Unease rose first. The enemy’s smile carried a foul omen, like being forced to jab a latrine maggot with a bare finger.

What must come to pass will come to pass. She’d already dealt with the Dragonbone Cannon behind her, yet a strange thing felt incoming from her rear.

The feeling hit hard, not soft—urgent as a drumbeat in the ribs. Whatever flew at her was close, maybe half a meter away.

She glanced at Sans and the grin tugging his mouth. The truth clicked—she’d been set up. Annoyance simmered; he wouldn’t meet her head‑on, he’d attack from shadows.

Still, she accepted it. In a fight, using your head isn’t a sin; it’s a blade.

But.

Admitting his tactic wasn’t admitting defeat. His bones against her front? She didn’t care. One arm could parry; the other could block the strike from behind.

Schemes mean nothing before absolute strength—they’re all muda, all for nothing.

Ding—

A bell‑bright chime froze her moving arm, stopped it cold in the literal sense.

Her body locked the instant that clear chime rang, as if strings cinched her joints tight.

From the corner of her eye, a thin blue film rose over her skin, cold as pond ice. Her mind rejected it as foreign—Sans had layered it on her to seal that one instant.

She shot him a heated look. His yellow‑blue neon eye flickered and curved, a mocking smile without lips.

No surprise followed. With Ling restrained, the bone from behind slammed her waist. Sans blinked away in a seamless glide, smooth as drifting clouds and running water.

As the sole victim, Ling crashed into the wall not far off, leaving a shallow human‑shaped dent, a one‑to‑one stamp of her frame.

Sans reappeared where he’d been, his eyes sinking under his cap’s shadow, unreadable as a shut door.

Crack… crunch…

Ling pulled free from the wall with ease, no slapstick struggle to tug her head loose.

Her feet settled on solid floor. She rubbed the aching spot at her waist, a touch of mixed feeling flickering through her gaze.

Hey—why didn’t you aim for my heart when you had the perfect opening?

He shouldn’t know she could tank his strike, yet in that “duel to the death” he’d picked her waist over her heart.

He’d skipped a killing blow to hit what only disables, not destroys.

Missed his aim? That excuse was self‑comfort dressed as truth. Only one unlikely answer remained—a feeling an Undead shouldn’t carry: mercy.

Marked as a “strange Undead” in Ling’s mind, Sans calmly smoothed his clothes, ruffled by teleport wind, and answered without opening his mouth.

Pardon. My eye wandered.

While saying that, his yellow‑blue eye fixed on Ling’s small frame, like he meant to see through everything hidden beneath it. After a few seconds, his gaze slid away, as if nothing yielded.

Ling never noticed the small tell. She was still chewing on the phrase “my eye wandered.”

The taut string called “battle” suddenly slackened. Both stood there, motions stilled, neither striking, neither speaking to break the odd lull.

But a fight is a fight. It doesn’t end with two statues trading looks and silence.

Ling laughed. A sly, witch‑sharp laugh curled from her lips, and even Alicia, watching afar, felt a chill steal down her spine.

You missed. That makes you very unlucky.

She finished, and her form flickered like Sans’s—blink, blink—then, to Alicia’s straining eyes, shrank into a bead of light, a straight‑line streak tearing toward Sans.

The speed was a world apart from before. The Ling of now and the Ling of then were sky and earth, two different beings.

Sans’s eye couldn’t catch her at all. By the time his brain screamed danger, his body was already pinned to the floor, his view full of Ling and the ceiling above.

Ling pressed the Skeleton’s frame down with one hand. Her right fist lifted. Green threads coiled along forearm and knuckles, a weave that could punch through iron with ease.

Emerald pupils locked on the yellow‑blue pulse of his eye. In that heartbeat, their positions flipped cleanly.

You failed for one reason. Even at the edge of death, you chose to hold back.

She said it, and her right hand swung without mercy, magic slicing the air as it fell.