Sunny lay on the ground, gulping air like a dying fish. It felt as though he was drowning.
His body was a map of pain. He couldn't even remember how many injuries he had received… there was the gash in his side left by Caster's jian, the gruesome wound that almost severed his clavicle, the long cut across his ribs… and many smaller ones.
But he was still alive.
He was still able to fight.
He was still not willing to give up.
…All around him, the Crimson Spire was trembling and groaning, slowly starting to collapse.
Gritting his teeth, Sunny tiredly pushed himself off the ground. His body protested, but he forced it into silence and slowly rose to his feet. The blade of the Midnight Shard scraped against the stones as he pulled it up.
Nephis was doing the same.
The young woman stood up and staggered, then regained her balance and grew still. Her posture was slumped, with one hand pressed tightly against the deep wound on her abdomen.
Changing Star looked weak and beaten, her fearsome presence diminished. Her face was pale, bloodied, and grim, contorted by a grimace of suffering. The radiance emanating from her skin was barely noticeable.
…Only her eyes, which burned with dimming white flames, were still the same — striking, cold, and full of unshakable resolve.
Both of them were washed in the ethereal light of the Gateway.
Looking at Neph through that light, Sunny slowly inhaled and said in a hoarse voice:
"...Let's finish this."
She stared at him for a few moments, then grinned.
Her teeth were painted red by blood.
In the next moment, Nephis raised her sword and dashed forward, sending a cloud of dust into the air with the push of her feet.
They clashed beneath the dais of the Gateway, their swords whistling through the air like hungry fiends. The clangor of steel drowned the thunder of breaking stone, resounding in the darkness of the Crimson Spire once again.
Both Sunny and Nephis were gruesomely wounded, but neither allowed their agony and pain to make them weaker. Instead, they fought with ruthless ferociousness, throwing everything they had left at the enemy, not holding anything back.
Now that Changing Star was bleeding heavily, the Blood Blossom hanging on Sunny's neck entered a state of frenzy. At times, it felt as though his sword moved on its own, helping him strike faster, harder, with deadlier precision.
He had never been as powerful as he was now.
…And yet, it was not enough.
Nephis was still too much for him to handle. She was still too strong, too fast, too overwhelming.
She was more like a monster than a human.
A demon of silver steel wreathed in pale white flames.
Sunny managed to add several deep cuts to her harrowing collection of injuries, but the damage he received in return was twice as terrible. His left arm was slowly growing numb, weakening his grip on the hilt of the Midnight Shard.
His lungs were burning, and it was getting harder and harder to inhale. With each breath, a wet, disturbing sound fell from his lips. His eyes were burning, too, his vision becoming blurry because of all the blood streaming into them. He had to rely on Shadow Sense a lot to make up for this debilitating affliction.
'I can't… I can't go on like this…'
He had to think of something. Something devious and smart, something that would work…
But, for the first time, Sunny's bag of tricks was empty.
No matter how much he thought, he couldn't imagine anything that would defeat Nephis.
She knew him too well. Better than anyone in the entire world.
Two worlds, even…
And yet, Sunny felt that he had no chance of victory if everything continued as it had. He was already just one step away from death.
And so, he did the one thing he could think of.
A desperate gamble with little chance of success.
Summoning all of his remaining strength and resilience, he forced his perception to shift… and started weaving the strange, taxing movements of the incomplete Shadow Dance into his technique.
He allowed his mind to become formless and shapeless, and then aimed it at Changing Star, trying to mimic her incredible battle art to the smallest detail.
And use it as a weapon to destroy her.
After all, if not Neph, then who could he ever imitate?
He was the person who knew her best in the world, too. He was her companion, friend, and pupil.
He was already practically her shadow, her compliant little helper. Caught in the net of her schemes, in her insane, insatiable desire, and incapable of breaking free — not only because there was no other choice, but also because he didn't really… didn't really want to be apart from her.
He knew her flowing, deadly battle style better than anyone except for Nephis herself. After all, he had practiced it as well, spending countless hours to master its foundation and gain insight into its principles. From repeating the same downward slash hundreds of thousands of times to this terrible battle, he had never stopped learning from her.
If he had a chance to make that one final step to mastering the first level of Shadow Dance, it was in a fight against her.
And so Sunny fought, summoning the memory of the beautiful slave girl dancing with her seven shadows. He strained his already failing body to its limit, past the limit, trying to force it to perfectly reflect Changing Star's deadly grace and fearsome elegance.
Put under that strain, his body began to collapse.
Sunny felt as though there was something brittle in the center of his chest, a small part of his body that was slowly cracking under the pressure. With each move he made, a new crack appeared on its surface.
He just hoped that he would make the breakthrough before that small part exploded… if he could endure just a little more, do a little more, understand a little more…
But in the end, he didn't.
After another strange and excruciating move, one that somehow felt different from all the rest, the delicate thing in his chest suddenly shuddered, and broke.
For a moment, Sunny felt as a marionette whose strings had been cut. His eyes widened in horror.
And then, the Midnight Shard shivered slightly.
In the next second, the invisible well of power hidden in his soul opened, and a flood of rejuvenating strength carried his exhaustion away.