It suddenly occurred to Yuriko why she had such trouble imitating the swordsman’s waveform attack. While she had used consecutive strikes, and she infused each one with Empowered Strike, she realised that she had infused an equal number of lumens to each blade and that she did little to make the blades resonate with each other. The idea that she could infuse an increasing amount of lumens into the sunblades was so compelling that she immediately tried it out.

However, she didn’t have enough liquid Animus to stuff into the blades if she started with a hundred lumens, so she settled for ten. Ten in the first, twenty in the second…uh, forty in the third, eighty in the fourth, uhm….one fifty…no one hundred sixty in the fifth…and three twenty in the sixth.

Having no viable target, she slashed the sunblade pairs at a wall. Unfortunately, even the first strike was more than enough to cut through it easily. And she was suddenly wary of collapsing the maze.

She didn’t feel the exponential build-up of power though. So she would have to connect the cycle to each other. But didn’t she already know of a runescript word for it? Destroy, Harvest, Channel. Could she not use the principles of the Trinity Cycle to do it?

Hmmm. Was this not a way to merge swordsmanship and Sorcery into a holistic skill?

An interesting thought, but one she felt was too distant at the moment. She could reach for it, but it would delay her advance for quite a while. Perhaps only a few days, but it could easily take years. No, she could probably build on that once her foundations were a bit more solid. So what other cycles does she know? The Four Phases?

She knew how to change from one phase to the other without having to start from the first stance each time. There were commonalities in each stance and form, and by changing in the midst, she could also change which element they resonated with. The only reason she didn’t use the Four Phases all that much was that they were so much weaker than plainly using Radiant energy. But the sword dances and the Four Phases seemed to be linked to each other.

Or was it she who linked them?

The difference in the swordsman’s dances pointed out that each dance was different depending on the one using it. The Golden Silhouette showed her the dances, but that had been part of her Facet. It was another ‘her’ in other words, or a shadow of Damien. Either way, it was clear that she followed the same sword lineage.

Swordmaster Kinohara from the Realmheart Academy taught her the Four Phases. Before that, she had picked up the different styles from her Da, as well as senior Kale and Rorke. That told her that the Four Phases was a style taught to Imperials. The sword dances had not been, so how could they be linked? And if she really thought about it, were they truly equivalents? Maybe she was forcing a connection that shouldn’t have been there, or that connection was too immature, and had created a twisted form that could not touch on the Ennoia of Swords?

She uncoupled the dances and the Phases in her mind. They were not the same, they were not the flip side of the other.

That was all it took.

She could feel it. The Ennoia. But it was still veiled from her, just a bit less so. And the veil she could now identify. It was her Colligia of Radiance. Her first and strongest Ennoia would not let her replace it, or allow something unrelated to exist within the same Essence. The solution was starkly simple, yet complicated at the same time. She reached for it, nonetheless, and found another, baser Ennoia behind that too. One that was reminiscent of the Four Phases, but somewhat different too. And of course, it was the four elements represented by the phases.

Finding not one, but two different Ennoia’s within reach, Yuriko swallowed nervously. Purity of Form and Essence had been Damien’s goal but he was dead. His purity did not save him from arrogance.

Ouch.

Ignoring him, Yuriko continued musing. Steel was stronger than iron, that she knew. So perhaps Radiance mixed with other things would become stronger too. No, she was sure of it. And with that, all hesitation fled. She reached for the Ennoia of Swords but reached through the Colligia of Radiance first. And when she touched the Sword, it was through a mental hand coated in Radiance. And the Ennoia she touched was that of the Radiant Sword. Only for a moment, then even that warped to suit her needs.

Now, more than ever before, when she fought using the sword, it was through sunblades and sunshards. And though both were capable of fighting up close or at range, the difference between two paces and a hundred was too much to ignore. The Ennoia shifted to Radiant Flying Sword. The scope narrowed, and because of that, it weakened. But because it was her second Ennoia, and thus a supporting concept, it didn’t matter all that much.

And the third Ennoia she reached for, the Ennoia of the Four Elements, she had to do it through both the Radiance and the Flying Sword. And when she finally touched it, only a tiny, tiny part of it was left. It was not an Ennoia any longer, but simply, something to flavour her Essence. The third one faded away, but parts of it would always be with her, and hopefully, it would strengthen her foundations and allow her to reach Ascension and beyond.

She had been walking along a tunnel. It wasn’t empty but filled with swarmlings. Even a couple of Hunters, who despite their camouflaging abilities, could not hide from her perception. They burned just like every Wyldling within reach.

Looking inwards, she noticed that her perfectly golden Animus core was marked in a couple of spots. And not coincidentally, they were shaped like two sunblades facing opposite directions, sharp edges outwards. It was a small part of her core… and upon a closer look, the lattice was mottled with faint traces of other colours. The way they swirled around made a beautiful pattern too.

Yuriko couldn’t help but smile. The missing pieces were finally there, now there was only one thing left to do. She needed to temper her body and her Anima with the new Ennoia. She could do it without Ambrosia, but that would take too long. Perhaps as long as her initial refinements from before. She didn’t have that much time.

She took a seated meditation pose, though she floated in midair. Her Anima covered the entire space she was in, suffusing the air and the stone. She didn’t know how long the tempering would take, and perhaps she should leave instead. But no, too much would be lost. She let Fri’Avgi float beside her, and the artefact spun around in a loose orbit.

‘I will protect you,’ The animating spirit said as golden Radiance suffused the orichalcum.

‘Thank you. I hope this won’t take long.’

‘It will take as long as it takes,’ Fri’Avgi admonished.

‘True. Hah!’ Yuriko laughed. She fetched the canister of Ambrosia from her hip satchel. There were less than a hundred drops within, and hopefully, it wouldn’t take more than a couple of drops per tempering. But before she could proceed with the tempering, she first needed to find out what the Ennoia brought her.

The sword marks on her core flared as she called upon its power. But contrary to what she expected, it did not create an Animus blade or a separate Ennoia energy. It was the same Radiant energy, except…

Her mind was suddenly filled with visions. A single sunblade, divested of its paired gauntlet floated in front of her. And in a flash of insight, she realised she didn’t need the gauntlet. She didn’t need to pretend she was holding it. She didn’t even need to keep the blade within her Anima to fight properly with it. Not, the blade held her Anima, her Will, and her Intent through the medium of her Animus and her Radiant energy. Nothing else was needed.

She sent the sunblade down the tunnel. Her previous range had always been at three times her Anima reach, and only because she stretched her Anima into a string to keep in touch with the shard or the blade. Now, it travelled beyond that, more than three hundred paces, and Yuriko was still aware of what happened around it. Not too far, just a dozen paces around, but it was more than enough. She swiped the blade against the swarmlings in her way, chopped them to little bits, whooshed around a Hunter’s defences and perforated its head.

The sword followed the tunnel, going as far as nine hundred ninety paces before she reached the limit. Ten times her reach, and she could see around the weapon. She could fight as though she were there, and she could use the sword dances or the Four Phases as though she held the blade herself. The hourglass gauntlets had been a crutch she used to get things going, but it was no longer needed. And with one sunblade, she could scout down one tunnel. With more, she could search the entire Chaos Fortress in a fraction of the time she would have otherwise. She noted each branch the sunblade went past and she sent another on its way. It was a good thing that her perception around the blades was enough to cover the corridor’s width.

It was only when she sent the twentieth blade that she found out what the limits were. Her Anima reach had shrunk by twenty inches. So an inch of reach for each sunblade going beyond the norm. That was fine.

She called back her sunblades and as soon as they came within a hundred paces, the lost inches returned. Good to know. The only thing to worry about is what would happen if they were destroyed while away. Would her Anima recover or would it be lost? A worrying sentiment, but instinctively she knew that her Anima would only be damaged at most. And if she proceeded with tempering, then it would become even less of an issue.

It was time.

She drank the droplet of Ambrosia, focusing on spreading the effects of her new Ennoia on her body. As the Ambrosia swept into her core, and then into her physique, the Radiant energy within each of her particles changed. Not all of them, of course, but some. Each was a miniature core, and each one that changed now sported a twin sunblade and altered hues.

The next droplet went to her Anima Refinement, but unlike her physique, it did not create different globules of Radiance. Instead, the flavour of the infusion took on a bit of what her core was like. She wasn’t sure how much changed, but she had a feeling that creating sunblades or sunshards would be easier, and using it as she did a while back would be more efficient. More things to test out.

Elation and excitement! There was no feeling of pain, only completion. She didn’t know how much she progressed, but she didn’t think the percentage points actually increased. Instead, as she drank droplet after droplet, what was already there became more.

She didn’t know how long she took to complete the tempering, but by the end of it, she had a measly twenty drops of Ambrosia. Barely enough to initiate someone into the Ancient’s Way, but she’d find more of the stuff. Perhaps she could go back to Kogasi and the tower.

It was done. And there was only one thing left to do.

She took a deep breath then settled herself deeper into her meditations. She found herself on the cusp of change, and it would only take a small step forward to bring it to fruition. She tethered at the brink for a long moment, but then, it was not the time to doubt herself. That path led to ruin. She was about to change the very fabric of her existence, and any doubts would mar her body and her Anima.

She was ready.

She took the step.

And the world around her burst into golden Radiance.