“The kind green bird, the Star, youngest of the five. His wings of light layered over the world as he took his last breath.” - The Inception, Book of the Quintet Court.

For the first time in a while that she was truly mad. Her body was heated up beyond reason due to the fireball and the pain and hurt was everywhere. The apparent mental effect of Claw Morph did not help her mood either.

The Knight almost seemed to grin at her predicament, lifting the huge blade from the ground it took a stance with the weapon horizontal to its right. She let out an almost bestial shout before charging the Knight with all her might. The Knight charge right afterwards.

Both blazed a path in between each other at speeds beyond that of cars on the motorway. They clashed in the middle cratering the ground underneath with the force of the glow. Both of her claws against the blade.

For a moment they pushed against each other before she swung her arms apart throwing the blade upwards. The Knight took the force of the swinging blade and torqued with it into a spinning slash. Tisha jumped back dashing quickly to the side before flowing the spin attempting to get behind the knight for a sneak attack.

This time the knight glowed briefly, a spectral green all over its body. She stopped right before its back in alarm kicking herself away just in time for the area around him about five meters from, his large body to literally explode after the spectral green glow escaped its body in a quick flash. The flash reached from the ground all the way to the ceiling ten meters above it.

It walked out of the smoke and debris, the sword now pointed upwards in front of it in a two handed grip. Its mouth opened again.

Another black fireball spewed out with ridiculous speed. She was barely able to step out of the way as it smashed the ground right next to her and it became slag. The debris obscured her vision and she swiped at it in frustration. And it was just as well as she was met with a vertical arc of darkness bearing down on her.

She could not block this. She could feel it. The way it cut through the air and ground alike like a hot knife through butter. She was barely able to swift step out of the way as it cut a section of a claw out.

Luckily as the Claw is not an actual part of her body, she felt nothing. In fact, the claw was repaired once she looked back at its position. She did not have time to observe further as looking back at the knight it was in the process of swinging its sword multiple times sending multiple dark slashes at her.

She felt something else but pure power from those attacks, like death itself and upon looking at the clean slices it made everywhere, sure enough they started to steam and rot moments afterwards. She really could not have that attack hit her.

Multi-Swift Step was used to the best of her ability to dodge around moving at speeds imperceptible to the human eye as she used her agility to push her limits. Then she realized it had stopped the dark slashes. She had also lost track of it. She could feel her perception attribute working overtime scanning her immediate surroundings. A shift in the air to her right.

She barely turned her head looking in the direction of the alert and witnessed the air itself tear apart into a smokey dark void in the shape of an oval. The knight was lunging out of it, sword first. A portal.

She just barely dodged the lunge with as well as using her claws to deflect the blade. The force of the blow pushed her out of its path and she slid across the cavern to an eventual stop. She watched as the knight had the dark wisps flowing from it enshroud its being before disappearing completely. So that was its teleportation ability. She really wanted that ability.

With barely any time to think as she dodged a sword slash and had to turtle with her claws against the fast dark fireballs. She knew this could not go on, while her Claw Morph’s increase in toughness really seemed to have given her a far bigger boost than she had expected. It would not last forever and even so, she was in fact taking some damage even if it was very reduced.

The knight was relentless, it was strong in melee especially with its massively increased range to the size difference and had multiple range options. On top of that it was very strong, likely just below her Claw Morph form overall. Her only advantage it seemed was agility. She had no clue about Varos though… An idea suddenly occurred to her.

Her use of her Orb’s attacks was honestly extremely inefficient. And it did not make sense to her that according to what the System said, others could have more conventional weaponry which she would have preferred over having a single powerful attack every few moments. It might sound weird considering how well she was doing but that was because of her impressive martial arts rather than her Artifact.

When she had first tested out her Artifact on instinct, she had drawn on a well within her. And envisioning that well she had drawn out a mass of water or energy to use its basic function. Using this idea, she figured that maybe changing the amount used would influence the cooldown in between each shot. So first, a test.

Dodging another swipe, she commanded her Orb to attack. This time she limited the energy it would use on the shot to a miniscule amount. With a thwomp, the Orb obeyed letting loose a thin red beam that did not even make a visible mark on the knight’s armour.

Perfect, this now allowed her to go through her true plan. Dodging another set of attacks and making sure to block the fireballs efficiently. She took distance with another Swift Step and did the opposite this time. Cramming the Orb with as much as it could handle, she commanded it to blast the knight apart as it made another appearance through a portal. And…nothing happened.

It was still charging; she had miscalculated the full workings of her Orb. Barely lifting her light arm, palm outwards she took the sword lunge to her arm and the momentum from the blow threw both her and the knight against the cavern wall. The force shook the entire cavern causing small boulders to fall from the ceiling to the ground.

She groaned in pain against the wall. She was being held up as the sword struggled to get through her morphed arm and was slowly succeeding as the knight push against the ground as leverage. For the first time during this crazy situation, she was contemplating death. Which she knew made no sense, the fact that she had not even thought to ask how real this all was and right now with the pain she was in. She was convinced it was all real. And she was going to die.

BOOM!

Relief. The knight was blown away from her as her Orb finally fired. The blast weas tremendous rocking the entire cavern once more but even more so as if an earthquake at the top of the Richter scale had hit. She was lucky that the knight had such a huge blade as it she felt a significant shock from the attack and was thrown against the wall from the force.

The knight’s weapon slammed down next to her blade first. That was a close one. Looking over at where the knight was thrown to, she saw it ion a heap on the floor. She was about to collapse in relief, until it started staggering to its feet. Its armour in tatters revealing barely hanging on pale blue skin scarred and burnt.

She was besides herself, after pushing herself so far this enemy just would not stay down. The ability affecting her mind she went into a rage.

Crouching low one claw forwards on the ground. She pushed off the ground sprinting at speeds beyond what she had reached before, claws spread out on either side. The knight barely stood as she reached a twenty meter distance between them.

Swift Step

She shot the distance between them in a moment. The knight could not react as she blitzed passed it slamming it into the air with an uppercut swipe. She caught it with one hand up as fell. She didn’t know how she knew but was sure the knight weighed several tons. Launching it in the air a name came to her. Instinctively.

Demon Shredder

She swiped without a proper attempt at targeting. Up. To the sides. Even downwards which made no sense. She became a scarlet ball of fury and claws. Not finished yet. She landed a strong uppercut before bracing herself. Pushing off the ground in a powerful Swift Step enhanced jump. She shot upwards and infusing her body with Varos. She swiped upwards, an attack so forceful that the air quaked from its strength.

The knight was gutted, three red slashes of light trailing her claws from the ground to its abdomen.

[Agility rank up G to G+]

[Varos rank up G to G+]

[Test 4 complete]

[All Tests complete]