Green lasers blasted down around Akira and Goukei as they fought. The ground cracked and ruptured with whiffed staff strikes and deflected venomous kicks. The shower of light left one burn mark after another on the rock. Goukei cackled in the midst of it all.

  A clean kick to the stomach made him stumble, followed by an axe kick that brought his head down. A concentrated barrage of light struck his back. None of it stopped Goukei's hand from flying forward for a deathly grab. Akira separated herself from her clone and slid backwards as his hand closed around the scapegoat's leg and took a huge overhead swing that splattered its brains out behind him.

  Goukei let go of the fading clone's leg, his face split in a deranged grin as he kept his good eye on the real Akira. If Erina's lasers had done anything to him, it was impossible to distinguish from the ink on his back.

  Akira rushed in, static distorting her figure as she threw a kick. Goukei blocked it with one arm, his eye tracking the second Akira that split off. His staff came down and broke her spine against the cavern floor as a third Akira split off again, throwing a clean roundhouse to the face that spun him back with a thunderous boom.

  "Kehahaha! Finally feelin' warmed up?!" Goukei struck back with glee.

  Akira brought on the pressure, her outline constantly flickering and distorting as she fought. For every attack she launched, another clone appeared to immediately press her advantage on hit or exploit any opening in his guard. Goukei's staff was a white blur, his feet leaving rough imprints in the rock with the speed and power of his footwork. If there was a "real" Akira in there, Erina couldn't possibly keep track of it. There had to be at least four of her at any given moment, whether they were repositioning, throwing attacks, or getting dismembered by Goukei. Their figures blurred together, splitting and combining and phasing right through each other, yet all of them were real. It was completely unlike any magic Erina could think of.

  Goukei's foot slammed down hard enough to shake the ground. Erina caught her balance, jolted back to attention. She couldn't just sit here and watch without doing anything. Akira was still fighting. Erina couldn't let her down.

  Erina left the cover of the forge, racing across the hard rock for a better vantage point. Even Akira struggled to pierce an oni's hide. Erina had to find an opportunity to use the railgun. It was their win condition. Goukei knew it, but Akira's relentless pressure kept him from hunting down Erina.

  That searing gold eye of his flicked to her. Hellfire blazed to life as he swung the staff in a full circle, forcing Akira away as the ring of fire formed around him. He pivoted on his heel and slammed the staff against the earth hard enough to shake the cavern again, lines of flame racing across the floor alongside the sudden fissure that formed.

  Erina wobbled as the floor shook under her. An orange glow lit her from behind, accompanied by overwhelming heat. The fissure split open just a few feet beside her and continued up the wall, releasing a new magma flow right on top of her!

  The lines of red fire roared into blazing walls on either side, cutting her off. Erina set a spell circle at her feet and angled it. The ensuing stone tree grew at the same angle, carrying her away from the cascading magma falls in its branches.

  Light glinted off the bone staff as it left Goukei's hand—

  Erina threw her own spear right back and detonated it as soon as it left her grip. The branches of light filled the air, one strand striking the staff off-course to bury itself in the wall away from her.

  "Over here!" Akira leapt over the flames to join Goukei in the ring of fire. "Your enemy's on this side!"

  He struck and struck again with his bare hands. Every few lightning-fast punches found another target, pulping skulls and covering his hands in fading guts, but Akira kept on coming. No single copy of her lasted more than a few seconds, constantly splitting and shifting bodies around him while raining down a shower of devastating kicks from every angle.

  The staff crunched free and flew back into his grip. "That's more like it!" he roared. "Throw everything you've got at me!!"

  Furious hellfire lifted from the ground and coalesced in his staff as he swung it. One more motion, and they split free as a pair of fireballs, developing the texture of gargantuan human skulls as they flew at Erina.

  She jumped out of the tree as the first charged her, dispersing into a blast of red flame on the branches. Her sword flashed into her grip and she cut down the second in mid-air, squeezing her eyes shut as she fell through the red flare. A glowing seal caught her fall just above the ground. This time, it pushed back like a trampoline, launching her back into the branches of her tree.

  Akira was exerting more pressure than ever. Erina cast a spell circle into the air halfway between herself and their fight. The seal faded into invisibility, and then she prepared the railgun array once more.

  The flash of orbs splitting and compressing caught Goukei's attention immediately. Crushing another clone's head underfoot, he finally made the swing that found the real Akira just as she split off again. She narrowly met it with her own kick, sent skidding back regardless by the impact. He whipped around and hurled his staff straight at Erina—

  Her delayed spell circle activated with a flash of light, bending space around the staff in flight. It hovered right there in mid-air, moving so slowly it might as well have frozen in time.

  "Spatial distortion iteration," panted Erina. "You only have one staff, don't you? You can't make replacements either, or you would have by now. That's why you have to recall it to you each time. If your staff can't return to you…"

  Erina flicked her hand. The cloud of orbs finished compressing into one shining ball of light.

  Goukei just grinned and stabbed down, his hand piercing solid rock. He buried his arm to the elbow and heaved with a gleeful yell, tearing out a huge chunk of the cavern floor and flinging the entire thing in one huge motion.

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  Erina's eyes went wide as the giant boulder arced over the distortion field. It was flying right at her! She fired the compressed beam to destroy it—

  A loud crunch drew her gaze higher still. Goukei had launched himself from the floor straight to the ceiling, crouched upside-down against it as he prepared to kick off again.

  A spell circle flashed into being at Erina's feet, providing the footing to leap aside. Goukei's flying megaton punch obliterated the seal and the rock tree under it, bringing it crashing down around him. Akira was in hot pursuit, following his movements just moments behind, but that was a few moments too slow to stop Goukei from ripping up one more fist-sized rock and simply chucking it at Erina while she was still falling.

  It was a pebble in a comparison to everything else he threw. It was backed by the force of an oni. Her trajectory deflected into the wall and all the wind blew out of her lungs, followed by an equally hard landing to the solid rock floor. Bright green ether stained each surface. Her focus broken, the distortion field collapsed and Goukei's staff spun back into his grip as he resumed his battle with Akira, laughing all the while.

  "How many years has it been since I've had a good workout?!" he bellowed between blows. "Startin' to feel the burn over here!"

  Akira didn't respond. It took every bit of her attention to manage her multi-bodied onslaught, weaving between his attacks and responding with an endless slew of offense no matter what he did. Black-green venom trailed her blows as she connected again and again. A reverse roundhouse to the head from a low stance. A side kick to the gut. A stomp to the side of the knee that would cripple any normal youkai.

  It vanished within a second of appearing, but Akira saw it. As her boot lifted away from his skin, barely visible through the dripping venom before his regeneration shrugged it off, her strikes were beginning to expose raw red flesh.

  "Stop protectin' the girl!" said Goukei between blows. "You'd never let me get this many free hits if ya weren't!" He ate another boot to the face and took it like nothing happened. "Ya might skip the regen time with yer body shiftin', but how many times can ya keep it up?" His next swipe with the staff tore two of her in half at once as another dove and rolled back to her feet. "You got a limit, and goin' blow for blow with me?"

  Sweat flew from the ends of her hair as she weaved around another mighty punch. Her breathing was heavy and ragged. Every part of her body ached after having been pulverized and regenerated repeatedly.

  "You know full well ya can't beat me into submission!" A wild grin was carved across his face as he struck again and again in this sweltering exchange, bearing down on his opponents, as suffocating as the depths of Hell. "Sooner or later, yer the one who's gonna give out first!"

  Akira didn't say a word. Their gold eyes met for a brief moment—and then she was gone in the blur of bodies.

  "Ain't that new…" Goukei stumbled back with a clean hit to the chest. He grabbed the offending Akira and ripped her head from her shoulders. "First time I've seen ya like this! Now I'm real interested!"

  "Erina!" called Akira. "A little help would be nice right about now!"

  Erina's head spun. She could barely control her ragged, gasping breaths. She was on the verge of panicking. She had to help somehow. Directly attacking Goukei was no good. Spinning up the railgun was no good. She had to come up with something, and she needed it fast. Every second that ticked away brought Akira closer to her limit. Erina couldn't allow that. What could she do? Her eyes flitted everywhere, barely able to think in the heat. The brutal bloody melee. The blocks of metal. The forge. The anvil. The ocean of magma. The trenches of molten rock. The fissures. The boulders. The damage to the terrain…

  That was it!

  Fresh determination in her eyes, Erina readied the acceleration array and prepared a single orb. Then, she left her setup floating in place and drew a glowing spear into existence. Another accelerating seal formed as she threw it, rocketing the spear into the ceiling high above. The ensuing inverted stone tree was massive, its trunk immense and its branches nearly reaching the ground far below. Erina staggered as an intense wave of dizziness struck her, nearly pitching to the floor.

  The cavern rumbled. Erina didn't create those branches out of nothing. Matter was pulled from its roots and moved outwards to feed its growth. Normally, it didn't matter… but for a tree this large, all of its stone had to be drawn from somewhere. It had to come from the ceiling right above, leaving even less material holding up this huge inverted tree made of solid rock.

  Erina backed away towards the tunnel as the first boulders fell. Branches snapped off the tree and crashed to the hard floor. Akira glanced up and kept attacking, keeping Goukei pinned right under the huge trunk. One copy of her split away from the fight and ran to join Erina.

  The tree snapped free. It crashed down onto Goukei and the mob of Akiras around him, branches snapping one after another and shattering into shards and dust as more and more of it hit the ground. A wave of dust swept out through the shaking cave.

  Erina coughed, one sleeve over her mouth as her other hand cast a spell circle at her feet. Another blinked to life at the far end of the platform and then faded into invisibility.

  "While you have time!" Akira panted as she joined her side, eyes on the mountain of rocks. "Hurry!"

  "Yes, sir!" Erina floated a single orb in the palm of her hand and willed it to multiply, splitting again and again and again and again until a thick cloud floated over her head. They compressed back into one shining orb of light and she fired it into the accelerator, the low whistle of its speed rapidly scaling to a high-pitched whine.

  The pile of rocks exploded in every direction with a supernatural yell. Akira stepped forward and batted away the stray boulders headed at her and Erina. Goukei shook himself off and climbed over the rough terrain as the rest of the rocks showered down everywhere around them.

  Goukei flicked his staff. Two fiery skulls blazed to life and split off, rushing forward. Erina used her free hand to flick an orb into the air that burst into a split barrage of lasers, taking them both out.

  Akira kicked off at the same time as Goukei, both of them colliding halfway. Static crackled as Akira threw her kick—

  "Too slow!" he bellowed.

  The back of his hand collided with her face, blasting her off to the side of the cave and clearing the path to Erina. That searing eye like molten gold was locked onto her.

  The spell circles enlarged and spun faster as the bolt grew faster and faster still. Sparks of lightning jumped, discharging around Erina as she motioned with her hand. The spatial distortion field activated under her, pushing away the surrounding space as Goukei exploded into a mad rush to close the distance. Debris flew from the craters his feet left in the cavern floor, racing to outpace the bending dimensions. Tenfold iteration—twentyfold—fiftyfold—he was still getting too close!

  "Nnngh…!" Erina's heart was ready to break her ribs from the inside out. She set one more orb in front of her and swiped. A dragon's curve bloomed, forcing Goukei back as it relentlessly grew outwards.

  The railgun's whine became a scream. Erina caught him taking one step forward at the edge of the distorted space through the fading curve—right in her sights.

  Erina fired the railgun and the entire cavern lit up with a deafening peal of thunder.

  Goukei vanished. He was six feet to the left with a grin on his face, a shelf of stone kicked up with the raw force of his dodge as the blast lanced through thin air—

  Erina twitched her wrist, and the side of his head exploded.

  The blast tore the white cloth binding his head to pieces, vaporized a clean chunk out of the same side, and wiped the smile right off his face. Erina's shot had flown into the spell circle set at the very back of the arena, where she redirected it for a second shot into the back of his head.

  Erina's expression was set with calm determination as her own railgun blast obliterated the wall beside her, an explosion of dust and rubble flying all across the platform. Her hair whipped wildly in the wind. The spell circles faded, her two fingers still pointed at Goukei where he stood.

  "Target neutralized," declared Erina.