Deep underground beneath Grandeur City, within the training hall constructed specifically for Liam under Queen Lucy’s orders, a deafening bang echoed as something—someone—was violently hurled across the vast chamber and crashed into the reinforced side wall.

The impact was thunderous, the kind that should have shaken the very foundations above. Yet, due to the powerful sound-cancellation and shock-absorption spells layered throughout the hall, not even a whisper of that force escaped to the surface.

"I told you," Mabel said evenly, her voice calm and unshaken as she stood at the center of the hall, a curved sword resting firmly in her grip.

She remained clad in her Royal Corps attire, her half-mask still in place, giving her an air of composed authority.

"...choosing not to go all out won’t help you today," she continued, her hazel-brown eyes locked onto the crater embedded in the wall far ahead.

Within that crater, faint movement stirred.

A hand slowly emerged from the debris, gripping onto a chunk of broken stone at the edge. Moments later, a figure pulled himself forward. Dust and fragments shifted and fell away, gradually revealing the person within.

Liam.

Forcing himself upright, he stepped out of the crater, one of his twin daggers already in hand. His training attire was torn in several places, faint streaks of blood marking the exposed areas.

"And I said I don’t see the necessity... if you aren’t going to go all out," Liam replied calmly as he walked forward, his tone steady despite the damage he had just taken.

"Don’t be stubborn, Liam," Mabel said, her voice firm now. "You know I’m a High Tier 7-star mage, and you’re a Low Tier 6-star. We both know this won’t be a fair fight if I actually go all out."

She paused briefly, her gaze sharpening.

"Even with you naturally operating above your level, it still won’t bridge that gap."

Liam tilted his head slightly at that, his expression unreadable.

"Fair?" he echoed. "You say that like real fights are ever fair. In my opinion, no fight is fair—because if they were, every battle would just end in a stalemate."

He let the words hang for a moment before exhaling softly.

"But... you’re not wrong," he admitted. "Holding back this much is just going to get me slammed into walls over and over again."

A faint, almost dry hint of humor touched his voice.

"And honestly, I’ve got a bad history with being thrown into walls. Kinda hits a nerve."

Mabel’s grip on her sword tightened ever so slightly as she felt the shift in the air around him—subtle, but unmistakable.

"It wouldn’t hurt... if I used this much, right?" Liam muttered.

The moment the words left his lips, his shadow stretched unnaturally behind him, spreading wide across the ground like a living entity.

From that darkness, two forms began to rise.

The first was Nyxie.

The Nyxarion was not in her usual small, feline-like form. Instead, she emerged in a towering seven-foot humanoid figure, her wings unfurled slightly behind her, her glowing blue eyes shining with quiet intensity.

The second was Smoke.

The four-eyed, spiked-fur creature stepped forward in his full form—massive, wolf-like, and nearly the size of a horse. His presence alone carried a primal weight, his glowing eyes fixed unblinkingly on Mabel.

Both summons took their positions at Liam’s sides, silent and poised.

Then, without a word, Liam summoned his second dagger into his free hand.

"Hope you don’t mind the numbers," he said calmly.

"Why should I?" Mabel replied, lowering her stance as her grip on her sword firmed. "They’re only extensions of you, after all."

"Glad you see it that way," Liam murmured.

In the very next instant—

They all vanished.

Liam, Nyxie, Smoke, and Mabel, now fully coated in flowing water magic, blurred from their positions, the air itself distorting as the clash began.

The next instant, the hall erupted.

Liam reappeared first—low, fast, and already inside killing range.

His body came out of the blur like a blade loosed from a hidden mechanism, one dagger driving toward Mabel’s ribs while the second angled higher for her shoulder, the twin strikes arriving from different lines with almost no delay between them. There was no wasted motion in him. No flourish. Just clean, brutal efficiency.

But Mabel was already moving.

Her sword flashed up with a metallic shriek, the curved edge catching the lower dagger and knocking it aside while her body twisted away from the second strike. At the same time, water surged around her right arm in a tight spiral, then snapped outward in the shape of a compressed lash.

The whip of water cracked across the space Liam had occupied a fraction of a second earlier.

But it met only air.

He had already slipped past her flank.

Smoke came in next from her left like a launched boulder, his full-sized form devouring distance in two violent bounds. His claws tore long grooves through the stone floor as he lunged, maw splitting open, four glowing eyes fixed on her throat. At the same time Nyxie descended from above, wings beating once—hard enough to send dust skittering across the ground—as her elongated shadow-claws carved down toward Mabel’s head and shoulders.

The attacks overlapped perfectly.

High, low, and blindside.

No room to breathe. No room to think. Just survive.

Mabel dipped down as her knees bent with liquid smoothness as though her joints had momentarily become boneless. Smoke’s claws tore through the air above her by inches while Nyxie’s descending strike met Mabel’s blade in a spray of sparks and scattered droplets. The impact rang sharp through the chamber, but Mabel did not contest the force directly. Her sword rolled with the hit, redirecting it, letting Nyxie’s own momentum carry her slightly off line.

Then Mabel pivoted on one foot.

Water burst under her boots in a spinning ring, slick and controlled, turning her into the center of a whirlpool. Her blade swept outward in a wide arc that wasn’t meant to wound Liam, but to force space and reset angles. Liam ducked beneath it, close enough for the edge to stir his hair. Smoke recoiled from the cut with a snarl. Nyxie twisted backward in midair, avoiding the shimmering crescent of steel by a breath.

Mabel took that single heartbeat of space and used it.

A pulse of water exploded from her body in all directions. A precise circular shock.

Liam crossed both daggers in front of himself and was shoved backward several feet, boots grinding hard against the stone. Smoke slid sideways, claws scraping and shoulders bunching as he fought the push. Nyxie beat her wings once more and cut through the pressure, but even she lost her immediate angle.

Mabel did not wait.

She stepped into Liam before his balance was fully settled.

Her sword came alive in her hand.

The first cut was a feint toward his neck. Liam raised one dagger to parry—then felt the real strike turn midway, the curved blade dipping and cutting low for his thigh. He jerked his leg back just in time, but not enough to avoid the thin line of blood that appeared across his skin. Mabel flowed into the next motion without pause, her sword reversing direction in a tight upward slash that Liam barely caught with his second dagger.

Steel met steel.

Then Mabel’s left hand struck.

Not physically.

Water gathered around her palm and drove forward like a hammer.

The blow hit Liam in the chest and sent him skidding backward.

Nyxie was there before he could fully recover.

She crashed toward Mabel from the side, one clawed hand reaching while the other condensed darkness around her forearm into a jagged spear-like edge. Mabel turned sharply, her sword flashing three times in rapid succession. The first strike caught Nyxie’s wrist and knocked the claw aside. The second raked sparks across the dark construct around her forearm. The third was a thrust that would have pierced Nyxie through the chest—

—but Nyxie folded backward with unnatural flexibility, the blade missing by a hair as her wings snapped outward. A beat later, her leg whipped around in a savage kick.

Mabel raised her elbow.

The kick slammed into it with enough force to crack the stone under Mabel’s boots.

Smoke arrived behind that impact.

He hit low, aiming not to slash but to crush. His full weight barreled into Mabel’s side like a charging beast, intending to break her stance and pin her long enough for Liam to close in again.

Instead, Mabel went with it.

Her body turned with the collision rather than resisting it head-on. One foot slid back. Then another. Water streamed under her boots, reducing friction, letting her absorb the monstrous force into a controlled glide rather than being blasted off her feet. She used Smoke’s momentum against him, pivoting at the exact instant of impact and guiding his massive frame past her. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Then her sword stabbed down into the floor.

The moment the blade bit stone, the water around her surged through the crack like a living vein. In the next instant, sharp pillars of compressed water erupted beneath Smoke’s legs and chest, striking with enough force to lift the massive beast partly off the ground and ruin his footing completely.

He snarled, twisting in midair.

Nyxie dropped again to cover him, but Liam was already moving on another line entirely.