I could hear Yukina and Evren scream my name, calling for me to stop, but I didn’t listen to them. I switched to the grey domain as I approached the demon. I knew I was going against our plan since Eliora had explicitly instructed us to fight as a unit. Though I was keen on doing as told, Darya had other plans, and I blindly followed her lead.

I felt unusually calm as I waited for the demon to make his move. I had almost forgotten how powerful perception was in the grey domain but was reminded, experiencing the sequence of events that followed. During my training sessions with Eliora, Yukina, and Evren, I prioritized using femryn’s jolt and realm slip. The idea was to give me a handicap of some sort. I wasn’t just trying to learn the hard way. Rather, I saw it as a means to push beyond my limits.

Silhouettes of lightning bolts came streaking toward me; I counted five of them. I knew the silhouettes were lightning because the speed at which they approached me was relatively faster than the speed of other spells I had seen conjured whilst in the grey domain.

I watched as the silhouettes inched closer in my direction. The rippling sensations of the shock waves the silhouettes generated as they tore through the dense atmosphere were sending a clear message to me; something terrifying was coming for me.

It was terrific and overwhelming to think about what I saw and felt. A person would have been long dead if they stood to observe the movements of spells hurled at them, but the grey domain made it look different, artistic.

At most, I was separated from the silhouettes by a few inches, and I felt Darya was messing with me. The normal me would have used femryn’s jolt to push the streaking silhouettes away or triggered realm slip to change my position as soon as I saw them approach. But for some reason, I held still and watched without making any attempt to evade them.

For the first time, I got to experience firsthand how much control the mind had over the body. It was one of the aspects of living that were almost always overlooked since the mind and the body worked synchronously; one giving orders and the other reacting and taking action. At the moment, I felt some kind of dissociation, and though my mind and body were fully functional, it felt as though Darya was in charge. I couldn’t tell if she was just influencing every decision I was making at that moment or if she was the one making them.

My relationship with Darya, or more precisely, the bond between both of us, was unique. I was certain it wasn’t that of a puppet and a puppet master, where she had complete control over my body and thinking space. Rather, it felt like she was putting ideas in my mind, ideas that suggested I did one thing or another, and I couldn’t help but comply with them even though I knew it was within my capabilities to refuse those ideas.

She was in my head, I could feel her presence, but it didn’t feel strange. It felt like she was a part of me, a part of my consciousness.

Just before the silhouettes hit me, I dematerialized from that position and brought myself in striking distance of the demon. With my sword drawn, I slashed, aiming for his head. My blade was met with conjured ice as I saw other silhouettes roughly shaped like spikes appear. It was easy to tell that they were meant to hit me as three of them pointed in my direction. They were so close to me that the only way I could possibly avoid them was to trigger realm slip.

There was a sort of clash in my head. A part of me wanted to reposition myself, and another didn’t. In the end, I didn’t trigger realm slip as I attacked the ice spikes with my sword. Maybe I was lucky they didn’t approach me all at once. I cut the first in two halves from the tip as it fell apart. I followed up immediately as I slashed through the second and the third in quick succession, shattering them. Though the grey domain made it look normal, I knew what I just did was astonishingly fast. I didn’t think it was possible, given I instinctively wanted to run from it. My arms were still attached to my body, and they seemed pretty okay. That was a good sign, at least.

I didn’t want to give too much thought about what I just did because I was still in the middle of a fight. It was a daring attempt, one that came with a lot of risks, but thankfully, was a success.

“That’s why you are stuck with little or no improvements. If you don’t know how to take risks, how do you want to get better?”

It wasn’t my thought. I mean, it was, considering that it came from within me, but it wasn’t. That was Darya speaking.

“This is how you approach every fight. Your mentality is always centered on safety. If your priority in every fight is always safety, then you shouldn’t bother engaging the fight in the first place. The priority should be taking out the enemy, incapacitating them, or killing them if need be. If you don’t have some degree of control or a strong foot in any fight you find yourself in, your chances of winning will be only decided by a miracle.”

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The sound of her voice in my head was loud and clear. She wasn’t wrong, but it was easier for her to say. Until a few weeks ago, I was just a normal person with no abilities, so it was instinctive to prioritize my safety first.

In my defense, anyone who’d seen the demons fight wouldn’t even want to go up against them, and anyone who dared to would tread cautiously. I didn’t want to say anything to her in response, not yet. After all, we would have plenty of time for that after fighting.

I was very close to the demon, very much in striking distance, yet I triggered realm slip. Weirdly the pathway for the realm slip I triggered went through the demon as its exit opened somewhere behind him. I was confused because I didn’t think it was possible for me to get through since he was an obvious obstacle. Every time I used realm slip, I plotted my paths on open spaces with no obstacles in between. It was my first time doing something like that, thanks to Darya since it was all her doing.

No objections were coming from my side. The curiosity to find out what was going to happen outweighed any doubts I had about the feasibility of Darya’s plan.

Surprisingly I went through like he wasn’t even there. Before fully materializing behind him, I thrust my sword into his torso. There was literally no distance separating us when I ran my sword through him. It was almost as if I had done it even before I reappeared.

I felt a surge of excitement within me.

“Darya you genius,” I praised.

“You have no idea,” she replied.

The things within reach were really the most difficult to find. I spent weeks training, trying to unlock any innate potential I might have had in order to get strong enough to be able to face a demon at least. Little did I know that I had all I needed.

I instantly drew out my sword from his belly as I shot myself backward. Switching out of the grey domain, I stood looking at him as he clutched his belly with his hands as blood still found its way to spill out in large volumes. I could easily predict his next course of action, black fire from nowhere, which would patch him up, followed by a Feel realm imposition.

I could have just replicated the maneuver I had performed earlier to finish him off before he used his trump card, but I held back. I already knew whose idea it was. There was a voice in my head saying,

“Come on, get up. I need to see the best you can offer.”

I was going against everything Eliora would have wanted me to do, and in this situation, she would have wanted me to go for the kill as the chance presented itself.

As expected, the black fire appeared, and his wound disappeared. I was calm, once again, waiting for him to make his move. At that moment, I felt confident that I was going to kill him; it was just a matter of time.

Dull white motes filled the air around us, and I knew he was about to overwhelm me with whatever spell he had at his disposal. I didn’t know much about the Feel realm, or how it worked since I wasn’t a caster, but from my observations, I felt it was just a means to overwhelm an opponent. I switched back into the grey domain, ready for whatever he was about to unleash.

I was expecting a barrage of lightning spells streaking toward me from all directions. At that thought, I panicked a little. Since I was apparently in a Feel realm the demon imposed, there was a good chance that some lightning bolts could be conjured so close to me that would be impossible to evade. I had no choice but to trust Darya, hoping she knew precisely what she was doing.

There was a funny feel to the viscous atmosphere that surrounded me. Though I didn’t see any silhouettes of conjured spells, I could tell that something was about to happen.

It was apparent that Darya could sense my growing fear as I heard her voice in my head,

“How pathetic,” she remarked.

The thoughts in my head suggested everything was going as Darya wanted. She wanted him to impose a Feel realm. The Feel realm was a double-edged sword. It was something that would make a caster so powerful yet leave them vulnerable. No wonder they only imposed it when they felt cornered with no other options.

I released my intent and got a different reaction. The dense atmosphere of the grey domain started to tighten around me until I began to feel suffocated. Naturally, I had to push against it, forcefully dispersing it.

“What was that?” I queried, only to look around and observe what I had just done.

Silhouettes of lightning, mostly clustered around each other, were dispersed in different directions. I created a space of emptiness between me and the silhouettes I had dispersed. I searched for the demon but couldn’t find him anywhere within my radius. The push force I had generated most probably blew him away.

I switched out of the grey domain to discover that the white notes had disappeared. I found the demon lying on debris from a wall he crashed onto. His sorry state could clearly tell that he was struck by some of the lightning bolts he intended to use on me as his clothes were charred with burnt patches here and there. His skin was covered with burns as the black flames that engulfed him tried to heal his wounds.

I sauntered towards him, dragging my sword with me. I couldn’t tell if I was just lazy to hold it firmly or if my arms were tired. The scraping sounds the tip of my sword made while it kissed the floor as I dragged it along were unpleasant to my ears, but I still let it carry on until I was standing next to him.

The demon wasn’t finished yet. He was in a lot of pain as he fought through it and stretched his hands toward me. I scoffed,

“What does he want to do?”

To be fair, his spells kept him in that state. I kicked his hand, crashing it to the ground as I drove my sword into his chest, shattering his nexus. He forcefully coughed as blood spilled from his mouth. I was sure he wanted to say something but the words didn’t leave his mouth since they were hindered by the pain and the blood that choked him.

I was supposed to be happy with the feat I had accomplished. I was able to kill a demon on my own. Though it was all Darya’s doing, I still had to give myself some credit. Realistically, I wasn’t elated as I expected of myself and I couldn’t quite tell what I was feeling.

I drew out my sword from the demon’s lifeless body, there was still more fighting to do.