Roilnia gritted her teeth, watching as her burned hand and Haimar’s slashed hand healed themselves simultaneously.
Whether she raged or not, Haimar simply hunted her like prey, his face a mask of terrifying indifference.
To Roilnia, it didn’t feel like an equal fight; it felt like being a lowly creature cornered by a predator.
Irritation surged through her like a broken dam, but regardless of her feelings, her entire body was suddenly slammed toward the earth.
“Ugh…!!”
It was gravity manipulation, a sensation she knew all too well.
The weight pressing down on her tried to pin her to the ground.
Roilnia fought against the merciless force, her trembling lips pulled into a sneer.
She had no intention of falling as easily as she had in their last encounter.
Instead, she increased the number of shells falling from the rifts in the sky and tore through space to lunge at Haimar.
This time, she held a fresh knife in one hand and a gun in the other.
“I won’t lose…! I’ll never lose…!”
The blade sliced the air, and the gun aimed for his head.
Moving through space at speeds invisible to the naked eye, she continued her persistent assault.
Like a venomous snake provoked to madness, she watched for any opening to sink in her fangs.
In contrast, Haimar’s anger boiled with an infinite coldness.
It was a heavy, crushing fury that existed on a different plane from the woman’s frantic, burning rage.
“You seem to be mistaken about something.”
A flash of light ignited at the tip of Haimar’s finger pointed at Roilnia.
In an instant, the woman’s world turned white.
“You and I are not of the rank to be discussing winning and losing.”
K-boom—!
A bolt of lightning from the clear sky struck Roilnia directly.
Successive streaks of lightning hit the shells scattered across the sky, causing a chain of explosions.
For her, it was a horrific display of light that mirrored their previous battle.
Yet, despite the shock racking her body, she remained standing upright.
She swept away the flames rising beneath her feet and the white smoke billowing from her skin with a rough hand.
Her body smelled of charred flesh and was covered in soot, but within moments, Roilnia—fully healed as if nothing had happened—charged at Haimar with madness in her eyes.
If he thought she would crawl pathetically on the ground just because she was hit by lightning, he was wrong.
She had taken the hit as bait, a chance to blow his head off.
More lightning fell toward her.
Again, using her durable body and recovery speed to endure the attack, she rushed forward without slowing down.
In the past, she had lost her arm because she lacked this level of recovery, but now was different.
The ampoules she had struggled to obtain were only necessary when she first lost the limb; now, she possessed the ability to reconstruct her body the moment it was damaged.
Roilnia jumped through space, appearing behind the man’s back and thrusting both arms forward.
“Die—!!”
Slow. Definitely slow.
Even though she was right behind him, Haimar’s reaction was a beat late.
His rampant power was eating away at him, causing his reflexes to drop as he lost control!
Roilnia pulled the trigger without hesitation.
All she wanted was to pierce his brain!
“Argh!!”
Just before she could fire, Roilnia was yanked backward by an unseen force and slammed face-first into the ground.
She felt something cold wrap around her ankle. Looking down, she saw a thick stream of water binding her tightly.
The water, split by Haimar’s power, had snatched her without a sound.
The liquid shackles dragged her across the earth, making her roll ignobly.
When she stabbed her knife into the ground to stop the forced movement, the water lifted her high into the air and smashed her back down without mercy.
Thud—!!
“If you thought a few skirmishes made us equals, you are under a massive delusion.”
It was Roilnia who had been pouring out attacks, yet it was she who lay pathetically broken on the ground.
It happened so fast she didn’t even have time for humiliation to set in.
By the time she scrambled to her feet and severed the water binding her ankle, Haimar’s hand was already clamped around her throat.
Crack—!
A powerful grip crushed her neck.
Refusing to yield to the pain, Roilnia grabbed Haimar’s arm with her free hand.
With the other, she leveled her gun at him to fire.
It was a simple, transparent attack born of a desperate need to shoot whatever enemy was in sight.
Easily brushing off the futile attempt, Haimar grabbed her wrist and tore the arm clean off.
“AAAAAAUGH!!”
Like a child breaking a toy, her left arm was ripped away by sheer physical force and sent flying.
Shards of flesh sprayed everywhere, and blood geed high into the air.
The falling droplets soaked only Roilnia’s red hair and skin, forming a dark pool on the ground.
Immediately, thick smoke erupted from the wound.
Her evolved body was already reconstructing and healing the limb the moment it was lost.
“Let… go!!”
Just before her neck snapped, Roilnia pulled her legs up to kick Haimar with all her might.
But he was faster, hurling her into the dirt.
After rolling several times, the woman stood up and spat blood-tinted saliva onto the ground.
Her steaming arm was already forming muscle and skin.
It was an irrational scale of reconstruction and speed that even high-rank physical Espers couldn’t attempt without the proper grade to back it up.
“What are you looking at? Surprised?”
“Hardly.”
In contrast to the woman’s pride in her recovery, Haimar offered a dismissive remark.
He treated it as a cheap trick, no different from before.
Boom—!
With that icy reply, Haimar’s relentless assault began.
His attacks grew faster and fiercer, leaving Roilnia struggling just to defend herself.
As the battle raged, the golden aura surrounding the man began to darken, turning a murky, abyssal black.
There was no way his condition was stable.
While his exterior remained clean without a single scratch, his internal powers and senses were tangling into a total catastrophe.
His uncontainable energy had long been overflowing into physical reality; it wouldn’t be strange if he went into a full-scale rampage at any second.
Still, his purpose was clear: tear her apart as much as he desired. Punish her until she suffered enough, then kill her.
Following his instincts, Haimar moved like a machine dedicated solely to slaughter.
“Go on. Try again.”
This time, Roilnia’s left eyeball was torn away.
“Aaargh! You crazy son of a bitch!!”
“Hurry up.”
Then her right forearm, then half of her left abdomen.
The blackened aura became a weapon itself.
Every time Haimar swung his hand, it raked across her like claws.
The sheer difference in power was evident as he easily shredded the intangible shields she tried to manifest.
Because she was pouring so much energy into repeated physical regeneration, the rifts she had kept open in the sky eventually closed.
Reconstructing lost limbs was an incredibly taxing act that even high-grade Espers rarely attempted.
If it were just healing wounds, she wouldn’t be this drained, but Roilnia had repeatedly exhausted her power to its very limit to create entire body parts from scratch.
Consequently, something was running low inside her as a price for the excessive use of her abilities.
The “drugs” were wearing off.
“Damn it, the medicine…!”
Feeling a strange thirst in her throat, Roilnia secretly pulled a small tin case into her hand.
She needed to take it to use her powers properly, which meant she had to put some distance between herself and Haimar.
But there were no openings.
Even though they were just standing there facing each other, the woman couldn’t move a muscle.
Instinct told her that even the slightest slip would be fatal.
Sure enough, the energy flowing from Haimar grew bloated, expanding its range.
It poured out like a burst dam, forming a massive wave of power that encircled the entire area.
The vortex, comparable to a natural disaster, spiraled upward until it eventually swallowed the sky.
The sky closed off, and even the faint moonlight vanished.
All surrounding sounds were devoured.
Inside a dome-like space severed from the outside world, a destructive pressure filled the air.
“…”
The forest, trees, and roads all disappeared, leaving only a single, black-painted space.
Sparks crackled between the flames and water columns remaining inside the dome.
Amidst the violent, chaotic energy at the center of this disaster, veins bulged across the man’s body as murky power billowed from him.
He looked like the incarnation of something non-human.
His eyes were like blue flames, and a strange light radiated from his platinum hair.
As the very air grew heavy, Roilnia felt a pressure incomparable to before.
The abnormally swollen energy and the physical anomalies appearing on the man…
If Roilnia’s mind was still functioning, she knew exactly what this was.
It was the omen of a total rampage.
