Zef’s bullets tore straight through the ghosts which leapt into their trajectory, one prevented from striking true by a sudden block by Toza’s ghostly limbs and the other by a near-inhuman spot dodge. His blades were exquisite, exactly of the sort one would expect in an ancient cultivator’s arsenal, and yet, one of them simply snapped where Zef’s bullet struck it. The other bullet whistled by Toza’s head, its trajectory having changed by nearly fifteen degrees closer to its target. His blind eyes went wide and a grin gripped his face.

Zefaris cheated, compressing time. Nearly the exact instant after the last, she fired another shot, appearing as if she had skipped forward by a split-second.

Phantom warriors coalesced well ahead of the advancing sword saint, crossing their blades in defense of their master. Appropriately, the ghostly bullet of Death’s Lieutenant was the one that struck them, and scattered their ghostly mass all about the surrounding flowers. It nearly instantly gathered back into humanoid forms, but the real bullet had already flown well past. With a sideway step and a deflection using five swords at once, Toza sent the bullet well away from himself. Its impact, however, visibly caused him pain, and carved a gash into the flat of every sword he’d used against it.

By this point, Toza had closed in to barely more than twenty meters. Zefaris threw her coins skyward. A third shot, a decoy, immediately followed by a fourth. Their mirrors followed right after. Phantoms ate one bullet, a second was dodged, a third was blocked, and the fourth… Toza cut it in half with a lightning-fast upward slash. It set forth a flash of swordlight so intense that it made a ravine through the ground and would have split Zefaris down the middle if she hadn’t used Stutter Step to dodge it.

Zefaris raised Pentacle for its final shot.

Zelsys saw something that should have been impossible. Death’s Lieutenant fired before Zefaris. She knew the spirit, and knew that it somehow drew the power to fire its ghostly sparklock from Zefaris actually firing one of her guns. In her mind, it was not unlike a swordsman needing to actually slash with his sword in order to send out a burst of swordlight. But then, the next split-second, the truth of what she had done revealed itself, heretofore concealed by the fact Death’s Lieutenant hadn’t moved an iota until now.

The trick was nothing more than the application of Stutter Step to the spirit and the spirit alone. Death’s Lieutenant skipped forward to the point of its personal timeline where it was firing the mirror twin for a bullet which had just now left Pentacle’s cylinder. That bullet at this moment rode a pillar of smoke and flame into the sky, striking a coin, from which it ricocheted with yet greater velocity than before, not towards Toza, but to another coin. One after the next, until, after the bullet struck all five coins, it came ripping through the air like a comet, flaming tail and all, towards Toza’s head.

He deflected it.

The bullet that had been fated for his head instead tore a hole straight through his chest. Despite the gaping wound, despite the severance of Toza’s spine, the total annihilation of his heart, and the rupturing of his left lung, he yet stood. His ghostly soldiers all returned to him, as did his many summoned ghostly arms, and their ghostly glow entered into his flesh. Each step filled with great struggle, he forged ahead towards Zefaris. The swords slipped from his grasp.

“Heh… This technique is meant for last stands, but there is no world in which I can strike you down in my current state,” he wheezed. Zefaris walked forward to meet him, still ready to blow his head off at any given moment, but the swordsman only stood there, face to face with her. He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a thick, boxy object of dark wood with rings of metal on one side. It took Zefaris a moment to recognize what it was: A rolodex inside a sheath-like protective sleeve.

He held it out, and the book flew out of his hand, floating in front of Zefaris. He began to speak, wheezing out each word, a waterfall of blood pouring down his front.

“Take it. All that I know, save for my sword arts, is contained in this Sword Phantom Scripture. It is an art by which one might gain strength from the lingering fighting will of fallen warriors. That is my Walking Way. It was my master’s, and his before him, but… Coward that I am, I hid myself in fear of the one your era knows as the Emperor. The blade of my soul has grown rusty from an absence of blood to polish it. I came to this place hoping to take from these fallen the strength to reforge my soul’s edge, but it seems that I only walked to my judgment all the same. Do me this favour, if you would…”

The ghostly light faded from him. He coughed, and struggled out his final words: “...Pray read the scripture before you leave. Put these peaceless warriors to rest.”

Toza slumped over, and breathed his last.

Among the four of them, only Zelsys could even hope to fully grasp what had just happened. Victor had the visual and mental faculties, but he couldn’t quite parse what all had transpired. Jorfr wasn’t a visually focused fighter to begin with. As for Lydia… She stood in wide-eyed awe, unable to comprehend, yet struck by sudden enlightenment nonetheless. While Zefaris had spoken with Toza for a short time, it was an eternity compared to their fight. A handful of seconds at most; the man ran at her, his swords and ghostly servants swirling about him in a lightning-fast dervish, auratic blades spewing out of him. Zefaris rapid-fired a few gunshots at him, hucked coins into the air with inhuman force, then shot upward. Light drew a constellation in the air, and then, a flaming meteor put the old man on the ground like he was a straw doll. Indeed, the bullet had traveled more than quickly enough to set the air ablaze merely with the friction of its passing.