"Haaah~"
Jane let out a lazy yawn. Ten years had passed, and the hair Nanoda had once severed had grown back to her shoulders.
The contrast between them was stark — Jane in her white backless dress, Nanoda in her black robes.
Perhaps owing to the relentless string of battles she had fought over these past ten years, the mana radiating off Jane had grown noticeably stronger than before. Her eyes, too, had deepened further into vivid crimson.
White hair, red eyes — the small Demon girl before her was almost unbearably adorable, like a little rabbit.
"Sorry for waking you from your nap."
At Nanoda's words, Jane shook her head quickly, hands — tucked at her waist — splaying open as she gave a vigorous wave.
"It's fine, Mother."
"Then let's begin. The rules are simple: I'll be attacking Jane, and Jane only needs to dodge. Even if you get hit, you cannot strike back — only when I call out Jane's name are you allowed to retaliate. It might hurt a little. Jane will have to bear with it."
Nanoda had long wanted to test how her Paradox Magic performed against a Great Demon like Jane — one who possessed an overwhelming reserve of mana — in order to gauge its tactical effectiveness against Macht.
And with Jane's Eternal Life Magic, even injuries inflicted by the paradox of stillness and motion could be recovered from quickly.
Qual had often used Jane as a test subject for his Killing Magic in the past. Now it was Nanoda's turn.
"Jane is used to it. Not scared of a little pain."
A pair of blood wings tore through the skin of Jane's back and unfurled. A single beat sent her small body launching skyward.
Were it anyone other than Jane, Nanoda would have felt a great deal of guilt.
Nanoda reached into the hidden pouch at her thigh with one hand and withdrew Severance — the broken-horned blade. The familiar weight of it in her grip brought a wave of quiet comfort.
There was simply nothing like having a weapon you were used to in your hand.
The experience of trading blows with the Imperial Prison Dragon bare-fisted was one she had no desire to repeat.
"Watch yourself now."
In a single instant, Nanoda pushed her movement to its absolute limit — leaving nothing behind but an afterimage where she had stood — and launched the paradox of stillness and motion at Jane.
"Huh?"
A faint sensation at her neck. Jane was suddenly reminded of the time Mother had taken her head clean off — Mother was stronger than her.
From the moment she had spread her blood wings, Jane had concentrated every last shred of her focus.
And the very instant Nanoda's words fell, Jane felt it clearly — herself, and everything around her, froze for just a moment.
No matter how desperately she tried to circulate her mana, she could not move so much as a hair's breadth. It was as though even the flow of mana itself had come to a standstill.
The only thing still moving was Nanoda, who in that same moment slipped around behind Jane's blood wings.
One second — perhaps even less.
That was the window Nanoda's Paradox Magic held open.
But for her, it was more than enough.
The moment everything resumed — the broken-horned blade, wreathed in Severance Magic, came sweeping down!
Both blood wings were severed at the root. Jane immediately plummeted from the sky. The raw flesh at her back erupted in blood, straining to reshape new wings — but it was futile. Blood and Severance clashed in a grinding stalemate; no resolution was coming in the short term.
Nanoda's Severance Magic carried within it the corrosive bite of her refined miniature severance strikes — the same technique she had used to bring Jane down outside the tower before.
"Splash."
The severed blood wings dissolved into a liquid scatter as they fell, then broke apart mid-descent into mana particles and faded from existence.
"Ugh..."
With no other option, Jane's back split open again — four fresh gashes — and two new pairs of blood wings burst forth, catching her in a low glide mere moments before she hit the ground and carrying her back up into the air.
"Still not quite fluid enough... or perhaps this is my current limit."
The mana in the surrounding air converged back into Nanoda's body. She was nowhere near the level of ease with which It could deploy Paradox Magic at will.
Without fully releasing her instincts, against an opponent with no mana at all, Nanoda's current paradox of stillness and motion could sustain its effect for several seconds. Against a Great Demon like Jane, it was barely under one.
The mana she had gathered before was burned through rapidly under the strain of Paradox Magic. Fortunately, Nanoda could draw from the external reservoir of mana without limit.
"So that's the magic Mother wanted to test? It's incredible..."
Jane could find no way through it at all. The moment that magic activated, she had been completely and utterly helpless.
"Jane — you can strike back now. Show me how you've grown over these ten years."
The effects of Paradox Magic had been roughly mapped out. In Nanoda's assessment, there was still room for improvement.
For now, she needed Jane to help her rekindle some of that sharp edge — the tension that only real combat could bring.
"Mm."
With permission granted, Jane unveiled the new technique she had forged across ten years of battlefield.
Aided by her blood wings, she climbed steadily higher into the sky. As she ascended, all four wings underwent a transformation — gradually dissolving, unravelling into a dense, fine latticework of thread-thin filaments.
In the next instant, countless strands no thicker than a hair cascaded outward and downward at terrifying speed — like the needles of a syringe, like the trailing tendrils of a jellyfish — plunging indiscriminately into everything within Jane's field of vision.
Every flower, every tree, every blade of grass the filaments pierced withered and died in moments. The threads did not merely pierce and cut through everything in their path — they drank greedily from the life force of all living things.
Wielding the paradox of stillness and motion and her razor-sharp perception, Nanoda worked the Severance-imbued broken-horned blade in a frantic weave — barely carving out a gap just large enough for two people to stand in.
The threads encircling her pulled taut and retracted. Everywhere except the small patch where Nanoda stood had turned a dull, withered yellow. The soil beneath was riddled with holes.
"I see — this really is a technique built for the battlefield. You're turning the blood that keeps regenerating into filaments... and did you pick up a little something from Lugner as well?"
Nanoda was certain: any soldier caught by those threads on a battlefield would be drained down to a husk.
Watching the countless threads drifting behind Jane, Nanoda could already picture the sight of her reaping through a battlefield unchecked.
"Just... asked for a bit of advice. Well? Mother — is Jane's new technique impressive?"
The blood wings that had earlier been severed by Severance Magic began producing filaments of their own. Jane extended both arms, and from the very pores of her skin, more threads pushed and crawled their way out.
Anyone with trypophobia who saw Jane in this moment would feel their stomach turn.
"I'll admit I'm genuinely shocked..."
Nanoda's mouth twitched at the corner. Before her eyes, Jane was becoming a "cocoon" of blood threads at a rate visible to the naked eye.
After that, an uncountable number of threads peeled free from the cocoon and surged toward her.
Each time a living thing was pierced and drained, not only did Jane's mana recover and swell ever so slightly — the threads' assault grew faster and denser in turn.
...
After a fierce battle that matched — if not surpassed — her clash with Macht in intensity, every last trace of life within the training ground had been extinguished.
When Nanoda cut open the blood-thread cocoon with Severance Magic, the Demon girl inside looked exactly like someone who had eaten themselves into a stupor — she was dozing.
"To think I still underestimated you."
Lifting her gilded arm, Nanoda managed — just barely — to scoop Jane up into a princess carry.
She gazed at the dissolving blood cocoon.
In her heart, Nanoda had already settled on her strategy for the assault on the Golden Land — just a few days from now.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan ;)🔥👻
🔥 New history: Danmachi: Summoning Ruri Gokou, And other Chuunibyou Brats
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