*
"I..."
"..." (Huo Li)
I couldn't even utter out a word, the pain was driving me insane, nearly to the point that I couldn't think straight. No matter how much I endure it, I couldn't get used to it. It was a searing sensation that deepened itself in my very soul, it is the sign that one is alive... I'm glad... I could at least be assured that I once lived... Even in this pitiful end...
It was like an invisible countdown, one filled to the brim with malicious anxiety and heart wrenching fear... I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die...
It feels... Cold... A foreign object is embedded in my chest, a feeling of unease creeps into my chest and doesn't get out. I continue glancing between HuoLi and the stake in my body, as if the feeling of unease will disappear the next time I look at it. I can't see it... I feel my death coming closer with each passing second, but I can't see exactly how much time I have. Just a vague feeling that my lifespan was about to reach its end...
My last breath... I don't know which one is my last... Only that I keep taking new breaths... Hoping the next wouldn't be the last. My temple is drenched in sweat, it feels uncomfortable, as if there's a spider crawling on my back but I can't smack it away... Then it crawls onto my neck, next it lifts its legs... Waiting either for the legs to land or for it to bite my neck... It never arrives, yet I feel too fearful to turn around and check if anything happened...
I have no strength to turn my neck or lift any of my limbs... not even my fingers can lift a single bit... Ah... I can't see... I can't see at all... So now even if I get rescued... I wouldn't know if they are there or not... I can't hear, smell, feel or see. My senses fade out like a dying flame, to the point that I can no longer recognise my own body. I...
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I timed my revival a little later than usual. One could say it was a gamble. When I'm dead I cannot assess the state of the living world. Meaning that it depended on HuoLi if she believed I was already defeated or not. If she thought I was finally gone, she would release the stake, and I would revive right after. If not, I'll time my revival at an even further date from now. And the next one will be even more further in the future than that. And then even more for the next one, each subsequent revival will have a longer period of death than the previous...
I need to defeat her quick and assist my friends, so this is likely putting the cart before the horse. But I suppose I'm selfish... I want to continue existing even longer... I'm not sure if this skill... Really revived me... Or just copied the memories of my previous self over into a newly regenerated body... Would there be any difference to me? Would I still be myself? Such things, I have no way of verifying. In any case, I revived after 10 minutes had passed.
When I opened my eyes, there was an enormous puddle of blood under my body. Did she dice me up like minced meat? I suppose there is also this external factor of HuoLi, if she has some kind of tool or power to prevent my superimposition... Then I wouldn't really have anyway to go around it. I stood back up, and she was there, in front of my eyes. It seemed that she knew, so she casually waited for me to revive....
"Ready for round 2? You'll wish that you timed it 10 years from now rather than 10 minutes." (HuoLi)
It seems revival wasn't really as good as it seems. Looks like this will be the last time when I can get so distracted in my thoughts.
Without warning, I leaped off the ground at a steep 30 degree angle towards her left. A trail of spears and ancient plant life follow behind my fleeting figure like a comet's. She swerves her right leg for at least 180 degrees, smashing into me who had arrived on her left, it was a similar pattern where I parried with the spear... But this time it was a parry, and not a frontal block. I quickly used the unequal momentum that she was crushing into my spear to fling myself over her leg while sending multiple spears at her figure.
She quickly smashes them apart with the timeless 4th dimensional substance born from her first skill, giving a slight window of time for me to duck under it and swipe a low kick at her feet. The impact was enough the shift her left feet and tip it over, but her right feet made up for the lack of balance and grounded her entire body as she used her forcefully lifted left leg to send a kick.
I noticed as soon as I kicked, since there was an unnaturally low amount of resistance. It meant that she had planned on kicking me before hand, so the diving slide under the timeless substance to kick her foot wasn't a miscalculation on her part, but a planned trap. The moment I kicked, I realised it was a trap and lifted my entire body by using my arms to do a somersault. In which she took advantage off by using sending the substance flying at my head, an attack that I barely dodged.
As I had squatted down to duck under her attack and was facing away from her, I twisted my hips in a quick fashion and launched a wide kick only to be stopped by the substance. My foot has been reinforced enough to survive a collision with the substance for a moment, but it was still much better to make no contact. So I quickly retracted my foot and got out of the way by jumping some distance away.
"... You got tougher..." (HuoLi)
For information like this, it was much better for the enemy not to know about it. Anything I can use to surprise her or overpower should be kept hidden under my sleeve, otherwise like now... It would be useless. She's already adapting to this information by forming several sharp edges with the formless substance. She throws it with astounding speed that even my newly enhanced state struggles to keep up with, shifting my body to the right by side stepping with all my strength, it whizzes past my cheek. The residual heat singed my cheek as it rushed by, kicking up a huge Gail that threatened to tear my hair off.
I return the favour, using my waist as the axis, I twisted my torso spine and all and shot my spear forward with all my being. My fingers trembled under the strength exerted and my palm pressed further into its shaft. I wielded my spear with my pride-with all my power and strength. Slashing diagonally, she blocks upwards with the substance, which I kick once more at an unspiked area to gain momentum from her again. Then I launched multiple other spears from several directions, forcing her to block it all at once. She encased herself in the signature shape of an orb made out of the shapeless substance.
This time I had prepared the opposite of the previous situation. It was my turn to wait for her to come out of her shell rather than her waiting for me to revive. I aligned countless spears that aimed at her little orb while twisted vines and trees grew all over the orb. The orb explodes outwards, shredding apart everything I prepared.
"Second skill, [Boundary of radiance, indifference of aether]. Under the supreme authority of this skill, no change can be recognised but your death." (Huo Li)
"Second skill, [Extreme body governing]. Transcend the natural limits of this material, crush the potential under an iron fist and plunge further into an unknown realm. Composite technique with final skill, Beyond the grasp of bonds."
My instinctive reaction to her second skill which granted her action priority until I died, was to first try to break through her action priority. In essence, it was a magic that imposed a law on reality that made sure she could attack me and that I won't be able to move or do anything when does so. Not even magic.
There were many types of magic that fell into this category of granting the user action priority, Kanou's instant attack is a good example. If she kept using it multiple times in a row, from her own perspective she's able to attack her opponent as much as she wants while they can't retaliate in anyway.
As such, I relied on my own second skill which boosted my movement efficiency, and subsequently speed and strength. I immediately realised it had a rather weak effect. Though it looks strong since it enhances my speed, strength and reaction speed by so much, it was a very simple skill that merely made my movements more efficient and removing any waste of energy. It was not something that could defy action priority on its own, so I combined with whatever else I had on hand. My final skill.
At this point my stats still can not match up to HuoLi's but they are now undoubtedly all S grade. My well may even be SS grade since attack magic doesn't draw from my well anymore but the magical particles of other parallel universes.
I dodge her blinding effects, a common pattern of action priority is that the user's attacks all happen in an instant. Either that, or they freeze the enemy still. But my composite technique can even surpass timestop now as it constantly superimpose my next move. It was like the animation techniques of the past where the animator drew each and every single frame meant to appear, that was what the skill did. It drew my being over reality an infinite amount of times, to the point the electrical signals in my brain can connect and I can exist even in stopped time or lock space.
I can even observe infinitely small frames of time now, or HuoLi's infinitely fast attacks. I dodge them one by one... No, I'm dodging them automatically with the technique faster than I can formulate my thoughts. I can see thousands of steps that she would take in the future, overlapping the present with a translucent phantom. But nevermind dodging, I shot my palm blade into her heart to test a hypothesis.
***(Huo Li)
Not once until now had another person surpassed action priority directly. People have done so by letting me kill them and subsequently revived themselves from the dead, that forces the skill to deactivate unless I cast it again, spending more magical particles. But physically... Only one other... The Eye God was the only other that has physically overpowered the law of action priority and stop my attack with a single finger.
'You've done well, forcing one of my fingers to move' (The Eye God)
She smirks, an expression of utter exhilaration and ridicule riddles her cheeks, a passionate blush wells up as a side effect. That image has been burned deep into my mind, a powerlessness I haven't ever felt since my father died once again engulfed me at that time. It made me sick, want to throw up the entire contents of my stomach even. It churned as hard as it could and a wave of dizzying nausea permeates my conscious. My insides felt like a disgusting washin machine filled with trash and my legs could no longer support my body.
Without even using a skill, she had brought me to my knees. I had never encountered anything this overpowering since I awakened as a magical girl... I had merely fulfilled my own vow from back then, saving countless people from natural disasters and fire outbreaks. Naturally I saw and rescued as much people as I could from The Great Disaster. I moved as fast as I could, my mind and muscles burned with the fatigue that magical girls wouldn't usually feel. It was because I used my magic to save people rather than alleviate my own fatigue, than I powered through that searing exhaustion built up of the lactic acid in my blood.
I have been training the entire time since I was forcibly brought under The Eye God's servitude-for this exact moment. I dodged the extended fingers of my enemy that were meant to simulate a knife's edge. She reacts accordingly, she might have pulled back the palm blade in shock, but she quickly recovered from it and prepared another fighting stance.
At this moment we were both stuck in this infinitely miniscule time frame of an 'instant'. Surpassing conventional speed, this is the pinnacle where every tiny bit of effort matters infinitely more than before. That includes mental state and emotion, in other words whoever hesitates less will win. In real time, it will be over in an instant. In our perceived time, it was possibly an eternity.