My All-Seeing Eye is already activated.
Every bit of my perception has been on full blast since this fight began, yet it's been hopeless.
Now, as the notification of its upgrade rings in my ear and my Divine Threads tether with the new pulse of aura that radiates out from my eyes, a whole new world becomes visible around me.
I thought my perception abilities were nearly at their peak, but I've been deceiving myself all along.
It's like my eyes have finally opened once again.
It feels just like the first time I absorbed this skill during the C-Class exams in that labyrinth.
Back then, it was one of the first times I started seeing the dungeons for what they really were, beginning to see individual mana particles in the air and learning how monsters and the system itself truly worked.
Now, the countless new data points entering my mind feel as if the veil has finally been lifted, and I'm seeing reality around me for what it really is once again.
Everything looks more vibrant, like golden sparkles of never-before-seen light create and glue reality together between every particle in the atmosphere. Even the oxygen atoms in the air are visible down to the protons and neutrons in their cores, I can see the glue that binds even them together and that's not even the end. It's like I'm peering into the building blocks of reality, down to microscopic levels I never knew were even there.
The deeper I look into this golden sparkling phenomenon that glues the universe together before my eyes, in any given area, my mind starts to intuitively move away from it. My focused perception instantly zooms out, and a slight brain fog covers my mind on the intricate details of what I'm seeing.
It's like my ability is allowing me to see things I shouldn't be able to perceive; it feels very similar to the times I stared into the center of Ember's golden core.
I take a slight gasp of breath at the thought as my vision returns to searching for the invisible assassin I'm currently battling to the death.
My eyes dart all over the sky, and I airstep forward in the direction that I last reflected the sword wielder.
However, everything feels like it's going in slow motion around me.
My body still moves at the same rate, but my vision and my mind feel as though they're moving far faster than they were just moments ago.
After my fifth step higher into the air, I instinctively make a sharp head turn to my left side when I see a faint ripple.
I can't even describe exactly what it looks like, it's more of a feeling; like a microscopic panel of reality accidentally flipped the wrong way for a fraction of a second.
As I charge my blades and reflective barrier toward this point, the visual sensation becomes more and more common.
Groupings of these shimmering clear, almost white, ripples in the air grow larger and larger from a single microscopic point into solid metal objects, appearing out of thin air, like a divine pocket dimension just opened up before my eyes.
The two silver blades come into full view once again and collide with my yellow reflective barrier right after they appear.
I was able to perceive the incoming blades as they were plunging into reality, but now, as the blades make contact with my Divine Threads and begin to interact with my purple divine barrier, a whole new wave of information floods into my consciousness.
Holding these two silver swords, there is a woman with fair skin, dark black hair, and covered in countless black and silver armor and magical blood-bonded items.
A greater form of bright yellow divine light surrounds her being, just like me, and I turn my head to make eye contact with the bloodthirsty warrior who has relentlessly tried to kill me for the last hour.
Her vibrant hazel eyes are full of determination, confidence, and behind them all, I feel the genuine thrill of the fight burning in her soul.
There isn't even a hint of fear or surprise in the fact that I'm staring right at her.
The corners of her lips are turned up so minimally, it's hard to tell if it is just my mind playing tricks on me.
The deeper her blades sink into my reflective barrier, the clearer her features become, and the more panels of reality flip my way to reveal her to all of my senses.
I'm flooded with 20 individual readings of blood-bonded items on her status first, all of which have 5 stat slots with well over 500% buffs, some of which are even higher than 1000%.
The fact that she can carry 5 more gear slots than me piques my curiosity, but when I get close enough to read her level, skills, and buffs, it all makes sense...
[Lv. 15831]
Skills:
[Stealth][Divine Grade]
Buffs:
[Silent Steps]
[Cloak of Shadows]
[Greater Invisible Battle Form]
The moment these metrics enter my mind, the attacks she's made into my reflective barrier hit their stopping point, mere millimeters before sinking all the way through to puncture my chest, and the violent exchange of energy explodes to send her reflected back.
Her silver blades cross to block the brunt of the blow as she's sent flying, but once this silver sword wielder leaves my purple barrier and immediate range of perception about 10 meters away from my greater form, she completely disappears once again.
My mind processes everything while I prepare for another exchange.
This is the first triple-ranked-up being I've ever seen before.
She has a true core, is well over level 10,000, holds 20 gear slots, 3 ranked-up buffs, and most impressive of all things, she has a divine grade skill.
My heartbeat speeds up, and despite my burning and aching muscles and the fatigue riddling my joints and bones, the excitement to fight someone like this overrides all of my natural senses.
My Mythic Grade All-Seeing Eye pulses through the desert, enhanced by the burning hot strength of my Divine Threads, overturning every building block of reality in the atmosphere.
Even so, as I airstep higher into the sky to face off against the mysterious hazel-eyed woman, I'm not able to sense her until she comes within a deadly range.
I'm only able to barely sense her, basically just a vague intuitive outline of her being as she comes within 10 meters of me, and can only see her for what she really is and her status information when she's making contact with my purple barrier.
Instead of reflecting her away in fear of getting hit like every time before, I want to make a move and go on the offensive.
I use every bit of divine energy I would have manifested into a yellow hexagon and channel it into both my blades.
I twist my body the moment I see her entire greater form, swinging my swords upward to clash with her silver swords and lock eyes with this assassin again.
This time, I'm smiling wide as we both stand still clashing in the sky, radiating pulses of divine light like a beacon rippling through the air for hundreds and hundreds of kilometers.
I can even sense the excess radiation and sound of this clash reach some of the smaller towns and villages in the outer bits of the populated areas of Sector 2.
We're at nearly identical strength, and the burning divine energy in our True Cores is extremely similar too. My reaction time and speed are faster than hers, and my defensive power is too. However, this sword wielder's stamina is far greater than my own, and if she wanted to run away, it would be impossible for me to locate her.
Still, even with this change in my technique, blocking her with my swords instead of the logical reflective barrier move, her emotions and physical state don't change at all.
Her gaze is locked on my core, and her conviction to fight doesn't waver.
There is no malice in her movements, and unlike the dragon that was battling me before, it doesn't seem like she's being forced to do anything.
The sword wielder is here because she wants to be.
She wants to fight because she's enjoying it.
Nothing more, nothing less.
This realization is both exciting and also a bit worrying.
There is nothing more dangerous than an opponent like this. I know so, because I myself have felt the same way many, many times before... My instincts tell me, there is no reasoning with her. The only way this battle ends is if one of us falls to the other's blades.
We stay locked in the sky with our blades colliding. She pushes mine back a few centimeters, and I do the same as more and more pulses of silky Divine Threads seep from our cores through our blades and out into the completely decimated desert.
There's nothing at all left below us but an impossibly deep ravine stretching further than mortal eyes can see.
Despite this, we continue on.
The scraping of divine energy tethered to greater form's swords echo through the air, and finally, we both go in for the kill at exactly the same time.
Both of our right-handed swords break away from the other's left, aiming for the core, but we both twist our bodies and dodge, only piercing one another's sides while flying through the air onward in the opposite direction.
Once again, her yellow divine residue tears a gaping hole in my stomach after it pierces through my armor like butter, but the slow healing process begins while I airstep around, charging my blades to get ready for another exchange.
Another clash ripples through the air, shockwaves traveling over a thousand kilometers, less than a second after our last exchange.
A small yellow slash from my own divine energy residue is visible on her side once we meet again. While mine is healing, hers is still burning bright.
However, instead of being concerned, the hardly noticeable grin on her face grows just slightly as both of us go in for the kill again.
Over and over, a new style of battle continues in the sky.
Now that I can see my attacker, we're on equal footing.
When she takes me by surprise in awkward angles, I manifest reflective barriers, and when she attacks straight on, our blades hit every time.
On the head-on attacks, both of us always leave those with wounds.
Although they're not severe, they do build up over time.
Mine heal, but not fast enough. I have slashes all over my legs, arms, chest, and torso. However, the silver sword user does too.
The collisions only get more frequent, ramping up to multiple clashes per second.
The waves of divine energy that erupt from our collisions are stacking together and pulsing out further and further into the Dark Continent and Volcanic Region.
To the south, more and more lava erupts from the active volcanoes, and the mana in the air is being distorted by the constant energy pulses to create and break dungeons.
My Plunderer skill absorbs so much mana from the air that pockets of dense mana are flooding into drained portions of the atmosphere and odd phenomena are occurring down below in the crater where the dead zone of the desert used to be.
Rogue dungeons are being formed from the excess mana residue trapped in our divine energy pulses.
While new dungeons forming and breaking within a radius of our fight won't be difficult to clean up, there is a far more dangerous result of this exchange that is beginning to show itself.
Far away, in the center of the Dark Continent, weak vibrations of yellow divine light from two True Cores clashing begin to ripple into the depths of the demonic energy-filled abyss.
While one or two waves don't get much of a result, the continuous and growing pulses of Mana and Divine Threads that are being consumed by the darkness make the entire abyss tremble.
As I clash with the silver assassin in the sky for the 139th time in the past minute, another ripple of Divine Light filled with Mana collides with the abyss thousands of kilometers away.
In the center of the abyss, a pulse of black energy responds back, making a ripple outward, and above it, the clouds in the sky begin to slowly part.
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Author's Note:
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