Silver and Gold
Their clash evoked the graceful, swirling dance of silver and gold intertwining. It was a breathtakingly beautiful sight, like gazing upon a masterpiece painting. Yet beneath the surface, the battle unfolding in Ariaadna Square was fiercer and more brutal than any other fight that had ever taken place there.
“……”
Jealousy extended his hand like a blade. Despite the elegant nail art adorning his fingers, the magic power swirling around them had sharpened his nails into something keener than any blade in existence. Kindness deflected the strike aimed at her vital points with her right hand and immediately countered with a powerful punch of her own.
Jealousy swiftly tilted his head to the side to dodge. A few strands of his meticulously maintained hair fluttered into the air with a soft swish.
“Can’t you be a little more careful? Those few strands of hair are worth more than your pathetic life, you know?”
It had just been dyed to his satisfaction after so long. His mood clearly soured, and Jealousy’s attacks grew even more savage.
Moonlit Assassination Art — Lunar Eclipse.
Jealousy’s body vanished into thin air. Like the moon hiding within the shadow of the earth, he melted completely into the surrounding presence in an instant. He slipped into Kindness’s blind spot and swung his bladed hand toward her throat.
“You’re about to die. Why are you still worrying about your hair?”
She twisted her body with blinding speed. A sharp snip rang out as her golden locks scattered through the air, just like Jealousy’s had moments before.
“Who said I was going to die?”
Jealousy let out a hollow laugh and retreated, looking utterly dumbfounded. Kindness chased after him without hesitation, raising a fist wrapped in condensed golden magic power.
“Isn’t it completely absurd for an assassin to face a martial artist head-on like this?”
Golden orbs the size of boxing gloves formed around both her hands. She swung them relentlessly, relentlessly pressuring Jealousy as he tried to create distance and flee.
“Figures the so-called pinnacle of the Church would only learn such trashy martial arts.”
Hundred-Step Divine Fist. Its original form was less a combat technique and more a form of ascetic training. It involved extreme straight punches performed from a horse stance. By repeating the motion endlessly, one could eventually pulverize even a stone monument a hundred steps away.
Rather than relying on magic-infused palm strikes, its goal was to produce phenomena through pure physical impact alone. It was originally a self-cultivation method meant to temper both body and mind. But Kindness had twisted that training art into something grotesque.
A fist technique that grew stronger with every step taken. One punch per step. The further she advanced, the more the power of her strikes amplified. Her objective was to kill her opponent within exactly one hundred steps. From its underlying philosophy to its intended purpose, it shared nothing with the original art beyond the name. The only common ground was that both pushed the most basic straight punch to its absolute limit.
It was the perfect example of what happened when someone with zero flexibility or adaptability poured everything into extreme repetitive labor.
Thanks to that Holy Magic or whatever it is, surprise attacks don’t work on her at all.
Unlike the five abilities defined as academic disciplines, Holy Magic was a form of mental cultivation, much like the Hundred-Step Divine Fist. If the latter trained the body, the former trained the mind. What one gained at the end of that training was an unshakable mental fortitude that refused to waver under any circumstances.
Those who had mastered it to the extreme, like the 7 Cardinal Virtues, could resist being swept up in phenomena created by dark mages and even partially negate the Divine Rules of an Inner World. That was why the Church was called the natural enemy of dark mages. While Kindness had not reached that level of overwhelming influence, her rock-solid composure still played a crucial role in her fight against Jealousy.
Jealousy let out a deep sigh at the sight of her—completely unfazed by any ambush, never once showing an opening.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Even as he sighed, her punches continued to grow stronger. The force of her advancing legs shattered the ground beneath her. That power traveled up through her waist and exploded forward through her fists. The impacts shattered the air like glass, sending massive shockwaves that relentlessly battered Jealousy’s eardrums.
The concept embedded in her fists was Shatter. Starting with the Hundred-Step Divine Fist, all of her martial techniques had been created with the sole purpose of destroying the enemy before her eyes.
Fifty-one… fifty-two… fifty-three… fifty-four…
The attacks Kindness unleashed had already surpassed the count of fifty. Her movements grew faster and faster. The speed advantage Jealousy had held at the start was on the verge of being completely overturned.
Feeling the growing difficulty of simply dodging, Jealousy’s brow furrowed.
More annoying than I expected.
Her movements were simple. There wasn’t a single variation—nothing but stubbornly straightforward strikes. Yet because they were so perfectly executed, she was strong.
What part of her is supposed to be “kind”?
She wasn’t kind in the slightest. Would it kill her to show a little carelessness for his sake? What was the point of wrapping her speech in polite language if her actions were the complete opposite?
This is going to get dangerous if I’m not careful.
She seemed even stronger than when they had last fought. The realization that she must have trained relentlessly since then began to fill him with a growing sense of crisis.
Jealousy’s eyes wavered as he stared at his shattered nail art, destroyed while deflecting her increasingly powerful punches. But he quickly gathered his rage, condensed it into something solid, and steadied his gaze.
First, create some distance.
He had zero intention of continuing a head-on brawl with that simple-minded brute.
The moment that thought crossed his mind, thin silver lines rose from beneath his feet. A soft, moon-like glow began to shimmer around him.
Moonlit Assassination Art — Moonlight.
The same technique that had once torn apart the massive golem of Topaz Greymud—a member of the royal mage corps during the invasion of the Ellemental Kingdom—was now unleashed fully upon Kindness.
The moonlight ignored the magic power she radiated, passing straight through it to strike her body directly. As Kindness watched the attack—now infused with Jealousy’s awakened concept of Penetration—she raised her fist, still cloaked in the same golden flash as before.
Seventy-two…!
The concept of Shatter crushed the concept of Penetration. She couldn’t block it completely, however. A thin red line was carved across the back of her hand. Ignoring it entirely, she immediately thrust out her other fist.
Squelch.
But the instant she took another step forward, the ground surged violently, as if she had stepped on a water balloon filled to bursting. While her attention had been diverted by the moonlight, Jealousy had used a spirit to alter the properties of the ground in front of her.
The modified Hundred-Step Divine Fist relied more on a stable lower body to support each punch than on the strikes themselves. In a technique where every single step mattered, the sudden loss of balance drastically reduced the power of her next attack.
Kwaaaang!
Jealousy blocked her punch, which had been thrown with her leg still extended forward. The pose looked almost like he was stepping on her fist. The impact erupted like an explosion. Using the rebound, Jealousy shot backward at high speed, putting distance between them once more.
Moonlit Assassination Art — Lunar Eclipse.
He vanished again in that same state. Kindness’s brow creased at the technique disappearing right before her eyes. She had lost track of the assassin’s presence. And she knew exactly what that meant.
Swish!
For the first time, the woman who had only ever advanced now retreated slightly. A streak of moonlight shot past where she had just been. Starting with that, gentle beams of moonlight began raining down from the sky like countless thin threads, slicing mercilessly toward her.
The attacks pierced straight through her magic power. Shallow cuts began to multiply across her skin.
“……”
She blocked, dodged, shattered, and counterattacked. In a situation that had been completely reversed by a single mistake, Kindness crouched low, waiting for an opening.
No matter how I look at it, her name is wrong.
This woman was far more suited to the name Patience than Kindness, in every possible way. If she was already this bad, just how monstrous must the real Patience’s endurance be?
But it ends now.
Human concentration could never remain at its peak forever. No matter how tenacious someone was, there was always a moment when their focus would break. The opening finally appeared behind Kindness as she continued blocking Jealousy’s relentless barrage, and he had no intention of missing it.
Moonlit Assassination Art — Slashing Moon.
Beyond a partial eclipse, this was a complete one. An unexpected ambush only possible in the Lunar Eclipse state. Jealousy’s movements, hidden at the edge of Kindness’s vision, accelerated rapidly. He reached zero-to-sixty in an instant with no hesitation whatsoever. Moving at nearly the speed of light, he appeared behind her. His bladed hand plunged toward her neck.
“That makes one hundred.”
In that moment, Jealousy met her eyes and immediately realized something had gone terribly wrong.
I’ve been had…!
Before the thought could even finish, her body moved with terrifying speed. In a world where even Jealousy’s own movements felt sluggish, she alone seemed to have transcended the limits of time. She spun with blinding quickness.
Splat!
Jealousy’s hand blade grazed the side of her neck. It was the first serious wound she had taken after suffering only shallow cuts until now. But she had clearly anticipated it. With eyes that refused to waver, she raised her right arm.
Flesh for bone. She would offer her own flesh to claim her enemy’s bones.
Kwaaaang!
The final, one-hundredth strike of the Hundred-Step Divine Fist. The killing blow meant to guarantee her opponent’s death slammed directly into Jealousy.
He tried to block with his left arm, but defense was meaningless before the concept of Shatter wrapped around her fist. With a thunderous crash, her punch shattered his left arm and smashed into his face. Unable to withstand the force, Jealousy was sent flying backward even faster than he had approached, slamming deep into the ground.
He disappeared into the earth alongside a massive crater that looked as if a meteor had struck. A huge natural disaster bloomed in the center of Ariaadna Square as the surrounding air, completely pushed outward by the overwhelming force of the strike, rushed back in like a tornado to fill the vacuum.
“I know you’re not dead, so get up already.”
But Kindness’s own condition was far from good. Blood continued to gush from her neck in worrying amounts. She pressed her left hand against the wound to stem the flow and slowly walked toward the crater where Jealousy had fallen.
Swish!
At the same time, a pillar of moonlight shot high into the sky, splitting the tornado in two. Something descended gracefully from within it, landing before her.
“…Hey. You know what?”
His left arm dangled limply like an octopus tentacle, every bone completely shattered. His upper garment had been torn to shreds, exposing a blood-soaked torso. The left side of his face, where the punch had landed after piercing his arm, was completely caved in around the cheekbone.
“That crazy bastard Wrath never touches my face when he picks a fight with me.”
His carefully maintained appearance had been ruined in an instant. His voice sank to an incredibly low pitch, heavy with suppressed fury.
“Do you know what that means?”
A vicious killing intent radiated in every direction, crushing everything around them with terrifying pressure.
“You’re dead, you son of a bitch.”
The moment Jealousy spoke, Kindness’s vision flipped upside down. By the time she realized what had happened, she was staring at a pitch-black night sky where the city lights had swallowed the stars. Only the lonely moonlight remained. As she gazed at that sky, she wondered why she was looking up at it.
Bang!
A split second later, the sound of the impact reached her. Only then did the pain exploding across her face make her realize she had been punched.
“……”
What she saw next was Jealousy standing over her beneath the moonlight, leg raised high.
“Die, you fucking bitch.”
Jealousy’s heel slammed down onto the bridge of her nose, driving her head deep into the ground.