The lightning surging through the huntress’ body demanded an outlet, but its erratic patterns were likely to take her directly into the webs that littered the ring. Even under the influence of Absolute Awareness, Jia would not have been able to control the power raging within her—at best, she could give it a general direction. Jia didn’t have Heian’s instincts to guide her. The huntress directed the excess energy inward, where it could be handled by the normally-dormant core next to her heart.

With most of the energy handled, she could pounce from one spot to the next in controlled bursts of lightning, weaving her way through the labyrinthine webs of qi threatening to trap her. In the blink of an eye, she jumped half a dozen times before arriving next to her astonished prey. It took all of the self-control that she had inherited from Jia to hold herself back from tearing the prey’s throat out with her teeth and disemboweling it with her claws.

Death would come later for this prey. Right now, the huntress needed to bleed it—take away the source of its power and weaken it for a more decisive strike, hidden from the eyes of those that would strike back in retribution. She saw her targets—three glowing beacons of essence connected to the spiders by threads of control, and one faint presence that had already been damaged by her soul sister. The prey hid the vessels well, but the huntress saw with more than just her eyes. Faster than the prey’s eyes could follow, the huntress snatched each vessel—and the intervening fabric—then incinerated them with the dragonfire cultivated within her soul.

Without a vessel to sustain them, the lesser spirits could not sustain their domains and dispersed into essence. The huntress hungrily devoured the shadow essence left behind—such insignificant fragments would not be missed by the greater spirit that spawned them, and her living vessel was vastly superior to the pathetic contracts that had bound them before. With the spirits destroyed, all the threads that weren’t directly controlled by the prey vanished.

The huntress felt a spike of pain in her mind—not just her head, but a deeper metaphysical pain. Her minds were too different—too alien to each other to sustain her transformation. Along with the additional strain of Absolute Awareness, the rejection was too much for her to handle any longer and she was forced to split before her minds violently tore each other apart. While Jia was reeling from the sudden departure of Heian’s mind from her own, Bai Lin caught her neck and arms with threads and threw her to the ground.

“You worthless beast! What have you done!? I don’t care anymore—once I kill you, that demon bitch will lose it and get put down like the little rat she is. The reward for destroying you will be much greater than anything this sham of a sect could possibly offer.”

Jia struggled against the threads, but once caught in them they were a sinister threat. The stronger she resisted them, the deeper they cut into her flesh. Her Dragon’s Heart technique couldn’t burn them, either—though they were empowered and controlled by qi, Bai Lin’s razor threads were real. She might have protested the unfairness of Bai Lin being allowed to carry weapons if not for the immediate threat of being diced to pieces by them.

Her mind raced as the threads tightened around her. She didn’t have another lightning nova talisman, and without the ability to move her arms she couldn’t direct a regular spell either. She could feel the power of the Lightning God Transformation still raging within her, but that power would only lead her to cut off her own head against the threads that now choked her.

From her soulscape, Jia felt Heian’s mind touching hers briefly. She didn’t communicate in words, but Jia wasn’t inclined to be picky right now. The concept crashed into her mind and she did her best to break it down into something that she could interpret.

Core. Steps. Pounce!

Her core? She recalled the way that Heian had been able to store the lightning essence within her core, but how could that help her now? She couldn’t use Steps of the Stalker at the same time as Lightning God Transformation either, and even if she could, she didn’t see how turning invisible was going to get her out of the situation she was in. Her robes were getting stained by her blood as the threads continued to cut deeper into her skin—Jia knew that if she was still a mortal she’d have passed out from blood loss, and probably already lost her head by now.

She felt Heian’s concern grow more urgent and closed her eyes. Jia remembered the feeling of Heian’s instincts, things that she had just known intrinsically. She hadn’t been able to understand how or why, and it felt impossible to review those memories now—Heian’s mind had just been too strange for her to comprehend. The feeling still resonated with her, though, and it reminded her of her own intuition, the feeling that had guided her through life and gotten her out of some terrible situations.

Jia decided to trust that instinct. She stopped thinking about what Heian had meant and just did what felt right. Her lightning core pulsed, and the power running through her body was quickly absorbed, leaving her feeling lethargic in its absence. Then, she called forth the power of shadow from within her soul and let it fill the gaps left by the Lightning God. The world went dark, and the pressure against her skin vanished along with her own presence.

She slipped through the threads as if they weren’t even there, and practically floated next to Bai Lin. It was just like her duel with Minami Yuuko—only she hadn’t realized then that she had become incorporeal. Her core strained to contain the power of her lightning essence, and now that she had escaped Bai Lin’s threads, Jia allowed it to surge back out and concentrated all of it into a single blow.

With a crack of thunder, Jia reappeared next to Bai Lin and delivered a spear hand to the pressure point under her arm—she decided against going for the temple at the last second. The blow knocked Bai Lin across the arena, where she rolled limply for a few feet before stopping, motionless. Jia knew that if she was still alive, the lightning essence ravaging her meridians would probably keep her paralyzed for a few hours.

“Bai Lin has been eliminated! Lee Jia will advance to the final round!”

Jia slumped to the ground, panting for breath. No disqualification announcement meant that Bai was probably still alive, which she had mixed feelings about. Mostly, she was just relieved that it was finally over. Bai Lin would get what was coming to her later, but for now she wasn’t nearly as much of a threat without those spirits. It was too bad that she had needed to use her Steps of the Stalker technique and waste precious—Jia did a double take as she took stock of her remaining shadow essence. She had more now than when she’d started the fight. Jia vaguely recalled absorbing the remnants of the destroyed spirits while she had been merged with Heian, but she didn’t think it would be so significant.

Rising unsteadily to her feet, Jia shook her head to clear it of any concerns about the duel she had just fought. She’d have plenty of time to meditate on it later, now she had a much greater mountain to climb. Tomorrow would be the final round—a duel against Hayakawa Kaede. In the last year, Jia had competed with Hayakawa numerous times, and not once had she ever come out on top.

She had her work cut out for her.

“You acted like a cat.”

Eui’s tone was flat—almost accusatory, though the playful mirth that Jia could feel coming from her betrayed her real feelings. That didn’t stop Jia from covering her face and protesting.

“Nooo! That’s not true!”

Rika—the traitor—was having a much harder time keeping a straight face as she added her own impression between fits of snickering.

“Jia, you went down on all fours and pounced exactly like a cat. You even had your butt in the air.”

Haeun made absolutely no attempt at hiding her amusement, giggling openly as she pointed at Jia.

“Big sis, you wiggled your butt!”

Yue nodded sagely, taking the opportunity to pile on. She kept a perfect deadpan as she affirmed Haeun’s accusation.

“You wiggled. Your butt.”

Jia wanted to scowl at the little scamp, but she couldn’t stay mad at Haeun so instead she just blushed even more as she whirled on Yue.

“I don’t want to hear it from you, okay!? I wasn’t—entirely myself.”

Jia’s memory of her brief fusion with Heian was fuzzy, and her grasp on it seemed to slip further every moment. Even though she had been using absolute awareness at the time, trying to review the memories just resulted in a confusing flood of information that she no longer had the appropriate senses or context to unravel. Eui’s memory was quite clear, however. As soon as Jia began to glow with her signature technique, she underwent a transformation. Her hair, ears, and tail turned black, and her eyes glowed blue. Then, she had dropped down to all fours, poised like a cat—yes, with her butt in the air—and then pounced several times in rapid succession with her lightning steps in what seemed to the outside observer to be a random pattern. Once next to Bai Lin, she’d shredded several patches of Bai’s robe before collapsing and returning to her usual self.

Everything after that, Jia remembered clearly. Channeling Heian had been an experiment with mixed results. She’s only been able to hold the transformation for a few seconds, and the way she behaved during that time was—Jia covered her face again. Takeda Chiyo—who had visited again to get away from her grandfather—frowned, crossing her arms.

“I don’t see what the big deal is. So Miss Lee acted like a cat. She is one, isn’t she?”

There were a few gasps from the half-spirits in the group, and Rika cuffed her little sister.

“Rude! Half-spirits aren’t animals, Chiyo. Apologize!”

The contrite looking pre-teen rubbed the back of her head painfully and bowed.

“S-sorry. I didn’t know that was rude to say...”

Eunae sighed and shook her head, explaining.

“In Goryeo it’s generally considered to be rather demeaning for a half-spirit to behave like an animal—especially the one that they express the features of. In Jia’s case, there were some extenuating circumstances—you channeled Heian, right?”

‘Channeled’ had a rather specific meaning in this context, and Takeda looked up with renewed interest as Jia shrugged uncertainly.

“I don’t really know. I’m not sure if it was exactly the same as what Yamato’s priests do, but that’s where I got the idea, at least.”

The room fell into a thoughtful silence at that, and Jia jumped on the opportunity to change the subject to absolutely anything else.

“Oh! By the way, Eunae, do you have any way to contact Dae? I’m still under house arrest, and I need to talk to him about my match tomorrow.”

Eunae cocked her head to the side.

“Dae? I may have something, but why do you need to speak to him so urgently?”

“I want to know how he managed to stop Hayakawa’s weightless fist. I’ve never seen her come up short like that after using it.”

Eunae nodded.

“Give me a few moments, then.”

It ended up taking Eunae the better part of an hour, during which she cast a few spells and sent a bird-letter—they’d all learned the spell from Dae. Eventually, they got another letter back that contained a complex formula that Jia didn’t understand, but apparently Eunae could use it to reattune her own speaking stone to allow Dae to communicate it through a spell instead of using his own stone. The whole thing was a dire reminder that while Jia had been advancing quickly in power, her theory and technical skill were still pretty far behind those who had been living their entire lives immersed in cultivation.

Dae’s voice sounded experimentally from the stone.

“Eh...hello? Can you hear me?”

Jia nodded, then remembered that the stone could only transmit sound.

“We can hear you, Dae.”

“Ah! Very good! Greetings, Miss Jia. Congratulations on your victory! How can I help you?”

“I was hoping you might be able to help me secure my next one. You pushed Hayakawa further than anyone else did by stopping her ultimate technique—I was hoping you could share how you did that.”

“Ah, well I’m happy to answer for you, but I’m afraid that the answer probably won’t be very helpful.”

“Anything is better than nothing. I need all the help I can get against her.”

“Ehehe, I suppose so. Well then, let me explain—in our expedition to the mountain in spring, she mentioned that her martial style was based on the element of gravity. It’s a relatively rare element, but I had a number of opportunities to study it during that expedition, and one of your own manuals has some rather interesting information on the subject. Did you know that—?”

Jia had to cut Dae off before he went off on a huge tangent.

“Dae, focus. What does this have to do with stopping Hayakawa?”

“Right! Hehe, well I believe that her ultimate technique reduces her effective mass to almost nothing. The inner workings of it are rather complex, and obviously she wasn’t inclined to share the details or allow me to study it. However, based on my hypothesis, I crafted a spell based on the Earthen Domain manual that would create a field of gravity surrounding myself to add a small amount of mass to everything within it. Almost unnoticeable normally, but to Hayakawa under the effects of her Weightless Fist technique, even that small increase would render her hundreds or thousands of times heavier—enough to negate the more extreme effects of the ability.”

Jia knew that Dae was trying to keep things simple, but her head was still spinning. She just didn’t understand the concepts that Dae was trying to talk about, and she wasn’t sure she ever would.

“Would it be possible to teach me the spell?”

Even before Dae answered, Jia was pretty sure she knew what he was going to say.

“I doubt it—you would need to significantly deepen your understanding of the element of gravity and its effects on the world just to be able to scribe some of the more advanced runes, and the spell itself was similar in complexity to my teleportation spell. I don’t think I could make another without a few weeks of preparation.”

“Damn...”

“I wouldn’t lose hope entirely, Miss Jia. You may not have a way of stopping or countering her ultimate technique, but is yours not just as frightening? How is she planning to stop your own Lightning God Transformation, I wonder? I think you are more of a match against Miss Hayakawa than you give yourself credit for, Miss Jia.”

Jia smiled at Dae’s encouraging words.

“Thanks, Dae. I guess I’ll just have to do my best.”

“Naturally! I look forward to seeing it myself! I can’t think of a more fitting match for the finals of the tournament. Good luck, Miss Jia!”

After deactivating the speaking stone and returning it to Eunae, Jia slumped back on the couch and heaved a weary sigh. No secret weapon, no new insight, no grand plan. Tomorrow Jia would be competing with Hayakawa Kaede to prove which of them was the strongest in the entire academy. It was surreal. A year ago Jia would never have dared imagining being the strongest anything anywhere—she still didn’t. How could she be the best with the likes of Dae, Eunae, and Hayakawa to compare herself to? And that didn’t even factor in the unfathomable monsters like the instructors, the Fire Elemental, or Jianmo. Jia had started her life in this academy thinking that she would finally be able to grow beyond her tiny, insignificant existence, but instead she now felt smaller than she had on the streets of Nayeong.

She felt Eui’s hand in hers, squeezing reassuringly as she spoke in Jia’s mind.

“Don’t stress out about it, Jia. You’ll do fine. Even if you lose to Hayakawa tomorrow, I don’t think anyone is going to doubt your strength anymore. Besides, there’s still the other two divisions. If they think you’re impressive, just wait until they see Yoshika in action!”

Jia smiled and hugged Eui close.

“You’re right. I’m not going down without a fight, though. I still have to get her back for all the times she’s smashed me into the dirt.”

Eui snickered.

“That’s my girl. Kick that rich bitch’s ass!”

While most of Jia and Eui’s friends politely left them to their moment of intimacy, the children lacked the tact or attention spans to do so, and Haeun obliviously interrupted them.

“Big sis Jia, can Heian come out to play?”

Jia chuckled—Heian had been resting inside her soulscape since her duel with Bai Lin, but she couldn’t bring herself to say no to the little fox.

“She’s a bit tired, but let me see if she’s feeling up to it.”

Jia focused for a moment, mentally prodding the cat spirit and coaxing her to manifest. To her utter shock, what appeared before Jia was not the oversized black kitten that she had been expecting at all. Standing in front of Jia was a girl even younger looking than Haeun, wearing a plain black dress. Her black hair cascaded around her shoulders in messy, loose curls all the way down to her ankles, and she sported a pair of fuzzy black cat ears and a matching tail. The little girl rubbed her eyes sleepily before looking up at Jia with a familiar pair of bright blue cat eyes and grumbling.

“Sleepy...”

Jia stared slack-jawed at her familiar’s new form. She knew that it was Heian—Jia could feel her within her domain, but she felt as if her own senses had to be betraying her.

“H-Heian, is that you?”

Heian nodded once, before being caught in a sudden embrace by Haeun.

“Yaay! Heian, let’s go play!”

Heian frowned and made a noise of protest that sounded more like a cat than a person. She slipped out of Haeun’s grasp by turning back into a cat, then leapt into Jia’s lap and curled up to nap.

Jia chuckled uneasily and smiled apologetically at Haeun, who was pouting so fiercely she seemed as if she was on the verge of tears.

“Sorry, I think she’s just exhausted from the fight earlier. Besides, it’s getting late—you should probably be getting back to your big sister’s place before she starts wondering where you are.”

Eunae and Rika took that as their cue to take the kids back to their respective guardians and head home.

“Good luck tomorrow, Jia.”

“Thanks, Eunae. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

After seeing the girls out, Yue returned to the living room where Jia was still sitting in stunned silence, staring at the cat in her lap. Yue sat opposite her, calmly took a sip of tea, and then stated the obvious.

“So—I suppose Heian can take human form now.”