*
"... Precise destruction, she peeled away my virtual world...." (Ledia)
Fortunate or not, when she received a deep wound earlier... Ledia mended her atlas armour into her nerves. The more damage she took, the higher the integration rate between armour and body. The signal gap was decreasing as the fist fight escalated.
One, two, Arasovi struck consecutively into Ledia's head, sending her mind and thoughts floating into the skies. Arasovi proceeds to spin for a kick, jerking her body and smashing it into a straight trajectory. She then caught up to the meteor like body, and crushed her knuckles into Ledia's torso twice, finally ending it with a kick to the jaw. Her body was injured beyond belief, pain filled all of her receptors over and over like a blaze was set upon her body without pause.
Every inch, every pore seemed to be leaking blood and agony, her eyes struggle to locate themselves before attempting to lift their swollen eyelids up, her skin bearing an unhealthy purple hue from all the blunt force trauma.
"Tch!" (Kaori)
"Eyes here!" (Kaori alt)
Kaori parries the oncoming rapier, she could extend a hand to Ledia right now, but that would just be it. Ledia would get beaten again and again... Kaori couldn't help her much more than that, lest she straight up fights off a 1 v 2 by herself. But... Kaori grits her teeth and manuevres her rapiers with ease, they smash and clatter against her opponent's rapiers without a sweat. She'll put some trust into Ledia, this is not where she dies.
Arasovi conjures a black orb with her first skill, a concentrate of destruction that wouldn't leave any existence unscathed, configured to erode at any state of being until nothing is left. Stripped from existence, it's inner void rumbles in hunger, groaning like a starved beast yet grinding against reality like nails on chalkboard but with a much lower timbre. She was planning to finish off Ledia with this one attack, it wouldn't take long to gather enough power. She's done it enough time to nearly finish it instantly. After all, this was her first skill, it's something she's done countless times.
"ugh!! V... Virtual world assimilation... Malicious grand cornerstone assimilation... Once I achieved 100% integration with the world... Using the virtual world and Atlas as a bridge... I'll achieve true God magical girl hood!"(Ledia)
"Really?" (Arasovi)
Her voice came from behind with a pristine tone, she had already pressed her orb of destruction on Ledia's body before speaking behind her. Ledia utilised her virtual teleportation and substituted herself with Kaori alternative who parried the black orb with her rapier, causing a loud metallic clang to echo in the white space. The rumbling of the destruction orb softens gradually as Ledia reappears at a distance unscathed, floating next to Kaori who had caught on to the situation.
Ledia really was growing at an explosive rate, so much so that her growth rate was catching up to the stats of everyone else. The integration was going well, she was becoming a god magical girl as they fought. She wouldn't be stopped by any limits. Her blood was pumping faster, the vivid deep beating of her heart's rhythm resonates with her mind, her ears hear the regular thumping and her mind accepts it into her soul. Her blood, body and mind are moving with more synchrony and are trudging through the air with more force by the moment.
Her body appears behind Arasovi, launching a high kick. Arasovi twists her body to shield herself with her own shoulder, but the kick crushes through her shoulder blades and lodged out her arm from its socket. Has she ever felt more alive?
Ledia lifts her right arm with all of her strength, Arasovi appears right after with her right fist outstretched, in a deep collision with Ledia's right wrist.
"Tch... Battle high? It won't last long." (Arasovi)
"Fufu, that's what you'd hope. My body passively produces steroids, the high will never stop until I do." (Ledia)
As she spoke, she pushed her entire body closer before flinging her left arm into the space in front of her. Arasovi brings her right arm up at the last second, blocking the devastating blow brought by Ledia's left arm. It wasn't even bunched up into a fist, Ledia had swung her left arm like a club, causing a loud explosion of shock waves from their collision's intensity. The air inbetween them pushes the two apart, forcing some distance between them. The resulting shock waves had left some cuts on Ledia's cheek, to which she wipes them off. Swiping her thumb over the cut, it regenerates instantly giving the illusion that she rubbed it away.
A black aura wraps around Arasovi's body as an in corporeal fog. She steps closer with the fog shrouding her body, she still has not used her second or third skill. The first is enough to kill you with, that was the message it sent. A flash to the distant past, a scenery of a time infinitely distant. A single scene from Arasovi's past catches up to her, hunger, death, sickness, it surrounds all and reaches its eery hands over all. She could do nothing but watch.
... Why was she thinking of it now? Her world was already gone, courtesy of her. Such an unforgiving world didn't deserve to exist either way, that's why she left it in dust. The world's sins? No, there was nothing so lofty. She was dealt a bad hand, so she simply dealt it back. Ledia really was high on her own fumes, she closed the distance with a bright smile and a devastating kick. It would require her to use all of her physical strength to ward it off, but why put in so much effort?
Why not use her magic and lower the amount of physical strength she needed to exert? Her left wrist gently waves through the air with a black aura surrounding it, despite its ostensibly slow movement compared to Ledia's high speed high power kick... They moved at the same speed. Their perceptions of time were different, but both moved at infinite speed, meaning that their actions happen in mere moments unquantifiable by time anyway.
Her left wrist made contact with the high kick, immediately disintegrating the leg away into nothingness. She grins at Ledia, pondering if her high had abruptly stop with the arrival of her disappointment. True, there was disappointment on her face... Frustration pooled at her forehead in the form of wrinkles and furrowed brows, but her resolve was real. Such a small lapse in emotion would do nothing to deter her.
She regenerated her leg and continued her assault, Arasovi crouched a little then swiped her right arm high into the air, covering a large area. Ledia arrived next to Arasovi, dodging the arm swipe at the last moment before throwing a right hook. Arasovi brought her left palm up at the last moment and caught the hook. Arasovi closes the gap further, almost kissing Ledia, then she smashed her head into Ledia's.
A large explosion erupts at the point of collision, tearing away skin and flesh from Ledia's body. Her legs lock at the joints and lowered to retain her sense of balance, while pushing against the devastating force. Her arms clawed against the air and were pushing a sumo wrestler's pose.
"Guh!?!!!" (Ledia)
The skin and little bits of tendon were peeling off of her cheeks, lips, nose and her arms and legs. A welling sensation surges up her chest vigorously, resulting in her spitting a mouthful of blood. Her heart aches and her ribs felt like they were piercing into her flesh, her blood vessels scream, giving the edge of her eyes and skin a red hue. Amplifying her destructive power with her skill, the head bash that Arasovi pulled off really did a number on her.
"... Do you need help?" (Kaori)
"... Nah. I'm getting used to it." (Ledia)
Even as her blood and muscles scream at her, she kept a cool head as she survived the aftermath of the head bash. Her eyes were trained onto Arasovi without break, even as Kaori spoke to her for a moment. Only using her first skill was an insult, yet how could Ledia make her do more? How could Ledia push Arasovi further if this is all her all can bring out?
"Because there is only one way to go, forward." (Ledia)
Arasovi can be hurt. It's not impossible to kill her. If she could master her final skill and second skill, maybe she could draw out more of Arasovi's cards and put them down one by one. At this point Arasovi sees no need to use her other skills, it meant that Ledia wasn't even seen as a threat that required the use of her other skills, at this moment it was impossible for her to kill Arasovi. That was what it meant.
The current her was not enough, the present magic she was using was not adequate. Even with all of her concentration poured into her atlas armour and combat, there needed to be more. The armour was already forged as a Stick, an independent magic item. It should work automatically, augmenting her capabilities without her conscious effort, but she found it terrifying to let go of her mental grip over the armour, and to focus her concentration on something else.
But there was no other choice, it was as much as she told Kaori, she has to do it .she has to let go, the armour has spiritually melded into her body anyway, she won't lose her connection with it just by letting go...
Before she noticed, Arasovi's arm was already inside her, impaling her torso. Her black coloured magic spreading throughout Ledia's body and disintegrating every single cell it came across. A burning pain assaulted her body relentlessly, she wanted to cry her soul out until it pierced everyone's ear drums and caused their ears to rot off. Blood and drool leaked at the tips of her lips as a ferocious grimace appeared on her face. If she removed Arasovi's hand now, she can still make it, but how?
At this rate, she would definitely die, with Arasovi's destruction magic easily eclipsing her 'infinite' rate of regeneration... There wasn't much she could do to stave off her eventual demise. Except... Combust into flames, overload her body with energy until everything was indistinguishable. Erode! Overload! Use enough energy to create another universe! As long as it stops the destruction, she must do it! Like a malignant cancer, the destruction magic crawls through her body thoroughly...
She must... I activate her passive and allow her own magic to take her first... At the same time since she's about to die anyway... She can let go of her mental grip on the Atlas armour... And...
Life form evolution. The destruction magic was eliminating her body, but not the armour. So she let go of the armour, deactivated her passive and let her flames consume herself... Recording her spiritual existence onto a remnant of the armour that's untouched by the destruction magic. Then regenerate a completely new body from there...
"Tch, she became the armour? You have the audacity to ascend into godhood right in front of me...!" (Arasovi)
"Puhah! Haa~ haa~ haa!" (Ledia)
She was practically born anew in the vicinity, because her old body was completely destroyed. It was akin to the continuation of a dream... There was no way to capture the experience of death in words, an incomprehensible and eery sensation took root in her spine, almost like a sense of loss but there was way more to it than a gaping hole inside one's heart. As if... There was too much to it, making it impossible to describe how she felt dying just now.
There was also a foreboding sense of doom, as if she could experience it at any moment again, and a looking insecurity over whether she was the real Ledia or simply a recreation.... There was too many unsettling emotions for any one word to represent it, but there was also simply no time to reflect on any of it. Ironically, the sense of impending danger and mortality brought by Arasovi's presence in the middle of a fight... Was able to distract Ledia from all the negative traumatising emotions that she could have incurred from experiencing death.
Closing in with a leap, Ledia hopped through space with vigilance. Arasovi arrived to annihilate her rush and momentum, swing a vertical hand chop that crushed one of Ledia's legs as she blocked it with her elbows. Arasovi was pressuring her with her own magic adding to her attacks, leading Ledia to keep running while thinking of a way to counter those attacks. Things weren't looking so good.