Zelsys was a folk hero for the new epoch, having stepped straight out of the pages, off the propaganda posters, and into reality, now facing a woman whose identity as a pirate queen and a scourge of Pateiria’s colonies was all but an open secret… In a friendly exhibition match.

The weeks leading up to this had served to change the mood of Willowdale’s populace for the better, to sow the seeds of optimism among their ranks, that much was true, but this was something different.

This was the spring rain that would see those seeds quicken, to set alight a new fire in the hearts of those who had watched their beloved country torn apart by malicious foreign powers.

Immediately after that fireworks display, Zelsys spun on a boot-heel to face Arnys head-on. The meticulous posing melted from her form in moments as she shifted to a relaxed, yet prepared stance, her apparent calm contrasted by the rapid pace of her breathing and the constant puffs of Fog from her nostrils.

She turned her eyes skyward, grinning at her glittering creation before she swept her gaze over the crowd.

“You want to see more?!” called out the beast-slayer, breaking out into full laughter at the raucous response.

“Very well!”¨she proclaimed, rolling her shoulders. “You’d better watch closely, because you won’t have time to see this when steel starts flashing.”

Even faster breathing. Even more pointless exhalant and lightning whipping about, but… There was something there, in the midst of it. A murmur crossing her lips, a savage countenance gripping her face. On the surface, it just looked like an even more bombastic version of the same display she’d shown before, but...

There it was. That thing. A shape formed by absence within the maelstrom of Fog and lightning that swirled about her. Arnys knew what it was, yet couldn’t believe her senses. The potentiality of its manifestation had been among those she considered, being that Newman was already more instinctive than many actual animals to begin with, but…

…Not in this shape. Regardless of whether it was a Berserker, a Skinwalker, or any other of a myriad cultivation methods that allowed the conscious mind to draw power from the primitive self, this just wasn’t how that Id manifested.

A real animal, a twisted monstrosity, an ominous spirit, even some truly bizarre phantom automaton, but this one was new.

“You can see it, can’t you? The Other Me, just barely visible in this mess of magic,” the monstrous woman called out Arnys’ observation. “Does it truly look as strange as you seem to think, going by your expression?”

“I have met a few individuals who exhibited this phenomenon in my lifetime, I must admit, but none whose manifestation just looked like some… Exaggerated reflection of themselves. Tell me, do you know why it looks so much like you?”

“We’ve formed an accord of sorts, you could say - myself and I. As for Other Me’s handsome barbarian looks, I can trace every single difference to something I remember. The skull, my first kill - a rot-bear and its rebirth as a necrobeast. The antlers, my second - a maneater of retribution, a wendigo by any other name. I’ve consumed both of their Azoth Stones. As for the rest… It’s just me. My own larger-than-life personality given form, or egoism as you could call it.”

Arnys felt laughter rising from her chest, and she couldn’t stem its tide in full before it came out as an amused chuckle. A homunculus, wielding one of the Wrathful Thundergods that made up the Living Storm, an Ikesian Captain’s Cleaver empowered by that very same Wrathful Thundergod and melded with what was clearly Three Kings Era essentech for a handle, alongside whatever unsettling abilities she derived from a vengeance demon and a necrobeast… All in service to filling the power vacuum left by the effective death of organized cultivation within one of Ikesia’s last remaining holdout states.

“Truly, a living monument to Ikesia’s defiance of her conquerors you are. Never let it be said the tides of fate do not have a sense of humor. I will greatly enjoy putting you to the proof, Newman,” remarked the matriarch. Despite this, a part of her very much hoped her expectations would be exceeded, if only so that she wouldn’t have to drag Kargaria into this conflict prematurely.

One of the arcanists surrounding them, who also served as referees, called out in Kargarian. A series of switches were thrown in sequence. Essentech came alive. Flesh grew stiff and returned to normal as a wave of hardening magic washed over them both, the stamped seals above their hearts spreading outward to signify their activation.

The system would reactively power up the enchantment, causing would-be severe injuries to be reduced to surface-level flesh wounds. In order to maintain the consequences of being struck, the stamp would inflict pain proportional to the amount of energy expended in protecting against an attack. While it couldn’t precisely simulate the theoretical pain that a subject would suffer were an attack allowed to impact in full, it was at least precise enough to target the same general location, thanks to the same arcane principles that allowed its protection to target a specific area.

Nobody needed to know that, in addition to sophisticated essentech, it also employed corpse parts from multiple minor deities alongside certain types of mind-reading magic in order to be truly accurate. Each stamp was connected to its own subsystem, and therefore, the strain of one person being hit wouldn’t reflect on the whole system, and more importantly, no pain simulation mix ups could happen. On the off-chance that any of the system’s numerous safeguards were to be tripped, either by continuous strain or a single overwhelming attack, the stamp in question would dissipate in a highly visible shower of semi-congealed arcane waste designed to resemble a spray of blood, while all other participants would be briefly paralyzed through a full-body hardening surge in order to stop any in-progress attacks.

It was still far from entirely safe, but it lowered the risk factor of an armed duel to that of a fistfight.