Veth raised his arm slowly.

The blood around him responded; pulling inward from every direction on the battlefield, condensing into something denser and darker than anything he’d used before. It gathered above his palm in a rotating mass, the color of it deepening from red to something closer to black at the core.

"Crimson Requiem," he said quietly.

The name alone felt heavy.

The mass above his palm pulsed once; the shockwave from it alone cracked the ground beneath his feet in a perfect circle.

Then he looked at Arlott.

Still on one knee. Left arm hanging useless. Sword in his right hand, it’s tip touching the ground, the only thing keeping him anchored.

Veth tilted his head.

"Still"

Arlott’s hand tightened around the grip.

Slowly, he stood.

"This isn’t over yet," he said.

Veth stared at him.

The fire in Arlott’s eyes hadn’t gone anywhere; battered, one armed, on the wrong end of a regenerating devil with a battlefield worth of blood at his disposal, and the man was up and looking at him like the fight had just started.

’What?.’

For just a second, genuine surprise crossed Veth’s face.

Then he grinned.standing

"Interesting," he said. "Very well then."

Arlott took his stance; one handed, his left arm dead at his side, the sword angled forward, flame and wind both running along the blade simultaneously.

He exhaled once.

**Silford Sword Craft: Eleventh Form — Crimson Tide.**

He moved.

Not a single strike; a sequence, one continuous flowing motion that carried him through the space between them before Veth had finished processing that he’d started moving. The blade cut a first arc, Veth threw up a blood shield, the flame on the blade vaporized it before it fully formed, the wind element carrying Arlott’s momentum through without breaking stride.

Second cut.

Third.

Veth was moving now too; retreating, pulling blood from the ground in desperate defensive walls, each one meeting the blade and dissolving under the combined fire and wind before it could stop anything.

"Blood Lance!"

Dozens of compressed blood projectiles fired point blank.

Arlott twisted through them; two grazed his side, a third caught his shoulder, none of it stopped the sequence, the Eleventh Form didn’t allow for stops, that was the entire point of it.

Fourth cut landed.

Veth’s torso took it; deep, the flame burning through the wound before his regeneration could even begin responding.

He screamed; the first genuine sound of pain he’d made since the fight started.

’It burns,’ he realized with something close to panic. ’The flame is interfering with the regeneration.’

He threw everything he had.

"Blood Domain!"

The blood from every fallen creature within a hundred meter radius lifted simultaneously; a crimson storm that filled the air between them completely, blocking sight, blocking movement, and turning the entire space into a hostile environment.

Arlott stopped moving.

Stood in the center of the storm.

’I can’t see him,’ Arlott thought; his instincts running the calculations faster than conscious thought. ’But the blood has to come from somewhere.’

He closed his eyes.

Felt the wind.

Wind element expanded outward from him in a thin invisible current, moving through the blood storm like fingers, reading the air displacement, tracing the source back to its origin.

There.

He moved.

**Silford Sword Craft: Eleventh Form — Crimson Tide.**

Again; cutting through the blood storm blind, following nothing but the wind reading back to him, the flame on his blade burning a path through the crimson curtain as he went.

Veth saw him emerge from the storm directly in front of him and his eyes went wide.

He threw his arm up.

The blade caught it; not the gauntlet this time, through it, the fire eating through the blood armor before it could absorb the impact.

Veth stumbled backwards.

’Why,’ he thought; and the thought carried something underneath it that he hadn’t felt in a very long time. ’Why isn’t he stopping.’

He pulled more blood; from himself this time, opening wounds deliberately to fuel the next attack, the desperation of it showing in the way his hands were shaking slightly.

"Blood Typhoon!"

A vortex of blood erupted around him, spinning fast enough to shred anything that came close, the edges of it razor sharp and accelerating.

Arlott looked at it.

Flame erupted along his entire blade, brighter than anything he’d put out in this fight; the heat of it pressing outward in waves, his mana reserves running thin but not empty, not yet.

He walked into the typhoon.

The outer edges hit his mana reinforcement and screamed against it; cuts opened across his right arm, his chest, his jaw. He kept walking; the flame on his blade meeting the blood vortex and burning through it layer by layer, the wind element keeping the shredded blood from finding purchase on the wounds it opened.

He came through the other side.

Veth was right there.

Out of blood walls. Out of shields. Out of distance.

His face had changed completely; the amusement was gone, the grin was gone, what was left was something raw and unpleasant and very much afraid.

’This human,’ he thought; the frustration and disbelief tangling together into something he had no clean word for.

Arlott’s sword came up one final time.

**Silford Sword Craft: Fourth Form — Ember Cross.**

The cross shaped slash hit Veth square; flame and wind combined, the impact blasting him backwards off his feet and into the ground hard enough to leave a crater.

He lay there.

Staring up at the sky.

Tried to pull blood for regeneration.

His body wasn’t responding the way it should; the flame had done something to the regeneration process, disrupted it, slowed it, made it work against itself.

’Impossible,’ he thought.

He’d had this fight won.

He’d had it won.

Arlott stood at the edge of the crater, one arm, covered in cuts, breathing hard; the sword point dropping slightly as the last of the immediate mana burn settled through him.

He looked down at Veth.

Said nothing.

Veth stared back up at him with something in his expression that had never been there before in this entire fight.

And that was...Defeat.