Tonight.

The Lunar Princess landed on him like a meteorite, it shook him like the waves of the sea. The katana narrowly missed escaping from between his fingers. It wouldn't have fallen very far, the barrier was rather small, but the time it would take him to retrieve it would be too much.

A fatal mistake. After all, not everyone could pull swords out of their body and recover just like that from a situation where you had been disarmed.

An advantage she had. One of many others.

Sylvester shouted as if to shake that insecurity away from him and swung the sword. She could have simply dodged the blow, he knew it, saw it, but she chose to clash her weapon against his.

The sound of metal against metal didn't rise in the air.

That was not metal, after all.

In ancient times, swordsmen didn't clash their weapons. It looked good in the movies, but in real life that only caused the blade to deteriorate much faster. In half a dozen blows the idiot knight might find himself with only a handle in his hand and the blade in pieces on the ground.

But modern progress had solved that problem.

So he broke the Lunar Princess's sword for the third time, while his own was still as good as new.

He fired two claws of darkness, one on each side, intending to crush her in the middle.

Intending but not expecting it.

She dodged the claws effortlessly and then kicked him in the teeth. Literally.

Sylvester went flying backwards and because of his bad luck, something that showed no signs of changing any time soon, his back brushed against the electric barrier shot by the satellite.

It was only an instant. A small graze.

But it was enough to make him feel as if he had been set on fire. He wasn't and wouldn't be on fire, he pulled away immediately, by instinct, as soon as he felt the pain. Like a child bringing a hand close to the flames just to see for himself if it was really that hot and paying for it.

He didn't even burn a small piece of his jacket, but fuck if he didn't momentarily doubt.

The pain loosened the fingers of the hand with which he held the katana. No, he said to himself. And he squeezed before it slipped away.

If Sylvester let go of his weapon, he would lose before he could retrieve it. He had skills to spare, but he was convinced that would be a death sentence anyway. Even if it wasn't directly a death sentence, it wouldn't do him any good, so he'd better make an effort to keep it where it belonged.

They were both inhumanly fast. In the midst of a series of dizzyingly fast attacks and defenses, Sylvester realized that she hadn't just copied the shape of his sword. She was also mimicking his fighting style. She was taking everything the first person she had seen after birth had to offer her. As if he were a father, only she was learning without his consent or help.

Sylvester clicked his tongue.

If she kept learning so fast, they would soon be equal in every way. If she kept growing so fast, she would soon be strong enough to squash him like a bug. He couldn't see a way out of this situation now. Since they had been locked in the barrier, there was no way for him to get assistance either.

None of the people down there had attacks powerful enough to break through the barrier. The barriers, rather. That someone would have to break through not one but two barriers to get to him, even assuming they could somehow help him against this monster.

Sylvester could tear down the barrier if he wanted to, naturally. But that would require turning his back on the enemy.

He would die right then and there. He couldn't even take it into consideration, he would die without a doubt.

The truth was that he was already doing everything he could. The truth was that it didn't matter if it wasn't enough. Things were as they were.

They crossed paths once again and all they managed to do once again was exchange positions. It wasn't like in a samurai movie, one of them realizing seconds later that they'd been wounded and collapsing. They were simply evenly matched (for the moment, just for the moment) and couldn't reach each other.

Sylvester quickly turned around. The Lunar Princess was already coming for him, like a meteor.

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He fired the claw of darkness and missed.

Or so it must have seemed to his enemy, but he hadn't been aiming at her from the start. No, his target had been the barrier. Before all the energy was transmitted through the claw to him, he pushed, pulling the barrier towards him.

Towards them, and that bitch was the first to touch it. She didn't even notice. It was electricity after all, it didn't make any more noise than that constant buzzing. How was she supposed to hear it coming?

She could have put two and two together watching him pull, but even though she wasn't normal deep down she was a newborn.

"You still have a lot to learn!"

Now he was a shark smelling blood in the water.

He released the claw and struck her before she could recover from the shock of the electricity. Sending her against the barrier a second time. His heart was totally out of control now. Because this could be the last chance to finish her off.

Because if she survived, getting up and learning from it, how would he catch her by surprise the next time?

He couldn't think about such things at a time like this. All his effort and conscious thought had to be directed to ensure her absolute death.

A blow executed with both hands.

The Lunar Princess brushed it off and launched her own barrage of blows. Each one was aimed at a vital point. Sylvester didn't back down, he had had enough of losing ground. Instead he advanced, savage, even though he knew he couldn't dodge all the blows under any circumstances.

He had to accept every bit of flesh that was ripped from him and press on.

That was his only method, his only hope, of winning. He couldn't allow anything to make him hesitate or distract him. His life wasn't what was important here. It never had been.

His katana pierced the enemy's guard for the first time, plunging deep into her stomach. He felt it come out the other side, saw it. Her blood was as red as his own.

Even though he had told himself he couldn't be distracted by anything, he allowed himself to grin like an animal baring his teeth.

But, of course, it turned out to be too soon to declare victory.

The black crystal expanded. It swallowed his katana and the arm with which he held it up to his elbow. They were still where they should be, but he couldn't move them an inch. Trapped. Not only had he not won, but this mistake could spell his defeat.

He wasn't smiling anymore. But the Lunar Princess was, a very big smile.

His mind went blank. There was no pain, there was nothing. When he regained consciousness, he found himself without half his arm, in free fall. The katana, intact, was also falling through the air. Twisting and turning. Out of his reach. No matter how far he stretched out his hand, he couldn't reach it.

His hand? His hand? His hand and most of his arm were missing.

He knew he had the other one available, but still the thought made him laugh as if he had said something incredibly stupid and contradictory.

Neither his sword nor he should have fallen very far, but the barrier opened for them. So those in the syndicate had beheld their defeat. Those who were watching the situation from afar, coordinating everything behind the scenes.

Soon the people who were still fighting would see it too.

He was something of a symbol. He meant a lot to a lot of people, even those who had never seen him. Even those who recoiled in fear when he approached. He knew that. That was one of the reasons he couldn't afford to lose.

Humanity needed hope, to keep morale high. That was what Sylvester symbolized. And, tonight...

The symbol crashed into the asphalt, forming a large crater. Lying right in the center like a garbage bag. Without an arm. Without his weapon. In other words, defeated.

Sylvester opened his mouth as if he was going to say something. All he did was spit blood all over himself and the cracks in the floor. He had given it his all, but she had decisively defeated him. A part of him was enraged because it wasn't fair, there was no way he could have predicted what happened.

But so what? Life wasn't fair. In life and death fights there was no room for fairness, only survival. He had lost, so he would die. That was it. It was painfully simple.

No. No!

He couldn't die yet and he hadn't actually been defeated. He had one ace up his sleeve left, one sure way to escape death. He had no choice but to use it. She was coming for him, to finish the job. She wasn't going to fool around or monologue for the cavalry to get there in time. He would die as soon as she caught up with him.

He had no choice but to use that, and there was nothing wrong with using it in the first place.

However...

Health: 15

He hadn't leveled up in years. He could use experience points to improve his stats, but his overall level was what determined the limit of his stats.

He had gone up two levels in a very short time, but it hadn't happened again. He could only raise his Health once more, if this kept up. He could recover a second time, but not a third.

Besides, he would reach the level limit soon, even if it were otherwise. He had to worry about that detail as well.

Whereas The Lunar Princess had just been born. Everything was new to her, anything could make her level up. She had the same power as him. Which meant that even if he managed to bring her to the brink of defeat, she had but to raise her Health stat to fully regenerate.

This was a hopeless battle.

No matter what he did, she would crush him. God... He didn't want to die like this.

He gritted his teeth. Unacceptable. Since that fateful day, he had dedicated his entire life to this. So to fail was unacceptable. Unacceptable, completely unacceptable, unacceptableinacceptableinacceptableinacceptableinacceptableinacceptableinacceptableinacceptableinacceptable.

Heaven and earth. Sun and moon. Human and monster collided in the middle of the crater, instantly making it more than ten meters deeper.

Their swords clashed, of course. The missing arm took only a second to grow after he leveled up his Health. He was also very quick at retrieving the sword. The clash happened before he realized it.

Yes... It was as if his body had moved under someone else's command. Pure instinct, like flowing water.

"Imitate this," Sylvester spat, first out of his mouth.

Then out of his free hand, a beam of energy that hit her squarely and sent the little princess against and through the front of one of the buildings. He should have cared about the damage to the property and the danger to the people possibly still inside, but he couldn't think about that right now, he couldn't think about anything.

First, because his head was exploding.

Second, because if he didn't win this fight at all costs, there wouldn't be a city left to worry about.

He advanced towards his fallen enemy.

He would decide when this was over, when things were truly hopeless. Only he could decide that, so he would press on, whatever it took. And he would crush her.