In hindsight, this piece of information wasn't one that she should have forgotten.
It was most likely because of the rush of battle that she threw this information out of her mind.
Her mind flashed back to the times when the vestige landed a hit on her and the force that would always land five seconds after.
Then she recalled the how it hadn't happened at all since it changed forms.
Which begged the question from her,
'Why didn't a second hit come?'
She could only think of two reasons that this would happen...
'Either it lost the ability along with the transformation or..'
...but the second thought was the one that took root in her mind,
'its stacking them.'
And this thought scared her to no end, especially when she thought of what it meant for her.
'This thing, it's gotten smarter.'
At this time the orb had already left her hand and was heading towards the vestige.
Time slowed down further as the colour of her eyes and tattoos were overtaken by a dark yellow.
As I said before, when a person feels fear, there is always one of three reactions.
The first was to run away.
The second was to fight the cause of their fear if they couldn't run.
But there would be times when they couldn't run or even fight the cause of fear.
When the fear would be so overwhelming that they would just freeze up and stare at it unable to fight back or even feel like running.
In that kind of situation, what would they do?
There was only one option, really. The person's body would instinctively bring forth the best defense they could muster and hope it would be enough to get them through the danger. And in this perception of time, her body, guided by instincts and fear, did exactly that.
Her body started to draw up a large amount of energy from the surroundings into her, sucking it in with such force that it seemed to disappear into her body.
It very quickly surpassed the previous amount of when she first threw the spear and kept climbing higher, even though her aura remained the same.
At that point there was a ripping sound coming from her body, followed by a wave of pain that her mind couldn't process yet only because it hadn't reached it.
Then, all that energy moved to five areas of her body. Her four limbs and her stomach.
The orb had finally landed on the vestiges' body and sunk into it as her perception of time started to speed up again.
With that came three things in slow motion.
A red flash of light along with the explosion of most of the vestiges' body, the explosion of Maria's limbs and abdomen, and the twisting of her face when she felt the pain that the ripping sound caused.
The explosion sent them in two different directions with both of them crashing down on the floor with heavy damage, though one clearly worse than the other.
Maria's gaze was out of focus as her body was finding it difficult to heal.
Blood came up to her throat and she tried to spit it out, but not quite getting it all out as she started to gurgle it and choke.
Her ability quickly tried to get her body back together by calling back the pieces that were strewn about, which helped as the blood that was stuck was called back into her veins.
Unlike the vestige that couldn't call back parts if they were too small, Maria could do that if she concentrated enough. It was most likely because she had the real and complete ability while it had only a part.
But even with this, she didn't have the focus necessary to call back most of her body parts as they were too small and too far away.
She wasn't even in the state of mind to take out a pellet to facilitate the regrowth at this moment.
But even with all this damage, she could count herself fortunate. With all the hit's her body had taken from the vestige, it would've been much worse if she hadn't pulled that maneuver instinctively. Her entire body would've otherwise blown apart due to damage she had taken from them.
The amount of energy she drew in for the technique was just enough to stop her entire body from blasting into bits, instead making it just the affected area.
Now instead of becoming bloody juice on the floor, she became bloody juice on the floor and a broken torso, which could be argued to be slightly better or worse, depending on how you look at it.
But this slim escape from instant death came at a cost. That ripping sound was one that a person with an ability would never hope to hear.
It was the sound of her ability organ beginning to collapse from stress.
There was a limit to the amount of energy the thing could take before it started to fail.
If when it started to fail you still pushed past the limit, it would start to break down.
Her organ had already started this process and if you looked at it now, there would be a tear ripped open on one side.
It both caused her immense pain and made using her ability both energy wasteful and more damaging to it.
Granted, it would still be able to heal itself after a long while, but if she kept on abusing it like that, it would undoubtedly fail permanently and rip itself apart with no hope of recovery.
The process of organ failure would come with a pain unlike any other. One that renders most forms of pain resistance useless.
Even Maria, who boasted the second best pain resistance of the students, was finding it difficult to ignore it.
She was still drawing in more energy from the outside as she was trying to keep herself alive, which was made more difficult by both the pain and the rip from her organ.
The pain disrupted her focus while the rip limited the amount of energy she could gather at once.
If not for this energy still fueling her technique and her strong will to live that refused to allow the technique to disperse, she would've long succumbed to her injuries and died.
Though even that had it's limits as her situation wasn't looking any more promising as time went by.
'Is this... how I die?'
Her eyes were starting to become hazy.
'I can't... die yet.'
But even though her breath was becoming shallower by the second and her thoughts were slurring, she kept telling herself that.
'There are so many things that I haven't done.'
Her mind was struggling to hold on, desperately trying to stay conscious. She knew that if she should stop struggling for less than a second, she would fall unconscious and die.
'I haven't found out what Alexander's true motive is.'
Her lips twitched and a low sound escaped her mouth. It sounded like a groan but if you listened closely, you could tell that she was trying to say something.
'I haven't done nearly enough to help my sister.'
Her blood loss was starting to slow down, though whether it was from her technique or it had just run dry, she didn't know.
'I haven't even told Arthur.... '
Thinking was becoming more and more difficult.
'haven't told him that...'
Even when she knew she shouldn't speak and waste the energy, she still said out loud.
"I... like... him."
Even though very faint and she could see nobody around, she still said it aloud, perhaps with the hope that he would hear it somehow.
'So move body!'
But with those words, like she got a second wind, she started to struggle more desperately, using all her will and more to help her body heal and make sure that she held onto her last line.
'There is a lot of things you've left undone!'
Even though her vision was getting blurry, she still stubbornly held on to that thread of life, refusing to allow it to snap.
'How can you die so easily!?'
But even with all her effort, it was clear that her body couldn't heal fast enough. She was dying. She just refused to acknowledge it.
She was stubborn like that.
"I figured you'd need some help with this."
But it was that stubbornness that ultimately saved her life this time.
"You've done enough for now. how about you let me handle the rest?"
A voice and a hand reached out to help her. Even though it sounded pained, she could recognise it, and tell that the owner was there to help her.
Through her blurry and darkening vision, she noticed a lightly tanned white-skinned hand reaching out to inject several vials into her bloodstream.
"Even I want a chance to look cool too, y'know.", he said with what she could barely make out to be a cheeky smile on his face.
Hearing that even she couldn't help but show a faint smile despite her situation.
"By the way, you are gonna tell me who the person you mentioned you liked earlier is, right?"
But hearing what he said after her slight smile froze and what could arguably be called all the blood in her body rushed to her face as it turned almost entirely red and she blushed heavily.
If not for the fact that her body was producing more blood and she was healing up, she might have just died then and there because of that blush.
---
Turning away from Maria's broken body on the floor, Arthur only had two thoughts. The first was about the battle he was about to get into, the second...
'Saying that was totally worth it!'
He was feeling good about himself for finally catching her blushing.
If there was a ranking of the things that their classmates wouldn't be caught doing, firmly at number three would be Maria blushing.
Rank two would be seeing Arthur cry and firmly at first place would be a day that Alia looked at Alexander with any emotion other than joy and love.
So the fact that he managed to see her blush did wonders for his mood.
'Seeing something that was said to be impossible right before a possible battle to the death is certainly not a bad omen, right?', he thought to himself.
Just when his thoughts were about to go down the wrong direction, he was brought back by a jolt of pain in his arm.
The amusement he was feeling was almost enough to make him forget the pain he was going through.
Almost
Currently he was feeling the pain of the medicine he had injected into himself as it did it's work to regrow his missing arm.
As I said before, although more effective and faster than normal ingestion, injecting it directly would cause a lot of pain.
In about a minute his arm would be back so he was planning on waiting for that while watching Maria's fight.
But seeing how she became way too injured to continue fighting, he regretted the fact that he didn't act sooner.
If he did, then maybe she wouldn't have had to suffer so much and almost end up crippled.
But all these thoughts would have to wait as he looked at the vestige that was in the other direction.
The explosion took away about 75% of its body. If not for it moving it's Richome to the far end away from the explosion at the last second, it would most likely be dead.
It was an survival move that it shouldn't have been able to think of before.
If there was any doubt that this growth in power also came with a growth in intelligence, they were cleared at this moment.
Arthur was able to deduce as much as he witnessed the significantly smaller vestige suck up the small pieces of its body back in.
But while he could tell that it was smarter, it didn't explain why it could reconstruct the body parts that were destroyed and replace them with materials in the surroundings like it was also doing at this moment.
It kept on eating pieces of wood and rock to replace the missing parts, making it more of its body to be tree and rock.
Just when he was wondering if it could do it forever, he noticed that the intense red colour that it had was starting to fade, turning it's main body back to black and allowing the markings to be more visible on it.
That was when he also noticed that the markings that it had when it ate part of Maria were more.
It didn't take him long to notice the cause as the bits of Maria that were strewn about could be seen being picked up.
'What's with this thing's appetite?', Arthur thought when he saw this, knowing that he couldn't allow it to continue doing that.
He took out an object from his regular spatial storage and put it into a different, more special one.
This new spatial storage had one function, to start breaking down what was inside it and feed the energy, no matter the type, directly into the body it was connected to.
And what did he put in there?
The life core of the puffin that he killed earlier!
Almost immediately, the high level cold energy that was in the core started to flow into him, almost freezing him up.
That was until he activated his ability, engulfing himself with flames that kept growing in intensity until they thawed his innards as fast as they froze.
Without even a second wasted after, he launched himself at the thing, hitting it at an angle and slashing through a tentacle and the flesh near it with his gauntlets curved blades packed with flames on his only good hand.
The T.O.V (Thousand Organ Vestige), because it wasn't expecting it's most hated human to reach those speeds and hurt it, was taken off guard and allowed the blow, letting out a scream from all it's mouths and glaring at him with more hatred than ever before.
This vestiges' magnitude had shot up after it's transformation, going from 3.7 to 3.9, making it one step before tier 4.
Arthur on the other hand, was a level 3.6 grade 3 ability user, which meant that despite how weak he was in comparison, the fact he could do so meant that he could fight above his level.
There were two units used to measure an ability user's raw power. The Neo energy unit and the ability unit.
They were used to measure the raw power of the person as well as the power of their ability.
The neo energy unit was the amount of energy that the person could hold at a given time. With every 0.1 increase would come an increase in lifespan, energy levels, body strength, flexibility and durability. They were measured in the same way that vestiges were measured, by tier.
Abilities, just like tier levels, were graded from grade 1 upwards. The highest known ability level was grade 6, which was one of the reasons that it wasn't so far fetched that there could be grade 5 and above vestiges out there.
Depending on the ability strength and it's flaw, the ease it could be leveled up with varied a lot. Arthur's ability held a flaw that severely limited how long he could use it while being very powerful, which balanced out somewhat, so his difficulty could be said to be average.
He would have upgraded his ability to a higher level if not for his flaw, which would burn him up way to fast if he upgraded it any higher. So he held off upgrading it until he found his cure or reached magnitude 4.0.
But don't let his relatively low level fool you, he had been known as a prodigy for a reason.
Arthur had always been known to be able to fight vestiges that were two magnitudes higher than himself, though that applied only if he went all out and almost died in the process.
This one, although three magnitudes above him, was both heavily injured and had a severe weakness to fire, so if he played his cards right and with a lot of luck, he might be able to defeat it.
That was his thought process before.
But now? When he saw that the vestige had grown in intelligence?
'I am most likely gonna die if I let down my guard for even a second.', he thought to himself after distancing himself from the vestige after the first blow.
'So in that case, I'll need to make sure it doesn't catch me!', he thought and then proceeded to launch himself as sonic speeds at the vestige.
Right now, Arthur resembled in every way a flaming orange-yellow comet zipping around the vestige at incredible speeds, leaving behind streaks of fire as if trying to surround it in a ball of flames, which wasn't too far off from the truth.
The life core of the puffin vestige that he killed had a lot of cold and liquid type energies, water being the main type of liquid.
His powers, which mostly dealt with heat and Gaseous energies, were at a slight disadvantage to it, which would normally hinder him if not for his flaw.
But with his flaw, the heat generated from him would be counteracted by the cold flowing through him, which Arthur took full advantage of.
He turned himself into a human star, constantly generating heat while staying a moderate temperature, allowing him to use his ability for however long his body would last.
But he knew, his body wouldn't last that long in this situation.
Like I mentioned before, a life core held the mind of a vestige, mere minutes after it had been killed, it's mind would erode and disappear from within unless it was strong enough to hold itself or it was specially stored to prevent that.
But that didn't mean that it was entirely safe. There would still always be a residual will left in it along with a varying amount of life force.
You see, life cores were an extremely versatile resource in this world.
They contained vast amount of attuned and non-attuned energies and even precious life energy. This made them very useful for powering specific machines and even for extending lifespans.
But the reason it was used most was because it was a method to increase the power level of people.
If taken back, for a heavy price, you could get someone to remove the residual will, attuned energy and life energy from the core, granting a smooth and easy absorption process.
If you didn't want to do that though, you could just absorb it yourself while filtering out the impurities, which were all unneeded energies and the resident will.
The will would of course fight back, so the absorption process was even seen as training to temper the willpower by many.
Both of these things would allow it to be successful, but they also needed a lot of time to pull off.
But Arthur didn't have that kind of time, which meant that the energy flowing into him was still controlled by the resident will.
Uncoordinated energy of any type could very well prove harmful on its own, talk less of if it was controlled and made to do harm by a will.
The plan before was to take the life core and cleanse the residual will and unattuned energies after the battle, which would allow him to use it longer and more efficiently.
Unfortunately, the situation forced his hand to do otherwise.