Last time Saya witnessed Rias in action, he effortlessly neutralized her best friend and violently snapped nearly half of her body off with a single bite.
Despite not knowing the full extent of his capabilities, there was no telling whether he had the anti-magic curse activated.
But at least now, she knew that the monster possessed the ability not only to expand its body and open its jaw to an absurd extent, but also to transform what were once people into creatures so abhorrent that it nearly seized her mental functions.
If not for her pure anger and disdain toward Rias, she would have most likely passed out, adding another face to the overgrown arm of mud.
On the other end of the spectrum, Rias stood before the girl who had bested both him and Sulva within the span of thirty seconds. Her speed, her optimized movements, and her sheer raw power were something the mud-man was not willing to experience again.
Had he been faced against the feeble Saya Idlansil, he would have had no problem lunging at her by now. But the eyes she carried instilled a deep fear within his veins. His focus slipped, forcing his mud-like state to fluctuate on and off.
To the cultist, staring into her gem-like eyes was like being struck by a petrification spell, binding him in place with chains of pure, agonizing terror. With each tick of the clock, his breath seized as he felt what seemed like an anvil dropping from his heart to his feet.
His leg shook slightly as the young mage took slow steps closer, making only the smallest movements.
Of course, for Saya, this was merely the result of her curiosity as she drew closer to confirm whether the silhouette before her truly belonged to the person she believed it did.
Both feared the other, and neither was willing to test that theory.
However, Rias had a major flaw in his assumptions. Oktavia was not currently inhabiting Saya’s body, but even so, she was far from powerless. The last week of pure, unfiltered practice had given Saya a slight edge.
Wielding a magical technique that was not widely practiced, battling against arcane magic would be like traversing a maze blindfolded. He knew his immunities to certain magics well, and thanks to his duel with the Sword Saint, he had taken extra precautions against wind magic.
But raw energy was an entirely different beast.
For each step Saya took forward, he took one back.
“—!”
At last, Saya noticed her opponent’s odd movements. The monstrous hand stood still, awaiting its master’s orders.
But its master was too preoccupied with driving himself farther and farther away from the mage, inching closer to the wall behind him.
Is he scared of me?
The thought flowed through Saya’s mind. Her desire to turn off her Soul Sight vanished as adrenaline surged through her bloodstream. The creature before her unsettled her beyond belief, but as long as her gaze remained fixed on Rias, she felt like a completely different being.
Perhaps it was the faces that disturbed her, as she was still not used to seeing the bodies of the dead, especially ones twisted into such grotesquely animated expressions. But hatred was one emotion she was deeply familiar with.
Taking a deep breath, a blue glow filled Saya’s arms and legs. To her, it was merely routine, the simple activation of her abilities. But to Rias, the sight was the one he feared most. In his mind, if Saya intended to leap toward him, there would be little time left to counterattack.
“Kill her!” he exclaimed at the hand, before slowly seeping his body through the wooden cracks beneath him.
Leaving him with no chance to escape, Saya dashed forward, using the power of her Physical Strengthening technique to aid her initial burst of momentum. Her robe fluttered in the wind as her boots left a small impact crater in the church floor.
The world around her remained in a state of deep blue, isolating her targets within her vision. But another factor filled her sight, as mirages of what appeared to be older versions of herself performing the same action flickered before her.
From Saya’s point of view, she intended to dash so quickly that the hand would not be able to react in time, hoping to land at least a single blow on Rias.
But the faint, static mirage ahead told a different story. Along the trajectory of her path, a version of herself leaned to the left, an invisible spear piercing through her right abdomen.
He was so close, and within a second she would finally enact the first part of her revenge for what the cultist had done to Albo. But as she closed the distance, a buzzing sensation overtook her body, numbing her physical senses.
No matter how much she desired to push forward, her mind, body, and soul sent constant warning alarms, urging her to retreat.
The last time she defied that feeling, half of her body had been bitten off by Rias.
Shifting her body weight through Physical Strengthening, she leaned backward as her heels screeched along the wooden planks. Just before reaching the hand, she planted her left foot, using it like a piston to launch herself back.
Unaware of her change in tactics, the hand fired a spike of mud resembling a lance. It shot precisely where Saya would have been, and the aftermath would have meant her death.
Back at where she started, Saya closely analyzed the mirages before her. It wasn’t just one or two, there were dozens of possible scenarios she could take.
She hadn’t been certain before, but now Saya fully confirmed that the mirages were versions of herself from previous loops, each path leading to the next step for victory.
The straight route ahead carried the most casualties, ending with her body impaled or torn apart by an internal explosion.
Before Saya could plan her next course of action, the hand began to glow with a mixture of four colors.
The four victims whose bodies had been claimed by the mud-man still bore their Birthmarks, and like a twisted puppeteer, it commanded their souls to cast elemental magic at the mage before them.
Without warning, blazing fireballs shot toward Saya, each one unrelenting in speed. She used her accelerated movement to dodge the initial volley, but with the hand merged with so many bodies, it was capable of casting different types of magic simultaneously.
After a brief tremor, spikes of stone erupted from the ground. Leaping backwards, Saya tried to gather her thoughts on how to counter the opponent before her. From Albo’s previous fight against Veronica, she knew that taking to the air would be suicide.
Even if I didn’t draw that conclusion…
Saya lifted her gaze upward, watching a mirage meet its end as multiple spikes pierced through her skin and skull.
I can clearly see myself dying.
Despite possessing such an ability, the overwhelming number of mirages made it difficult for her to discern which deaths occurred when. The timelines blurred together, victories and failures layered atop one another in a chaotic haze.
Oktavia said she can’t come back. So if I die here, it’ll be actually over.
She was presented with two choices: vault through the pews on the right, where no mirages appeared, or follow a potentially successful route to her left.
To the right, numerous deaths flickered into existence, but thin gaps between the visions suggested small windows where she might slip through unharmed.
To the left, the path was mapped by prior experience, each step marked by a version of herself that had nearly succeeded. It was more dangerous in one sense, yet more predictable in another.
What would Oktavia do?
Her past self would choose the most optimized route, move left, weave carefully, trust the pattern, eliminate inefficiency.
But doing so meant exposing herself to the overwhelming flood of mirages, risking paralysis from overanalysis, becoming too cautious at the worst possible moment.
Now she understood why Oktavia had seemed so cold, so detached. To follow the mirages perfectly required the shedding of hesitation, of fear, of self-preservation itself.
Perhaps if this had been a training exercise, Saya would have had no problem experimenting with new tactics and techniques. But in a life-or-death situation, she needed to follow the path laid out before her to achieve absolute success.
With a deep breath, she rolled to the left, narrowly avoiding the incoming magical barrage. The rows of pews proved useful; thick wood splintered under the assault, but the layered benches acted as staggered shields, absorbing much of the impact and breaking the spells’ momentum before they could reach her.
The hand may have possessed overwhelming spell quantity, but it certainly lacked refined power.
Saya paused behind her cover as the magical barrage ceased for a brief moment—only to resume once more.
It’s like a turret.
If I run out during its short break, I might be able to bombrush it.
Drawing in a slow breath, she visualized magical energy coursing through her limbs. It flowed from her core into her legs and arms, swelling far beyond what she typically allowed during training with Hana, nearly double her usual output.
The strain came immediately. Her muscles tightened, veins pulsing beneath her skin as heat built along her nerves.
For every five seconds of magical assault, there was a two-second lull in between.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
The hand paused.
Now!
She hurled herself sideways, locking into the route she had chosen. Mana detonated through her legs, and Saya burst forward, her trajectory wildly unbalanced.
A palm slammed against the Church’s stone wall, the impact serving as a crude brace to redirect her momentum. Her shoulder scraped along the edge, the jagged rock tearing through fabric and skin.
She felt the sharp, hot sting of the friction, her body’s silent protest against the recklessness of the move. But the impact worked, pivoting her frame back into a dead sprint. If she hadn’t used the environment before her, there was little to no chance that would have been able to drastically change directions so quickly.
One second passed, and Saya was nearly at the end of the Church.
Mirages showed her death when she reached the dead-end wall. Others showed her dying when she stopped too early. But there was one clear pathway, one that had not yet reached its end.
She folded her left knee and planted her foot against the wall. Reaching the mirage that led to success, she followed its exact movements, kicking off the surface and launching herself across the room toward the hand.
Magical energy surged into her right arm as she drew it back.
In retaliation to the reckless mage, the hand prepared another barrage of ice spells. At this distance, the attack would function like a shotgun. A single volley would be enough to impale her and end her life.
As she closed the gap, an unfortunate truth surfaced, one of the versions that had used this same approach had been killed by that very shotgun of ice now forming before her.
But by now, Saya understood where the hand preferred to release its spells.
The fingerprints that inhabited each one of the fingers.
Unfortunately for the hand, fingerprints only faced one direction.
Shifting her weight into her upper body, she rolled forward.
With the sudden drop in height, the hand was forced to readjust its aim. But by the time it recognized its mistake in focusing on a single point, it was already too late.
Truthfully, she wasn’t certain whether the hand could shoot magic from behind, but it was a risk she had to take.
From what she knew, the hand could launch spikes from its body, and all she needed to do was dismantle and distract her opponent before it could activate its defensive mechanism.
Behind its dorsum, Saya unwound her punch like a boxing glove released from a spring. As her fist cut through the air, a faint resistance pressed against her knuckles. She had no time to dwell on it, no room for hesitation or second thoughts.
In the microsecond before impact, she overfilled her fist with as much magical energy as it could withstand and drove it forward, piercing through the barrier.
Before her physical fist could touch the mud, a short beam of blue light shot forward like a bullet, piercing through the hand’s mud-like body. As the glimmer of the bullet shocked Saya at what she had just done, the hand started to recover its pierced body at a rapid pace.
Of course, physical attacks alone were not sufficient to take down a spawn of Rias.
But having encountered Rias, and having seen him fight against Hana, her goal had never been to fully defeat the monster before her through physical prowess alone. If the minion refused to solidify its body, then she would aim for the next best thing—
Something she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, would end the suffering of those trapped inside the vile clump of mud and meat.
Before it could enclose its body fully, she reached out with her left arm, gripping something invisible to both the hand and the rest of the world.
A thread only she could perceive.
And only she could pull.
Whenever she utilized this unique ability, she emptied her mind, granting whatever she killed an easy death. She knew the consequences of forcefully yanking a thread all too well, it had haunted her entire life.
An invisible force resisted her pull, as magical energy imploded from within the hand’s body. So, with a single swift motion, she pulled her arm back, yanking the invisible thread tethered to the soul.
The thread may have been long due to the victims’ wills to die, but the newly born monster wished for a long and prosperous life. But to steal one’s life was tantamount to not living at all, and the mage knew all too well of that fact.
She had never encountered such weight when severing a soul before. But she was unwilling to give the monster before her any time to react, and her body snapped into its next action.
Like a labored worker carrying a cart of bricks, Saya wrapped the thread around her shoulder.
If her arm strength wasn’t enough to tear the thread free, then she would use the weight of her entire body.
As she slipped backward, she planted her right foot forward and hurled herself in the opposite direction the hand was facing, turning her retreat into leverage. Saya grunted at the struggle of having to pull multiple souls, its weight holding her down.
Images of lives that once were, from birth to death, flashed through her mind. Unlike the animals she had dissolved before, these memories surged forth in a single instant, leaving her no time to process the lives she was about to sever.
“—ngh… gh… GAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!”
With a roar rising from her chest, she released the accumulated frustration welled up within her soul, pouring every ounce of her will into this final attempt at victory.
This battle wasn’t just for her, but also for the boy she trained so desperately to save.
The air rebelled against her, and yet despite that, she pushed forward as much as she could before finally breaking the barrier. Shattering through the wind’s resistance, she was flung across the room.
As a last second defense, she barely managed to raise an arm to shield her body before slamming into the stone wall. The impact was a dull, bone-jarring thud that knocked the air from her lungs.
The hand erupted in magical energy, the ground shaking violently before it collapsed with a ghastly, wet cry.
As the dust slowly settled, Saya lay on the ground, gasping for air.
I’m alive.
I really did it.
The mirages that had haunted her slowly dissipated, as if destroying the hand had triggered their disappearance. Her Soul Sight finally deactivated, and the world around her returned to its natural colors.
Her eyes darted across the stage, glaring at Rias.
Saya swallowed, forcing herself to take a deep breath before standing ready for the next battle. She raised her arms, ready for Rias’ counterattack.
Her body felt surprisingly light despite the immense amount of magical energy she had expended. Normally, the use of her Soul Sight alone drained both her physical and mental strength, but even after overexerting herself, she felt strangely rejuvenated and alert.
The door burst open as several knights rushed inside with their weapons drawn.
In a violent burst of speed, Rias shot toward the open door. Saya readied herself to protect the knights, only to find the mud-man ignoring what seemed like prime targets, opting to leave as quickly as he could instead.
By the time Saya sprinted toward the door, Rias had vanished completely.
With a light chuckle, Saya laid back down on the cold floor beneath her, the winter wind slamming against her from head to toe. As the knights watched the young mage in confusion, she closed her eyes, spreading her arms and legs out like a starfish.
“I won, I actually won.”
A wide, triumphant smile spread across her face, stretching from ear to ear as she let the adrenaline of victory rush through her.
The sensation was electric, a sharp contrast to the crushing weight she was often used to, as the thrill of the win finally took hold of her heart and soul.