Fade in…
The wind howling across the ruined Milner High sports field carries the metallic tang of localized vacuum energy. Vanessa Mbatha stands suspended in the high air, her unbuttoned uniform whipping violently around her frame. She glares down at the cataclysmic crater below, her hand wrapped tightly around the hilt of her ancestral katana. With a voice that cuts through the atmosphere like a razor, she declares, "Amahle will only be wielded by me... is that understood?"
She doesn't wait for a response. Dropping down with immense physical authority, she drives a brutal kick straight into Leragga's chest, using his own velocity against him to force him to the ground. Simultaneously, she executes a seamless, fluid motion and slashes the air above him with absolute precision.
The physical reality of the school field fails to handle the output. The ground directly beneath Leragga instantly disappears, swallowed whole by a conceptual vacuum that leaves a perfect, geometric void in the earth. The high-speed momentum cuts a line straight through his position. Seemingly, the multiversal assassin has been completely cut in half.
From the edge of the crater, Joy's jaw drops. Her eyes widen in absolute disbelief as she mutters, "No way!"
Enzo, helping the rest of the boys up from the debris of the changing rooms, steps forward. He looks at the massive rift in the ground, then up at the Head Girl, and utters, "Did she… did she win?"
A chilling, disjointed echo bounces through the sports field, originating from everywhere and nowhere at once. "You seem to have absolutely no understanding of my superiority," a voice states calmly.
Vanessa's eyes widen in an instant. Her internal instincts scream a warning as she jolts, "Ah—?!"
High above her previous position, floating completely untouched in the sky, Leragga is seen looking down at her with a condescending sneer. The bisection was an illusion of timing; his mastery over movement had bypassed the execution frame of the technique.
Standing with the Royal Squadron, Noligoa looks up and cries out in pure terror, "No! Vanessa, watch out!"
Leragga drops like a falling mountain, channeling his momentum into a devastating downward strike, attempting to punch Vanessa straight to the ground. Reacting on pure muscle memory, Vanessa raises Amahle to block the attack. The steel of her blade meets the raw force of his fist with a thunderous crack. She successfully blocks the physical impact, but the sheer kinetic weight behind the blow is too massive to nullify. She is sent plummeting toward the earth at terminal velocity.
Enzo shouts to the group, his voice cracking with urgency, "Catch her!"
Leragga, shifting his position in mid-air with effortless grace, interjects with a dark chuckle, "Nope. Not going to happen."
As soon as he says this, Leragga activates his mobility, vanishing from the sky and reappearing instantly right beside a falling Vanessa. He pulls his arm back, attempting to strike her again while she is completely off-balance and airborne. But Vanessa Mbatha is a daughter of Zulu warriors; she does not panic. Even while falling at dangerous speeds, she twists her torso, her katana flashing as she is already slashing directly toward his oncoming face.
Leragga's eyes widen as he senses the light-speed trajectory of the invisible edge. He curses under his breath, "Damn!"
He vanishes in a flicker of movement, escaping the immediate kill zone. The invisible trajectory of The Touchless Blade misses him completely, continuing downward and striking the school architecture. With a catastrophic roar, the historic brick pavilions are completely destroyed by the conceptual force, collapsing into a heap of fine dust and rubble.
Vanessa hits the ground, using her knees to absorb the impact, and lands perfectly on her feet. Her breathing is heavy, her chest heaving as she takes a deep, stabilizing breath to center her spiritual reservoir. She realizes that standard, distant slashes will not suffice against an opponent who can naturally outrun light. She grasps her sword with both hands, locks her elbows, and slowly closes her eyes, relying entirely on her ancestral awareness.
Immediately as she closes her eyes, the air behind her ear warps. Leragga appears beside her out of the ether, his hand solidifying into a deadly spear point as he lunges to pierce her neck. But Vanessa's senses are absolute. Before his hand can even break her personal airspace, her katana has already traveled through a perfect arc. She has already sliced his attacking arm clean off at the elbow.
The severed limb flies into the air, dissolving into mist, and Leragga cries out in genuine, agonizing pain, "AAAAhh!"
Blood sprays across the grass as he leaps back violently, desperate to create distance and recover his bearings.
Vanessa doesn't chase him, nor does she open her eyes. She slowly turns her body toward his new coordinate, her eyes remaining tightly closed. Both hands remain locked onto the hilt of her sword as she takes another deep, measured breath, drawing the absolute maximum amount of spiritual oxygen into her lungs.
Vanessa, holding her breath to lock her internal frequency, thinks to herself, channeling the deep linguistic heritage of her bloodline, "Touchless Blade… Isivumo Sesihlabathi."
Leragga, clutching his bleeding stump as he skids across the grass, looks at her unmoving, serene posture and wonders frantically, "What is this?!"
Desperate to restore his combat capacity, he quickly vibrates his shoulder joint at a high frequency, forcing his cells to accelerate as his severed arm begins to reanimate and grow back slowly from the wound.
But time has run out. Vanessa vanishes from her spot, defying the space between them. She appears instantly directly in front of Leragga, her blade already in motion, slicing him immediately across his guard.
Leragga's instincts save his life by a fraction of an inch. He dodged the lethal vertical path, but his spatial perception was too slow. He looks down to see his newly reanimating arm completely severed for the second time, the clean cut stopping the cellular regeneration instantly. Because of the speed of the blade, he feels the agonizing pain a moment later, his nerves delayed as he screams, "Ah—!"
Before he could even attempt to counter or adjust his stance, Vanessa was already upon him like an inescapable shadow. Moving with continuous, light-speed transitions, she had sliced him already before the sound of her first step could even register.
Leragga dodged frantically, throwing his entire upper body backward, but he suffered a massive, deep wound across his left shoulder. The divine energy of Amahle burns into his flesh.
Completely losing his composure, the 'apex predator' collapses into the dirt, crawling backward on his one remaining hand and knees in absolute fear of the blinded schoolgirl. He shouts, his voice cracking with panic, "No! No! Stay back! Get away from me!"
Vanessa is seen walking towards him slowly, her steps rhythmic and unhurried. Both hands remain firmly on her sword, her eyes still closed as she ignores his pleas. She raises her hands high above her head, the tip of Amahle pointing toward the sky as she prepares the definitive downward execution stroke. She then takes a deep breath, locking the final coordinate...
But just as she's about to bring the sword down to deal the finishing blow...
A heavy, ancient whisper echoes directly inside her mind, sounding like a thousand voices speaking in unison from the dirt:
'Ungakhohlwa nguwe.'
Vanessa's arms freeze mid-air. Suddenly, her entire body begins to glow with the exact same brilliant, divine energy that the Touchless Blade had been shrouded by. But instead of focusing into the steel, the power now seems to be violently leaving her skin, bleeding outward into the atmosphere.
'Ungakhohlwa nguwe.'
The truth of her lineage manifests. The Touchless Blade is not the absolute pinnacle of the Mbatha Clan's secret techniques, as the younger generation believed.
'Ungakhohlwa nguwe.'
There is another level hidden beyond the veil—an extension of the Touchless Blade, a forbidden and volatile technique kept buried within the deep shadows of the Mbatha clan's most arcane traditions...
'Ungakhohlwa nguwe.'
A technique strictly reserved only for those who completely transcend the physical limits of the Touchless Blade and have fully unlocked the deepest secrets of the cosmos...
'Ungakhohlwa nguwe.'
Only those rare warriors who have mastered the whispers of the wind, the absolute silence of the void, and the deep, rhythmic pulse of the universe may ever attempt to safely wield the Echoing Slice.
'Ungakhohlwa nguwe.'
The ancestral laws dictate that a warrior must first completely hear and comprehend the whispers of their own soul before they can ever hope to unlock the true, unbridled potential of this ancient art...
'Ungakhohlwa nguwe.'
When this perfect spiritual alignment is achieved, the physical body ceases to be a mere conduit; they will then become The Touchless Blade itself, achieving the true state of Isivumo Sesihlabathi...
'Ungakhohlwa nguwe.'
But Vanessa is still growing. When a young warrior attempts to prematurely invoke the Echoing Slice without being spiritually prepared or anchored, the Mbatha ancestors manifest through the bloodline, whispering a haunting, chilling warning directly into the physical world:
'Ungakhohlwa nguwe.'[1]
Standing nearby, Noligoa looks around in confusion as the heavy, supernatural pressure drops over the field. Hearing the multi-layered warning echo through the wind, she questions, "What... what is that sound? Where is it coming from?"
The eerie, rhythmic refrain continues to echo around Vanessa's trembling form—a stark, immutable reminder from the past that she has not yet reached the required threshold of power to safely harness the Echoing Slice.
'Ungakhohlwa nguwe.'
The strain becomes too much. Vanessa's strength completely evaporates, and she falls heavily to her knees as Amahle disappears back into her soul's storage dimension. Weakened and realizing her transgression against the traditional boundaries, she bows her head low to the earth and says softly, "Ngixolele."[2]
The ancestral laws are absolute. Those who choose to ignore the ancestors' warning and fail to acknowledge their premature transgression risk being instantly consumed and disintegrated by the very cosmic energy they seek to control. But because Vanessa submitted and asked for absolute pardon, the violent energy emanating from her body slowly dissipates into nothingness. She has been forgiven, but she is completely drained.
Leragga, still sitting in the dirt, looks at her sudden collapse. Now slowly getting to grips with the situation and realizing the terrifying girl is no longer a threat, he utters in confusion, "Huh? What just happened?"
Noligoa, seeing her mentor defenseless, mutters in sheer terror, "Oh no... Vanessa!"
Leragga then lets out a shaky, nervous scoff as he pushes himself up, trying to regain his pride. "Heh. Foolish girl. You overreached."
He violently vibrates his entire torso at a high cellular frequency, forcing his biology to regenerate his arm and shoulder back to normal within seconds. He stands up straight, his eyes burning with malice.
He then looks down at his restored hand and says, "Swords, huh?"
As he says this, he raises his right arm toward the sky, concluding with a sneer, "Here's a sword for you."
With a loud, deafening bang that breaks the sound barrier, his entire right arm morphs, turning into a massive, jagged sword composed entirely of white-hot plasma energy. The heat from the limb singes the grass beneath his feet.
Joy, watching from the sidelines and questioning how this man can possibly be completely unharmed after being systematically dismantled, questions, "How is he—? How is he still standing after all of that? He's a monster!"
Vanessa looks up towards Leragga, her vision blurry, her physical body completely weakened by the ancestors' severe warning. She cannot move.
Leragga, his analytical mind completely overridden by pure, unadulterated anger, declares, "I am going to sever you into a million pieces!"
He brings the massive plasma sword down in a violent arc, slashing directly toward Vanessa's neck. A massive explosion occurs, and a thick dust cloud instantly envelops the entire area, obscuring everything.
Leragga holds his position, his plasma blade sizzling through the smoke. He thinks to himself, searching for the physical feedback of the strike, "Did I get her? Did I cut her down—?"
Suddenly, a massive, deep exhale echoes from the center of the smoke screen, carrying a weight that completely blows the dust away:
"HHHAA... THAT'S MORE LIKE IT."
Leragga freezes.
Wait... what? Where on earth did he come from?
As the smoke completely clears, Hakuna is seen standing there. In the micro-second before the plasma blade connected, he had intervened. He is seen gently placing a weakened Vanessa down at the designated coordinate where the Royal Squadron girls are standing, ensuring her safety.
He then turns his body back around to face Leragga. Instead of flaring his aura defensively, he casually begins to stretch his arms behind his back?
Leragga, initially raising his plasma sword to ready himself for a fight, mutters in complete bewilderment at the casual display, "What... what are you doing? Why are you moving like that?"
Hakuna strains his muscles casually, rolling his neck until it cracks. "Just… stretching. Getting the blood flowing."
He then drops his arms, his expression turning completely serious as he enters his classic, low-center-of-gravity fighting stance. He says, his voice steady, "I had to use Celesti quite hastily to cover the distance and save Vanessa from that attack."
A slow, heavy wave of energy begins to flare around him, cracking the pavement.
He continues, looking directly into Leragga's eyes, "That was incredibly risky. Divine Nzilo is highly dangerous to wield so forcibly without proper preparation, especially with the whole complex process of achieving the yin and yang balance between this inherited power and my own soul... but looking at the state of this field, this was absolutely worth it, wasn't it?"
The moment the sentence ends, his eyes undergo a radical shift, fading completely from their natural shade into a brilliant, piercing silver color that radiates pure starlight.
As he focuses his gaze, he says, "But don't worry about my balance. I'm completely fine now. Sorry for the wait, everyone."
His spiritual energy bursts outward in a massive, localized shockwave for a brief moment, then immediately retracts, returning to a steady, mathematical increase that alters the gravity around his body.
Leragga steps back, his plasma sword flickering as his thinking stalls. He thinks to himself, staring at the boy, "Something is completely off here. He's entirely confident... I know for a fact I broke his spirit during our last encounter. He shouldn't be able to channel such a state with this much stability."
Hakuna looks down at his hands, a calm, experimental smile touching his lips. He then says, "This is an entirely new experiment for me. I didn't think I would actually need to combine these states so soon... but here goes nothing."
Hakuna takes a deep, deep breath, locking his diaphragm. Suddenly, the brilliant silver energy around his body begins to darken, transforming into a deep, heavy, pressurized purple steam, while his eyes remain locked in that shining, brilliant silver state. The dual energies of Psycha and the Divine merge into a single, terrifying hybrid aura.
He then looks directly at the multiversal assassin and says, "Here I come… Celestihimurra!"
With a loud, cataclysmic bang that shatters the remaining foundations of the sports field, he vanishes from existence.
Fade out…
End of Episode 72.
[1] Meaning, 'Do not forget who you are.'
[2] Meaning, 'Forgive Me'