Ken was thrown back through the air after blocking an attack, his feet planted against a tree. He looked up very fast and saw that the leader was charging at him again. Ken smiled. He pushed off the tree with so much speed that the tree cracked.

Clang!

Their swords collided and a shockwave ripped through the air. Ken was pushed a few feet back, but he managed to hold his ground. The smile remained on his face.

The leader looked at the smile and spoke, "What makes you smile, human?"

"The fact that I have not had this much fun in a long while," Ken said before very quickly slipping to the side, causing the leader to stumble forwards. The leader turned fast with a slash, thinking that Ken would attack right there, but Ken did not attack. He stood looking at the leader.

"Why?" the leader asked.

"I do not need that to take you down," Ken spoke.

"Huh? You have seen the gap that exists between you and I. What makes you think that, human? Or are you buying time for the stronger elf?" the leader asked.

"I don’t need help," Ken said and then shifted into his stance. "Someone like you is not worth the trouble."

The demon frowned. He gripped his sword with one hand and, in anger, he swung down. The blood lightning coated the blade. The blade hit the floor and split it in half, the lightning surging forward like a dragon. Ken leaped into the air, the attack slamming into the trees behind and obliterating them. He looked down at the leader.

"I lack ranged attacks," Ken muttered in the air. He knew that he had to find a way to attack from a distance or get close fast. An idea popped into his head. If he could use a merge of mana and qi, he would surely be able to cover the distance fast. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to merge the two and use them, but if he managed to, then he would win.

He shut his eyes in the air for half a second and channeled his mana like he had done against Sierra. It felt like fire through his veins and it somehow ran along the same line as the qi and yet didn’t cause issues, just the burning feeling.

[Unnatural flow detected in Host.]

The system gave the first warning. Ken ignored it. He knew his body better than anyone, and if he didn’t feel like he was in trouble, then he was not.

[Forced state reached.]

[New state created.]

[Qi + Mana merged stage.]

[Name state.]

’I can name it? What the hell, this is great. Fine, I’ll make it True State.’ 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

[True State registered.]

[200 percent increase in all stats for one minute.]

"Hahahaha, that’s what I’m talking about," Ken laughed like a madman in the air. He looked at the leader down below and spoke, "Now stay beneath me."

He shot down with so much speed that the leader was visibly stunned.

The air screamed around him as he fell.

The leader raised his sword and the blood red lightning surged up the blade in response, a wall of it, crackling and violent, the most the leader had pulled at once since the fight began. It met Ken head-on.

The collision shook the earth.

Ken hit the ground and the shockwave rolled outward in every direction, splitting the soil, flattening the grass, the trees at the edge of the clearing bending away from the impact. When the light died and the dust thinned, Ken stood at the centre of it, sword forward, not a single step taken back.

The leader stared.

Ken was already moving.

The True State burned through him like something that had always been there waiting to be found, the mana and qi running together in a single current that made everything feel frictionless. He crossed the distance between them in less than a second and the leader barely got his sword up in time, the block rattling him visibly, his boots dragging lines into the dirt.

Ken hit him again before he recovered.

And again.

Each strike was precise, each one targeting the same points he had been building toward the entire fight, the shoulder, the wrist, the half-second gap between the leader’s blocks where his guard opened without him knowing it. The blood red lightning flared desperately on the blade, trying to compensate for the speed, but Ken was inside it now, too close for the range of it to matter.

The leader threw a wild slash to create space.

Ken ducked under it and drove his shoulder hard into the leader’s chest, the impact carrying everything the True State had behind it. The leader left the ground.

He hit a tree trunk and the wood exploded around him, splinters scattering across the forest floor. He dropped to one knee, sword still in hand, chest heaving. He looked up and for the first time since the fight began, his expression had changed into something he clearly had no practice wearing.

He pushed himself upright and swung one last time, the lightning on his blade burning a deep and furious red, everything left poured into a single diagonal cut that split the air with a sound like a thunderclap.

Ken read it the moment the shoulder moved.

He stepped inside it, let the blade pass behind him by an inch, and hit the leader across the jaw with the full rotation of his body behind the pommel. The crack of it was loud and clean. Then he spun and brought the blade across in a single sharp arc that stopped at the leader’s throat, close enough to draw a thin line of red.

The leader froze.

His sword dropped.

He looked at Ken with wide eyes, the lightning dying on his blade as it hit the ground, the silence of the forest rushing in around them both.

"You," the leader started.

"I told you," Ken said, not breathing hard at all. "Not worth the trouble."