Night Frost raised her eyes. From the far dark stepped a tall woman in a red-and-white British cut, a figure like frost over scarlet. On each forearm shimmered near-solid Blades of pure Mana, stretching sideways like wings, then thinning to glass.

At this distance? Her breath tightened, a prickle of awe under caution. To nick her Spear from so far—was she a wind-aspected Magic Maiden, or wielding a vicious Magic Tool?

Both could be true, but none of it mattered. Anyone blocking her path was an enemy, a shadow across her moon.

She drew a slow, steady breath. Flame pooled at her wrist like a coiling serpent. She lifted her right hand and hurled the Crimson Gold Spear, putting her whole body behind the throw.

The Spear tore the air with a storm-borne whoosh and drove for the woman’s chest like a comet. The red-clad woman slipped aside in a feather-light flash, then stepped in, and flung the twin Mana Blades off her arms like crescent moons.

The woman’s Mana Blades could travel far like hawks on the wind. Night Frost fought best up close, flame hot at the knuckles; at range, the field felt like thin ice. A few fireballs sputtered like sparks and couldn’t cage the woman’s motion. At this rate, Night Frost had no room to resist. She had to close like a wave onto shore.

The woman sensed that intent. She didn’t block; she bled off cadence. Her strikes slowed, like a metronome winding down. A trap, a honeyed lull in the storm. Night Frost saw the pit, knew it, and still had to step onto the narrow bridge.

She pulled her Spear from the Crimson Gold Flame as if plucking iron from a furnace. The Flame around the shaft broke into several orbs, lanterns meant to seal the woman’s feet and hands.

The woman watched Night Frost draw nearer, excitement brightening her gaze like lantern light under silk. Night Frost thrust, a killing stroke for the heart. The woman didn’t flinch. In that blink, a silver-white miao dao slid from her waist like winter moonlight.

That miao dao was forged from something formidable, steel with a secret, harder than Mana’s own edge. District Twenty One’s Modification Center had clearly plucked rare ore from the bones of the earth.

Steel flashed, a silver arc across a stove of fire, and it caught Night Frost’s gold eyes in its reflection. The miao dao swung. Flame burst like bubbles. The Crimson Gold Spear met Mana against Mana, then snapped in two, and shattered to glittering grit.

Night Frost’s eyes flew wide, disbelief hitting like cold rain. Her spear, true as a sunbeam, broken like straw. She backpedaled, breath sharp; the woman chased like a hunting cat, her miao dao eager to carve a ribbon of Blood.

That fevered gaze unsettled Night Frost, a chill hand on the spine. She steadied, forced fear into a lidded jar. The look was wrong; the fight would decide, not the stare.

The woman held advantage. One slip and Night Frost would earn new scars. Yet the woman seemed to disdain those scars; more than once she lifted, dropped, and sighed, like an artist refusing a crude stroke.

They circled the field five or six times at a dead sprint, two meteors chasing tails. Stalemate held, taut as a bowstring.

Night Frost’s stamina and Mana began to fray, threads burning under strain. She had fought across several battles, trained both breath and flame, learned tricks to stretch her reserves. Her wear time had multiplied dozens of times since her first dressing in armor. Even so, the furnace couldn’t run forever.

The woman clearly craved the scene of Night Frost’s collapse, a rose of defeat under steel. She already poised the miao dao for the final stroke.

Break the stalemate—now. The thought hit like a bell.

Her Mana and strength were the lesser tonight. Close quarters had turned against her. At range, the woman still owned the wind. Array Pattern and array disc were off the table; they ate at the body, and her arm couldn’t swing a Spear too hard. The wooden carving offered only one chance. Both were lifelines she wouldn’t burn yet.

She thought fast, mind like flint. The silver cube, then. That thing always struck from an odd angle. The woman stood close; the pull wouldn’t be strong, the effect not grand. But without the carving, it was the best card.

Night Frost slipped a hand to the empty pouch tied to her Spatial Box and drew out the silver cube. She also took the last Magic Stone cradled within the box, a cold star in her palm.

The motion opened a yawning gap, an exposed throat under moonlight. The woman didn’t know what Night Frost planned, but the distance favored her. In her eyes bloomed a delicate flower of Blood from Night Frost’s chest, a morbid blossom ready to open.

On one side of the miao dao, the woman’s smile ripened, drunk on imminence. On the other, Night Frost’s crimson-gold pupils widened, flame rising to swallow their shine.

It didn’t fall as easy as the woman dreamed. Night Frost flung a wall of fire, and the heat kicked a fierce updraft, a pillar of summer wind. The heart-bound miao dao lifted a hair, pulled by the rising air. Night Frost dropped her center like a stone. The cut pierced her shoulder, not her heart.

Rage hit the woman like a snapped string. Her chosen canvas kept defying her hand, ruining the aesthetic she worshiped. Night Frost could have been a perfect picture on silk; now she chose another path—

To wither while waning, to fade like dusk.

The woman’s assault turned hard. Her eyes sharpened to blades; her blade-work grew lethal. She seized the opening she had earlier dismissed and carved like a storm. In mere seconds, the miao dao and the two Mana Blades scored Night Frost’s skin with hundreds of scarlet lines.

Night Frost didn’t understand this shift, and she had no time to. Reasons were dust in a gale. Death stood a step away, a shadow with a knife. The woman wasn’t top-tier; if Night Frost were whole, they could trade steel to even terms.

Now escape mattered more than pride.

Two roads opened in thought. One: find the passage to the Twelfth District, or turn back to the Tenth. But the Tenth meant a closed net: District Twenty One’s Order Keeper at the exit above, the woman hunting below.

The Twelfth District was unknown, likely guarded too. Still, the chance wasn’t zero. Given a choice, she’d take the Twelfth—because a sliver of life beats a painted coffin.

The other road: wake the fox and try to end the woman in one strike. The risk was a cliff. The odds of a clean kill were tiny. At best, mutual ruin. This wasn’t a final abyss; she would not spend that card.

After so many circles, Night Frost had roughly mapped the entrance to the Twelfth District, a shadowed mouth in stone. But how to move without telegraphing the step?

She reinforced the Crimson Gold Spear, a band of flame bracing iron, and knocked aside the woman’s Mana Blade like batting a wasp. The woman’s miao dao fell in a smooth follow-through, shaving gray-white strands from Night Frost’s hair and grazing her throat with a shallow red line.

Night Frost clenched the silver cube till her knuckles bleached. That exchange had opened a sliver of space. She pressed the Magic Stone to the cube. A faint pull breathed out, like a tide tugging at ankles, drawing on the woman mid-swing.

In that instant, the miao dao dropped faster, a hawk in a dive, but the woman’s center rocked forward, caught by the hidden tide. Night Frost backpedaled, Spear weaving like a windmill. The pull strengthened; the woman’s body drifted toward the Spear point.

The woman saw no clean dodge; the miao dao couldn’t reach. She hacked at the Spear, and flung a Mana Blade at Night Frost’s other hand that held the silver cube, a cleaver for the grip.

Night Frost had to yank her hand back. The cube’s pull went still, a pond without wind. The woman glanced down—and saw the Spear tip buried in her lower abdomen, a sudden thorn.

Her red-and-white British garb turned deep crimson, a wet flag. Luckily, she wore Magic Armor; the Crimson Gold Flame couldn’t catch and climb.

Night Frost’s eye flicked across the hall. She was close to the Twelfth District’s entrance. The woman stood four meters away. With Flame to drive her heels, Night Frost could dive into that corridor and cut down the stairs like a falling spark.

She stepped—and a spike of pain stabbed her mind, cold iron into soft clay. She knew at once: the unruly Black Dragon. It pressed through her battle fervor, choosing her weakest breath to invade her spirit. She couldn’t split focus. The woman’s blade stood inches away. Even if she tried, she couldn’t outmuscle the dragon’s mind; its spirit was stronger, a river against a candle.

The intrusion was light, though, like mist rather than storm. She could grit teeth and bear it.

Plan unchanged. Flame pooled under her feet; walls of fire rose like red gates. The woman’s Mana Blade split a path through the wall, glass slicing paper, but Night Frost dashed for the sealed passage, a fox through reeds.

The woman would not allow escape. Her twin Mana Blades linked, chain into lash. She whipped her right arm, and a Blade like a long, pliant whip swept out, fast as lightning. Night Frost had no room, no angle.

Steel cut her back bone-deep, a gorge carved in flesh. Pain buckled her knees; she stumbled and caught air like broken glass.

The woman surged, a hawk stooping. The Blades split again. Her miao dao poured light like rain. Her voice drifted into the air, a murmur in a shrine.

“At day’s end, eyes watch clouds sink. Light’s wick unlit, blade’s edge yet unseen. Bloom like a flower, fade like a flower… Λουλούδι αίματος!”

Blade-light rose and circled, drawing long arcs around her like petals in wind. Each stroke hung and did not fall, condensing into tight buds, waiting for the moment to burst.

Night Frost forced her body to turn, breath ragged heat. She drew another Spear, iron from fire. She hadn’t expected the woman to pivot this fast. Maybe the woman had already guessed her plan; maybe Night Frost had underestimated her. The woman still held hidden cards.

Flame runes formed over Night Frost’s wrist like glowing script. She pulled an array disc from the cube, a disk etched with amplifying Array Pattern, good for one or two more beats.

“You’re worth this move,” the woman said, voice cool as temple water. “No matter how you struggle, your end is death. So why resist? A death like this lacks beauty.”

Night Frost understood. The woman had held back for the sake of “aesthetic.” Such a twisted taste. Slaughter has no beauty, only ash and Blood.