Pyrrha frowned as yet another wave of Grimm emerged across the crimson horizon, black silhouettes pouring over fractured moonstone in such impossible numbers that they resembled an ocean rather than an army.
At this point practically every surviving member of Sleepless had already abandoned the battlefield above.
One after another they had leapt from the titanic cliffs into the unfathomable abyss leading toward the moon's core, leaving only their Grimm behind to occupy LUCID's attention while they raced toward whatever ritual was unfolding below.
Rather than easing the pressure, however, their departure had somehow made matters worse. Freed from the need to coordinate with their human allies, the Grimm simply surged forward in endless tides, drawn instinctively toward the concentrated presence of awakened
Everywhere Pyrrha looked there was movement.
Rank Zero Beowolves bounded across broken crimson rock by the hundreds while larger Rank One variants crashed through their own kin with reckless abandon, and farther beyond them strode Rank Two horrors whose enormous bodies dwarfed buildings, each step shaking the battlefield as if the moon itself had developed a heartbeat.
One such Grimm lunged toward her with startling speed, its monstrous claw enlarged through runic energy until it resembled an enormous crimson lance. The attack pierced toward her chest with enough force to split a mountain, yet Pyrrha's body merely shifted sideways in a movement so precise it appeared someone had tugged invisible strings attached to her limbs.
The claw missed by less than an inch before embedding itself into the moon's surface with a deafening crack. She never even looked at the creature. Countless microscopic particles of liquid metal already suspended throughout the battlefield obeyed her thoughts, phasing silently through flesh, muscle and bone until they occupied the Grimm's brain.
A heartbeat later those particles expanded explosively. Black ichor burst from the beast's eye sockets as fragments of skull erupted outward, the enormous creature collapsing dead before its claw had even finished grinding against the stone beneath it.
She exhaled quietly as the corpse dissolved into drifting ash, her thoughts wandering despite the relentless battle surrounding her. Sometimes she genuinely wondered where exactly everything had gone so catastrophically wrong. Had her life begun changing the day she met Jaune Arc two years ago?
Or perhaps even earlier, when she left Mistral behind in pursuit of a different lifestyle. Granted, none of those choices had any direct connection to the current reality, where she stood upon the surface of the moon commanding rivers of living metal against an endless tide of Grimm.
Yet the feeling lingered regardless.
Somewhere between then and now, life had quietly abandoned every pretense of normality. Another pair of Grimm charged her. She dispatched them almost absentmindedly, spears of liquefied metal phasing effortlessly through both skulls before her attention drifted elsewhere once again.
Toward her third rune.
She considered activating it, then immediately dismissed the thought. Then found herself contemplating it all over again. From a purely tactical perspective there was no denying its usefulness. Once activated, her overall combat ability increased dramatically, enough that entire sections of the battlefield became far easier to control.
Unfortunately, usefulness came attached to a horrifying price. Maintaining the rune required an inordinate amount of Aura. A full forty percent of her reserves simply to sustain its existence. Granted, part of that outrageous consumption came from the fact that it happened to be a not yet comprehended Meta Rune, but even by the standards of Meta Runes, it still bordered on ridiculous.
A faint smile touched her lips despite the circumstances.
She had always wanted a Meta Rune. Ever since Jaune created Weakness, she had found herself unconsciously comparing their progress. It had never been born from jealousy. If anything, she admired him more than anyone she had ever met. Yet she had always felt that his instincts in battle eclipsed her own.
Even before he disappeared, Jaune had repeatedly overturned impossible situations through sheer creativity, somehow finding paths to victory that nobody else could even perceive. Then he vanished for months, leaving everyone searching desperately while she continued training in hopes of narrowing the gap between them.
Now he had returned, and after witnessing him carve through the battlefield earlier, Pyrrha honestly no longer knew what to think. Grimm disintegrated before reaching him. Experienced Rank Two awakened had become as helpless as children, their runes stripped away and turned against them almost effortlessly. He had crossed the battlefield like a force of nature, leaving devastation behind with every step.
She felt a range of emotions seeing this. Was it envy? Acceptance? The answer was neither. She knew exactly what she felt.
Inferiority.
It wasn't that she wasn't happy for him. Quite the opposite. She was incredibly happy. After everything Jaune had endured, seeing him return stronger than ever filled her with genuine relief. Yet somewhere deep inside remained the quiet realization that her own aspirations of someday standing beside him as an equal might never become reality. Perhaps they had always been dreams. She sighed softly before returning her thoughts to her own rune.
Truthfully... she liked it.
No, that wasn't accurate either. She thought it was cool as hell. Embarrassingly cool. She remembered countless conversations with Mocha and Nora while designing it. Originally she had wanted nothing more than to discover some method of truly animating metal rather than merely manipulating it.
They had both encouraged her relentlessly until eventually the idea crystallized into something entirely different. The rune's name had been obvious from the beginning.
Mecha.
Compared to Weiss' Spirit Rune, which summoned independent elemental companions that had long since outgrown their original adorable chibi appearances, Mecha created something far stranger, an artificial existence born entirely from metal itself. It wasn't truly alive, yet it wasn't merely a puppet either.
It occupied an uncomfortable space somewhere between construct and living organism. The rune itself was unbelievably powerful. The problem remained the Aura. Forty percent. If this had been the Dream Realm she might have accepted that cost without hesitation, but this battle wasn't a duel. It was a war of attrition against an enemy whose numbers appeared limitless. Every drop of Aura mattered.
Abandoning the idea once more, Pyrrha redirected the liquid metal orbiting around her body. The swirling metallic storm condensed instantly into the shaft of an enormous double-ended spear positioned directly behind her back.
She never turned around, mostly because she simply didn't need to.
Behind her, a gigantic Rank Two Beowolf had already lunged, jaws opening wide enough to swallow an entire house. The spear lodged itself vertically between those jaws an instant before they snapped shut, stopping the bite by sheer leverage.
Crimson runic energy crawled between the creature's teeth as it attempted forcing the weapon apart through brute strength. Pyrrha merely twitched one finger. The spear phased effortlessly through bone and flesh alike before reappearing directly inside the Grimm's skull. Its body convulsed violently before beginning to dissolve into ash, and only then did Pyrrha's eyes narrow as she noticed movement near the horizon.
Another contingent of Sleepless approached, every one of them a Rank Two. They rode enormous flying Grimm toward the battlefield, clearly intending to use the creatures as transportation before abandoning them and descending into the moon's core. Pyrrha barely acknowledged the Grimm themselves. They would inevitably turn upon LUCID once their riders departed.
Instead, one particular silhouette immediately captured her attention. A man with striking crimson hair, so dark a shade of red it almost matched her own. Recognition came instantly. She would never forget that silhouette. Months ago within the Shadow Realm, he and Grise had nearly succeeded in killing both herself and Jaune.
Adam Taurus.
Memory surfaced immediately alongside Jaune's parting words. "Help Blake defeat him when he comes here."
Pyrrha couldn't help wondering where Blake actually was.
Adam, meanwhile, appeared to notice her at precisely the same moment. His expression paused briefly before he leaned toward another Sleepless operative beside him, whispering several quiet words.
The man nodded, barked orders to the surrounding riders and peeled away toward another section of the battlefield while Adam calmly stepped from the back of his flying Grimm and simply stood suspended in empty air. Beneath him the gigantic Nevermore continued flying toward Pyrrha, enormous beak opening wider and wider as though intending to swallow her whole.
Pyrrha prepared to counter but she never received the opportunity. The shadow cast by her own body across the metallic platform beneath her feet suddenly rippled.
Not because of shifting light or because something had passed overhead.
It simply... moved.
A lance of darkness erupted from her shadow with such blinding speed that Pyrrha scarcely processed its existence before it had already passed cleanly through the charging Nevermore. The building-sized Grimm continued flying several more meters before silently separating into two perfectly clean halves.
Both pieces drifted apart while dissolving into ash. Meanwhile, the black spear of shadow retracting and squirmed in the air, drifting like a piece of paper towards Pyrrha's location.
A Stalker!
An actual Stalker from the Shadow Realm!
How was it here?!
She hadn't sensed it. Not once. It had hidden inside her own shadow for who knew how long, and if that attack had been directed toward her instead of the Grimm, she doubted she would have realized anything was there before dying. Every instinct screamed at her to retreat as the darkness drifted back towards her. The stalker had started transforming into a humanoid silhouette.
As it came fully into view, confusion abruptly replaced alarm.
Its silhouette, wasn't shaped like the Rank Two Asura Stalkers she remembered from the Shadow Realm. Those possessed three pairs of arms and grotesquely inhuman proportions built solely for slaughter.
This figure... looked almost human.
Stranger still, there was something oddly familiar about it. The broad shoulders. The posture. The shape of the face. It resembled... Jaune. Or rather, some impossible shadow cast by Jaune himself. Realization struck her like lightning. Her eyes widened as disbelief overtook caution.
"Gula?"
The shadow's glowing white eyes slowly shifted toward her while an impossibly wide grin spread across its featureless face.
"In the flesh," it replied with unmistakable amusement in its tone. Comparatively speaking, it was as close to flesh as a shadow could ever become.