Chapter 435: The Battle Between Miyabi and Stelle
Wind howled across the simulated ruined plaza, kicking up plumes of digital dust. Hoshimi Miyabi stood perfectly still amidst the scattered rubble. She slowly exhaled, a visible plume of white mist escaping her lips as she regulated her breathing. Her slender fingers drifted to her waist, resting lightly against the cold, wrapped hilt of her katana, Tailless.
Across the fractured concrete, her fox ears twitched, locking onto her opponent. Miyabi brought her hands together, cupping her fists in a traditional martial salute. Her voice, cool and crisp as a mountain spring, echoed through the arena's audio feed, broadcasting clearly to the spectators outside. "Please, guide me."
A short distance away, Stelle rolled her shoulders, feeling out the digital environment. The simulated space hummed around her, actively reading and replicating her unique physiology. Deep within her chest, the golden thrum of the Stellaron pulsed in tandem with the chaotic, burning power of the Path of Destruction. The energy flared hot and violent, yet the system's safety protocols expertly corralled the destructive force, weaving it into a stabilized framework meant strictly for sparring.
Stelle raised her right hand, her fingers curling inward as if seizing the very fabric of the air. A violent crackle of crimson lightning shattered the empty space. From the dimensional rift, she drew forth her Star Sword. The blade gleamed with a dark, blood-red luster, its design deceptively simple yet radiating a heavy, oppressive gravity. Torrential waves of black-red energy erupted from her core, wrapping around her shoulders like a burning, jagged cloak. The sheer kinetic force of her aura blasted outward, sweeping the heavy concrete rubble away from her boots in a perfect, expanding circle.
A wide, battle-hungry grin stretched across Stelle's face. The golden hue in her eyes burned brighter, fully embracing the theatricality of the moment. Her voice boomed through the arena speakers, dripping with her signature, unapologetic chuunibyou flair.
"As a sign of respect for a true warrior, I shall not hold back! Step forward, challenger! Show me the true weight behind the title of Hollow Hunter!"
Beyond the reinforced glass of the spectator booth, March 7th groaned, burying her face in her hands. "This girl..." she mumbled through her fingers, her voice laced with second-hand embarrassment. "Can't she tone it down just a little? The dramatic opening, those cheesy lines, the evil red aura... she's acting exactly like the final demon king of a JRPG! It's so embarrassing!"
Beside her, Dan Heng stood with his arms crossed. His face remained a mask of stoic indifference, though a microscopic twitch tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Down in the center of the 'stage', Stelle was blissfully oblivious to her companion's suffering. Or, more accurately, she was entirely lost in her own sauce. She stood tall amidst the swirling crimson energy, absolutely convinced that she looked impossibly cool, radiating an aura of majestic power that mere mortals could only dream of comprehending.
Miyabi, however, remained completely unfazed by the theatrical display. Her icy blue eyes narrowed, sharpening into a predator's focus. Every stray thought, every distraction of the outside world melted away. Her breathing slowed to a rhythmic crawl, perfectly aligning her physical body with the dormant steel at her hip.
She knew better than to underestimate the Trailblazer. The memories of the Epis Port Hollow were still fresh in her mind. She vividly recalled the terrifying heat of Stelle's strike—a blazing inferno that had incinerated the Ethereal swarm and looked as though it might cleave the very sky in two. That, coupled with Mr. Welt's gravity-crushing, light-devouring Simulated Black Hole, had burned a permanent impression of the Astral Express crew's monstrous strength into her memory.
Because of that, testing the waters was out of the question. Miyabi intended to go all out from the very first breath.
Without another word, the foxian swordswoman vanished.
It wasn't teleportation; her muscles had simply fired with such explosive, kinetic force that her acceleration completely bypassed the limits of human perception. To the untrained eyes in the audience, she was nothing more than a blurred, pale-blue streak of lightning tearing across the ruined plaza. One millisecond she was standing a hundred meters away; the next, a freezing gust of wind blasted Stelle's hair back as the lethal, silver glint of a drawn katana materialized inches from her face.
A suffocating, sub-zero chill preceded the steel, carrying a singular, absolute intent to sever everything in its path.
[Winter Bee: Zenith]
The iaijutsu draw was flawless—fast, ruthlessly accurate, and utterly lethal. It pushed the very concept of high-speed assassination to its absolute pinnacle. Any ordinary combatant would have found their throat slit before their brain even registered the movement.
But Stelle's dynamic vision and battle-forged instincts were anything but ordinary.
"Come at me!"
Just as the pale-blue arc threatened to bite into her neck, Stelle let out a fierce, ringing shout. Her Star Sword blurred upward, intercepting the lethal trajectory. The heavy, black-red flat of her blade caught the razor-thin edge of Tailless with millimeter precision.
CLANG!
A deafening, metallic shriek echoed through the arena, the sheer force of the impact sending a visible shockwave rippling through the simulated air. Miyabi's blinding thrust, backed by immense kinetic momentum, slammed into a dead halt against Stelle's heavy, horizontal guard.
Friction ignited at the cross-section of their weapons, showering the concrete in a cascade of brilliant orange sparks. Despite her ultimate strike being stonewalled, Miyabi's icy gaze didn't so much as flicker. It was exactly as she had calculated.
With a microscopic twist of her wrist, Miyabi weaponized the violent recoil. She allowed her katana to glide frictionlessly up the length of the Star Sword, her lithe body spinning into the momentum like a phantom butterfly. The katana carved a freezing, crescent-moon arc from the ground up, the tip aiming directly for the underside of Stelle's jaw.
The transition was terrifyingly fluid, devoid of even a fraction of a second of hesitation.
Yet, Stelle adapted instantly. She forced her heavy blade downward, riding Miyabi's upward momentum, and sharply twisted her wrists. The heavy crossguard of the Star Sword slammed down, brutally pinning the rising katana strike.
But Miyabi's assault was far from over. The blocked strike was merely the spark that ignited the powder keg.
"Frost Moon," she whispered, her breath turning to ice.
In the blink of an eye, the foxian's silhouette fractured, splitting from a single entity into a dozen overlapping phantoms. They weren't magical clones. Her footwork had simply accelerated to such a sickening velocity that she painted the narrow space with tangible, lingering afterimages.
Pale-blue streaks of steel, cold and merciless as winter moonlight, erupted simultaneously from the front, the flanks, the rear, and even the diagonal airspace above. Miyabi occupied impossible angles, weaving an inescapable, omnidirectional cage of death that rapidly collapsed upon the Trailblazer. Every single flash of steel carried lethal, physical weight, slicing through the oxygen with a high-pitched whistle. It looked as though an entire squad of Miyabis was executing a synchronized execution.
Up in the spectator stands, a chorus of sharp gasps rippled through the gathered crowd.
Soukaku pressed her hands against the glass, her golden eyes blown wide and her mouth hanging open. She refused to blink, absolutely terrified of missing a single frame of the high-speed clash. A few seats over, Harumasa had casually slipped his smartphone from his pocket. He leaned back, the camera lens perfectly framed on the arena monitors, quietly recording every second of this unmatched, interdimensional heavyweight bout.
Trapped within the blinding epicenter of the bladed storm, Stelle didn't panic. Instead, a low, genuinely thrilled chuckle rumbled in her chest.
"Now that's more like it!"
Her grip tightened on the Star Sword until her leather gloves creaked. She didn't waste energy trying to track the elusive, hyper-speed afterimages. Instead, she planted her boots firmly into the concrete and swung her heavy blade in massive, sweeping arcs. She abandoned complex swordplay entirely, relying purely on brutal, fundamental physics—heavy blocks, crushing parries, and explosive horizontal slashes.
Driven by the raw, burning engine of the Destruction Path, her muscles fired with monstrous speed. The heavy Star Sword blurred into a solid wall of black-red energy, weaving a violently spinning, airtight sphere of pure kinetic defense around her body.
Ding! Ding! Ding! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
A torrential storm of high-speed collisions detonated across the ruined plaza, the overlapping metallic shrieks sounding like a hailstorm of bullets shredding through armor. Showers of blinding sparks bloomed relentlessly against Stelle's spherical guard, wreathing the Trailblazer in a gorgeous, highly volatile halo of fire and ice.
Every single one of Miyabi's strikes was surgically precise and aimed at a vital artery. Yet, every single one of Stelle's brutal parries arrived at the exact millisecond needed to shatter the attack's momentum. The two combatants vanished into a blinding vortex of clashing steel and erupting energy. The sheer concussive force of their overlapping shockwaves tore through the plaza, grinding the surrounding concrete pillars and heavy rubble into a fine, powdery dust.
Miyabi pushed her acceleration even further, her silhouette dissolving into a continuous, pale-blue ribbon of light. The trajectory of her katana became utterly chaotic—one moment delivering the piercing, localized lethality of a Winter Bee, the next scattering into the wide, sweeping barrage of a Frost Moon, all while drifting around Stelle's heavy counters with the weightless grace of falling snow.
She smoothly married her peerless swordsmanship with the absolute zero properties of Tailless. Wherever the katana sliced through the air, jagged trails of frost crystallized in its wake. The ambient temperature plummeted, the encroaching ice actively attempting to freeze the joints of Stelle's armor and lock down her explosive footwork.
But Stelle stood her ground, an unshakable, burning fortress anchored in the center of the blizzard. Her counter-attacks were bold, sweeping, and devastatingly heavy, yet they never lacked precision. She weaponized her overwhelming physical strength, constantly using brutal, wide-arcing offenses as her primary defense, frequently forcing the hyper-fast Miyabi to abort her assassinations and retreat to avoid being cleaved in half.
In mere minutes, the sparring match within the simulated ruins had escalated into a white-hot, devastating spectacle. Two absolute powerhouses from entirely different universes clashed in the center of the digital arena, holding absolutely nothing back as they poured their skills, their raw power, and their unbreakable wills into every single strike.
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