For a moment, the wind over the training ground seemed to freeze.
The blue cursed energy that had been boiling off Kaede's body like steam suddenly settled into something eerie and controlled.
It was no longer the violent turbulence born from poor control. Instead, it became a thin, transparent film, deep and steady as flowing water, fitted tightly over every inch of skin and every crease of his clothes without a gap.
The shift changed the feeling in the air. The pressure was no longer sharp and stabbing. It became something heavy instead, damp and cold, like moisture pressing against the lungs.
Kaede stepped back half a pace, staff held horizontally in front of him, his dark red eyes locked on the purple-clad figure ahead.
Mei Mei noticed the change.
Her pale, porcelain-like fingers brushed lightly over the haft of the axe. Her braid swayed in the wind, partly veiling the cold, appraising look she wore when studying prey.
From where she stood, the cursed energy that had been full of obvious openings was now drawing itself inward, becoming a single seamless whole. That speed of evolution was enough to make the instincts of a Grade 1 sorcerer sound a low internal alarm.
"What excellent self-management. All that noisy waste has been filtered out. This smoothness of flow... it's like watching an unstable stock suddenly settle into a perfectly managed high performer."
Mei Mei let out a light laugh. The crow on her shoulder beat its wings hard and rose into the sky, circling above the training ground as a black ring.
The cursed energy around her began gathering at the tips of her feet. Around the blade of the heavy axe, the air itself twisted faintly under the density of the compression.
"So then... what kind of defense are you planning to use to offset the cost of this move?"
The instant the question ended, Mei Mei left behind a crater where she had been standing and crossed several yards in a blink.
She did not attack with a direct swing. Instead, using the axe as a pivot, she twisted up off it, her whole body riding the momentum into the air.
Her dark purple skirt opened like a flower mid-spin, and with her cursed energy concentrated to that level, every movement of hers cracked with small sonic bursts.
At the edge of the woods, Megumi's shoulders, which had eased very slightly when he saw the change in Kaede's cursed energy, tightened again with even deeper concern.
Sweat rolled down from his temple along the line of his jaw. His dark green eyes jumped constantly between the two fighters.
"His cursed energy efficiency went up by more than one level. That flow pattern... is he imitating the circulation of water itself?
He's neutralizing Mei Mei-senpai's technique through amplification, but now she's switched to a pure contest of output and reinforcement."
Megumi muttered under his breath, his gaze locking onto the crow above all the shifting movement.
"Watch the shadows. Kaede, she's sharing vision through the crows. What you're seeing in front of you might only be there to funnel you into the real trap."
And just as if to prove him right, one of the crows circling above let out a sharp, terrible cry.
Its whole body was instantly wrapped in thick black cursed energy, turning into a dense black projectile with the violence of a suicidal strike, diving straight for the back of the black-haired boy's heart.
At the same time, Mei Mei, now directly in front of him, shifted the giant axe from a diagonal chop into a flat sweeping line, sealing off every route forward.
"So this is the peak of crow manipulation, Bird Strike... seriously?
This world really is something else. And these ridiculous teachers are even worse."
Kaede wanted to complain, but there was obviously no time.
The killing move of Bird Strike was absurdly fast and carried terrifying penetration.
But Kaede himself was resistant to purely physical damage, which meant that in his case the move's actual effect was limited... so he could have exploited that difference in information and rushed straight in to win by surprise.
But...
That was the mindset of dead weight.
The physical immunity provided by his technique existed to give him room for error while learning to operate, not to become the foundation of his fighting style.
If he relied on it as his main method of combat, then he would never progress.
And this was a trial.
"What I need to do... is defeat you without using a full domain expansion or relying on my technique's physical immunity!"
Kaede's eyes went suddenly cold.
"Beat you!"
He triggered amplification again.
The thick black cursed energy coating the sacrificial crow exploded against the edge of his amplification like black ink being violently torn apart, leaving behind a scorched smell in the air.
At the final instant before that dark blur could punch through his defense, Kaede's body tilted hard to the right. His toes scraped a line through the turf, and he barely slid past the bloody draft the crow carried.
But the giant axe from the front had already arrived.
The muscles in Mei Mei's arms tightened beneath the fitted sleeves. The heavy blade screamed through the air and split straight into the center of the hardwood staff Kaede had thrown up to block.
With a crack sharp enough to set teeth on edge, the wood fibers gave way instantly under the force.
Inside the invisible film of amplification, the dense violet light wrapped around the axe was neutralized and stripped away, but the pure physical force of a Grade 1 sorcerer still came pouring through the point where the weapons met.
Kaede's arms dropped heavily, the webs of his hands trembling.
In the final fraction of a second before the staff fully broke, his back foot kicked off the ground. Riding the rebound of the impact, he flew backward, the hem of his deep blue uniform whipping wildly through the air, narrowly avoiding the icy edge of the axe as it passed just in front of his nose.
At the same time, Kaede's right hand closed death-tight around the broken half of the staff as he moved. The blue cursed energy around it shifted instantly from calm flowing water into a compressed, violent state, wrapping around the wood splinters.
He turned through the shoulder, rotated through the hips, and threw in one smooth motion.
The broken staff became a short bolt fired from a heavy ballista, dragging a visible white cone of compressed air behind it as it shot straight at Mei Mei's brow.
Mei Mei's pale blue eyes sharpened slightly.
The hand on the axe did not move. Her upper body merely shifted less than an inch with a laziness that bordered on insulting.
Crack!
The broken wood shot past her braid and buried itself in the trunk of a tree behind her, blasting out a deep hole the size of a fist.
"That was calculated beautifully.
Using the instant of weapon breakage to create a visual blind spot and attack gap... honestly, the added value on that move almost offsets the depreciation cost of the staff itself."
Mei Mei held the giant axe in one hand and let the remaining half of the staff drop to the ground.
Then she ran the tip of her tongue lightly along the edge of her lower lip, her gaze lingering on Kaede's dark red eyes for a second as the cursed energy around her began taking on an unstable, high-frequency vibration.
"But by throwing away your only close-range weapon as a consumable too, you've just doubled the cost of every defensive action you make from here on out."
"She's too fast... no, not just fast. That wasn't something speed alone through cursed energy could explain...
I hid that attack extremely well, so if there's one answer, it has to be..." Kaede's eyes flicked upward toward the crows still circling above.
"Taking them all out at once would be difficult. But from desperation, something new can still be born."
From the shade at the edge of the woods, Megumi had already unconsciously reached toward the pouch at his waist where he kept his cursed tools.
The dark green of his eyes reflected the wreckage of broken stone across the training field as his gaze swept back and forth between Mei Mei and Kaede, the crease in his brow deepening further and further.
"It wasn't just the amplification. Even the force behind that throw was enhanced with precise cursed energy control.
If Mei Mei-senpai hadn't already predicted the trajectory, that strike would have decided the match."
The lower half of Megumi's face was hidden in shadow, but his low voice still carried unmistakable tension.
"Kaede's cursed energy consumption is already near a critical threshold, and Mei Mei-senpai hasn't even taken one real breath.
Without the staff, if he tries to hard-block a weapon that heavy using amplification alone, his body will collapse first."
And just as Megumi said, Mei Mei crossed the space between them again in the next heartbeat.
The giant axe rose from low to high, carving an enormous crescent through the air, the target no longer the weapon, but Kaede's jaw at the exact instant when his old force had already gone and the next had not yet been born.