakable pattern in their stead: Three lines in the shape of a cornerless triangle, the true mark of a dragon descendant.

The knight captain began convulsing in place as his flesh visibly shifted beneath his shirt, a disgusting cracking and squelching audible from inside him. It started at his hands, scales suddenly covering them in their entirety, followed by sudden lengthening of the claws to talons the length of short daggers. Symmetrical, filed horns grew into their true asymmetrical, gnarled selves, newly-growing scales and spikes tore apart his shirt and a short, stubby tail grew from his back, accompanied by wings just barely big enough to be impressive while remaining useless.

“Oh. It’s just a mutagen transformation,” she thought with a pang of disappointment, having seen this type of grisly metamorphosis a dozen times before. The Gorth’Itans - or eagle-men - who had left the Kargarian caravan to join the sect nearly all demonstrated a minor form of self-induced mutagenic transformation, just as varied as the shapes of their taloned feet and colours of the feathers they had instead of hair. While the knight captain’s transformation went on, Zel pulled his sword out of herself and tossed it aside, dedicating a good portion of digested Vitae towards making sure the wound remained shut and that no blood leaked into her lungs. It was always fun to see how even the same type differed person to person, but Von Wickten’s was… Uninspired. Feral, barely refined, obviously something he hadn’t put real work into, treating it as an emergency power boost for fights where his subpar swordsmanship failed him. Zel did nothing to increase her own fighting ability for now, deciding to clash with him at least once on his terms. He was a good deal faster and stronger, the extraneous wings affording him a minor tactical tool in an easy way to kick up sand. From his mouth now issues concentrated bolts of blue flame that she actually felt the need to dodge, and he managed to leave quite a nasty, albeit surface-level gash on her side with an attack that came out quickly enough to blindside her, as lightly as she was taking this fight. However… The moment she actually got a feel for the jump in raw capability, it was over. He just didn’t know it yet.

Despite the impressive increase in mobility and power, Zelsys found herself having to put in even less conscious effort to fight Von Wickten in his Pseudo-draconic form. He’d lost what little self-control he had exhibited previously, his fighting style became entirely instinctive and reactionary, fully that of a rabid animal. Predictable, direct action, always the most direct movements possible, telegraphed, frontal assaults with attempts to go for the jugular.

Zel decided to up the cyclic rate of her Engine Breathing to perhaps two-thirds of what she would use for a real fight, such as the False Drake.

To deal with his claws, she dredged up small quantities of Metallum and blended it with Pneuma in her second stomach, storing it away specifically to use with her actual defensive technique, whose use she had foregone until now.

Von Wickten lashed out like the animal that he currently was, only to find his strikes robbed of momentum, any attempted followthrough foiled by conveniently-metallized skin that didn’t lose its hardness until after Zelsys had already left his reach. He tried again and again, not understanding what was happening until a phantom antler had taken form on the left side of her head, and even then, he had no way to know what that display meant. In his rabid state, Adalbert didn’t even pay enough attention to be worried when he saw Zelsys twisting her own forearm clockwise, flesh and bone glistening metallic and bending as if it were nothing. Evading his furious onslaught the entire time, she twisted and twisted until her forearm looked like a wrung cloth and her fist was in an otherwise normal position relative to the elbow.

In the end, the knight captain’s capabilities were even more disappointing than she had expected. The least she could do was make it look good when she put him in his place… Even if a part of her felt insulted by using the strike she’s used to finish off Ubul, the Beast Reborn in Stone, on a degenerate rapist slaver.

They faced one another down from opposite sides of the pit.

Von Wickten charged at her.

A great serpent of lightning coiled down her arm, the motion line of muscular contraction lighting up with intramuscular arcane combustions in rapid succession. She uncoiled her entire body into a modified casting punch, her arm following the motion of a whip as her forearm violently sprung back into its natural shape, flesh and bone made into a terrifying torsion spring by the clever application of Metallomancy and supreme internal control.

A STRIKE TO HUMBLE THE GENERALS OF DIVINITY

FORMLESS BUTCHERY: THUNDERCLAP STING

The beast-slayer’s metallized fist struck the feral Dragon Knight mid-charge like a wrathful hand of divine tribulation, and from its impact there issued a blinding flash and a thunderclap. Only perhaps a dozen people in the entire amphitheater had had either the good judgment or foreknowledge to cover their ears. Once the dust cleared Von Wickten was left standing there stone-still, a gaping pit in his left side, a crater amongst his armored scales. Shattered ribs protruded from his chest like the broken trunks of thunderstruck trees after a storm. A blood waterfall poured out between his snarling teeth, the draconic shine vanishing from his eyes in favor of half-dilated pupils.

His wings, tail, extraneous scales, and additional muscle mass all faded away in seconds, crumbling to putrescent dust that blew away in the wind…

…And he still raised his hand to strike her, the pride in his eyes unwilling to accept defeat of its own accord. It was pitiful.

Zel leaned to the side, the jab sailing right beside her head before she grabbed his outstretched arm and threw him to the ground, leveraging his arm while reaching for the blackstone handle that protruded from the sheath on her back. Even now, as his purplish blood soaked the sand, he snarled, hissed, and struggled, and for that, she had to give him some modicum of credit.

It was that blade again. That terrible tuning-fork tonfa which Victor now knew to be the broken remains of Zel’s cleaver, the Lightning Butcher; or more accurately, now the Broken Butcher. The sawteeth on one of its prongs began to violently oscillate back and forth, the metal screeching as she funneled a tremendous deluge of Fulgur through the weapon and used it to begin sawing off the knight captain’s horns, smugly demanding his submission the whole time. As evidenced by the spurting of purple blood from the horn and the furious, flame-belching protests of the knight captain, the so-called Butcher’s Teeth had not grown dull in the slightest through the blade’s breaking in the final battle of the Blue Moon War.

It wasn’t until she was halfway through the second horn that he submitted, and even then, Zelsys pretended that the noise of her weapon had drowned out his voice, prying at the horn until it broke off, leaving an unsightly splinter.

"...Now, my winnings, if you would," she smugged into his ear as she leaned in.

He gurgled, spitting out a glob of blood before turning his head just enough to say: "Tgh... The red sun... Rises over... Bloodstained peaks."