CHAPTER 76 – THE FRACTURE
The first strike cracked the sky.
Crimson Six's fist tore toward Leylin's temple, wrapped in a spiral of crimson force. The air screamed as the blow carved through it.
Leylin tilted his head.
Her knuckles skimmed past his helm.
The pressure wave detonated behind him, flattening a ridge of shattered stone into dust and ripping a fracture across the sky itself.
Leylin answered immediately.
A straight punch toward her throat.
Crimson Six twisted aside, letting the blow graze her collarbone as she drove her elbow toward his ribs.
Impact.
Leylin caught it with his forearm.
The collision split the ground beneath them like glass. Stone plates lifted and flipped into the air before collapsing in a violent ring of debris.
They separated.
Dust spiraled between them as the battlefield groaned under the strain.
For a moment neither moved.
Then they vanished..their bodies collided again midair.
Palm met fist.Elbow intercepted knee.
Every strike arrived with perfect timing. No wasted motion. No hesitation.
Crimson Six's leg swept toward his head.
Leylin leaned just enough to let it pass.
His counterstrike rose from below like a spear aimed at her jaw.
She caught his wrist...for a single suspended moment they hung in the air.
Energy grinding against energy.
Then the land beneath them collapsed.
The battlefield caved inward as their combined pressure crushed the terrain. Whole slabs of rock broke free and plunged downward.
Both fell with the collapsing earth, twisting through the falling debris before landing dozens of meters below on fractured stone.
Leylin straightened slowly.
His cloak settled behind him.
Across from him, Crimson Six rolled her shoulder once, studying him with bright predatory interest.
Then she smiled..,and moved.
Her palm shot toward his chest like a descending blade.
Leylin intercepted,the redirected force ripped across the battlefield, carving a trench through the land that ran all the way to the distant cliffs.
She followed instantly with a spinning kick.
Leylin ducked.
Her heel sliced the air above his head, the shockwave splitting the clouds overhead.
Leylin rotated with the motion, driving a counterstrike toward her sternum.
Crimson Six stepped inside the blow and caught his wrist again.
The impact beneath their feet compressed the earth into a crater.
Fragments of rock lifted into the air before collapsing back down like rain.
Crimson Six's smile widened.
"You're careful."
Leylin said nothing,the cores embedded within his chest shimmered faintly beneath the dark armor.
Gluttony.Greed.Pride.Envy.
Her gaze lingered there.Then she attacked again.
Her hand descended toward his chest.
Leylin blocked.
The impact thundered outward.
But something strange happened.
The crimson force surrounding her strike simply vanished.
Not deflected.Not absorbed..Gone.
For a fraction of a second, even the air seemed confused by the absence.
Crimson Six's eyes flickered.
Leylin smirked
He surged forward instantly,palm.Elbow..knee.
Three strikes launched in perfect succession.
Each one powerful enough to shatter bone.
Crimson Six slid across the broken battlefield before stabilizing herself near the edge of the cliffs.
Behind her, the ocean stretched to the horizon.
Then she laughed.Soft,almost amused
"you really are interesting little anomaly"
Leylin's eyes narrowed at hee statement as he advanced again.
This time he did something different as he appeared directly Infront of her before she could react, driving his head forward as...BOOM
their temples collided The shockwave flattened the remaining battlefield. The cliffs behind Crimson Six exploded outward as fragments of stone rained into the sea below.
Silence...then a gradual shock on her otherwise feminine façe as she muttered.."did you just headbutt me"
Eyes tearing up about as leylin was momentarily caught off guard by her first display of human vulnerability as just as he was about to scratch the back of his head in apology
He felt a sharp pain at the back of his neck as only then did he look up to realise that the figure of crimson six ahead of him began fading slowly
"A mirrage..fuck"
But it was too late as he was lifted up his feet,fling backwards like he weighed nothing as
he ocean churned violently from the force.
"Hehe,works every time,"she said as the smile on her face widened
Then leapt after leylin's falling figure as They exchanged another flurry of strikes.
But Crimson Six's movements had changed now...no more the fragile persona she had just displayed earlier as her aura carried this serious air about her nwo
Every few attacks drifted closer to his chest,Testing..Probing.
Leylin's defenses adjusted each time as he noted how quickly she has switched her personality as if it was a dirty outfit to change
Perfectly,too perfectly.
Their fight continued across different terrains as Just as she prepared another blow that would have shattered the remaining cliffside..
She stopped.
Completely as their figures landed on a beach filled with the faint scent of falling dust
Leylin halted a moment later, his chest rising slowly beneath his cloak in exhaustion as although he had access to reusable energy..even he felt the strain of the prolonged battle
The sea roared far below them.
Crimson Six studied him in silence.
"You fight like someone who already knows the ending."
Her voice was calm now..measured.
Leylin said nothing.His gaze never left her.
Crimson Six began walking toward him.
One step,then another.
"Most fighters grow reckless when a battle drags on."
Her tone carried faint amusement.
"But you…"
She stopped several meters away.
"…remain exactly the same."
A pause.
"Almost as if you were conditioned to."
Leylin said nothing as he took a step forward and vanished..when he reappeared his eye's were cold as his fist flashed toward her throat.
Fast.Precise.
Boom.
The explosion from their collision blasted the clouds apart above them.
When the dust cleared..Crimson Six held his wrist.
Anticipated.Caught.Contained.
The sand beneath them liquefied under the pressure of their clashing power.
Crimson Six leaned closer.
"You're holding back."
Leylin's eyes narrowed.Then he spoke for the first time since their battle began.
"maybe we both are ."
Crimson Six's grin widened.
"There it is."
She released his wrist and stepped back.
Her hand rose slowly to the center of her chest.Where the Wrath core rested.
"You see…"
Her voice softened.
"…I've been enjoying this."
The core pulsed.Once.
A deep crimson glow spread beneath her skin.
Leylin felt it instantly,the pressure in the air shifted.
The sea below began to churn violently.
"But enjoyment," she continued quietly,
"is a flaw."
Another pulse.crimson light surged through the veins of her body like molten fire flooding through stone.Her arms began to glow,then her neck,then her eyes.
The cliff beneath her feet cracked apart.Leylin remained still,watching.The Wrath core ignited.
Crimson energy erupted outward like a living storm. The ocean below began to boil where the pressure touched its surface.
Crimson Six lifted her head slowly.The smile that returned to her face was different now.
Wider...Hungrier.
"And flaws…"
Her fingers flexed.the air trembled in response to such a casual gesture
"…should only be indulged for so long."
Leylin's cloak snapped violently in the rising storm of energy.
Crimson Six vanished.The impact arrived an instant later.
Leylin's body shot backward like a meteor.H
e tore through the cliffside behind him, blasted across the raging sea, and vanished beneath the waves with a thunderous eruption of water that rose hundreds of meters into the sky.
The ocean swallowed him.
The surface boiled violently,and for the first time since the battle began.
Leylin felt something he had not expected,not danger,not pressure.Not even killing intent.
He felt…Nothing.