*
"Apologies for underestimating you. I'll make sure you properly die in one strike this time." ({Nerve})
No matter what, she couldn't be mad at the opponent. Carelessness was her own fault, but it didn't mean she should just take the beating too. She'll kill, she had to. She took a deep sigh and activated her skill. She reappeared, throwing her fist clenched to the extreme. Her knuckles grew white and magic poured into her arm. She has no physical enhancement magic, she'll have to make do with her raw strength and any strategy she could muster. {Nerve} once again, used his ability to rotate himself, however this time...
Sariel was more than a few metres away. She made use of his anxiety, deliberately faking an attack while keeping a safe distance. Now... She used {Swap} on her enemy to bring him closer, and turn him back around. She lands a clean hit on his liver. Leaving a black bruise on his flesh, she changes to another spot. This time she wouldn't go too far away, and she'll continue the assault.
Shifting to a spot nearby, she kicked him in the solar plexus before teleporting into the air, slamming an axe kick into his head. Losing a few ribs, a skull and her foot wasn't much of a problem, they had regenerated quite quickly. His body was tougher, likely because his magic was based on isolation. Most of the force from her attacks couldn't get through at all. At the moment it's like punching an armoured man, the armour is indenting and punching into his flesh but it's not as much damage as an unarmoured man would take.
Not to mention his fighting skills. After her axe kick, she leapt away. Using teleportation to retreat was dangerous, was this how other people felt? How did Lastia and Arin fight like this? As long as she was alive, Lastia would pick up her sword. Sariel had long acknowledged that she was that sort of irregular existence. Even if Lastia was weak, she would rush headlong into it. Even if she would die, if she had the chance to take out the enemy in one strike she would take it. There was no other magical girl as strange as her, no one who grew strong as fast as she did, no on who understood her thoughts except for maybe Arin.
Did it matter? Do friends need to understand each other to remain friends? It was all perfunctory pleasantries in the end, if one truly valued their companion they wouldn't care if they understood them or not. The act of being alive and well was the most important. Was Lastia alive? Sariel had such doubts. The Lastia she met was the amnesiac plagued by the curse, the countless Lastias that have already perished. The current one could be said to be a new entity.
Maybe the soul and body was the same. Maybe the magic was the same. But the person in the moment wasn't. {Nerve} rushed at her promptly. He mixed in feints and overwhelmed her with martial arts. After the first feint, he threw a powerful kick. Sariel could do nothing but to block with her left arm, she lost her balance and a left punch hit her hard. Before the assault could escalate, she made sure to {Swap} the moment they lost physical contact. She thrust her leg in a forward kick, striking at the back of his shin before {Swapping}, beginning her own assault.
One moment later, she was in the air and she threw her fist at his head. He endured the hit head on and grabbed her arm. Then she {Swapped} away without her arm. He rushed her, closing the distance. He had to keep up the pressure and stop her from healing away all the damage. She felt like a lizard, abandoning a limb or two to survive. The massive problem was that due to {Nerve} as the defensive skill, {Nerve} could physically dismember her, but she couldn't do the same.
He raises two hands, ready to grab and crush her. She activates {Swap} again, putting more distance between the two. She never stops running, through that one interaction she realised that she could retain momentum via {Swap}. The natural limit is her own sprinting speed, and the magic won't increase her speed or power anymore than she could normally muster, but it was better than having nothing.
He chases after her flashing figure, constantly changing locations. She swiftly reached her fastest running speed, {Swapping} closer from another direction, she plunged her fist into his right flank with a leap. He grits his teeth, but ultimately suffer no damage. The power of {Nerve} has made him like an impenetrable fortress, she was doing almost no damage. Soon, it'll be her fist that gets crushed instead.
"Have you begun to see the difference? It doesn't matter how far you pathetic magical girls go, you have reached the level of sentinels, yet this is the chasm in our disparities." ({Nerve})
His defensive power was devastating to begin with, and the longer he engaged in battle, the tougher his defences grow. After a while, even S grade individuals would have a tough time piercing through his defences. He couldn't hold it up forever, and if an S grade used their full power from the start it would be easy to defeat him, but Sariel was no such individual.
Power isn't the way to go. Sariel understood most of all, how pitifully mediocre she was. Any other sentinel and they wouldn't be having this much trouble at the beginning. If she was an A grade, she was the weakest to grace this era at this moment. She has no grand agenda, no greater purpose, or some grand order. All she has is her mediocrity, anyone could reach her level if put in her shoes. She only got this far because fate decreed for her to meet Lastia and Arin.
{Nerve} closed the distance, his fist planted firmly through her spine, I paling her torso and ripping her flesh out from the other side. Her organs slid and spilled onto the floor in fleshy rupture fragments, their membranes torn asunder to the point they couldn't serve any purpose. They were equally as desultory as she was. There was never any greater significance to her.
"Given up?" ({Nerve})
The floor was a dark crimson grimy mess, unidentifiable chunks of fat, bone and fluid was strewn about. Even so, her gaze tightened resolutely. Her eyes betray no despair.
"No. She believed in me." (Sariel)
I can't die here. After all, she called me her victory condition.