Two claw weapons tore through the world, suffused with blue energy. Shei blocked the slashes that followed in rapid succession with mere flicks of her wrist.

The weightless sword, Sky Cherry Blossom, was a weapon whose inertia existed only for Ebon. One moment it was blocking his left claw; the next, a turn of her wrist sent it changing direction to split his head. That forced Ebon to keep one hand in reserve for defense whenever he attacked with the other.

“An invisible weapon. At first, I thought that would be a headache.”

In fact, it was fortunate that Sky Cherry Blossom was invisible. Had he not focused on Shei’s wrist from the start, his skull would have split before he discovered its secret.

Ebon spoke, begrudging its unfairness.

“It certainly is a weapon far too good for its wielder.”

“What would that puny brain of yours know? It’s ten times better than you think.”

Shei sneered coldly and unleashed her sword energy.

Heavenly Sword Art, Tailwind.

From this moment on, the wind smiled on Shei alone. Sky Cherry Blossom descended, wrapped in air. The sword was weightless, but the vibrating wind was a force in itself.

“Guh!”

Ebon crossed his claws to catch Sky Cherry Blossom. Six blades shuddered violently against the single sword. He thrust both arms forward, throwing it off.

He had blocked it, but the moment he committed both hands to defense, he had already lost the tactical exchange.

Shei sneered, and Ebon gritted his teeth.

“You’re doing remarkably well for someone mauled by a Beast King!”

“Oh, this?”

Still sneering, Shei tilted her head. Blood manipulation took effect that instant, drawing the blood she had shed back into her body.

Ebon cried out in astonishment.

“You were faking it!”

“No, I wasn’t. I really was hurt a little. I just healed.”

That was no comfort to Ebon. If she could retrieve her blood and heal her wounds, however slightly, wearing her down with shallow claw cuts would be difficult.

“That King of Cats wouldn’t run, even after I wounded her quite a bit. You must have trained her well. Thanks to that, I took a few unexpected hits.”

“You’re awfully confident with that assortment of trifling tricks.”

He had no choice but to use his second power. Ebon twisted his left wrist and murmured.

“Call to Arms, Set.”

At that moment, the miniature military armament built into his left claw slotted into his biometric terminal. The terminal consumed mana and began to shine.

CLICK. CLACK.

A steel framework settled into place along his skin. Level 3 steel filled the gaps, glowing with alchemical light.

This was no transformation. Mana and alchemical light flowed along his Arche Avatar, allowing Ebon to finish equipping his military armament in the midst of battle.

Now wearing a steel helmet, Ebon swung his head. Sky Cherry Blossom, aimed at his skull, bounced off the single horn on his helmet. Confronted with unfamiliar equipment, Shei drove him away with wind and retreated to examine his weapon.

Ebon murmured confidently.

“A General’s Armament: Unicorn.”

From the claws on both hands to the gauntlets, the breastplate with its pauldrons, the helmet, and the sturdy horn that was anything but ornamental, this was equipment the Military State had specially made for Ebon alone. It protected his upper body while adding another means of attack.

Ebon explained to Shei as she watched in silence. His voice echoed from beneath the horn and helmet.

“You must understand. Fighting with claws has the disadvantage of forcing you to lead with your head. Until now, whenever you aimed for my head, I had to take a defensive stance to block or evade... But now that I’m wearing my military armament, that is no longer necessary. All that remains is attack. Well? Can you stop me?”

Shei tilted her head, her face full of questions.

Ebon smiled in satisfaction, but contrary to his expectations, her questions had nothing to do with his capabilities.

“I knew it. I’ve never seen that military armament before. You didn’t steal it, did you? Or is it so useless they’re about to scrap it?”

Sometimes, hearing something utterly absurd renders even patience useless. Faced with such a rude, outlandish suspicion, Ebon lost his temper and shouted, quite unlike himself.

“Of course not! I am a star of the Military State, and my military armament is a weapon granted only to generals! Just as each star is unique, so is each general’s military armament!”

“Why? Last time, no general had military armament this stupid. What the hell? Were even you people not the real culprits?”

“... What do you mean?”

But Shei’s questions were beyond the present Ebon’s ability to answer. Forgetting even the fight, she muttered.

“An Instructor. Male, a member of the Lords of Creation pursuing Humanity’s great cherished wish or whatever. He knew the undying one existed, seemed like someone it would take at least the undying one to stop, and brought a Beast King.”

Fragments of information poured from her lips.

Hearing her, Lieutenant General Ebon asked, his gaze darkening.

“... Humanity’s great cherished wish? What do you know, you little bastard?”

Shei could have answered, but had no intention of doing so. She merely kept muttering to herself.

“Even the two women fit. It’s unclear whether that included Azi, but it’s also unclear whether the lieutenant colonel was there at the time, so setting that aside... Roughly everything lines up.”

After puzzling over it for some time, Shei snapped at the piece that refused to fit.

“Then who the hell trashed the bottomless pit?! Why would those Lords of Creation bastards, supposedly beast experts, leave Azi like that? Where did all those corpses come from?!”

Their information crossed paths. Ebon could not answer Shei’s questions, and Shei had no intention of answering his.

In this case, Ebon was the one who had acquired a new objective. He struck his claws together, then drew their edges against one another. Sparks flew from the blades with a metallic screech.

“It seems... I’ll have to cut off your right arm and interrogate you before you’ll talk. Don’t worry. I’ll leave your left arm, the one with your biometric terminal. I’ll need it to torture you.”

Shei grimaced as an unpleasant memory surfaced. Even when confronted with horrible memories that could have given her PTSD, her first response was irritation. That was one of her strengths.

For a Regressor, at least.

“Why don’t you worry about that horn of yours?”

“Your concerns are unfounded. The rest is Level 3, but this horn alone is Level 4 alchemical steel. I hope you don’t get impaled and die by accident. You have a great deal to tell me.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. That thing on your head.”

Shei smiled ominously. As she smiled, her hair crackled with sudden static.

Only then did Ebon notice Sky Cherry Blossom’s ominous turbulence. He also realized that its supposedly transparent blade had grown as dark as a storm cloud.

“Isn’t it perfect for getting struck? They say a Thunderbird looking for somewhere to land likes pointed things.”

Before Ebon could respond to the danger he sensed, Shei’s attack was complete. She drew a finger downward, unleashing her power.

Heavenly Sword Art.

Thunderbird.

As though it had been decided from the beginning, as though no other possibility existed.

A bolt of lightning struck Unicorn’s horn.

“Aaaaaaaargh—!”

Electricity coursed through Ebon’s body. Fighting to control his trembling limbs, he deployed his energy arts throughout his body.

Military State Standard Energy Arts, Heaven Form. Repel. Deflect.

Energy that repelled bullets and arrows rose across his entire body. For an instant, the force pushing outward from him threw off the lightning. He drove his feet into the ground and summoned more energy.

Standard Energy Arts, Earth Form. Flow.

With his feet planted, he spread his energy and channeled the lightning into the ground in an instant. The electrical energy burrowing into him seeped away below.

Having accomplished the feat of diverting lightning, Ebon gasped for breath.

“Huff. Huff.”

Even this, however, had cost him dearly. He had needed to deploy energy arts in rapid succession merely to endure his opponent’s attack, rather than evade it, and the drain on his reserves was immense.

Shei jeered at him as he recovered.

“Looks like you’ve managed Heaven and Earth somehow. Well? Got a feel for Water yet? Or do they still make anyone a general as long as they’ve reached Earth?”

“Guh... You merely lucked into a powerful artifact! Don’t talk as though you’re better than me just because its power gives you the advantage!”

Ebon shouted to buy himself time to recover. Contrary to his expectations, however, Shei’s face twisted into a fierce scowl.

“You’re saying my gear carries me?”

He had not put it that way. But her almost convulsive reaction left him standing silently, unable even to deny it. Shei gripped Sky Cherry Blossom and glared at him, fuming.

“Did you just say my gear carries me?”

Her hostility swelled. Sensing it, Lieutenant General Ebon hurriedly raised his claws.

Gripping Sky Cherry Blossom firmly with both hands, Shei wound her arms back and raised it behind her shoulder. At the same time, she drew on the energy throughout her body.

Her overflowing reserves, accumulated by gathering every kind of treasure and consuming elixirs, seeped into Sky Cherry Blossom.

In an instant, wrapped in a tremendous surge of energy, Shei shouted at Ebon.

“Stop saying my gear carries me, you fucker! I can beat a lousy lieutenant general without Sky Cherry Blossoooom!”

Heaven-Reversing Realm.

The ultimate defensive energy art, which engraved movements into the body in advance so that even unexpected attacks could be deflected naturally.

But there was no reason the engraved movements had to be defensive forms.

There were more varieties of attack than defense. Attacks had to be more diverse and tailored to the opponent. Thus, for prearranged forms like those of Heaven-Reversing Realm, defense was overwhelmingly more efficient.

Indeed, Heaven-Reversing Realm itself had been designed with that purpose in mind.

Still, couldn’t it have a few... offensive forms? Perhaps five, if the movements were relatively independent of the circumstances.

That was what Shei had thought, and what she had done.

One of the five offensive forms Shei had stubbornly created: a left diagonal slash.

Sky Cherry Blossom cleaved through space with ponderous force. For a weightless sword, the energy poured into it became its strength.

Brimming with blue energy, the blade was the only stretch of open sky in this bottomless pit. Impossible to resist or block.

“Bullet-repelling...!”

Ebon deployed his energy arts to their utmost to defend himself.

But before that overwhelming force, it was his claws that were knocked away.

Unicorn’s horn, forged from Level 4 alchemical steel, snapped. Sky Cherry Blossom tore a great gash from pauldron to breastplate. Cutting through even the energy within, it drew a blue diagonal across Ebon’s body.

Blood sprayed. Ebon staggered backward.

Briefly halted by the recoil of Heaven-Reversing Realm’s offensive form, Shei studied her opponent rather than pursue him now that distance had opened between them.

It was only his bullet-repelling energy that had kept the wound from being fatal. Spread throughout his body, it had pushed him away the instant the blade cut him, keeping his ribs out of Sky Cherry Blossom’s path.

The wound was already severe, but at least his life had been spared.

Ebon spat out a lament along with blood.

“... Damn you... Peerless Spear... Dropping a monster like this down here... without even... incapacitating her....”

Shei murmured indifferently.

“If you knew, you should’ve come better prepared.”

Ebon laughed. He threw his head back and laughed until he coughed up blood, then covered his mouth against the rising blood and murmured.

“Haha... I even brought... the King of Cats.... What more preparation did I need?”

Shei conceded the point. If the Lords of Creation had brought a Beast King along, they had made a considerable effort. Any greater force would quite literally be meant for a decisive battle, not something a lieutenant general could deploy for private purposes.

Instead, Lieutenant General Ebon had used every means available from his position: the authority of his rank, the talented people he had painstakingly cultivated and recruited, the mana herbs, and even his adjutant.

“And yet... to have it all thwarted... by a single variable....”

Muttering hollowly, Ebon deactivated Unicorn. The broken metal remained lost, while the remaining alchemical steel dissolved into a cloud of light and converged on his left arm.

The military armament packet popped out, chipped in several places. A general’s military armament was both a form of identification and a weapon packed with military secrets. Upon defeat, a good soldier locked it into packet form, if only to prevent technological leaks.

Just as Ebon picked it up with a trembling hand, a brittle crack came from inside the packet. A hollow sound, like a jewel shattering.

Then fragments of a broken gem fell at his feet.

Ebon’s eyes widened. He had not misheard. It was one of a pair of twin gems that resonated with each other.

When one broke, the other shattered too.

“What’s that?”

He heard Shei’s question, but had no obligation to answer.

Besides, the answer would come soon enough.

YEEEEEEOOOOWWWL!

Nabi’s howl rang out in the distance. Unlike an ordinary hiss, this howling carried a hint of madness.

Startled, Shei turned toward the building’s interior.

“What? A chest-voice roar? No, that doesn’t sound quite right...?”

“Heh, heh, heh.”

Familiar with such matters, Ebon realized what had happened.

Training Nabi had been difficult, time-consuming, and dangerous.

Even a human drug addict was dangerous. How much more so the King of Cats?

At first, Nabi had eagerly accepted the mana herbs as gifts. Sometimes, when her symptoms grew severe, she attacked the keeper of the herbs and fled with the remaining supply.

Whenever a keeper died that way, Ebon immediately cut off the drug supply.

Once her mana herbs ran out, Nabi would creep back. She threatened, begged, and sometimes turned the entire base upside down, but she could not find herbs that were not there. Writhing in withdrawal, she learned that Ebon was the only one who could provide them.

Only after leaving her desperate for a long time would he finally supply more, driving home the fact that if she stole the herbs, she would never receive them again.

Over and over and over.

Thanks to those efforts, Nabi had come to associate “the keeper’s death” with “the loss of her drugs.”

That was not a bad thing for either Ebon or the colonel.

At the very least, it kept the colonel safe from Nabi. And if he died, she would go berserk and devastate everything. It was a reassuring insurance policy for them both.

“... Ha. So ‘he’ even made something like this.... Really, he’s worse than I am.”

But a certain being sponsoring the Lords of Creation had turned even that into a mechanism.

Something had clearly been implanted inside the colonel, currently Ebon’s sole adjutant, to make the King of Cats go berserk if Ebon lost.

Probably something that reacted to the jewel breaking by tearing up his insides. To produce as much blood scent as possible.

“In any case, thank you. Thanks to you....”

Taking advantage of Nabi’s frenzy and the moment Shei’s gaze turned toward it, Ebon ground his teeth into the mana-herb cigar he had slipped into his mouth earlier while pretending to cover it. The paper wrapping tore, releasing the catnip-based herbs inside.

More precisely, the specially made mana herbs, crafted from the king of catnip and dried World Tree leaves, filled his mouth.

Ebon murmured self-mockingly.

“Heh heh. I didn’t... want to use this....”

TICK.

A flame sprang from his finger. Though a hand-to-hand fighter, he had learned Level 1 everyday magic as part of a general education.

“Set, Re.”

Ignition, Ignite.

A combination of Fahrenheit’s flame and Pascal’s wind. The fire in his mouth spread like wildfire, blazing up all at once with the mana herbs as fuel.

Shei, momentarily distracted by the King of Cats’ chest-voice roar, looked puzzled.

“Huh? He set fire to his own mouth? What the hell is he...?”

The thing that had been Lieutenant General Ebon answered.

“Kyaaaaaaah...!”

His pupils narrowed into vertical slits. His hair stood rigidly on end. His stance naturally lowered, his claws grew a little longer, and his human body produced something akin to a chest-voice roar.

Only now did Shei recognize what her opponent was.

“You...! Cat beastkin...!”

Instead of an answer, streams of black smoke poured from Ebon’s mouth. Smoke from burning mana herbs was dozens of times more potent than their scent alone. When cat beastkin inhaled it, they forgot their pain, reclaimed their beast blood, and became capable of a chest-voice roar.

Its terrible addictiveness and severe aftereffects meant that even the Lords of Creation did not particularly recommend it.

But if someone chose to use it on the brink of death, what was there to stop them?

Even as the flames burned through his mouth, Ebon shouted.

“Kyaaaaah! No! I am not a beast! I am human—!”

Ebon lunged. This time on all fours, faster and lighter than before.

Shei had faced this before in a previous iteration: someone using a chest-voice roar without losing their reason. The beastkin who had accompanied the Beast Kings, humanity’s greatest enemies, had looked exactly like this.

“I thought there was something strange about the way you attacked...! So that’s why the King of Cats followed you! She thought you were one of her people! But your ears and tail—how...?”

Shei hurriedly examined Ebon, and saw it.

Where the helmet had disappeared, amid his bristling hair.

Dried, hardened scabs marking where something had been cut away.

“Your own ears...! You crazy... bastards...!”

She could say no more. Ebon’s claws descended with far greater power and cunning than before, as though he had become a real cat.

Against Ebon, who attacked while burning away everything he had, Shei began the second round.