Janeus vaulted into the air, evading the leaden grey lightning bolts striking the ground. She flipped backward, gripping a refined, elegant blade.
Body Extract:
Speed.
Technique.
Blind Spot.
Technique: Three Vertical, Five Horizontal.
Dropping into a combat stance, Janeus lunged forward, unleashing a sword path that tracked along her designated vector like the savage bite of a ravenous tiger. Her next strike was a horizontal slash, followed sequentially by interlocking vertical and horizontal sword lines.
Upon executing the third horizontal slash, Janeus spun on her heel, delivering a clean X shaped cleave directly across her opponent's frame.
However, quantity was more than capable of overwhelming quality. Immediately after the strike, Janeus's hands began to spasm and bleed—the telltale signature of magic. Her perception suddenly inverted; her field of vision fractured right down the middle and swapped places, projecting the right side on the left, and the left side on the right.
CRASH!!
Janeus took a brutal kick directly to the face, driving her head straight into the wall and burying it deep inside a web of fractures.
The horde of lunatics before her had long since pinned her into a corner. In combat, a corner was practically a death trap—it stripped away all mobility, eliminated escape vectors, and made counterattacks exceptionally difficult against a relentless barrage.
Yet, when fighting numbers over quality, being cornered, while sacrificing flexibility and retreat, effectively prevented the enemy from surrounding her from all four sides. It also set up a bottleneck for wide area destruction, and as the enemies crowded together, it became far easier to maintain a continuous, rhythmic offensive.
Ultimately, Janeus was here strictly to kill—and killing was far more straightforward than subduing an opponent in a ring. Thus, she needed only to attack.
Janeus quickly extricated herself from the cracked wall, glancing at her blade, which had already dulled considerably. The numbers were overwhelming, but that did not mean she was helpless.
She braced her muscles to their absolute limits, simultaneously executing the "Deformity" magic to forcefully override her own biology.
She blocked out the pain, bound her muscles to halt the bleeding, and banished all fatigue. Her five senses were heightened to their absolute peak, forcing her heart to pump and her brain to operate at maximum efficiency.
Though Deformity magic had never been classified as a combat art—and was often lauded by journalists and society as a benevolent grace due to its superior capacity for cell restoration, regeneration, and manipulation—to Janeus, using it purely for recovery in a survival situation was nothing more than turning oneself into a glorified punching bag.
Body Extract:
Speed.
Strength.
Endurance.
Observation.
Muscle Compression.
Janeus lunged into the manic crowd, blade in hand. The weapon radiated a faint, helical aura, forming a precise hexagonal pattern with spiraling lines gracefully tracing the perimeter of the steel.
Killing Technique: Three Rings, Three Vortices.
Blood began to stream from Janeus's nose, but she paid no heed to such trivialities. She threw herself straight into the enemy's grasp, executing a high speed sequence of slashes and thrusts.
To her, the enemies moved so sluggishly they appeared stationary. Janeus left a trail of afterimages in her wake, systematically severing their carotid arteries and tearing the hearts from their chests.
She sliced through them as if cutting through soft mire, her blade gliding like a weightless sheet of paper through the dense, oppressive air, reaping the bloodthirsty horde one by one. The residual afterimages of her sword paths trailed behind her, forming brilliant arcs that enveloped her petite frame.
Click~
In a span of a mere three seconds, she had slaughtered over twenty targets. Ultimately, despite their vast numbers, their cognitive capacity was severely limited, rendering them incapable of calculating and deploying appropriate magical counters.
Yet, as the line of enemies collapsed in droves, Janeus also dropped to her knees. Blood erupted from her eyes and mouth; her vision rapidly snapped back to equilibrium, though it was already heavily obscured by pooling crimson.
Down below, her fair, pristine legs were webbed with prominent, greenish purple veins, and blood began to seep directly from the muscle bundles. Even along her trajectory, her rapid dashes had generated a trail of black smoke, and the soles of her shoes were completely ruined.
To successfully execute these specialized techniques, Ron had forced Janeus to adopt a concept known as "Extract," or the absolute limit—a practice that demanded maxing out a specific physical attribute by sacrificing long term physiological stability.
In other words, it was an all out gamble. But for anomalous bodies like Ron's or Janeus's, it went far beyond a standard gamble; it was a literal dance with the reaper, stepping half a foot inside the gates of death.
She clutched her chest. Fortunately, the massive surge of adrenaline was keeping her alive; the moment it subsided, her heart would inevitably stop with it.
Lảo đảo balancing against a corpse, Janeus forced herself upright. At present, there were still people she needed to protect.
"How fascinating. This is the first time I've ever seen you put your life on the line like this."
Janeus caught the sound of a voice, but she couldn't identify the speaker; her head was ringing violently.
Nonetheless, she managed to deduce the identity of the person instantly.
"Promet… What is the status of the people in the basement?"
Though blood welled up from her throat, choking her speech, a princess's pride would never allow an outsider to witness a breakdown of her resolve.
"Oh… They are perfectly fine. I simply wanted to have a brief word."
Promet materialized within Janeus's blurred field of vision. The princess of a grand empire was currently forced to her knees before a commoner, painfully wiping away her streaming blood.
"…"
"I am aware you claimed to know and trust an individual who is currently hunting for the underlying rules of this mystical event, someone searching for the solution…
However, as you can see, the entire city has suddenly warped, triggering catastrophic devastation across every quadrant…"
Promet, a youth roughly the same age as Janeus, was the person who had assisted Janeus during her disappearance, and one of the very few individuals she trusted. He continued.
"But… out there, whenever a building collapses, a faint golden light manifests in its wake.
In truth, everything within this space—be it magic, architecture, or the inhabitants—is cast in a leaden grey, monochrome palette. Yet the anomaly lies in the fact that you, I, and the phenomenon I just witnessed, all bear distinct colors…"
"…I could discern that much even if I were blind."
Janeus forced herself up, staring unsteadily at Promet.
"Rest assured, the individual I commissioned is fully capable of delivering an answer. One should never doubt that rotting brain of his."
Janeus added.
"Furthermore, my sole directive here is knowledge… the societal structure, history, and politics of this region. Have you finished aggregating them for me? If even a single fragment is missing… everyone here will perish."
Janeus staggered toward the wall, struggling to fish out a cigarette and strike a light. She leaned heavily against the surface, looking as though she might collapse at any moment.
"…Hah~ I'm about to lose my mind again. Bring a living soul to me, whether lucid or maddened, it matters not… I need to deploy my Gift."