Maurice-san exhaled, cracking his neck loudly. His clothes were shredded in places and he was bleeding from several nicks, but he had escaped any major injury. At most, he had a few scratches.
In contrast, his clone lay a short distance away, mangled and beaten beyond recognition.
He... he overwhelmed his own copy?
Maurice-san looked at me, his expression nonchalant despite my shock.
"It's like I told Issei once—at the end of the day, these things are just defective goods. A sword without a soul behind it, no matter how fast it moves, is no match for the real thing. Besides, if the copy is me, then his patterns are me. I know exactly what he's going to do before he does it. Breaking a guy like that is easy."
"The clone represents who we were in the past," a voice added from above. It was Reisha-san, who had similarly dispatched her double. "Therefore, we simply have to surpass who we were a moment ago. It is as simple as that."
I stared at them. These two had surpassed their own limits in the span of a single skirmish.
Maurice-san gestured toward the rest of the field. "Looks like the others are catching on. See? Rias won. As expected of your Master."
I followed his gaze. President Rias was breathing hard, and she wasn't unscathed, but her clone had been completely erased from existence. Akeno-san, Koneko-chan, Xenovia, Irina, Dulio-san, Saji-kun—one by one, they were beginning to push back.
They were all stepping over their own shadows. They were evolving in the heat of battle.
Reisha-san placed a steadying hand on my shoulder. "We are going to support the others. Can we leave this to you?"
She looked toward my clone. The double was slowly picking itself up, a silent, murderous aura of black and white bleeding from its body.
I took a step forward.
"Yes. I can certainly overcome my past self. As a male member of the Gremory Household, I'd expect nothing less of myself."
The two of them smiled, satisfied with my answer, and vanished into the fray to hunt new targets.
I recalled the words Maurice-san had drilled into me during our training in that isolated space: Be stronger today than you were yesterday. Be stronger tomorrow than you are today. Be stronger this very second than you were a second ago.
That moment was now. My opponent was the "me" of the past. And the "me" of right now... is stronger.
I gripped the hilt of my Holy-Demonic Sword with both hands, bringing it into a mid-level guard.
We paused for a heartbeat, then vanished, our boots shattering the ground as we charged. Sparks erupted as our blades collided in a high-speed blur.
Faster.
More.
I can go further.
I can still accelerate!
In an instant, the world lost its color. The movements of everything around me slowed to a crawl, as if the world were being played back in slow motion.
This was it—the state of ultimate concentration: The Zone.
During my training with Maurice-san, I had managed to touch the edges of this state. But back then, I couldn't hold it; it was unrefined, incomplete. Even Issei-kun had taken time to master it after first breaking through.
But now, in this do-or-die moment, I took full command of it. With every clash of our blades, my steel grew sharper, my movements swifter. I was evolving through the friction of our combat.
I could feel the flow of power surging through my veins. I was breaking through my ceiling.
"I will sharpen this blade by surpassing myself! I am the Knight of Rias Gremory!"
Our Holy-Demonic Swords slammed together one last time. My blade caught his, and with a concentrated burst of force, I snapped his weapon in two.
"HAAAAAAAAAH!"
Vertical Drop, Slant, Right Cross, Right Rising, Back-cut, Left Rising, Left Cross, Reverse Slant, Thrust.
I unleashed the nine fundamental strikes of swordsmanship simultaneously at god-speed. All nine slashes tore through my past self at once. The clone didn't even have time to fall; it dissolved into dust and vanished into the wind.
"Haah... haah... ugh..."
I dropped to one knee, my lungs burning. My head throbbed—the mental backlash of using The Zone. I had poured every ounce of my stamina into that final burst.
Surpassing my limits during training was one thing, but doing it here, in the middle of a war zone, was exhausting. Every time you break a wall, the next one only gets thicker.
Still, I felt a spark of grim satisfaction. We still had room to grow. That realization alone made this fight worth it.
However, the tide of the overall battle was still against us. While I had defeated my shadow, many of our allied soldiers were still being overwhelmed. The enemy continued to mass-produce pawns, hurling them at us in an endless wave.
A swarm of Evil Dragons spotted my weakened state and lunged. I forced my protesting body to move, dodging their initial strikes, but I had lost the fluid, light-footed grace I'd had moments ago.
Nearby, Xenovia looked equally spent. The strain of her own duel had snuffed out her azure flames, and her hair had reverted to its original length.
We needed time to recover, but the enemy wasn't in a merciful mood. Xenovia and I pressed our backs together, raising our swords.
"Haah... haah... How's it looking, Kiba? Still got some fight in you?"
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