So I'd come back home to the heat of battle. The Tarachian girl swung apart her twin blades like a tiger spreading its maw and lunged down to devour me. Steering her flight with her nimble legs and hips, she fell at me with a swift spin, slicing the air like a sharp-edged wheel.

  I stepped back and to the side, steel brushing my bangs, and the girl landed where I'd stood with a heavy impact disproportionate to her size. Another cut followed without noticeable suspense. I continued to hop backwards, step by step, as she pursued my neck with the hunger and finesse of a feral beast, clearly not playing around.

  I pumped mana into my legs to give my leaps some extra spring and tried to stretch out the distance between us. She accelerated sharply in kind and stayed close at my heels, not letting up.

  Damn Rafel, you liar.

  He'd implied Naradhran Jeiyd was the only one to watch out for in the group, but this girl was a prana-user too, and exceptionally well trained for her age. Not quite master-level, but disturbingly close. Not twenty Rosslyns could've matched her. And I was in trouble.

  With the limiters, there were only so many simultaneous processes I could run. Effectively attacking and defending at the same time was too much asked. I had to pick the best timing for each with special care.

  With the scant lead I’d earned, I shifted from retreat to offense and swung at the assassin with a flyswatter of faux telekinesis, to slam her onto the wall of the nearest building. But compared to the authentic technique, my version created too much physical interference. She could sense the unnaturally distorted airflow and immediately dropped low onto her knees. Arching her spine far back like a fresh willow branch, she continued to slide under the wave. And as soon as the vibrating air mass had passed, the Tarachian sprang back up onto her feet, and her blade soon whistled towards my throat again.

  What a monkey!

  A fighter who had honed her instincts to preternatural sharpness and held unwavering confidence in her abilities.

  You couldn't reach that level of expertise without staking your life in a hundred battles.

  But I wasn't out of tricks yet.

  My techniques could obviously be applied to myself too. The problem was, the human body wasn't a symmetrical "rigid object," but more a misshapen water balloon stuffed with brittle bones. Magically launching one part of it in a different direction from the rest would've been like catching a cannonball with your guts. I had to first reinforce my frame with Mana Boost and divide launch points evenly across the surface area relative to the direction I was going to.

  Sort of tricky to manage in the middle of a fight for your life, but I'd done it a few times before. All it took was a bit of real focus.

  Before the assassin's blade reached me, I propelled myself straight up into the night.

  As I had just a little more mass than a rubber ball, I didn't rise very high, only barely on the level of the rooftop of the nearby residence. That was high enough. I adjusted the trajectory and shot myself horizontally onto the roof, rolling over the shallow ridge and down the sloping far side. Somehow, I got my feet under myself again and leapt over the narrow gap onto the flat roof of the next apartment, barely before falling off, and scrambled on.

  It was against my policy to fight battles where I stood to gain nothing.

  Since the meeting was not happening, I'd just get back to the academy, and let the CI clean up. But where were the other Tarachians?

  Rafel said there were multiple members in the task force, but I sensed no other presences in the vicinity. Nobody came to help either me or the crazy ripper girl. Where was the Emerald Blade himself? How disgraceful of a warrior of his fame to send a mere scout and not come in person. Did he have no shame?

  “...”

  You don't suppose the girl had gone rogue? Could their team cohesion really be that bad?

  Then again, the knife-slinger could hardly be dismissed as mere cannon fodder. She was a downright menace. Before I’d crossed the length of that one rooftop, she’d ran straight up the flat wall and was hot on my heels once again.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  What did the Tarachians feed their kids?

  “Die!”

  The assassin threw one of her daggers. It spun prettily and accurately through the cold night at my heart. It was most likely poisoned too. Even being nicked a little would finish me in seconds. I had to stop, turn back and deflect the blade with telekinesis. She used that fleeting moment to close the distance and cut at my neck with her remaining weapon. I drew my head far back to dodge the swing, but overreacted at the expense of my balance.

  I wavered, the parapet right behind me.

  The girl spun on, crouched low, drawing a small circle on the dusty roof with her toes, looking like she was setting up a kick. No, her weight remained low. It was a feint. She kept the dagger behind her, concealing the incoming stab. But every angle was shown to me clearly with Third Eye and I didn't stay there to wait for it.

  I gave in to the sinking motion and cast myself over the edge, off the roof.

  The houses being so low in this town, the street rushed to meet me all too quickly. During that short, disoriented flight, I had to take a measure of my position and momentum, and calculate a safer direction to fall in.

  Just before touchdown, I sent myself flying somewhat along the street, but was a bit off with my math. I landed painfully shoulder-first on the sandy lane and went rolling around and around and around, before crashing into a trash can standing next to an empty fishmonger's stall.

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  Stars swam in my eyes and my head spun. How about a timeout?

  No, now's not the time to sleep!

  I reluctantly pushed myself up to stand and took a few stumbling steps to resume my escape. My lungs cried for air, the cold air hurtful, and my legs were flimsy jelly.

  Me, running for my life? What a novel experience. It had been a very long time since a fight last got my heart racing like this.

  The berserk assassin girl skidded down the smooth wall after me, nimbly bouncing from window frame to another, and landed without a sound. Like the wind, she chased down the alley at me, only murder in her cold eyes.

  I raised my hand and launched a volley of Spindles at her. Not blinking, she cut the blurry air skewers off the night, precisely and dexterously parting the currents with her dagger the way a boatman splits water with the paddle. Damn. At Tier 2 capacity, the cooldown was too long to muster properly suppressive fire.

  How about one bigger hit instead?

  I put all available energy into a shot that could have pierced through the frame of an auto—but the girl didn't even attempt to parry that one.

  Guided by intuition, she leapt up high to draw her figure out of the way of the invisible air javelin, rolled diagonally over it. The Spindle struck the street some yards behind her and the force of it rebounded in an intense shockwave in every direction, rocking the house windows. Still airborne, the girl spread her arms and legs and let the gust bear her on like a kite, and as soon as her feet touched the street, she was running again, running like someone born just to run.

  I couldn't help but be mesmerized by the bestial fluidity of her movements. And then she was already at me, stretched her figure tall and angled the curved blade to plunge it into my chest.

  No choice now. It was clearly going to be either one, or the other.

  I had to strike——to kill…

  “STOP!”

  A bright voice rang through the night, interrupting us.

  A quick wave of light washed over us, like a wintry breeze. The assassin's lithe figure, poised to slaughter, flashed white all over, covered in a frosty dressing. Aerial humidity piled on her as a layer of solid snow in the blink of an eye, and our ragged breaths were rendered visible.

  I glanced to the side. There stood Emily Troyard, palm raised, looking intense and out of breath also, as if having run a long way.

  How was she even here?

  No, now was not the time to wonder about that. The Tarachian recognized Emily as the more pressing threat and responded accordingly. She flipped around the blade in her hand to take it by the tip and cast it at the magician.

  But people throwing things at Emily was no longer anything new or unexpected. I intercepted the dagger just as soon as it left her hold, and flung it up to the sky with telekinesis. Reconfirming the coordinates, I assigned it a new direction and launched it back down at its owner, with enough velocity that not even my own senses could keep track of its course anymore.

  Then, as I moved my gaze down, I saw the blade suspended a hair above its mark, pinned between the hardy fingers of a tall man standing behind the assassin. A chiseled warrior, long hair dyed green, swaying in the wind; the keen gaze of a hawk. The blue-green robes of a western martial artist, decorated with golden, stylized imagery of trees.

  “That's enough,” the man told the girl.

  It was him. Swordmaster Naradhran Jeiyd, the Emerald Blade. The unsung hero of Tarachia.

  Running away was no longer an option…Or, so I thought, at first.

  But I could pick up no will to fight from the fencer. His focus was on the frost-dressed brawler he’d just saved, and the look in his eyes was grim and sad.

  “Jeiyd!” the girl cried, no longer a cold-blooded hunter, but only a teenager, shivering and miserable. Desperately pleading, she pointed at me. “Kill her! It's the Demon of the Red Moon! You have to kill her! Quickly! Gah—!”

  The Emerald Blade chopped the girl on the back with his heavy hand. The motion was slow and relaxed, but she was flattened on the pavement in a frosty puff. An ordinary person would've been left with all their bones broken, but barely a beat later, the girl bounced back up to angrily scowl at him, more upset than hurt.

  “What are you doing, Jeiyd!?”

  “I said enough,” he repeated. “Come to your senses, Tatari. Your opponent went to great lengths to spare your life, though she had no reason to. What else can I then, but believe her intent to talk to us was real. Stand back. Don’t embarrass us any more than you already have.”

  He shoved the girl’s dagger under his own belt and then faced me directly, grave and formal, maybe a tad guilty. No, that he couldn’t fully hide the remorseful frown darkening his features meant he had to have been greatly ashamed. But I didn't expect to see him next bow his head. To his once mortal enemy. But that was what he did.

  “I apologize for my subordinate, Destroyer. She lost much in the war, including both her parents in Najjier. The grief is still too close to her heart. You meeting each other tonight was due to my personal oversight, but not by intentional design. I beg for your understanding. I am prepared to offer my left arm in compensation for this mistake. The right one, I still need a little longer. But please, if possible, spare her life.”

  “Jeiyd!?”

  “Quiet.”

  “...”

  Was I even awake, or seeing a very weird dream?

  What would I do with his left arm, anyway? Request speaking turns in class? These people were still hopelessly stuck somewhere in the feudal ages.

  I brushed the frost off my coat, trying hard not to look like my shoulder hurt terribly, and could barely be moved. I looked at Emily scratching her head on the side, wearing a very awkward expression. It was a sight I didn't need right now, and sighed through gritted teeth. What a mess this turned into.

  “...An apology from a Sword Saint candidate isn't casually dismissed,” I spoke to the Tarachian. “I will let it slide, this once. There was no harm done, after all.”

  I looked at the girl called Tatari when I said that.

  In response, she bared her teeth at me in an angry snarl—but hurriedly fixed her face when the Swordmaster raised his head.

  “I am grateful,” he said. “I would then make up for this incident with information, if you are still willing to hear us out. But the open street isn't the right place for discussions of this sort. Will you come with me to our residence? You are free to kill me if you suspect my honor at any moment. I shall not resist.”

  In my current state, a master fencer could've killed me in a blink of an eye with his bare hands. But it was a misunderstanding I didn't need to correct.

  Information was what I came here for, and would rather not make the same trip twice.

  I glanced at the fidgeting stalker on the side and nodded.

  “Let's go.”

  Want it or not, you're neck-deep in this now.