Full Power Deployment

Baba Yaga's Subspace Barrier.

A working of barrier-craft every bit as advanced as Baba Yaga's Chicken-Leg Hut itself. True to its name, the technique anchored its occupants at an entirely separate coordinate — an otherworld cut cleanly away from reality.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

White Ghost had made a point of calling this a trial. Until one of us — Cheon Geomhwa or I — was finished, the subspace would not lift.

No one could reach us here. Which meant we had, if only for a moment, room enough to talk.

"I never thought things would turn out like this."

Cheon Geomhwa nodded, as if she felt the same in her bones.

"Is your sister all right?"

"She's a hostage in all but name."

Whatever moved her, Cheon Geomhwa unburdened herself of everything that had happened. The Management Bureau had come crashing in. Roseria's safety was in Berze's hands.

"I followed your counsel and obtained the medicine. I believed that if I could only find the Ember, it would all be over. And yet it has come to this."

Th-that's the Sleeping Princess, right?

So that stuff had been at the Academy. I never imagined Cheon Geomhwa would have stashed it in advance.

There used to be an event where you woke a heroine who'd drunk it by accident with a kiss — a drug that dropped you into an eternal sleep unless the conditions were met. A decent stopgap against Abaddon's Extreme Poison.

A shame we'd ended up in a duel to the death before she could hand it over.

"If you die, the contract voids on the spot. Beelzebuth will swallow your sworn sister Roseria and your company, Evergarden, whole."

"I suppose so. Which is why… I cannot die. Not under any circumstances."

My words only stoked Cheon Geomhwa's will to live. The reason she still clawed for life even after falling this far was only one: to save her sworn sister, Roseria.

"I am sorry."

"You don't need to apologize."

The way she said it, Cheon Geomhwa already looked certain of her victory.

"Don't worry. Even if I have to kill you, I won't stand by and let Beelzebuth devour everything your sisters have."

"Beelzebuth, was it? That woman. One of Abaddon's Spawn. So that's why there were monsters in this assault."

She nodded as if the last pieces had finally clicked into place, then looked at me.

"The true nature of the extreme poison. Berze's identity. And you — who inherited the art without being White Ghost's disciple. What, exactly, are you?"

"I'll tell you."

Who I am.

This was a subspace neither Baba Yaga nor White Ghost nor anyone else could enter. Which meant I didn't have to hide what I looked like. Not here.

Shan. Full power deployment, please.

L-leave it to me. This… we're really doing this. For real.

Shan sounded almost giddy.

We never used this function in ordinary times. Survival had always come first, so we throttled our output, poured everything into mimicry, and stayed in the shadows. Fighting at full power had been a luxury we couldn't afford.

Not anymore.

I'd been shoved into this, but to prove I was qualified in front of White Ghost, I had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to put Cheon Geomhwa down with my own hands. This form was my true strength — something I revealed only before an enemy who absolutely had to die.

The self I'd buried to get into the Academy, the true shape hidden inside the mimicked shell, began to surface.

At the first signal, my body began to wake in earnest.

The microfibers of my muscles drew taut. My lungs began exchanging air at an efficiency far beyond ordinary oxygen levels. My body was reclaiming its original shape.

My body was being rebuilt into a perfect instrument of war.

As the sensory and neural optimizations kicked in, sleeping senses opened their eyes one by one. When it merged with the power of Hoyeonjigi and the Silent Killing Method, the world began to crawl.

I'll start the final system!

Yeah.

Every combat module that had been sleeping inside me came online. At last, I completed the shift to my finished form.

Tiss. Good luck.

Shan's voice rang one last time against my ear. Then she began to operate in earnest as my second brain.

Watching my body change, Cheon Geomhwa's face slowly hardened.

"…What are you?"

She couldn't finish the thought.

A faint tremor ran through the eyes of a former A+ hunter.

On the surface, it still looked human. It wore a beastkin's shape. But to Cheon Geomhwa's eyes, that white figure with crimson irises was no longer a childlike girl in White Ghost's image. It was indistinguishable from the thing of legend — humanity's nightmare.

A wrongness that screamed this was absolutely not human, and a survival instinct ringing every alarm it had, both tore through her at once.

"…Abaddon?"

Instead of answering, I looked at her with Shan's voice.

At our resonating voices, Cheon Geomhwa's expression changed for a different reason. The confidence shrank. She settled into a wary stance.

"Good heavens… to think something like this was trying to slip into the Academy…"

"That's why I told you beforehand. I didn't want you to misunderstand."

"Don't give me that nonsense!"

Metal petals swarmed the stump of Cheon Geomhwa's severed right arm with a harsh clatter, fashioning a temporary prosthesis of steel.

"My thanks for showing your true colors. Now I need not hesitate."

Will to save Roseria, and a former hunter's killing intent toward a monster — Cheon Geomhwa opened every last reserve of her power.

A garden appeared.

Thousands, tens of thousands — perhaps more — of blossoms unfurled, and a garden of iron flowers took shape inside the subspace. Countless steel blossoms rode her gestures like a tide. It was a colossal will of iron given form.

The steel flowers gathered and scattered at her whim, becoming sword or shield as she pleased.

"Begone."

A storm of steel blossoms howled. Even an Upper-grade Hazard caught in that tempest would not escape without a mortal wound — overwhelming, violent force. The iron gale carved the subspace terrain deep enough to rewrite it —

and then it was gone.

"I see… so you can use the art well enough to call yourself a disciple."

She spread a curtain of iron. A dense field, wide enough that any human would have no choice but to brush it passing through. And still, she felt nothing.

A slicing sound. By the time she threw herself back, a great wound already marked her chest.

"H-how…?"

She swept steel blossoms as she retreated. Nothing connected. It was a realm of the incomprehensible. A voice reached her, but she could not tell from where. No matter how she searched, she detected nothing — no sound, no scent, no sensation, no shape. It was identical to White Ghost only moments before.

She didn't need to try to feel it. She needed to find the place that could not be felt.

Cheon Geomhwa stopped simply spreading the petals and set them spinning around herself. A storm of blades that would strip bone from flesh on contact, reducing an ordinary person to minced meat, raged through the subspace.

Then she changed her method. Not searching — hunting for the instant, the point, where nothing could be felt at all.

"There!"

Toward a hollow where the petal-storm seemed to vanish, Cheon Geomhwa swung a sword woven of steel blossoms. When the blade, burning with ashen mana, struck, she saw eyes beyond the shimmer.

Crimson eyes.

The moment Cheon Geomhwa met Tiss's emotionless red gaze, it felt as if her heart had stopped.

A sickening crunch.

"My sword—!"

She reeled as her blade was carved apart in reverse by Tiss's invisible edge. Sparks flew — and only then could she make out a shape.

Endlessly twisting the eye's recognition of its own outline, it was an invisible blade rising from both of Tiss's forearms. And that shape was the forelegs of a mantis. To Cheon Geomhwa, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it was no different from the Grim Reaper's scythe.

Petals that touched it were ignored. Raise a wall of iron, and it was cut down. She forged ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠massive constructs, shaped the blossoms into fists and feet, and swung them. Even trying to crush with mass and volume —

"You mean to cut through everything?"

Without sound, without form, Tiss turned every last one of Cheon Geomhwa's metalworks back into petals. Whether she had simply cut too fast, or negated the ability itself, Cheon Geomhwa could not even tell.

Tiss's blades closed in, little by little. The field of steel blossoms shrank. Now that the position could be pinned, an all-but-infinite storm of steel petals should have butchered the enemy. They did not cut.

Most of them only grazed along the skin and slid away, as if the edge would not bite. Even so, with numbers like these, a few lucky petals did manage to score that hard-yet-supple hide.

"Regeneration?"

By the time she blinked, the wounds were gone, as if nothing had happened.

"You're a monster and then some."

An invisible, unidentified, undying monster — that was what it looked like. Realizing a tempest of steel flowers would never be enough against the monster called Tiss, Cheon Geomhwa gathered every petal onto herself.

The mistress of the garden of steel was sheathed from head to toe in iron blossoms. Like thorns guarding a rose, she became a walking knight of steel. Now that Cheon Geomhwa herself was a living iron flower, her entire body clad in metal, her sword could be reinforced without limit.

And still the steel blossoms bloomed without rest. As if to say infinite recovery and infinite strength were not Tiss's alone, Cheon Geomhwa — an incarnation of iron — poured everything into her swings.

A Steel Bloom blade at full bloom, flooded with mana, was a weapon that could land telling blows even on a special-grade monster. And still, bit by bit, Tiss's invisible blades sheared it away.

Cheon Geomhwa abandoned defense.

"Everything. Into this sword."

She poured every ounce of her ability and mana into the single blade in her hand. Only then did Tiss's blurred form come into focus.

Cheon Geomhwa and Tiss both stepped back, then lunged as if to settle it in a single stroke.

But —

Cheon Geomhwa's sword snapped without force. A barrier of hastily spread petals, thrown up after the sword was cut, was thinner than paper.

The transparent blades on Tiss's forearms punched through Cheon Geomhwa's chest and transfixed both lungs.

A wet, rattling cough.

She did not give up. She tried to seize the blades that had run her through — and the fingers of her steel prosthesis sheared off against the edge, limp and useless.

It was Cheon Geomhwa's defeat.