The eyes turned yellow as they focused on her, blinking rapidly in a strange pattern, then paused for a few moments. Yuriko stared at it with a bit of confusion and not a little bit of wariness.

The metal man she fought before had been as tough as Firehead or Weaver, and though a part of her wanted to launch immediately into an assault, there were still the hundreds of skitterers behind.

Marron and the others moved towards a smaller street, an alley compared to the broad avenue they were on. When they moved, the metal man’s yellow light eyes started to blink. It was a pattern, though one that Yuriko didn’t recognise and neither was it one she could respond to. Instead, she quietly invested Animus into the Adamant Guardian Seal. She always had a copy of that sigil etched in her aura, though it remained unpowered. A few experiments taught her that she couldn’t have more than one copy active at a time, though she could prepare three unpowered ones. Any more than that and the older copies simply wouldn’t take Animus and eventually fizzled out. So she had two etched on either palm, leaving the spare one to etch into a sunshard or Fri’Avgi if she needed it to.

“Yuri!” Marron whispered fiercely. They had crossed into the alley but the metal man didn’t even look at them. Behind, the horde of skitterers paused and fell back, but remained within sight.

“Hold on a moment,” Yuriko said as the metal man repeated the pattern. When she didn’t do anything else, a slit opened across its face, right where it would have fired its powerful beam of light.

It spoke. Words she shouldn’t have understood, but she did. It was in Old Imperial.

“Authenticate. Key Wielder Dawn Breaker. Authenticate.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Yuriko said, and it took a surprised grunt from Marron for her to realise that she had replied in the same language.

“Error. Authentication failure. Eliminate.” The eyes turned back to red and the white light gathered in its orifice.

“Go!” Yuriko yelled at the others. “I’ll hold them back!”

“Wait! No!” Gwendith and Marron yelled, but Yuriko had already kicked off and was halfway towards the metal man by the time the sound reached her ears. The light intensified, and a moment later, a beam of white light speared towards her.

She saw the trajectory, saw how the light erupted, and time seemed to slow. The Animus pattern in her mind responsible for speeding up her perception flared with a copious amount of Radiant energy and Animus, but it worked. She shaped her flared aura in such a way that the air nudged her aside. She used her kinesis to give her a push, and her perception to gauge where the beam would strike. It passed not an inch from her ear, missing the condensed aura by a sliver.

Fri’Avgi slammed into the metal man’s side, but he dug his feet into the road, cracking it and digging furrows.

She moved behind him and slammed the artefact over his head, and with a high-pitched squeal, the weapon caught on the metal armour and dragged its edge down. There was a line across his back, but the metal plates hadn’t been broken.

Frustrated and angry, Yuriko spun away from the counterattacks. The metal man’s arms turned into curved blades, which extended his reach as if he bore a side-blade. The thing was taller than her by quite a bit, about as tall as Marron, but Fri’Avgi gave her better reach anyway. It made little difference in how much she could damage the thing. Death by a thousand cuts would have been possible if the metal didn’t recover, but somehow, it did. It took a minute for the scratched-up plates to return to pristine condition.

During that time, the metal man hadn’t been the only one attacking, of course. The shooter skitterers pelted her with bullets, but she had set her sunshards to defence. They whirled in varied patterns around her, though she focused half of them to deflect the bullets and used the other half to counter and parry the metal man. The parrying dagger danced and kept one of the enemy blades busy, while she sent her sunblade to harry the skitterers.

The others didn’t run but instead supported her by firing at the skitterers. Desire’s song kept Yuriko focused, Saki dealt with any of the melee skitterers that came their way, while Gwendith refilled Marron’s cartridges. Her brother kept yelling at her, but she was too focused to pay attention.

The problem, she knew, was that she didn’t have a powerful enough strike to penetrate the enemy’s defences. The third dance in conjunction with Roaring Volcano, which didn’t always work properly yet, only created deeper scratches. Her Animus reserves were full, even after she spent fifty lumens to activate Adamant Guardian Seal when the metal man tried to blast her point blank.

She held her left palm right up against its face and stopped the beam cold. He reacted almost immediately, but that instant of hesitation had allowed her to hit solidly enough that there was a dent on his side. It was slowly pushing back into its old position, but at the moment, the damage slowed it somewhat.

Her sword dance individually consumed three lumens a minute each, which increased to about ten a minute when three were fused. The fourth dance consumed a varied amount depending on whether she wanted to move nearly instantaneously or if she just wanted a general boost in speed. Either way, faster doesn’t necessarily mean better. Even if she struck the enemy twice in nearly the same instant she would have hit once, it was still the same amount of force and Animus.

If she jumped back then used the fourth dance to speed herself up and use the increased momentum to hit harder, it consumed nearly as much as Adamant Guardian Seal did and barely made a bigger dent.

The amount of Animus invested into each blow was the same, and as long as that amount was countered and negated, just a bit more Animus on the defender’s part ablated much of the advantage speed, momentum, and weight gave her attack.

So…why didn’t she infuse more Animus to attack?

She staggered at the realisation. Why didn’t she? She had far more Animus than before, yet the mindset she had from nearly two years of fighting had her conserving her reserve. The dances consumed a fixed amount every minute, but in an area with one iarvesh, she recovered a lumen every three seconds.

The Animus circulated into her weapons when she used the dances, with also imparted the same effect as Empowered Strike. It struck as if she invested her weapons with three lumens every time, but unlike with the technique, she didn’t consume Animus with every successful blow. The dances were just more efficient!

That mindset held her back now, and she wondered why Damien never told her about it.

The man chuckled in her mind, Nothing quite teaches like experience.

‘You rotter!’

Ehehehe.

She hung back for a moment and channelled Empowered Strike into Fri’Avgi. Her sword dances sputtered for a moment, the pattern flowing into her weapon faltered and faded as the different techniques clashed. The dances were dynamic but Empowered Strike was static. The result, they got in each other’s way:

Wham!

Her mistake cost her as the metal man cut into her condensed aura. His Animus-laden weapons burned through her protections and only a hastily used Adamant Guardian Seal saved her from a brutal mauling.

Hissing in anger, she leapt back. He charged after her, slashing high and low. She reinstated the second dance and Jade Mountain, using Fri’Avgi’s side as a makeshift shield.

She couldn’t keep Jade Mountain up as the metal man’s strength was as great as her own. He was heavier too, so in each of their clashes, she was the one pushed back. Gritting her teeth, she invested more Animus into the dances instead of trying to activate Empowered Strike, willing the extra Animus to gather on her weapon.

Fri’Avgi gave off a golden glow, growing brighter until it was nearly blinding. She could feel the Animus running up and down the blade, channelled into the third dance. The Animus edges flared out, expanding until the blade was nearly a pace wide. She forced it to compress, but it resisted too much and only served as a distraction. Instead, she slashed horizontally, aiming at the metal man’s waist. Her blow was painfully obvious which allowed him to dodge back, not even attempting to parry.

But the momentum of the battle had shifted. She flooded the dances’ Animus circulation with three times more Animus, thirty as opposed to ten. But after a single swing, the expanded blade shrank back.

She had more to spare. She kept flooding her circulation pattern, feeling the excess burn into her Anima. But she had grown more resilient, not just from constant training, but also because her Anima was simply stronger than it was before. She felt that if she had tried this before she left Rumiga, she would have burned her Chaos channel to ashes. Now, there was simply a small burning sensation that was quickly soothed almost as soon as she stopped.

The flared edges pulled closer to the blade, the single time she had used it gave her enough insight on how to proceed. Faster. The circulation speed must match the increase in volume! If it cycled into and around her weapon faster, the shape would be a bit more streamlined!

She slashed down to up, then followed with an overhead swing. The metal man dodge both, but the last strike grazed its transformed blade.

Crack!

A fracture where her Animus struck. It had overwhelmed part of the metal man’s defences! She fed more and more lumens, refilling what dissipated from the failed blows, and what Animus was used up to enhance her blows.

She slashed sideways, and when the metal man stepped back to get out of her reach, she stopped midswing and transitioned into a thrust, a manoeuvre possible only because of how Fri’Avgi’s weight and momentum defied the Natural Sciences.

Caught by surprise, Fri’Avgi slammed into the metal man’s guts and sank into the plates. Sparks and a horrible grinding sound came from the wound. Yuriko stepped into the attack and skewered her foes.

A feral kick and a slam to the side of Fri’Avgi’s blade freed the metal man, at the cost of a chunk on its side. And then, he retreated. The melee skitterers flooded toward her and she swept them away with her newfound technique. Fri’Avgi’s edges sheared through metal bodies crushed their internals and turned them into so much scrap.

But the brief battle with the metal man had called for more of the creatures to come towards them. She couldn’t even see where he went.

“Yuri!”

Gwendith’s pained scream nearly stopped her heart. They were cornered by the skiterrers, and the metal man had reappeared there and struck a blow that sent Marron reeling back.

“Rotter!” Yuriko yelled and bowled her way past the creatures. “Come back here!”

He glanced towards her, then fell back into the horde. Bullets flew and Yuriko quickly made her way back. Marron staggered down an alley, with Gwendith, Saki, and Desire fighting to keep the enemy away from him. A moment later, Yuriko managed to get back, though she had taken several blows to her back and leg. Her aura protected her, but the cracks and fissures had accumulated to the point where it wasn’t able to recover in time to protect her from the next blows. Her overcoat was torn in several places though nothing had scratched her yet.

“Back to the exit,” she said grimly, but Marron shook his head.

“More of them are there. We have to fall back.”

“To where?” Yuriko grunted out even as she fended off the melee skitterers.

A bright flash of light was the only warning she had, and the quadruped abruptly sidestepped and cleared a firing path. She caught one of them by the leg and with a mighty heave, she tossed it in the path of the metal man’s beam. It stopped the attack for a second, just enough time for the rest of them to get out of the way.

The light spluttered against a building’s wall, and oddly, no mark was left on it. The building was barely two stories tall, but she hesitated to take to the roofs. They would be easier targets that way, but if they didn’t they would be swamped here.

A second beam lanced out. And this one came from a second metal man that appeared from the south. More of the skitterers came from the alley behind them.

Saki staggered and leaned against a wall, blood dripping from several punctures to her bicep, torso, and legs. Her face was pale, and her lips, bloodless. Her eyes sought out Yuriko’s. She smiled wanly, “Honour to serve…”

“No!” Yuriko hissed as she sent her sunshards and sunblade at the enemies. They cut down dozens of the things, but it wasn’t enough. They were slowly being overwhelmed.

“Here!” A strange voice yelled as one of the building’s doors opened. “Quickly!”

“Go!” Marron yelled, pushing Gwendith and Desire inside. “Yuri, hurry!”

Instead of answering, she grabbed her brother and flung him inside, then used her kinesis to do the same to Saki. She backed towards the doorway, fending off the continued and furious attack, but she couldn’t spare the time to get it. They would follow and then, they would be trapped.

“Duck!” the same voice said and…something flew over her head. It was a strange grey orb, and a green dot of light on it blinked a couple of times before turning red. Then, it burst into blinding light.

A hand grabbed her arm as sparkles danced across her vision and pulled her into the building. The door was slammed shut, but instead of barricading it, whoever it was pulled her deeper into the building. Her Anima flared to compensate for her blinded vision, and she saw her team rushing down a set of stairs.

“Hurry!’ The voice said, a man, middle-aged, tanned skin, with black hair and baby blue eyes, prodded her to the stairs. She went down into the darkness, and behind her, the door shattered into splinters.