Overkill: Incarnations Chapter 9: Chapter 9: Round 2,...Fight!

Read chapter 9 of Overkill: Incarnations by Kudo_Aosakka on NovelPedia.

Round 2..., fight!. ...,,, The supersonic boom from Kurael’s devastating punch had barely finished echoing through the white bone coliseum . Where Shiunoko had been standing , was now a brilliant constellation of fractures spreading outward across her figure. The cracks were webbed and luminous, resembling the surface of a frozen lake that had just taken the weight of a dropped boulder. For a fraction of a second, the glowing fractures held her exact shape, outlining a pale torso and the precise angle of her crossed arms braced for impact. Then her figure shattered and collapsed as she vanished . Shards of what looked like pale, translucent glass scattered outward in a wide arc, catching the shifting phosphene-light from the Eigengrau sky above before dissolving into pure nothingness before they could touch the stage floor. Kurael slowly lowered his fist. He looked at the empty pocket of air where the shards had gone, his expression completely unreadable. High above, the coliseum crowd, consisting of all five hundred thousand identical golden human faces, went briefly and collectively silent. "My... you're quite the gentleman." Her voice drifted from somewhere across the stage, entirely composed. Kurael turned smoothly on his heel to face the origin of the sound. Shiunoko was standing a considerable distance away, casually holding both of her heavy iron folding fans. She tilted her head slightly, making her rectangular red-and-white talismans sway against her pale cheeks. The serene smile on her face carried a distinct quality of mild amusement. Kurael straightened his posture, his dark eyes narrowing. The faint, irritating warmth that had crept into his face during the introductions had not entirely left the flesh. He chose to ignore it entirely. "A mirror substitute, huh." he said, his tone flat. "Perhaps it was , perhaps it wasn't," she replied pleasantly. If he had struck a mirror substitute, it would indeed explain the complete lack of physical resistance a normal body held. The moment she broke like glass was a tell he had filed away a half-second too late. Real flesh did not shatter into luminous fragments, nor did real bone dissolve before it hit the ground. He had struck something intricately constructed from either her inate techniques or her soul-bound artifact, mistaking it for the real thing because the duplicate had moved with her exact grace and carried her exact presence. Which meant her faded, elusive presence applied to her reflections as well. He could not distinguish the original from the copies by tracking her battle style alone. It is either a perfect copy of herself or a mirror displacement, Kurael summarized the theory silently in his thoughts. 'But how can I be certain which is which? I am no oracle, nor do I possess a basic appraisal skill.' He lampooned the situation inwardly before a sudden realization struck him. 'Wait. An oracle, appraisal... It is so obvious.' He catalogued the flaw in his approach. During the entire opening exchange, he had been operating almost entirely on sight . He had tracked her movements visually, anticipated her attacks visually, and reacted only to what his eyes saw . When the reflection had broken like glass, he had known it only because he could see the shards. He had been fighting an opponent with only one sense when he had immediate access to several. This was a glaring gap, not within his innate authority ,tho, but somewhere much lower down in his basic combat foundations. The crowd erupted into a fresh wave of cheers as Shiunoko took three quiet steps to her left. As she moved, the air around her body warped strangely. It distorted like the surface of a still pond disturbed from several directions at once, and from those spatial ripples, multiple figures emerged. Precisely three of them. Each duplicate possessed the same white robe, the same dark silk fringe across the forehead, and the same polished iron fans held at the exact same predatory angle. They all carrie