Subaru's eyes snapped open: no gasp, no scream this time.
Just a steady, trembling breath leaking past her lips as her vision settled on the forest floor around her… and the boy already rising to his feet in front of her.
"Demons…" he muttered, the same way he always did. That same cold tone, that same grim resolve carved into his expression.
The word no longer rattled her.
After over a hundred loops of being torn apart by him: cut down, crushed, stabbed, burned: her heart had long since numbed into a strange, suspended calm.
There was no fear left to spark. Only a distant haze, a shell-shocked stillness.
She didn't even flinch when he lifted the axe.
"…must die."
His voice finally ended the phrase, but Subaru wasn't listening.
Not really.
Her gaze drifted past him, her thoughts sinking deeper into the calm that only endless death could forge. The first few times she had panicked like a rabbit. She couldn't even stand. She couldn't even think. She died with her back turned, with tears in her eyes, with her voice cracking in disbelief—
But somewhere around the 40th death, she stopped crying.
Around the 50th, she stopped screaming.
Around the hundredth… she learned to fly.
His axe swept toward her face with a brutal arc, the same wild yet practiced swing she had memorized through countless loops.
Subaru simply stepped aside, smooth, unhurried, as if moving through water. She didn't even consciously register it: the dodge flowed out of her body automatically, carved into her like a reflex.
He growled and swung again.
Subaru crouched, slid under the blade as if gliding on her knees, then leapt backward with a mild hop, still mostly lost in thought.
Her eyes were a little empty, her breathing strangely soft.
After all, she knew how this went.
She had dodged.
She had flown away.
And then one of his accomplices: whoever they were had vaporized her with a beam of light.
She stared distantly at the boy now circling her, axe at the ready. There was a time when this moment would have knotted dread in her stomach.
Not anymore.
Another slash.
Subaru bent sideways at the waist. The blade whistled past, close enough to stir her hair.
She barely noticed.
Her mind was replaying the deaths after that, the hundreds of attempts it took to get past him.
The dozens of angles she tried to fly.
The number of times she had been skewered mid-air by those silver daggers he could throw like a monster.
And when she finally escaped him…
…she was killed by that damned elf.
A shudder ran through her at the memory of that cold green stare freezing her in place.
That single beam of magic swallowing her whole.
The way her body disintegrated before she could even scream.
Not fear. Not even anger.
Just that cold, familiar sense of inevitability. Of déjà vu.
"Die, Faker!"
The shout snapped her back, just a little.
Subaru blinked, realizing she had already drifted yards away from him during her half-conscious dodging.
She was still alive.
And he hadn't touched her.
"…how?" she whispered under her breath, barely hearing her own voice.
The boy rushed her again. His movements were sharp, practiced, lethal.
She knew them intimately: knew exactly how he stepped, how he twisted his hips, how he turned his wrist in a killing arc.
But this time… something in her shifted.
Her body moved first.
She leaned back from the first swing. Slid left from the second.
Her boots dug into the dirt as she pivoted, letting his axe carve the air a hair's width from her throat.
Huh.
He used curved paths, she remembered that. Arcing chops, crescents through the air, momentum-based swings. But this time, instead of panicking or calculating—
She reacted.
Her muscles answered instinctively, like they had stolen the rhythm.
He came in with another swing. Subaru snapped her own axe up mid-motion, catching the side of his blade with the haft.
The impact vibrated through her arms, raw and solid, but she held her ground.
Then without thinking, without planning, she threw her axe upward.
The boy's eyes widened.
Subaru jumped.
Her feet found the flat of the tumbling axe mid-air; perfect balance, upside down for an instant.
Then she pushed off it like a springboard and swung her legs down.
Her heel crashed into his face.
He flew backward, skidding through leaves and dirt.
Subaru landed lightly, blinking, her heartbeat finally spiking.
This is…
This is…
"This is Sasuke's swordplay?!" she hissed out, disbelieving, breathless, staring at her own hands as if they belonged to someone else.
But how?!
The boy groaned, staggering to his feet again, wiping blood from his lip. "Those moves… what are they—"
She didn't hear the rest.
There was a tug inside her... deep, electric, like something hooking into her spine.
A word bubbled up in a whisper, not from memory but from instinct.
Erfassen.
Her fingers twitched.
Her muscles coiled...
Information flooded her brain.
This feeling....
This sensation when you get everything you had expectedfor an exam...
When you feel the ultimate joy of winning...
She looked at the redheaded boy, she could see silhouettes in motion around him...
Moving in 47 ways, 12 patterns...
How to kill an axe-weilding warrior in 12 styles...
Is this…
…is it…
Subaru's lips curled into a wild, hysterical grin as the realization hit her like lightning.
"Copy moves…" she whispered, almost reverent. "Convert into mana-based motions…"
Her pupils dilated, a feverish tremble running up her arms.
"Erfassen… Is this my power?"
The boy braced himself, gripping his axe with both hands. "I won't let you win."
Subaru vanished.
A blur, no, a ripple of motion and she reappeared right in front of him, her axe raised high, a crazed smile carving across her bloody face.
Her frills beat once behind her, kicking up dirt and wind.
Her purple eyes burned with new, terrifyingly lethal clarity—
And her axe came down.