A loud boom shook the air as a plume of dust shot up high into the skies. It was thick, brown, and billowing, obscuring nearly everything within its ambit. Spurts of golden Radiance flared near the bottom along with spotlights of darkness so black it drew in a corona of white.

Yuriko danced and spun away from the crater even as the Remnant waved his quarterstaff in her direction. Only the fact that she could see the darklight coalesce into darts did she know that the seemingly fruitless gesture was instead an attack.

The darklight was familiar and Yuriko remembered that the big skelly back in Rumiga’s underground used the same kind of energy. It wasn’t identical, though.

“Ahh!” she yelped, and flinched as the darts flew towards her. They burned! Even before they reached her, they hurt her through her expanded Anima!

She hurriedly directed several sunshards and collided them against each other. The Animus construct destabilised as the Radiant energy and the darklight cancelled each other out. The obsidian man took a giant step towards her, propelling himself after shattering the ground behind him.

His quarterstaff, still gleaming with darklight, careened towards her head. Biting her lip, Yuriko moved three sunshards to interpose, and activated the Adamant Guardian Seal. The technique’s mandalas formed and stopped the attack cold, but she’d already used that trick earlier. The Remnant had pulled his swing as soon as the mandalas appeared, preventing the momentum from hurting him.

Still, she could perceive everything. She already moved towards the next point of attack while she split a part of her consciousness to replenish the Adamant Guardian Seal. Sunblades didn’t work so well, and the Remnant was too tough to crack with just her fists or feet. Unfortunately, she dared not bring Fri’Avgi out.

The artefact’s distilled Chaos storage bottomed out after her Anima ballooned in reach. Going from ten paces to thirty wasn’t just a threefold increase in volume. It was at least a couple of dozen times more, and all of that in the span of moments, too. To stabilise her Anima, Fri’Avgi had channeled her distilled Chaos back to Yuriko, dropping the artefact spirit back to unconsciousness.

Granted, Yuriko didn’t need Fri’Avgi to be awake to use the artefact, but she knew that she needed the spirit, and probably Fri’Avgi in ignition mode, in order to open the portal on the way back home. Even now, she didn’t have enough distilled Chaos to awaken the spirit and she was afraid that if she brought the greatsword out now, the spirit would force herself to awaken. If so, then it would mean another Season or so of waiting before they could leave.

She hadn’t been brought to the point where she needed to go all out to live. Besides, she was somewhat enjoying the current challenge.

For so long, her answer to every battle was to use her sunshards, sunblade, or Fri’Avgi. Only recently had she resorted to Sorcery and Free Shaping. None of those were the key to victory now. The shards and blade weren’t enough to penetrate the Remnant’s armoured skin, and she was wracking her mind for a solution.

Radiant energy. That was the only thing she was sure of that would hurt the obsidian remnant. But her methods of delivering it were limited.

She countered every darklight dart that came out of the staff before it could burn her Animus. While using Anima perception, her aura beyond her Anima armour was thinned to a hundredth of its normal density. In that condition, the darklight easily damaged it. What could she do? If she thickened her Anima, it meant less was available to enhance her strength or protect her.

The obsidian man’s strength was higher than hers, she was forced to admit. Stronger than Heron would be if his Anima strength was the same as hers…unless…

Yuriko hadn’t been able to use her full Anima enhancement on her body as she just wasn’t used to the increased reach yet. It had been weeks, yes, but there had been no challenges, and she hadn't been able to hone herself properly. Well, here was her chance.

Without challenges, she had grown complacent, she knew it in the depths of her heart. This region had tested her in a different way and she had almost succumbed. But now, here was a foe that was just as strong as she was, if not stronger in other ways.

Sunshards clashed with darklight darts. Her sunblade caressed the edges of his quarterstaff, changing its trajectory. She danced around his punches and kicks, returning slightly in kind. Cracks had formed over his obsidian shell. They were small and recovered in time. Her Animus stores were slowly draining away with her use of the sword dances and the Ender’s Waltz. Both of them combined created something that was far more than the sum of its parts. She was able to shift the dances around at her discretion, and always at the correct moment.

She used the second dance paired with Jade Mountain Style to redirect a downward smash. Then she shifted to the first dance to pry open a weakness in his defense. She paired it with Flowing Water Style, and the ambient Chaos resonated with her movement, conjuring clouds of water that quickly turned to steam. The Remnant didn’t seem bothered by the obscuring mists, or the floating dust, but it still slowed his movement almost imperceptibly, but it was all caught with both her perception aura and the waltz.

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That tiny opening left when he pivoted to kick her after she dodged his staff was wider than the valley in her eyes. She forced the opening wider, then shifted to a combined use of the fourth and third dances, and for the first time, she used Roaring Volcano Style and Sweeping Gale, albeit with different swords rather than a true fusion.

Her left hand sunblade swept downwards, while her right hand blade flared. Flames combined with Radiant light, and the blade grew jagged spikes on either side. She stabbed with the right, and the tip collided under the Remnant’s arm, striking at his rib. The Radiant light exploded on contact, and she used the other blade to control the direction of the blast, focusing it on her foe.

The obsidian man was blown away. He tumbled end over end but quickly anchored his feet to the ground. A deep furrow several dozen paces long appeared, and as soon as he stopped, the boulders behind him exploded from the transferred kinetic force.

That little maneuver cost her hundreds of lumens of Animus. She had less than a quarter left in her reserves but she couldn’t let up. The obsidian man’s side was covered in deep cracks, and even as she looked, fragments broke off from his body and fell to the ground.

With the density of ambient Chaos, as well as the improvement she’s made over the past weeks, she could regenerate a lumen every three seconds. If she were back in Rumiga, it would have been two lumens every three seconds, twice than what she could manage before. As for the Remnant, she didn’t know how he recovered his resources. She was sure he used Animus too, and not aspected Chaos.

The Remnant got back to his feet. The cracks on his skin slowly fused back into a solid shell. From what she observed, it would take him well over a minute to recover. She couldn’t let him have that time.

Yuriko propelled herself closer. She sent sunshards ahead of her charge, and as soon as she came within range, she punched him with her Animakinesis. The shards were intercepted with darklight bolts, while he took her punch head on. He stumbled back, but was otherwise unharmed, and the battledance continued unabated.

The hills and cliffs around them had disappeared, replaced by a deep crater. Blade scars, rocks that had melted into lava and frozen back into stone, fields of gravel. Those were what remained. If it weren’t for the cold and snow, she was sure that the hillside would have been covered in grass fires. As it were…

Blam! Boom!

The evergreens had exploded from the extreme heat of her Radiant blades, while some had withered to ashes from touching the obsidian man’s darklight. It was clear to her, and Damien’s memories backed her up, that the darklight was an order of energy that was close to, if not on par, with Radiant. From what she could tell, the Remnant’s usage was actually more skillful than hers, but she could output more Radiant energy, so it came to a stalemate.

She jumped up and spread Anima wings, thinking to take to the air. The Remnant, who was no longer encumbered by his titanic stone suit, leapt up after her. Burst of darklight spread from the soles of his feet, shooting his body faster than she could ascend. She spread her Anima to anchor herself on the air, treating it as she would flat ground. And when she struck him, it was with full leverage.

Twack!

The Remnant was blown back.

Booom!

The crater became deeper as he sank down. Yuriko took a deep breath, and pulled out several metal ball bearings from her hip satchel. She infused it with Animus and used the full force of her Animakinesis to throw it at him. The recoil of her throw was more than enough to throw her several hundred paces back, and no doubt wasted a lot of the kinetic potential. But the ball bearing broke the air barrier within an inch of leaving the protective domain of her Anima, and only the invested Animus kept it from disintegrating.

The Remnant looked up just in time to get hit by it, which struck him at his collarbone.

Crack!

He was thrown back into the ground, and sank even deeper within it. Yuriko had shaped the Animus infusion to disperse the kinetic force when it hit the man rather than to penetrate his skin.

Shaking her woozy head, Yuriko fell back towards the crater, her eyes sharp. A moment later, an obsidian spear shot straight up at her, followed by a vapour cone and a boom. Yuriko barely managed to slip aside, but the projectile grazed her side. It penetrated through her condensed aura, ate up the reserves of her Animus Armour, and tore a gash into her coat, her undershirt, and her bra. The forceweave parted, and ruined one of her three pairs…!

The fiery pain at her side was completely ignored as her mind was flushed by rage. Her comfortable forceweave underwear!

She barely stopped herself from flying completely into a rage, and dodged another hasty pillar. Instead, she gathered dozens of ball bearings, imparted Animus into them, and shot them down in quick succession.

Booms followed by puffs of exploding earth marked a trail across the crater as the Remnant dodged. His left shoulder hung limp, and there was a deep crater on his collarbone. Blood dripped out of the wound. Red and black.

She continued shooting down ball bearings, shaving her resources lower and lower until her outer reserves were completely empty. At that point, she stopped, breathing raggedly. Her side was slick with blood. Behind her, the denser sunblade still hung incomplete. Radiant energy lingered around the hilt and the blade, but was not incorporated into the structure.

The Remnant stared balefully up at her. He held out a hand, and pressed it into the ground. When he pulled it up, another quarterstaff, still orange from heat, rose up with it. He grabbed it by the middle, and hefted it up. He reared back and threw it at her, but she simply moved to a side, letting the weapon fly past.

The stare off continued for a few moments. Yuriko’s outer reserves were filling slowly. She had released activation of the Ender’s Waltz, but kept her sword dances circulating within her.

The wound at her side closed as her Radiant Body Refinement acted to perfect her physique. But the wounds on the Remnant had also disappeared.

She was down to her last two hundred lumens. But her body and Anima were still filled with Radiant energy. If only there was a way…

Well, why not? Was Chaos not the embodiment of infinite potential, and was Animus not the refinement of Chaos tuned for an individual? What was Radiant energy but Chaos changed?

Could she not…change it back?