Genetic Ascension

Chapter 2466 A Great Enemy

Cassarae moved the moment the sword energies around them began to scream. There was no point pretending this was the sort of opponent she could feel out first.

Silver light poured across the Executioner's Blade as [Silver Scythe Form] took hold, multiplying the speed behind every movement while [Accelerate] layered over it and her Sword Aura carved away the resistance in front of her.

One step carried her out of the courtyard, the second crossed the distance to Tomoe, and her sword was already descending before the stone beneath her first footprint finished breaking.

Tomoe's eyes sharpened with the another hint of interest as [Blade Severance] erupted along Cassarae's edge, the blue-silver aura stretching beyond the weapon until the slash reached several times its physical length.

Cassarae pushed [Sharpen] through it at the same time, and the Ancestral Gene Talent responded far more violently than the weak Skill she had started with, condensing the edge until the air itself opened in front of it.

Tomoe watched the strike reach her forehead, then lowered her own sword with a movement so casual that the entire attack split down the center and passed harmlessly to either side.

Cassarae was already turning before the severed Sword Aura dispersed, using the recoil of her first swing to drive herself into the next without wasting the momentum.

Her Will pushed through the sword as naturally as an arm or leg now, and [Aura Severance] joined the second strike with the intent of cutting through whatever protected Tomoe rather than bothering with the flesh beneath it.

The result made Tomoe's hair shift for the first time, but another short swipe broke the attack apart before the edge came within a meter of her body.

Cassarae landed, twisted her wrist, and sent the Executioner's Blade shooting away from her hand under the control of her Sword Aura while she attacked from another angle herself.

Her Will had long stopped behaving like the formless pressure most people relied on, becoming something closer to a blade in its own right, and she used it now to send the sword curving behind Tomoe while a second edge formed from her bare hand.

Tomoe glanced between the two attacks, and the interest in her blood-red eyes grew before she swept downward once and cut through both.

There was no Level floating above Tomoe, nothing for [Grandmaster Scouting] to translate into the neat measurements Cassarae had grown used to seeing. But rather than relieving her, that pissed her off more than if the woman had been several hundred Levels above her.

Cassarae was still Level 0 herself, so she knew better than most how worthless that number could become when someone's foundation stopped following normal rules. Whatever Tomoe had done to herself, though, it went far beyond Cassarae's own situation. Every clash made her feel as though she was swinging at the source of swordsmanship rather than another person using it.

She could already feel that the gap was impossible to close, but if they were technically at the same level, why was she so much weaker?

A faint mark appeared over Tomoe as Cassarae triggered [Mark of the Doomed], and crimson light immediately began leaking into the silver wrapped around her blade.

She didn't wait to see whether the Skill had taken hold before changing harmonies, allowing [Crimson Scythe Form] to flood through the Executioner's Blade while her Sword Comprehension pressed down upon the space between them.

The weapon grew heavier in her grip without becoming slower, and Cassarae drove forward, forcing the courtyard disappeared behind her in a blur.

Tomoe finally shifted one foot.

Cassarae's lips curled as she caught the movement, and [Reaper's March] carried her through the opening before it could disappear. Each step fed into the next slash, her pressure building instead of resetting between attacks, until a storm of crimson sword arcs surrounded Tomoe from every direction and forced the earth beneath them to collapse into trenches.

Tomoe's sword moved once from left to right, and every crimson arc broke apart at the same height as though someone had drawn a line through the entire battlefield.

Cassarae came through the destruction anyway, because she had already activated [Blood Debt] before the first clash and had no intention of letting the pressure she accumulated go to waste.

The Growth Skill had always suited her better than defensive abilities did, allowing a fight to become more valuable the uglier it grew, and right now every failed execution only gave her another reason to push harder.

Her shoulder dipped, her legs compressed, and crimson energy gathered beneath her feet as she launched herself high above Tomoe.

The silhouette of a guillotine formed behind Cassarae before she began falling, its enormous blade stretching across the sky as [Crimson Guillotine] gathered everything she had built into a single descending strike.

She had killed a C-tier with this attack while still sitting at Level 0, and after everything her Sword Will had experienced since then, the same Skill no longer resembled what it had been when she first received it.

Cassarae brought the Executioner's Blade down with both hands, and the world beneath Tomoe split before the sword even reached her.

Tomoe looked up.

Her sword rose halfway, then swept down.

The guillotine broke from top to bottom, Cassarae's Sword Aura split with it, and the crimson slash that had carved a canyon through the land vanished beneath a grey-black line so thin that Cassarae almost failed to see it.

The remainder of that line passed beside her cheek as she twisted in the air, opening the skin from jaw to ear without touching bone.

She hit the ground hard, skidding several dozen meters before finally managing to force her feet beneath herself.

"Fuck me."

Blood ran down her cheek while Cassarae straightened, but the pain barely registered compared to what had happened to her attack.

Tomoe hadn't overpowered [Crimson Guillotine], nor had she blocked it with some stronger Skill. She had simply cut through the Sword Will holding the attack together, and once that connection disappeared everything Cassarae had poured into it became useless.

The realization made her grip tighten. For the first time she understood why her own sword had reacted to this woman with such violence. It could feel its inferiority.

Behind her, Xarvenya remained near the courtyard with her arms folded, but Cassarae could feel the weight of her attention and knew exactly what she was thinking. Tomoe didn't seem to possess the usual collection of advantages at all. There were no Skills appearing around her, no obvious Classes or stat amplification, and yet every elaborate thing Cassarae produced died beneath one simple sword.

Fine.

If complicated wasn't working, Cassarae still had one thing left that belonged more to her than anything the system had ever handed her.

Her Sacred Sword Comprehension rose without a Skill to shape it, blue light thickening around the Executioner's Blade while the weapon hummed in her hand, and for the first time Tomoe's expression changed from mild curiosity into something closer to approval.

"Better."

Cassarae spat blood to the side and raised up a middle finger. Her sword pointed straight up as though doing the same.

Tomoe smiled, then her face twisted into an expression that carried enough madness that Cassarae felt her own heart grow cold.

After a long while, Tomoe shook her head slowly.

"This is the problem with relying on others when all you should need is your sword alone. Your Class, your Skills, your forms, even the strength inside that blade were all given to you, and you kept stacking gifts on top of little gifts, forgetting about what was truly yours."

Her grip tightened around the Executioner's Blade as the grey-black Sword Will around her began to wail, and the pressure made Cassarae's own weapon shake violently in answer.

"It is no wonder why you are so weak." Tomoe's smile widened as she raised her sword, blood-red eyes burning with an excitement that had finally replaced the boredom in them. But that excitement had little to do with Cassarae. "But for the first time in your life, you can be useful to someone else. I'll take your life today, and gain myself a great enemy."

Tomoe swung and the world seemed to split in two.

Xarvenya moved, but the space around her was instantly filled with blades. Not a single one of them were aimed at herself. Instead, every one of them aimed at a law and restriction of Earth, slicing them apart into ribbons and shining the system's light right onto Xarvenya.

Right onto her Demoness heritage.

One blade. Two deaths.