*
"Magia retainment: 60-... 70%" (Kaede)
She wouldn't pass up this chance, enhancing herself once more and adapting to the technique passed down from Kaori, she would put her everything into getting stronger. She had to catch up to Kaori no matter what if she even wanted a chance at defeating her enemies. While she's stuck in B grade, all the big players would be A and above. She needed to surpass her natural limits like how Kaori did...
" [Second step to completion] ." (Barius)
" [The gap of impermanence is a cage]." (Kaede)
She forcibly moves her own body while under the influence of the time stop, costing great amounts of magical particles. Her first skill had already allowed her to move a little, the second was to give her even more freedom. But at the same time... It was like moving through a liquid denser than cooled concrete, her flesh and bones screech in pain and her eyes became bloodshot as her blood flowed closer to the surface of her body. Under the time stop, there was an absurd amount of pressure acting on her as she tried to move around...
She was forcing her own body to move against the boundary of frozen space, her body felt like it was being completely squeezed, as if she was suffering the pressure of the bottom of the ocean. It suppressed her throat and strength, causing a soft groaning to escape her lips in her frustration. Here, she was nearly immobile while Barius had all the ease of movements that she had before.
"... Inverse time stop." (Barius)
Nevermind, she had even more ease in moving than before. A new technique that Kaede had never heard of before suddenly occurred, though she could wager a guess as to its effects. Her chest quivered as she thought about what would come next... Since she clearly could no longer dodge, then she needed to somehow accommodate the new factors with some other method.
Within an ultra miniscule instance of time, she was pulled back into the digital space that subsumed her ego. Here, the familiar green silhouette of her very first companion strikes a vivid impression. An air of authority and the picturesque stance of composure was exuded by her, right now she felt like someone that Kaede could entrust her life to. The most reliable partner in the world... Was herself. And since Grail was inside her body right now, technically she was also Kaori.
Who else could she trust more than such a figure, she felt their fates connecting and becoming interlinked. Their destiny was like a red string that has begun to tighten at this very moment into a dense coil. Being whisked away to another place at an uncharacteristic timing... It could only be described by one thing, magic. This beautiful sense of mystery permeated her entire being, stirring her core and chest with warmth.
This boundless admiration... This was someone else's feelings, it was too foreign to be hers and too uncharacteristic to be Grail's. Was there a third person here? Or was it just the delusions of the body. After all, this was a digital space formed as a simulation by her own brain through amplification of electric signals by magic. In other words, it was super precise magic that only egoes could control and utilise. If anything, she might subconsciously create something in this space based on her spontaneous whims.
Now to get to business. Grail's expression was reminiscent of when they met for the first time, at that time she might have been in a far too similar situation, perhaps this was simply the moment that occurs before death. The body talks to itself and consults itself of where it went wrong. At that time, Kaede had practically treated Grail as a guardian deity, a spiritual guardian of her one member family.
How humorous, she might be in a similarly dire situation right now... But this direness was purely from her sense of aversion to losing. In that sense, this was far different from last time. There was no longer any need for Grail to work as well, she didn't need to convince and try to prevent Kaede's frail conscious from breaking. She was all determined on her own this time. And for the next time, as well as for the foreseeable future.
"So, what do you have in mind?" (Kaede)
She spoke in a tone that wasn't too high or too low, perfectly cool headed and composed, at the same time her voice carried with it a subtle enthusiasm that eclipsed anything else. The enthusiasm to win, it was a massive driving force for Kaede in particular.
"First. Use different shapes, build your void constructs into more different.
Second, use the gradients to deflect to the side instead of brute forcing your way with more magic.
Lastly... No it would be meaningless if I told you this. Find it on your own. " (Grail)
When her vision returned back to the real world, it felt as if the digital space that she was in had been painted over with different colours and brought depth to the canvas. Information filled in even the peripherals of her eyes, overwriting the simplicity of that space. She twisted her wrist, activating her magic in an instant. She stretched the void rapier to the shape of a protective dome barrier.
Barius had arrived, she closed the distance as fast as Kaede could blink. Her attack caused a thunderous boom to echo inside the barrier as her strike was simply that heavy. Despite its properties of repulsing and deflecting magic, it weakened Barius' attack but not enough to prevent her from causing substantial damage. A large crack spread over most of its surface in an instant. If she continued to hermit here, of course nothing good would come out of it. She had to be active at the same time and counterattack.
Pulling her arms back, she conjured her magic to form spikes over her barrier that shot at Barius as they grew out.
"Void spear!" (Kaede)
Thin black rods lengthed at a few metres fire from the sky, with Barius immediately running away to dodge them. At such a long distance away, her time stop was no longer useful so she released it. It only became a burden that expended her magical particles needlessly. Kaede jumped into the air, spending large amounts of magic to send destructive black beams at Barius. They split off into multiple smaller beams that circle around her while spears continue to barrage her.
While each individual attack was quite weak, if she stopped to knock one away the rest would have an easier time hitting her. The damage would accumulate, so the best thing to do was to remove all of them at once. She sent an explosion of water, but the void attacks effortlessly tore through the water. The pressure wasn't high enough, she didn't put in enough magic out of panic. She raised her arms at the last moment to reinforce them, reducing her surface area to receive less hits.
Unfortunately most of them struck true to their target, causing a cloud of water vapour to swallow Barius' vicinity. Kaede could see clear as day that Barius had received minimal damage after increasing her defences, so she rushed in with her blade. She had been underutilising her magic, not because she didn't think of it, but because she was lacking the ability to do so. Now was the single chance she had to integrate it and improve her fighting style.
Her trusty rapier appears in her palm once more, as if to say 'leave it to me'. Making use of its long length, she strikes at the cloud of water vapour from a low angle.
*BOOM!!!*
Her rapier had predictably collided with something, as a water user there was no way the mist floating in the air could obstruct Barius' vision. So Kaede had to find an angle that cuts all possible locations that Barius could be standing at, the collision of her swing caused a thundering roar to echo in the surrounding area, blowing away the water vapour with pressured wind. A void spear comes in flying from the side, it was a spear from the previous manifestation. She didn't shoot all of them at her, she had kept some on standby.
It thrusted throat the air with a low whistle, flying towards Barius' neck. She had complete vision within the water vapour cloud previously, so she had stopped Kaede's rapier... With her foot. With relative ease, she materialised a water glove and smashed the void spear into bits, forcing it to dissipate back into magical particles. The water droplets splashed into the air, creating brilliant little gemstones that reflected like the distant stars.
These stars were quickly blown away by another slash from Kaede, this time a jett black whip had substantiated in her other palm which she immediately threw at Barius. With a swift and simple swing of her left glove, she smacked the whip away and knocked its trajectory else where before stopping time around her, freezing the whip in place. If left alone, it would react like her own whip, Kaede was clearly taking notes from Barius' style. Magic whips were special in that they could react like actual whips or behave like living beings that formed their own trajectory like snakes swimming through the air.
In that opening that she forcefully created, Barius busted the ground into numerous cracks as she leapt closer to her. She materialised a second water glove on her right hand... Well, it was practically akin to a metal gauntlet without the arm section. Perhaps it was better to compare it to a boxing glove that was pressurised and stronger than most materials on earth. With a single swift motion, her right fist swam through the air faster than a missile.
Then it slowed to a crawl... [The gap of impermanence is a cage], anything that relies on physical movement can be manipulated. This time it was the air around her fist, it was much akin to her time stop, but instead of touching time itself she has turned the surrounding air into something like sludge that repelled physical motion.
Before she could do anything, Kaede grabbed that arm and threw her other fist. Before she could reach her target... A blade of dark crimson rose through the palm that was grabbing onto Barius' arm, she used her blood as a jet pressure cutter and sliced through palm while blocking the trajectory of the other arm.
Kaede in turn, used her second skill to keep her fist going. With a propulsion technique behind her, and her fist getting more enhanced, it busted through the make shift blood wall and reached Barius' face. She kept her other arm on Barius right arm despite it being nearly bisected apart with her blood blade. She had finally broken through Barius' defence once more, the impact reverberated through her skull and sent her unconscious for a moment as her vision flashed into a deep black for moment, akin to television flickering off and on.
A large pillar of water rains from the sky with the maximum pressure that Barius could conjure. It swallow the two, but Barius who had her passives was pretty much immune to any sort of pressure or visual obstruction. Unlike Kaede's radar, she could simply see through anything that was material. The only condition was that she had to be inside the obstructive medium, for example a sandstorm or a whirlpool for her x-ray vision to activate. She still needed to be aware that she was inside the medium.
The dense pressure bore down on Kaede as she attempted to resist the oppressive pillar of hydropower. She used her first skill to try to reverse the gradients, but the water was moving against a greater pressure that continued to press down on Kaede. It wasn't futile as she felt the burden alleviate a little, but she was pretty much still struggling to move. She can't use the medium that Barius was adept at controlling...! She should use her own!
As if a gargantuan air gun had been fire upon her location, the pillar pulsated as large chunks of it seemingly vanish into thin air... If her own pressure causing magic didn't work on her, then her propulsion technique wouldn't exist. So she had to endure the attacks as well. In the atmosphere, air was more abundant than water. So she compressed it into a tiny point and fired it, exploding away the water with residual force.
Thanks to Barius... She had found a new weapon. Hyper compressed air and matter, with this she can accumulate the energy in such bombs simply by continuously using her magic to heighten the force contained within it. Barius was immune to her own water's pressure, but she could still get hit and be swung normally. Meaning that as long as it wasn't water... It should be fine.
She conjures numerous more ultra dense balls of atmosphere, dotting the surrounding air with small black orbs that were the size of ping pong balls.