Yang realized she had reached the point where holding anything back had become more dangerous than revealing her final card.
People were dying.
Every second she delayed, another awakened would be crushed by the aftermath of battles they had no business standing anywhere near.
She couldn't afford caution anymore.
Her gaze remained fixed upon Hazel and Cinder, yet her thoughts raced through everything that had happened since this nightmare had begun. Raven had already revealed her third Rune. The older woman had judged the situation severe enough to expose another trump card without hesitation.
Meanwhile...
Both Hazel and Cinder had only demonstrated two so far. That fact bothered Yang more than either of them probably realized. And that wasn't all. There was another irritation scratching at the back of her thoughts as well.
Single-use Runes.
Neither of them had used any.
Sleepless, had developed a frightening reputation because of Perpetuity. Their awakened routinely transformed what should have been disposable Runes into abilities capable of repeated use. It was one of the reasons they were so notoriously difficult to kill.
They possessed versatility bordering upon absurdity.
So why...
Why hadn't either of these two used even one?
Surely they had them. She had heard from the grapevine that Cinder was one of the team leaders of Sleepless. She wasn't entirely certain about Hazel, but surely Cinder possessed more than molten glass and whatever Meta Rune allowed her impossible piercing phenomena.
Though, to be fair, Yang wasn't entirely certain if her flames and glass were born from a single rune or was the product of rune synchronicity.
But the argument still stood. If their goal was to kill them, shouldn't they have simply tried to overwhelm them with versatility?
Surely that Hazel guy had more than his bizarre assimilation and intangibility rune?
Unless...
No.
Yang forcibly discarded the train of thought. Trying to solve puzzles during combat was an excellent way to become a corpse. Her breathing steadied. There was only one answer.
Use her Multiply.
The final Rune she had forged. The Rune consumed Aura so ravenously she rarely dared activate it for more than brief moments.
Unlike Inferno or Kinetic, Multiply wasn't flashy. It simply took something she already possessed...
...and made more of it.
From force to damage to heat convergence or even stored kinetic energy. Everything could be multiplied.
The limitation laid not within the Rune, but within Yang herself. Her comprehension currently allowed fourfold multiplication before instability overwhelmed both Rune and Aura.
Four times which was an obscene increase but it also had an obscene cost. Normally she limited herself to twice.
Three only in emergencies.
But four...
Four bordered on suicide unless the battle ended almost immediately afterward.
Yang inhaled.
The shadow platform beneath Raven's feet suddenly surged forward like a launched spear, Raven propelling it through the air with a violent pulse of darkness. Yang immediately drank in the acceleration flooding through her boots.
Kinetic force poured into her Rune and was stored. Compressed and waiting.
Hazel answered instantly.
His shadow-covered legs exploded across broken moonstone as he accelerated straight toward them without hesitation, while above him Cinder once more abandoned swordplay entirely. Molten glass flowed together into another elegant bow whose limbs glowed with flowing magma.
The string snapped and the sky disappeared beneath arrows.
Hundreds, with every one wrapped in fire, screaming across the broken moon.
Hazel reached them first.
His flaming arm distorted violently as fire condensed into a colossal axe whose edge glowed nearly white from temperature alone. He swung horizontally with enough force to bisect both women simultaneously.
Yang met it head-on.
Instead of dodging she reached out and grabbed the burning blade itself. The instant her palm closed around the weapon, Inferno erupted.
But not with fire.
Heat.
There was a difference.
One that she'd spent almost two years learning. Most awakened believed Inferno could only produce flames. But that was merely its simplest application.
Heat was also a part of the true authority of the Rune.
Flames merely carried it. Yang had spent countless hours under her father, Taiyang's instruction, experimenting until she learned to separate one from the other.
To manifest temperature without creating fire. It had seemed pointless then but now it became invaluable.
Beside her Raven didn't attempt to meet Hazel directly. Instead she stepped lightly onto the flat of the burning axe itself before using it as though it were nothing more than another piece of terrain. One foot touched the flame and the next landed briefly against Hazel's own face.
Not on his body, or even truly upon him.
She merely kicked against the empty air inches before his features, using momentum itself as footing before launching upward toward the incoming storm of arrows.
Yang concentrated and activated her multiply.
Her Aura lurched and her heat doubled. Around her, the space visually started to shimmer. Moonstone beneath her boots blackened and even the drifting lunar dust began glowing faintly red.
Hazel's expression changed. Barely, but Yang caught it. That meant that the man must have felt it. That was god news.
She'd been wondering.
Fire could perhaps be absorbed as it possessed some basic form.
Energy.
Hazel's strange assimilation might swallow it.
But heat?
Pure thermal transfer?
Yang had gambled on it not working and it seemed her gamble was working. The thought made another memory surface.
Physics class.
Her father had insisted that she actually attend school and pay attention. Even with the whole Sleepless shenanigans going on.
Yang had complained endlessly back then.
Now...
Now she silently thanked him. After all, she wouldn't have been able to come up with this plan without it.
In any case, if Hazel truly phased through everything, light would pass through him, gravity would ignore him and air wouldn't reach his lungs.
His rune clearly obeyed rules.
Everything always did. She merely needed to discover them. Hazel apparently reached much the same conclusion.
His fire expanded across himself.
Flames poured from his right arm over his chest, shoulders and remaining limbs while molten glass spread alongside it. The shadows coating his body retreated beneath overwhelming heat until the man resembled an elemental composed almost entirely from liquid flame and flowing glass constantly shifting between solid and molten states.
When his axe collided against Yang again...
He no longer attempted absorption, instead he matched temperature against temperature.
Yang smiled.
"So you were forced to adapt."
Hazel answered with silence.
Their blows shook floating moon fragments apart. Each collision sprayed molten droplets through vacuum-like air while invisible waves of multiplied heat distorted everything nearby.
Above them Raven had already reached Cinder.
The woman moved through the battlefield like living darkness.
Two enormous raven wings had unfolded behind her back, each feather seemingly carved from condensed night itself. Rather than flying conventionally she used the wings almost like enormous rudders, propelling herself through impossible angles that ignored conventional aerial movement.
Cinder refused direct confrontation. Glass constructs formed beneath her feet.
Fractals.
Endlessly branching crystalline formations that burst into existence only to shatter moments later, constantly dragging and redirecting her movement through the lunar battlefield.
Guerrilla warfare.
Strike, retreat and reposition before firing. Never allowing Raven prolonged engagement.
Unfortunately...
Raven was faster.
Every exchange ended identically.
Black met crimson and Ending devoured her Piercing effect. The glass around her shattered and Cinder retreated.
Again and again and again.
Then...
Something changed. Cinder suddenly stopped retreating. Instead, she planted both feet upon a floating fragment of moonstone and her bow expanded.
Far larger than before.
The glass composing it darkened until it resembled obsidian threaded with rivers of magma. She drew and released.
One arrow.
Only one.
It screamed towards Raven.
One arrow?
Raven would simply cut it apart. And exactly as expected, Raven raised the Sword of Ending. The black blade descended and contact was made. However, the arrow didn't split. Instead, it exploded.
Not outwards into fragments but into molten glass that deformed into a trap.
A gigantic bowl-shaped construct blossomed instantly around Raven like an enormous flower opening. It expanded with impossible speed until it resembled an enormous cage.
Except unlike a cage, there were no gaps or holes. Only a seamless dome of flowing molten glass.
Raven, however didn't even blink nor did she slow. The Sword of Ending carved downwards and the dome separated instantly.
One clean cut.
Runic energy ended and the construct died.
Then...
The real trap revealed itself. Hidden behind the molten construct waited twelve more arrows. Each already upon Raven and each wrapped entirely in roaring flame.
It was too close. Even Raven couldn't intercept all twelve, in a single instant. She had to dodge a few.
Her sword flashed and three arrows vanished. However, before she could dodge, the remaining projectiles abruptly bent away from her.
Redirecting.
Yang's instincts screamed. They hadn't been aimed at Raven, but were aimed... at the lower ranked awakened. The awakened who were doing their very best to escape the range of the fight.
Yang moved before the redirected arrows had even completed their turn.
Hazel disappeared from her attention entirely as instinct seized control. The moment she realized Cinder's true target was no longer Raven but the lower-ranked awakened scattered across the shattered battlefield, Yang abandoned her duel without the slightest hesitation.
Her Multiply Rune shifted internally, no longer feeding additional heat into Inferno but instead redirecting every ounce of its amplification toward Kinetic. The transition was brutal. Aura surged through her pathways with enough force to make every muscle ache, and the stored momentum she had accumulated compressed into something that felt almost physical beneath her skin.
The lunar surface beneath her feet exploded into crimson-white debris as she launched herself away from Hazel, becoming little more than a golden streak crossing the black heavens.
Below her, the Rank 0 and Rank 1 awakened were already struggling simply to survive. Grimm pressed against them from every direction, Beowolves and Creeps lunging through drifting lunar rubble while several larger creatures attempted to cut off every avenue of retreat.
They simply were not fast enough. Compared to the Rank 2 battle raging overhead, their movements seemed painfully slow, almost frozen in time. They never even saw Yang coming.
She crashed directly through the Grimm line like a meteor.
The first Beowolf ceased to exist as her shoulder collided with it, the multiplied kinetic force detonating through its torso and reducing the creature into a cloud of black ash before it even understood it had been struck.
Moonstone fractured beneath the shockwave, crimson-white dust billowing skyward while Grimm after Grimm exploded apart simply from existing within the expanding radius of her momentum.
She absorbed every bit of that movement.
Every collision, landing and every ounce of acceleration.
Her Kinetic Rune drank it all in until the sensation became almost unbearable. It felt as though an entire avalanche had been compressed into the space behind her fist. She planted one foot upon a floating slab of broken moonstone, twisted her hips, and threw a punch toward the descending rain of arrows.
Threefold multiplication.
The Aura cost hit immediately.
Tiredness lanced through her core as Multiply devoured another enormous portion of her reserves, but the resulting punch tore apart the battlefield.
Invisible kinetic force erupted from her fist like the detonation of an artillery shell. It climbed into the crimson sky as a colossal expanding wall of compressed momentum that slammed headlong into Cinder's descending arrows.
The clash was unlike ordinary impacts. Every arrow carried that impossible penetrative Meta phenomenon, each one attempting to bore through anything standing before it regardless of resistance.
Pure kinetic force met impossible penetration in midair, and for one terrible instant the two phenomena screamed against one another.
Then Yang's won.
The arrows burst apart into molten shards that scattered harmlessly across the battlefield, their Meta-enhanced momentum finally overwhelmed beneath an overwhelming tide of multiplied force. Fragments of burning glass rained harmlessly around the lower-ranked awakened instead of through them.
Several of the Rank 1s simply stared upward in disbelief at the fireworks.
They had survived.
Barely.
Yang exhaled shakily, her Aura reserves were already protesting the expenditure, but relief lasted only a heartbeat before reality returned.
The lower-ranked awakened were still trapped.
Grimm continued pouring toward them from every direction, slowing every attempted withdrawal, while high above, Cinder calmly nocked another arrow.
Yang understood immediately. This had never been about killing them with that first volley. It had been about controlling her.
A bitter realization settled inside her chest. Cinder had understood her weakness perfectly.
The problem with Yang was that she cared.
Unlike Raven, who evaluated battle through cold efficiency and accepted casualties when necessary, Yang simply... couldn't. She couldn't stand aside while people died if she possessed even the slightest ability to intervene.
Cinder had seen it from the very first arrow she had fired earlier in the battle. She had studied Yang's reactions.
Measured and learned them.
Now she was weaponizing Yang's own convictions against her.
Every time Yang moved to save someone else, Hazel received another opportunity to recover. Every rescue cost Aura. Every act of compassion reset the battlefield in Sleepless's favor.
It was manipulation at its most ruthless.
Yang's jaw tightened.
She refused to let herself think about Belmont. But memories did not ask permission. The ruined streets.
The Flesh Beast, the screaming.
She remembered standing there as a mere Rank 1, utterly powerless while that monstrous Sleepless member slaughtered everyone around her. She had watched people die because she simply wasn't strong enough to stop it.
Helpless, worthless and too weak.
But not this time.
She was Rank 2 now. She would not allow another Belmont. Not while she still breathed. High above, Raven watched Yang shatter Cinder's attack and clicked her tongue beneath her breath.
"That fool is going to get herself killed if she keeps throwing herself away for everyone else..."
Her mind raced through possibilities, searching desperately for some avenue that would break this stalemate.
Unfortunately, Hazel chose that exact moment to evolve.
The giant man's body relaxed. Then, one by one, every absorbed property abandoned him. The flowing molten glass drained from his arm. The fire coating his body vanished.
Within seconds he stood once again as nothing more than an extraordinarily muscular human beneath the blood-red sky.
Then the moon answered him.
Crimson-white lunar stone began flowing upward.
The ground itself liquefied around his feet before climbing over his skin like living mercury. Countless streams of shattered moon rock wrapped around his body, disappearing beneath his flesh as though he were drinking the landscape itself.
More and more followed. His skin gradually changed color from ordinary flesh into pale crimson, then deeper ruby, until finally the transformation stopped only after his body had reached the rich color of fresh blood.
Silence settled and Hazel inhaled.
Then exhaled.
The breath alone stirred enough force to send crimson dust spiraling outward into a miniature tornado.
Power radiated from him in waves.
Not merely runic energy or aura pressure, but something... heavier. Both Yang and Raven felt it instantly. The battlefield itself seemed to acknowledge his existence.
Yang's stomach tightened.
Before, Hazel had been dangerous.
Now...
Now every instinct she possessed screamed predator.
Apex predator.
Raven's expression darkened.
'This moon...'
No.
Calling it merely a moon suddenly felt incorrect.
'Whatever this place truly is... absorbing its properties pushed him beyond ordinary Rank 2.'
Hazel gave neither woman time to think further.
He vanished.
The only evidence he had ever occupied that space came from the deafening shockwave left behind.
A heartbeat later he appeared directly before Raven.
His fist expanded as it accelerated, muscles swelling unnaturally while the air itself screamed beneath its passage. Raven's eyes widened only slightly before darkness condensed instantly into a massive shadow shield directly before her face.
However, Hazel's fist passed through it. The shield may as well not have existed. His punch continued straight toward Raven's skull.
At the final instant Raven disappeared.
Her entire body collapsed into a small shadow raven that slipped effortlessly beneath Hazel's extended arm. The gigantic fist continued onward, missing her by centimeters before unleashing its stored force into empty space.
The resulting blast resembled an invisible pillar erupting across the battlefield. Compressed air exploded forward with such violence that floating moon fragments shattered dozens of kilometers away.
The tiny shadow raven immediately expanded.
Darkness erupted outward as Raven transformed once more into the colossal skyscraper-sized shadow bird dominating the lunar battlefield. Its gigantic talons descended, attempting to crush Hazel beneath its impossible weight.
Hazel simply looked upwards, then kicked off the air. The impact produced another explosive boom as though space itself had become solid beneath his foot. He shot upward and drove a single punch directly into the shadow raven's chest.
The enormous construct exploded.
The force tore completely through the gigantic bird, creating a tunnel of compressed air that burst from its back before continuing across the broken moon into the distance. Shadow disintegrated around the impact while the skyscraper-sized construct collapsed into countless rivers of darkness.
Yang barely had time to process what she'd witnessed before Raven emerged from her own shadow. The older woman appeared directly behind her, grabbed for her arm, and spoke with absolute certainty.
"We need to leave. Now."
Her hand reached Yang's wrist but Yang's own Will surged outward, suppressing the invading influence of Raven's shadow over her body. Raven's grasp never completed as Yang slapped her hand away.
"What?" Yang snapped. "What the hell are you talking about?"
Raven's expression hardened, but her eyes never left Hazel.
"We can't beat them. I thought the limit of his Absorption Rune only extended to runic energy properties."
She hesitated.
"...Whatever property he absorbed from this moon rock..."
Her gaze swept across the crimson landscape.
"...No. Calling this place a moon is probably wrong."
Yang stared.
"You..."
Raven finally turned toward her.
"He's operating at the level of a half-step Rank 3."
Every word landed like stone.
"We have to go. Now."
She reached for Yang again but Yang slapped her hand aside a second time.
"What about them?" she demanded, pointing toward the fleeing Rank 0s and Rank 1s desperately attempting to escape. "We can't just leave them!"
For perhaps the first time in years, genuine pain crossed Raven's face.
"It is unfortunate," she said quietly. "But if we stay..."
Her voice became iron.
"...we die."
Yang's fists tightened until her knuckles cracked. She watched the lower-ranked awakened running across the broken lunar surface while Grimm continued pursuing them.
Would she simply stand here?
Again?
Would she watch another massacre because someone stronger told her survival mattered more? Would she become that helpless girl from Belmont all over again?
No!
She refused. She knew Raven was right and she knew staying was irrational. She knew she was being reckless and impulsive.
Stubborn.
She knew, with painful clarity, that remaining here would almost certainly kill her. But knowing something and accepting it were entirely different things.
A small, almost self-deprecating smile touched Yang's lips.
Running away while others died...
It simply wasn't who she was.
Raven saw that smile.
Anger flashed across her face so violently that veins stood out along her temple.
"You stupid... foolish girl."
Yang never looked away from the people fleeing across the battlefield.
"Shut up. If you want to leave... and run like a coward..."
She clenched her fists.
"...then leave."
For several long seconds Raven said nothing. Then, almost too quietly for anyone else to hear, she whispered more to herself than anyone else.
"...How could I have such a stupid daughter?"