The two deformed remnants that had been guarding the corner advanced at the same time.
Yūta received them with the mana active and the dagger in his right hand and that part of his mind that had learned to separate what he felt from what he needed to do, functioning at a speed that had not been asked of it but was there all the same.
"Get out!" he shouted, without stopping moving. "Everyone, now, the doors are open!"
Nobody moved.
Yūta blocked a strike from the first with his left forearm and responded with the dagger to its side — he glanced towards the corner while repositioning.
They were all still. The teacher on the floor. The students against the wall with that specific rigidity of people whose bodies have decided that movement is not an available option right now. Sota was looking at the centre of the gymnasium with the eyes of someone who has seen too much in too little time and who, until they have finished processing it, cannot do anything else.
Yūta clicked his tongue.
The second remnant took advantage of the second of distraction and struck — to the right side, with enough force for the air to leave his lungs in a fairly disorderly fashion.
Yūta moved back, gaining distance, and looked at the green remnant that was standing to one side of the gymnasium watching with that calculating calm it had.
The green one smiled.
"Don't worry about them," it said, in that slightly off voice. "Once you die, they will too." It paused, and in its white pupil-less eyes something appeared that was not exactly an expression, but came close. "Although..." It looked at all of them, then at Yūta. "It would be interesting. If I kill you and you transform into one of us. Strong. You could help us." It said it more to itself than to the gymnasium. "It would be very interesting."
Yūta did not respond.
The two deformed remnants advanced again.
The two deformed remnants were large and slow compared to what Yūta had faced before — they had neither the coordination of something that thinks nor the speed of something that has fought many times, only the brute force of something that exists for a specific function and fulfils it without needing to understand why.
Which in an enclosed space like the gymnasium was still enough to be a problem.
He activated the mana.
Thirty seconds — the limit he knew, the one he had worked on in four days of training until it became reliable.
He continued fighting when it went out.
He activated it again.
Something was different this time — not in the quantity but in the way the flow responded. As though the body had started to understand that this was what was being demanded of it in a sustained way and was adjusting to that demand in a manner it had not done before. Not the five seconds of the beginning. Not the controlled thirty of training. Something more — not perfectly stable, not without cost, but more than it had been.
How long have I been using the mana? he thought, blocking a strike with his forearm.
He did not know exactly. More than in any previous fight. And it was still there.
The first deformed remnant tried to close him against the wall — using its body as mass, advancing without dodging because it did not need to dodge, trusting that size would resolve what tactics could not. Yūta threw himself to the right, passed alongside it, and brought the dagger with the mana concentrated to the remnant's side at the point where the density was least.
The deformed remnant went still.
It dissolved.
The second faced him alone — and without the first to coordinate from the other side, its movement lost some of that two-front pressure that had made the early exchanges more costly. Yūta read it and adjusted — more direct, using the mana that was still flowing in a way he still did not entirely understand but accepted because it was what he had.
When the second dissolved, Yūta was in the centre of the gymnasium with the dagger in his right hand and his breathing laboured and the mana still active — faint, with the cost visible in the way his hands did not glow with the same intensity as at the beginning, but present.
He looked at the green remnant.
The green remnant looked at him.
There was something different in its expression — not fear, not urgency. Something closer to the genuine surprise of something that had not expected this result and was recalculating.
"You killed all the ones I put in your way," it said, in that tone that did not quite correspond to the language. "And you're still standing."
"Yes," said Yūta.
"Interesting," said the green remnant. And then, in that voice that acquired something darker when it dropped in register, "But I am not like the rest."
It advanced.
The difference was immediate and brutal.
The green remnant moved in a way none of the previous ones had used — not with the brute force of the deformed ones nor with the threads from a distance, but with something closer to the fluidity of someone who has been fighting for a long time and has integrated every movement until they no longer need to think about it.
Yūta tried the same angle he had used with the deformed ones.
The green remnant was not where he had calculated it would be.
The dagger strike found air.
The counterattack came from below — an open hand to the stomach that was not a mana strike but pure physical impact with all the force of something that has more than its build suggests. Yūta went back two steps and had to use the wall to keep from losing his balance completely.
He tried the mana — concentrated, directional, the kind of strike that had worked with the deformed ones.
The green one dodged it.
Not with margin — grazing, with the precision of someone who has seen that kind of attack before and knows exactly how much space they need to leave. And then it counterattacked before Yūta had finished recovering his position — a short, fast combination to the torso and to the right shoulder that was already protesting, which made him double forward.
A kick arrived to the side.
Yūta found the floor.
He stayed there for a moment — not unconscious, but with the world turning slightly and his body sending signals from several points simultaneously that all said variations of the same thing.
Get up.
He got up.
Slowly. Hands first, then knees, then feet. The gymnasium was still the gymnasium — the artificial light, the corner with the students, the teacher on the floor, the green remnant standing three metres away with that calm that had not changed from the beginning.
"Is that all you have?" said the green one.
It was not a question.
"I hope when you die you transform into something strong," it continued, in that tone that dropped in register when it spoke of that. "It would be interesting to have a hunter on the other side."
The threads appeared on its fingers.
Yūta looked at the point where they were going to arrive — calculated the time, calculated whether he could move quickly enough with what he had left — and understood that the answer was probably no.
The threads launched.
Something got in the way.
The impact was different from what Yūta had calculated — more lateral, closer, and the sound that accompanied it was not that of something cutting the air but of someone absorbing the cut.
Sota Miyazaki was standing between him and where the threads had arrived, with his left shoulder bearing a line of red that was expanding with the specific speed of something that has cut deep.
Yūta fell to the floor from the momentum of having thrown himself back when Sota stepped in front of him.
"No—!"
The word came out before he could stop it. He pulled himself towards Sota, who was on his knees with his right hand on his left shoulder and the expression of someone who has done something before thinking about the consequences and is now processing those consequences.
"Sota—"
"I'm—" Sota began.
"Don't speak," said Yūta. "Don't speak."
He lifted him with the urgency of someone who needs to move him somewhere safer before anything else happens. He took him to the corner where the students were, to where Teacher Okazaki was still on the floor, and looked at her directly.
"Stop the bleeding," he said. "I need you to focus on that right now."
The teacher looked at him. There was something in her eyes that was still the prayer from before — but there was something else too, more recent, more concrete. She nodded.
Sota looked at Yūta from where he was now leaning against the wall, with the teacher pressing something against his shoulder and his eyes that still had everything that had happened in the gymnasium inside them.
"Amane," he said.
"It's all right," said Yūta.
"Amane, I—"
"It's all right," Yūta repeated, with a firmness that was not anger but the version of calm that comes out when there is no time for anything more than that.
Sota looked at him for one more second.
And then his eyes closed.
The teacher held him. She kept pressing.
Yūta turned.
The smile was no longer what he noticed most on the green remnant's face.
What he noticed was the attention — that constant assessment that had never switched off from the beginning, that had been present throughout the fight with the deformed ones and throughout the strikes he had received and throughout the moment with Sota, registering everything with the precision of something that does not waste information.
Yūta activated the mana.
Not the kind he had used before — not the controlled flow of training nor the five-second explosion of the beginning. Something that was somewhere between the two, with the cost of both, but with the availability that four days of practice and the fight of the last few minutes had built without him having planned it entirely.
The green remnant looked at him.
"Do you want another round?" it said, in that voice. "This time there will be nobody to save you."
Yūta did not respond.
He charged.
The movements were different from before — not because he had rested or recovered something he had lost, but because something had changed in the way the body read the situation. More precise. More direct. With less margin wasted between the decision and the execution.
The green remnant dodged the first strike — but with less margin than before.
It dodged the second too — but had to compromise its position to do so, and that placed it where Yūta needed it to be for the third.
The third connected.
Not deeply — the green one had moved enough for the impact to be partial — but it connected, and the remnant stepped back half a pace with something in its expression that had not been there before.
I surprised it, thought Yūta.
The green remnant looked at him with that attention that now had something additional — not fear, not yet, but the recalibration of something that has received information it did not expect to receive.
"Interesting," it said.
The threads appeared on its fingers.
All of them this time — not the two or three from the beginning but more, extending from every finger with that almost invisible fineness that made the light catch them only at certain angles, moving with the precision of something that had used them many times before and knew exactly what they could do.
Yūta looked at them.
The mana was still active — more faint than at the beginning of this round, with the accumulated cost of everything that had happened in the gymnasium, but present. Enough for something more.
How much more exactly was a question that had no available answer at this moment.
The green remnant threw the threads.
Yūta moved.
What followed filled the Misato gymnasium with the sound of something the students in the corner were not going to be able to describe fully when they tried to do so afterwards — not because it was too chaotic to follow but because there was something in the speed and precision of both sides that did not correspond to any frame of reference they had available.
The green remnant was faster than anything Yūta had faced.
Yūta was more precise than anything the green remnant had expected to find.
The threads cut through the air in trajectories that Yūta read with the attention of someone who has learned that anticipating is worth more than reacting — moving towards where the threads were not going to be rather than where they were, using the space of the gymnasium in a way that training with Kaito had built without Yūta having known it was for this.
The green remnant adjusted.
Yūta adjusted too.
The exchange continued — without a clear winner, without either of them landing the kind of definitive strike that would close the equation, with the cost accumulating in Yūta in ways that the green remnant did not feel in the same way and which gave the balance a tilt that was not yet visible but was there.
In the corner, Teacher Okazaki kept pressing against Sota's shoulder with hands that no longer trembled as much — not because the fear had disappeared but because there was something in front of her that required her hands to be steady and that was enough to make them so.
The students watched.
The Misato gymnasium was still the Misato gymnasium — with the artificial light and the wooden floor and the tall windows — except that in this moment it contained something that none of them were going to forget.
And in the centre of that space, Yūta Amane and the green remnant continued.