Once again, Yoshika found herself on the stone ring in the center of the training field. She wondered briefly whether the tournament would use the same space, or if they might make a new construction just for it, but quickly put the question out of her mind—she had bigger problems.

Takeda Rika—ancestors bless her mischievous heart—had decided to petition Hayakawa Kaede, of all people, to be her sparring partner against Yoshika. Now, she had only a few moments to prepare herself to compete with the strongest single combatant in the entire academy. Again.

She had to remind herself that it was just a spar—not that it helped. She could still see the cracked flagstone from where Jia’s first duel with Hayakawa ended. There were a few other damaged stones, but she would always recognize that one. She took deep breaths to calm herself—it wouldn’t turn out like that this time.

Yoshika began to strategize—first, what was off-limits? Six Arms of Asura, for certain. Not only was it far too much for an unsupervised sparring match, but she had been banned from using the element of destruction until she could master it without relying on Eui’s demonic core. Corruption of the Fetid Bog was out as well, until she could learn to control it more precisely—she didn’t want a repeat of Sun Jaehwa.

On the other hand, she could use Absolute Awareness for a few seconds at a time, and she had the body enhancement spells she’d been learning from Yuuko. It wasn’t much, but at least it might help deal with Hayakawa’s speed.

She smiled to herself—she’d have to thank Rika later. They hadn’t even started and this match was already giving her valuable insights into her training priorities. Also apologize—she wasn’t giving Rika any consideration at all in her strategy. She took up fighting stances and locked eyes with her opponents. Yuuko, off to the side, checked with both sides.

“Ready?”

Yoshika nodded her heads, and across from her, Hayakawa and Rika did the same.

“Begin!”

Yoshika immediately activated as many of the body enhancement spells as she could, improving her speed and power at the cost of a continuous stream of mana. Rika made her own preparations as well, forming a pair of doppelgangers out of her qi. Yoshika would be able to tell them apart from the real one through her domain, but Rika knew that, and she could still channel her telekinetic martial art through them.

Hayakawa didn’t waste any time on such preparations and sprung immediately into action, targeting Eui first. Yoshika had anticipated that—Hayakawa always focused on Eui first to take her dangerous destruction techniques out of the picture, and she didn’t know that Eui couldn’t—or wouldn’t—use them right now.

Jia pointed at Hayakawa and launched a lightning bolt, which Hayakawa was able to block with a burst of ki and her amazing reflexes as always. Her eyes widened in shock as she twisted to block a second bolt of lighting from Eui. Her eyes narrowed and she went after Eui with renewed focus.

Yoshika frowned with disappointment. She had meant for the two spells to be simultaneous, but there had been an unexpected time lag when trying to move lightning ki through Eui’s body, and it had taken her longer to charge the talisman. She could probably use her domain to activate the talismans, but they’d be weaker without matching the element. She mentally added controlling the elemental balance within her domain to her list of priorities.

Rika caught up to the melee and surrounded Jia with her doppelgangers at the same time that Hayakawa caught up to Eui. The doppelgangers had no substance, but they could still land blows, and Yoshika had to be as wary of them as the real Rika. They could also be destroyed, which would force Rika to make more, but it wasn’t particularly easy to disrupt the mists that they were formed from.

Meanwhile, Yoshika also had to focus on avoiding Hayakawa’s relentless assault on Eui. Thankfully the Soft Fist style was specialized in graceful, flowing movements that were well suited to dodging attacks, and Yoshika could mostly rely on Eui’s excellent reflexes. If Hayakawa could be said to have any weaknesses, it would be her rigid adherence to her martial arts. Even though she had developed her mental cultivation and showed an interest in spiritual cultivation, she didn’t even attempt to use any spells or aura sense in combat.

With Hayakawa being stalled by Eui’s body, Yoshika could focus most of her effort on taking down the much weaker opponent, Rika. As Jia, she normally favored a battle of attrition, wearing her opponents down over time—to that end, destroying the doppelgangers would be an excellent strategy, since they were extremely costly to produce. However, the Eui in her preferred to blitz opponents down, and it occurred to her that the doppelgangers would no longer be a threat without Rika to sustain them.

She decided to take a third option. Rika knew that she was vulnerable, and she was superbly skilled at controlling her clones. She always moved so that there was no way to strike at her without being countered by the illusory copies. It made her encirclement weak to a feint, but a half-assed feint would never work on Rika.

Yoshika focused on Eui’s anger, always simmering barely-hidden below the surface of her emotions. She recalled Yeong Jiwoo’s scornful gaze, Jaehwa’s betrayal, the pain of her branding, and for just a moment allowed the primal, murderous impulse to overtake her as she lunged toward Rika with Jia’s claws and fangs bared.

Rika’s eyes widened in alarm, and both of her qi clones immediately moved to defend her just in time—for Jia to do an about face and zip away towards Hayakawa with her lightning fast, zig-zagging movements.

“Wh—that’s not fair!”

Yoshika ignored Rika’s protests. She needed to take down one of her opponents quickly, but even though Rika was the weaker of the two, she was exceptionally good at stalling enemies stronger than she was. Yoshika was confident she could defeat Rika eventually, even with only Jia’s body and abilities, but eventually wasn’t what she needed right now.

It was a big gamble. She didn’t have much time to defeat Hayakawa before Rika caught up and turned the tables once more, but with her entire focus and both bodies dedicated to it, Yoshika might have a chance. Hayakawa seemed to realize something was amiss, and dashed out of the way just in time to avoid a lightning bolt from Jia, putting some distance between herself and Yoshika’s bodies.

Yoshika saw the way Hayakawa instantly evaluated the situation, her eyes darting from Eui, to Jia, and finally to Rika so quickly that it was almost too fast to process. Yet that was apparently enough time for her to make a decision as her stance lowered into a familiar pose—she was about to use her ultimate technique.

Absolute Awareness activated just in time for Yoshika to see Hayakawa lunge forward. Even in this state, Hayakawa’s speed was frightening. Within her domain, Yoshika could actually sense the air being compressed by the speed of Hayakawa’s movements. The attack was being directed at Jia instead of Eui—maybe to surprise them with the change of targets. This was her chance!

With both of her bodies so close together, Yoshika just had to avoid the strike with one body and counter with the other—she could even use Hayakawa’s absurd speed against her. Yoshika began to move and—she was too slow. While she could sense everything was happening around her and react at superhuman speeds, her actual movements weren’t any faster with Absolute Awareness. As soon as she had begun to move out of the way, she realized that she’d be too slow to avoid the attack.

There was nothing for it. Yoshika knew what she needed to do to win the fight, and knew just as surely that it was beyond her current abilities. Instead, she squinted Jia’s eyes shut and fell back on the only other option remaining to her.

“YIELD!”

Hayakawa’s attack stopped inches from Jia’s face, and the air in front of her exploded with a thunderous boom. Her hair and robes were thrown back as if she was standing in a gale wind for a moment, before it finally settled down and Hayakawa straightened her posture, staring at Jia with a complicated expression on her face.

Yuuko blinked at them in confusion before remembering her role.

“U-uh, L-Lady Hayakawa and Miss Takeda win!”

All of the students who had been watching began to applaud the display. Rika finally caught up, grumbling about being ignored, but Hayakawa ignored all of it, staring intently at Jia’s face.

“You saw me.”

Yoshika looked up at her with a start.

“W-what?”

“Never mind, we’ll speak later. This has been an enlightening bout—thank you.”

“Likewise!”

Yoshika bowed politely, and Hayakawa mirrored her before turning away to return to her own team. Rika looked back at her curiously before turning back to Yoshika.

“What was that about?”

Yoshika shrugged Eui’s shoulders.

“We’re not really sure. She’s right, though—we learned a lot in that fight.”

Rika crossed her arms and grumbled.

“Well at least someone did. All I figured out was that I’m even more useless in a real fight than I thought. I’m feeling a lot more confident about changing my cultivation method now. Also, I had no idea you could pull off a killing intent like that, Jia. It felt like Eui’s!”

Yoshika blinked at her with both sets of eyes, and decided that a bit of revenge was in order as she made direct eye contact with both bodies at the same time.

“It was. Or did you forget who we are?”

Rika visibly shuddered.

“Okay, wow! Sorry, Yoshika, but please never do that again.”

Yoshika giggled and grinned up at her.

“No promises.”

The rest of the afternoon was spent on training. Yoshika spent more time linked in order for her and her friends to get better acquainted with the idea of her gestalt form, as well as to get more practice fighting while linked. Coordinating the movements of her bodies turned out to be a lot easier when both of them used the same martial art, but Jia’s body lost a lot of speed and her strikes lacked power when using the Soft Fist art.

She tried experimenting with both bodies using Lightning God Transformation, but Eui’s body couldn’t make its own lightning ki no matter how she attuned her ki flow, and there was a significant lag when trying to transfer it from Jia’s body through her domain. It was theoretically possible, but impossibly awkward and the risks outweighed the benefits by a large margin.

At the end of the day, Yoshika had her training priorities as straight as they were going to get. The first and most important priority would be to regain the use of Eui’s destruction element. As dangerous and unstable as it was, it remained their most powerful weapon. Without it, Eui was relegated to a supportive role as a healer, which was a waste of her talent in hand-to-hand combat. The nature of the demonic core also meant that controlling the destruction element was non-optional for more than just combat reasons.

The next most important training goal was to get a better feel for her Corruption of the Fetid Bog technique. The ability to control its strength and focus it precisely would be crucial if she had any hope of using it in a group. It would also be valuable to understand how it affected enemies and how they might defend against it. She needed to understand the technique if she was ever going to complete it.

After that, she had a mix of priorities that were less clear-cut. Improving her mastery of the Soft Fist Style, learning new spiritual arts, and learning to control the elements within her domain were among her higher priorities, but she’d still need to find time for raising Heian, practicing artifact creation, and learning to resist mental and spiritual attacks.

Half a year had felt like a long time when she’d first heard the announcement, but now it felt like an impossibly short time frame in which to accomplish her goals. She’d just have to do her best in the time she had.

Before leaving, Yoshika remembered that Jia had promised to speak with Hayakawa after their training was finished. Jia and Eui separated seamlessly, and for a moment it still felt like she was Yoshika before Jia got her bearings again.

“You guys go on ahead, I’ll catch up with you later—I need to talk to Hayakawa about something.”

“Alright. I’ll see you back at home.”

Eui’s response was more of a performance for others than for Jia—there was very little need for communication so soon after they’d been sharing a mind. Jia left her with Eunae, Rika, and Yue as they headed back to the dorms together and ran to catch up with Hayakawa, who was still waiting for her by the dueling ring.

Hayakawa raised her head as Jia approached.

“Miss Lee, thank you for taking the time to speak to me. I won’t keep you overlong.”

Jia cringed at the formal tone. Hayakawa was in business mode.

“Just Jia is fine, we’re f—uh, I mean, I’m not really comfortable with that level of formality, since I don’t really know the proper etiquette.”

Jia wiped a bit of sweat from her brow as Hayakawa stared at her. Ancestors, it was hard to navigate around the F-word with Hayakawa.

“Alright. I hope you’ll forgive me for not extending the same courtesy to you, Miss Jia.”

Jia shrugged. Close enough.

“That’s fine. What was it you wanted to talk about?”

Hayakawa paused for a moment, glancing back at the dueling ring before turning back to Jia with a thoughtful frown.

“This...isn’t what I called you out for, but I can’t help but ask—how did you see my attack earlier? I know it’s rude to inquire about another’s techniques, but it’s been bothering me—you don’t have to answer—”

Jia had never seen Hayakawa so flustered. She wasn’t making eye contact, and if Jia looked closely, she could see the slightest hint of a blush on her cheeks. It was kind of cute, and Jia had to suppress the urge to tease her about it—that wouldn’t go over well with Hayakawa.

“Don’t worry about it, Hayakawa, I don’t mind. It’s a mental technique—I can accelerate my thoughts for a bit to enhance my perception and reflexes.”

No need to tell her that it was extremely limited, or that she could only do it reliably with Eui’s cooperation. Hayakawa sighed in relief.

“I see. That explains why you could see it, but not move in time. Regardless, it shows that my technique is still lacking. I don’t think I can afford to delay my breakthrough any longer. Would it be acceptable to you if my team continued to practice with yours while I go into closed door training to break through?”

Jia blinked, then shrugged. Hayakawa was nothing if not decisive.

“Sure. I’ll try not to kill Miyata.”

Hayakawa chuckled lightly.

“He means well, you know. It’s hard to let go of one’s status when your entire identity is built around it.”

“I understand, I guess. He’s still an ass.”

Hayakawa shrugged, but didn’t offer an argument.

“Have you given any more thought to my offer? Admittedly, I know it’s not very balanced. We’d both stand to benefit from an alliance, but my father won’t see it that way. I can’t make it happen without further incentive.”

Jia frowned. She had given it a lot of thought, and she didn’t think that Hayakawa was likely to be pleased by her decision.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea. Elder Qin said it would pretty much guarantee war, and even if it didn’t, could you promise me that your clan won’t force people to use the awakening stone against their will?”

Hayakawa’s face didn’t move, but her silence was damning.

“I didn’t think so. We’ve been lucky with it so far—nobody’s been hurt, yet. But the academy students are exceptional by definition, and even among them we’ve only been using it on some of the best. If your clan started forcing people to use the awakening stone, then every death would be blood on my hands, and I don’t think I can live with that.”

Hayakawa didn’t say anything for nearly a minute, as the silence stretched on. When she finally broke the silence, her voice was quiet.

“I heard that you spared Sun Jaehwa.”

Jia cocked her head curiously. Where was this coming from?

“Where did—? Oh, right, she’s your roommate. How is she doing?”

“She’s fine. A bit confused, perhaps. She doesn’t know how you defeated her, and she’s terrified that you’re going to come back to finish her off. She’s convinced you’ve got some mysterious xiantian backer.”

“I’m glad she’s alright—and I don’t. Healing her was something Eui and I decided on together.”

Hayakawa nodded, then frowned.

“Your concern is...concerning. She described the fight to me—if I had been in your position, I would have killed her without a second thought. I told you already, being overly merciful is—”

“I know! I remember, and you’re right. People will probably think I’m weak. I’ll probably be troubled over and over again by people who think that I’m an easy target, but if it’s between that and becoming the kind of ruthless person who would murder someone for looking at them wrong...”

Hayakawa sighed and shook her head, her expression grew hard as she glared at Jia.

“People die, Jia. The people you spare will not extend the same courtesy to you. Even now, Sun Jaehwa is no doubt plotting her own vengeance against you. Your kindness gains you nothing, and will one day be your undoing. What will you do when you face an opponent too powerful for you to hold back against, like you did against me today? What if your surrender hadn’t been enough to stay my hand?”

Jia’s head jerked up in surprise.

“I wasn’t—”

Hayakawa was shouting now, as she cut off Jia’s protest.

“Where was your aura!? Where was the technique that defeated Sun Jaehwa!? Do you think I’m stupid, Lee Jia? I knew you were holding back from the moment the fight began. Even Miss An was holding back her destruction art.”

“That’s because—”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses! I want you to answer my question—if I tried to kill you right here and right now what would you do!?”

Jia took a step back nervously—she’d never seen Hayakawa get so worked up like this.

“I don’t know! Probably run away!”

“Mujuuryoku!”

Jia didn’t have time to react—by the time she realized what was happening, she was on the ground, her ears were ringing, and Hayakawa was kneeling on her chest with a hand around her throat.

“Your enemy is faster than you! Stronger than you! They have every intent to kill you! If you run, you die! If you hold back, you die!”

Jia grabbed at Hayakawa’s wrist, but it didn’t budge—she was so strong! She tried to choke out a response.

“A—last resort—”

“Naive! Do you think that your enemies will hold back until the last moment? They’ll kill you before you even realize that a last resort is necessary!”

Hayakawa released Jia and stood tall above her, staring down with unmasked contempt.

“Take as long as you need to consider my offer. Keep it as a last resort, if you must. But know that your enemies will not wait—they will take advantage of every weakness, every opportunity to lay you low. I suggest you learn to seize advantages for yourself while you can, rather than waiting until it’s too late.”

Hayakawa turned and left without another word. Jia stood up shakily, coughing to catch her breath. She rubbed at her throat as she watched Hayakawa’s back. Had that been her idea of friendly advice? If so, then Jia was starting to seriously reconsider her attempts to befriend Hayakawa Kaede.