"Ngh..."
Sent hurtling backward through the air without even a split second to react, the Black Knight crashed heavily into the rugged cliffside. The jarring impact rattled her bones, sending a sharp wave of displaced pain rippling through her internal organs.
Yet, even as she slid to the snow, a flicker of quiet gratitude stirred in her chest. She knew that if Jeanne had adjusted her vector by even a fraction of a degree during that swing, the knight would currently be plummeting down the bottom of the ravine rather than resting against the stone.
"My thanks," Degenbrecher murmured, honest enough to acknowledge the mercy. Without missing a beat, she pushed herself up from the drift and snapped back into a combat stance, locking her eyes onto the Laterano Saintess.
"Our schedule is a bit tight, so I'm afraid I can't keep playing around with you at a leisurely pace," Jeanne said, flipping her hands over as her luminous banner began to spin rapidly, creating a dizzying blur of motion.
Even so, the Black Knight didn't dare lower her guard. She had no way of knowing whether the tip of that whirling banner would descend upon her skull the very next second.
"Therefore—"
In the blink of an eye, Jeanne vanished entirely from sight. By the time her voice echoed out again, she was already standing directly behind the knight.
"I'll try not to hit too hard, but do your best to protect yourself!"
A rush of fierce pressure accompanied Jeanne's words. Operating purely on veteran instinct, Degenbrecher whipped around, blindly dodging the initial strike before driving her dual swordbreakers upward and bringing them down with her absolute maximum force.
THUD—!
Clumps of frozen earth and deep snow blasted into the air. Realizing a split second too late that she had punched through empty space, Degenbrecher's expression hardened. Tossing caution to the wind, she discarded the momentum and leaped backward into a hasty retreat.
That unsettling sensation washed over her once more. It was as though the girl standing before her possessed genuine precognition—anticipating every tactical choice Degenbrecher intended to make before she even executed it, and moving to counter it ahead of time.
It was an infuriating wall to run into. How was anyone supposed to fight an opponent whose physical attributes completely surpassed yours, whose technical mastery was peerless, and who could read your every move like an open book?
Had she possessed Originium Arts, she might have tried to force a breakthrough with arcane tricks; but born entirely devoid of casting talent, that route was closed to her.
"Are you still not giving up?" Jeanne asked, tilting her head as she gestured toward the ground. "You don't even have your weapons anymore. If we keep going, I can't guarantee your arms won't shatter."
Jeanne pointed to the dual swordbreakers resting in the snow. Under the brunt of their high-intensity exchanges, the notched steel blades had already warped visibly. Another half-hour of this abuse would snap them in two.
If the knight stubbornly insisted on continuing with bare hands, Jeanne figured the best-case scenario would be compound fractures in both arms, followed by permanent nerve damage severe enough to force amputation.
"If we press on, you're going to sustain heavy injuries," Jeanne added, her tone carrying a surprising weight of genuine, unmocking pity—a pure empathy stripped of arrogance or condescension.
Even as a hardened veteran of countless bloody conflicts, hearing those words didn't trigger a shred of anger in the Black Knight. She recognized that the girl was simply stating an objective, unvarnished truth.
"I appreciate your concern, Your Holiness," Degenbrecher replied with a strained, ironic smile as she straightened up, raising her empty hands before her chest to prepare for hand-to-hand combat. "The reason I keep fighting isn't just to repay the Clan Leader. It's also because... well, it's been a very long time since I encountered an opponent quite like you."
Though she had a certain degree of confidence in her bare-handed martial arts, that confidence evaporated into thin air when weighed against the terrifying girl standing before her.
"Good grief..." Jeanne sighed, looking slightly troubled. The knight was clearly swept up in the heat of combat; talking her down with words alone wasn't going to work.
If she wanted to end this without permanent damage, her only option was to beat the fighter until she simply lacked the strength to resist. Yet that level of heavy violence carried a high risk of leaving lasting scars. It was a frustrating dilemma.
"Oh well, whatever. Talulah always says I'm too soft-hearted and prone to doing unnecessary things..." Jeanne muttered, shaking her head before casually walking over to pick up the deformed weapons. To the knight's utter astonishment, Jeanne tossed the warped blades right back toward her. "If you're going to spar with me, use these. I don't want people going around saying I bullied an unarmed warrior until her arms fell off, leaving me stuck paying for your medical bills for the rest of your life."
She's actually returning the enemy's weapons?! What on earth is going through her head? Shouldn't she want to end the fight as quickly as possible?
Hidden behind the rocks further down the path, Ratatos stared at the scene in absolute bewilderment. Why would anyone voluntarily give their opponent a second chance at an advantage? Weren't you supposed to crush your foes and expand your victory when you had the upper hand?
She shifted her gaze toward the Doctor, who was standing nearby entirely unbothered, as if she were watching a street performance without so much as a bag of popcorn. Apparently, this eccentric masked strategist found Jeanne's baffling choices entirely normal.
"That's just how Jeanne is," the Doctor explained offhandedly, scratching the side of her helmet. "Besides, if she went and broke the poor woman's arms over a spar, she'd probably feel guilty about it later."
"If you say so..." Ratatos mumbled, shrinking back behind her boulder. "I swear, you people are all cut from the strangest cloth imaginable."
Despite her lingering confusion, Ratatos couldn't tear her eyes away. Even though she questioned the logic of dragging things out, watching two masters clash with such raw intensity was undeniably thrilling.
A sudden understanding bloomed in her chest—she finally understood why citizens in the distant nation of Kazimierz were so utterly obsessed with the Knights and its arena spectacles. Watching a duel of this caliber genuinely made the blood rush. If she were an ordinary citizen of that arena-loving land, she too would happily pay to watch titans trade blows.
"My thanks," Degenbrecher said, dropping any pretense of false pride as she caught her weapons with a respectful bow. She gripped the battered steel and raised her eyes to meet the Saintess once more.
"If we ever find ourselves sitting across a negotiation table after all this madness settles, I will thank you properly for your grace today. But for now... forgive me!"
With every ounce of hesitation swept away, the Black Knight cast aside her mission parameters, her duties to the Silverash Clan, and the commands of her master. In this fleeting moment, she wasn't a retainer or a political pawn—she was a warrior, standing before a worthy adversary. She owed it to Jeanne to give everything she had.
As they clashed once more, the sharp ring of metal against metal filled the gorge. Degenbrecher kept a mental tally with every strike, wondering how many impacts her warped blades had left. Ten? Fifteen?
A massive fracture split down the middle of one of the swordbreakers. The structural integrity was completely gone.
Finally, during a heavy, downward swing from Jeanne's glowing banner, the knight's weapon finally surrendered, snapping cleanly into two useless pieces of scrap metal. Only the jagged hilts remained in her grips.
"How... how do you do it?" Degenbrecher asked, dropping the broken remnants as she caught her breath, her eyes fixed on Jeanne. "I attacked from every conceivable angle, using entirely different forms, yet your banner always managed to strike the exact structural weak point until the metal gave out completely."
She wasn't angry; she was simply awe-struck.
"If you're asking for the secret..." Jeanne scratched her cheek with an honest, disarming smile that made her explanation sound surprisingly credible despite its absurdity. "To be completely honest, I mostly just fight on pure instinct. If we're talking about pure technique, you're probably a lot better at martial arts than I am."
That was the terrifying nature of Jeanne's Revelation skill. Backed by overwhelming physical attributes and speed, her precognitive intuition left zero room for defeat against conventional fighters.
"Intuition, huh? What a terrifying answer," Degenbrecher muttered, slowly raising her empty hands in a clean gesture of surrender. "I yield. I don't have the tricks required to slip away from a monster like you."