Nyssira stirred, just slightly.
The chains of lightning clanging around her gave a hollow metallic echo, the crackle of electromagnetic force whispering in the charged air.
Then—like a rain of weapons—the uncountable black blades descended.
Each moved with a will of its own, yet flowed together in a vicious, perfect tandem, like a tide of death.
Nyssira was already moving. Already flowing.
Her sledgehammer swept behind her as she whooshed forward, the ground beneath her feet cracking slightly from the force.
The first wave of swords struck.
A violent hurricane erupted at the center of the arena, an explosion of rippling force, as Nyssira blasted forward with her hammer gripped in both hands. She moved at a speed that shattered all expectations—faster than anything she had displayed before.
Her body blurred across the battered stage, weaving through the deluge of blades, her hammer whirling at a terrifying, relentless pace.
Each motion seemed almost effortless.
And yet, each strike matched the speed of the flying swords—swords that were moving faster than arrows loosed from a warbow.
It should have been impossible.
Her weapon—the hammer—was massive. Far too massive.
The very weight that gave it devastating power should have dragged her down, slowed her, made her a sitting target beneath the endless storm.
It should have been her undoing.
But Nyssira's strength—her raw, unrelenting strength—turned it into her greatest advantage.
She wove the hammer in a deadly dance, shifting her stance with precise, brutal instinct, using the momentum and centrifugal force to swing where her blows could inflict the most catastrophic damage.
And with every swing, the black blades shattered.
Fragments of vanished light sprayed in every direction, littering the air like the afterimage of broken stars.
Her hammer—empowered by the electric chains that licked and curled along its frame—crackled violently with every impact.
The chains were not mere decoration.
They were born from her talent—an extension she had discovered by chance, when her lightning abilities found resonance with the weapon.
She didn't know who forged it.
But she owed Eleina for it.
Originally, she had petitioned for a greatsword—a simple, familiar weapon she had trained with for years. She was prepared for it.
When Eleina handed her the sledgehammer instead, she had almost objected. Almost.
But then curiosity had overtaken her stubbornness.
She had trained. Relentlessly. She had adapted.
Yet it was never enough.
Not truly.
She couldn't replicate the seamless, instinctive mastery she had once held with a greatsword. The hammer was heavier—crueler.
It demanded a different rhythm. A different strength.
And no matter how much she trained, to her, she was always too slow.
At least... compared to how she remembered herself.
But this slow version of her—this version she deemed sluggish—was viciously blurring through the air.
She wove between the swords like a destructive specter, deflecting and shattering every single one of them.
Sometimes the lightning chains wrapped around her hammer would ripple outward—almost sentient—elongating and lashing across wide swaths of descending blades.
The moment they touched, a tremendous, thunderous detonation erupted, causing the very air to vibrate.
The impact of those explosions stiffened nearby swords midflight, disrupting their precision, buying Nyssira precious, brutal seconds.
And through it all, she continued weaving herself forward—a storm in human form, inevitable and devastating.
Her movement was a contradiction in itself.
A paradox.
A massive hammer—meant for slow, deliberate carnage—whirling with frightening, unnatural speed in the hands of a seemingly ordinary girl.
It was an irony sharpened into deadly poetry.
The speed of her hand movements defied logic. It defied even her own limitations.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
The sound of impact roared out without pause, the rhythm a mad symphony. A barrage of metallic shrieks and explosive bursts filled the coliseum, the tempo ceaseless.
It became a kind of art—a violent ballet.
At the center of the arena, the storm raged: a hurricane of black swords carved from the midnight sky, falling, flying, bombarding the lone creature on the ground.
But down there, in that chaos, stood a star.
A savage, unyielding star.
Nyssira blazed in the heart of the darkness, a solitary inferno scorching every midnight blade that dared to reach her.
Sparks of white-hot light sprayed around her like a halo of wild stars, thrashing violently in every direction. Shockwaves ripped through the ground with every clash, cracks webbing outward in jagged scars.
The center of the coliseum had become a black whirlpool of destruction—so thick, so ferocious, that most of the spectators couldn't even see what was happening inside.
Only a few—certain instructors, and of course, Northern—had eyes sharp enough to pierce through the swirling chaos.
And the longer the blizzard raged, the more anxious the crowd became.
Visibility inside was gone.
Doubt grew like a sickness in their hearts.
Hope and fear twined into a single breathless silence.
Of course... not everyone was rooting for Nyssira.
The non-combative students—the ones who saw no value in strength—weren't particularly concerned whether she fell.
In fact, a small group of them, huddled together on one side of the coliseum, had begun booing, their voices sharp and bitter against the undercurrent of tension.
But they were few.
The combative students vastly outnumbered them—two to one at least—and their collective will drowned the jeering like a tide crushing a handful of stones.
To make it worse for the non-combative group, half of their ranks weren't even present today.
Still, the ones that remained had found a voice lately.
A voice encouraged by a certain person.
Speaking of that person...
He was seated among the crowd, leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, his gaze locked into the storm of black swords.
Inside the storm of swords, Nyssira was still moving.
Still deflecting.
Still breaking apart every blade with the crushing might of her hammer.
Each sword that struck her was met with brutal force, bursting into shards of fading light the moment her hammer touched them. The lightning chains coiled around her weapon crackled and soared wildly, lashing through the storm like frenzied serpents, detonating clusters of blades in sweeping arcs.
And yet—her speed did not dim.
That was, perhaps, the most astonishing thing about her.
She had a tenacious spirit—unyielding, relentless, almost inhuman.
Northern watched from above, and for a brief, rare moment, he found himself wordless.
He couldn't begin to imagine the pain she must be enduring.
How her muscles—her arms, her shoulders, her hands—must be screaming. How each swing must send tremors of agony rattling up her bones.
He couldn't imagine it.
And yet she fought on.
The rain of swords did not relent. If anything, it grew worse.
As if some cruel mind had decided it wasn't enough, certain swords began to merge midair—forming larger, more devastating monstrosities. They plunged downward, hurtling towards Nyssira at speeds so vicious the very air split apart in their wake.
She glanced up.
A flicker of calculation crossed her otherwise detached face.
Then she moved—swift, precise.
She shifted her footing, tracing a quick step back, her hammer swung behind her.
And as the monstrous sword came screaming down from the sky, she unleashed a brutal, sweeping arc with the hammer.
The moment of impact was surreal.
Time seemed to stutter.
The edge of her hammer met the sword—and for a fraction of a heartbeat, the world paused.
The hammer absorbed the kinetic force—drank it inward—then crackled, swelling with lightning so intense it turned white.
And then, all at once, the energy was released.
A blinding explosion of force erupted outward.
The colossal sword shattered into fragments before it even had a chance to resist.
But it didn't end there.
The unleashed lightning didn't simply vanish—it lashed outward in savage whips, snapping through the storm like a broken powerplant tearing itself apart.
The shockwave barreled through the black swords surrounding her.
Chain detonations followed, one after another, a roaring chorus of destruction.
The coliseum was drowned in noise—a ferocious, deafening sound.
It was like a mighty rushing wind—no, not one, but hundreds of them—all screaming, all converging violently toward the center of the arena.