At high levels, fights didn't take forever to finish, especially one-on-ones.

Liya's extra preparations happened in the instants between getting her spear bent and grabbing a new one. Fast as she was, that wasn't the only thing happening. Two Paths were fighting for supremacy in the overlapped domain.

Non-overlapped domains let the controller do just about anything they wanted inside, as long as they had enough mana. Mana was infinite in the Alliance, so...

Overlapped domains were nowhere near that, but they were still potent tools in their own right. They couldn't be directly wielded—Liya's quantum linking was the limits of what the drow had found—but a domain's most base function still worked: domination. They were called domains, after all. Whatever Law was involved in their making ended up having a stronger hold in the affected area than all others.

The Laws of Annihilation, Spear, and Darkness would be stronger inside Liya's domain than all others. And the Laws of Carnage, Destruction, and Saber would be stronger inside Uk'Gaar's. All related techniques would also grow stronger, faster, and harder to resist.

When domains overlapped, no matter the gap between them, every Law from both sides would have the same sway over Reality. Liya's and Uk'Gaar's Laws would be equivalent to each other in their extra power, and any other would be weaker.

At least, at first.

There was no direct willpower clash between domains, but there was a strategic fight for control when they overlapped. Throughout their entire fight, Liya and Uk'Gaar would have to push with their willpower to bring that shared space closer to their Path.

The reward was simple but powerful: extra power for the winner, less power for the loser.

It was another battlefield that both parties would decide whether to attack and when. Losing wouldn't make them dazed like a direct clash might, but it would affect the entire physical battle in arguably even more important ways.

Some called that "meta-combat;" defining the meta there might change everything under its rules. That, in turn, would see others call it the true battlefield; supposedly, whoever lost it had little to no chance of winning the physical battle.

Uk'Gaar shared that vision. He never sacrificed meta-combat, even if the focus he was investing there might cause him to lose a limb. He believed the consequences of losing the meta-combat were much worse than losing all limbs. He might still escape without limbs, but not in an overlapped domain he had no power over.

So, from the instant his domain and Liya's overlapped, he used a lot of his willpower and focus on making his Laws stronger than Liya's in the area. It wasn't enough to completely suppress hers, but enough to make his Laws have three times the strength as hers at first—and all others were still much weaker. After going berserk, he pushed even harder, making his Laws seven times stronger than hers.

His decision was twice as important to him because he could only cut her from the system in that place if his hold was stronger than hers. Without that, she could just teleport away if she were losing.

The second exchange showcased well how vital controlling the meta was.

Uk'Gaar approached and swung both sabers again.

Liya considered everything she could do and the likely outcome in the current meta-field.

Blocking wouldn't work. Uk'Gaar's armor was a shitty B-, but his sabers were B+, like her spear. Unfortunately, sabers were much more substantial than spears at the moment. Although Liya's current weapon was stronger than the previous one she had sacrificed, he might cut through the shaft rather than just bend it like before.

Parrying was also impossible. Having her spear getting cut in half was bad enough, but losing her spearhead would completely cripple her attacking ability.

Letting herself get struck in exchange for an attack of her own would be stupid. A B-rank's health regen was much better than hers. Not to mention that she still needed at least one of her vital organs intact to live while chopping off Uk'Gaar slowly wouldn't work. She had to kill him at once instead of cutting him down.

If he were C-rank, she could push her Laws into his body with her attacks and force him to waste some extra focus and energy to expunge them. At B-rank, he was immune to it. B-ranks simply couldn't be invaded by opposing Laws—though they could by opposing Realizations.

That left her with dodging. She did it, moving back and sideways.

Uk'Gaar already had at least B- agility, and his saber was much faster in this meta-field. Liya avoided most of the attack, but the very tip of Uk'Gaar's right saber scrapped her armor in the chest.

The impact made the entire section of the armor explode inwards. Her chest caved in from the shockwave, and pieces of the armor went all the way through her body, only stopping on the armor on the other side. All her ribs broke, her heart was gone, and she was pushed back for hundreds of yards before managing to stabilize herself.

That hole in her armor let Uk'Gaar feel her and confirm she was still C-rank.

He stopped attacking, but his rage increased to even new heights. His willpower pushed even harder against hers in the meta-combat. Their battlefield gained a red tint despite being inside overlapped domains and not his full domain, which would already be even redder than crimson by now.

That was the reason orcs didn't control their emotions like the drow. Emotions could negatively affect willpower but also improve it. The payoff, lowering of one's logical thoughts, was considered a good tradeoff, especially because their berserk state also made them not suffer so much in that regard.

Liya had been defenseless in those hundreds of yards of pushback. She only survived because Uk'Gaar paused. He always did when he encountered something ludicrously beyond his narrow worldview. It was even worse when that thing confirmed a hypothesis that he had formulated but refused to fully acknowledge. She had expected that but hoped to not use this one-time lifesaving moment later in their fight.

This was the second time she messed up in the tempo. She wouldn't win if she kept at that. She had to calculate things better and keep her distance—

Or not.

By all accounts, before Uk'Gaar had confirmed her rank, Liya should be the one on the offensive, and Uk'Gaar should have been fighting defensively. Instead, the orc went all-out from the beginning while Liya fought a protracted war with guerilla tactics. She attacked weakly on different fronts—emotions, mana, willpower—and kept the defensive while waiting for the perfect opportunity.

This was already a subversion of everything. And it had worked for him. He believed in himself more than he believed in everything else.

But why was Liya insisting on the same old?

This, she realized, wasn't a fight between drow and orcs.

Uk'Gaar himself was the most unique orc Liya had ever encountered. In general, orcs' low emotional control made them sway with the winds. If a situation was disadvantageous, they ran or submitted. If they had the advantage, they abused it. The only exception was when fighting for their entire race; they hated, suppressed, and killed each other with ridiculous ease but were paradoxically willing to die for the greater good orckind.

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As for Liya, she was drow, but not as before. She was now free. This was a fight for her Path—not her race—from the very moment she even decided to come.

And to her, freedom was...

It was the freedom she had found while crafting spears. In that place, only she and the spear she was crafting mattered. She used all her knowledge and accumulated wisdom but let herself feel the moment and be guided by instincts that couldn't be explained or shared through books or knowledge crystals.

She reckoned Shen could learn a lot of unconventional warfare from this fight, but this time, she would be the one learning from him.

That was the entire reason strong drow were ordered to teach promising students. Learning was a two-way road. Granted, D-ranks had very, very few things they could teach a C-rank. Liya had learned nothing from her past two students, and she had searched.

She hadn't considered her teaching experience with Shen in that light yet. She hadn't had the time. But now, she realized the most straightforward thing.

Liya had taught the human not to confound himself with his Path. He was the spear but also above the spear. He was the controller, not his Concepts and related Laws.

She, herself, was drow—but.

But!

But, she was also above her collective identity. She had even already acknowledged how that would affect the social aspects of her life. For instance, she had wondered about what other drow would think of her for deciding to come to fight a B-rank, regardless of whether she won.

Now, it was time for the next step.

Liya truly accepted her individuality, dreams, hopes, and pursuits. She didn't push them into her Path to create a domain. Instead, she used them to define herself. Who she truly was and wanted to be. Where she was and where she wanted to reach. What she was doing and what her goals were. It was the simplest yet most sublime type of self-acceptance. She freed herself of everything else—permanently.

Instantly, her whole being shifted. Invisible chains broke open; blood ties weakened or snapped. Her fundamental existence reorganized itself beyond her wildest imagination.

Weights she had never noticed she was carrying disappeared from her shoulders. She felt even lighter than when she was crafting. She mentally looked at herself and found exactly that: herself. Not what others might expect of her, not what her indoctrination might tell her, not even what centuries of experience might demand from her.

Only she remained.

She was drow but also free.

She was free but also herself beyond even the most harmless concept.

She was Liya.

Liya.

And this was a fight between Liya and Uk'Gaar. Individuals with thick roots that drank from the wisdom of their ancestors and had been groomed by their races.

They had also risen above most trees in the forest.

In such a place, where they received more sunlight than the ones tending for them, where they were more vulnerable to the strong winds than all those that kept the same height, and where they became easier targets, the only way to survive and thrive was by becoming genuinely unique.

Their convictions, rather than their races or ranks, were the real fighters here.

Liya released all hold over her emotions. All of them. Logic dictated that it would be suicide, but the same reasoning said fighting a B-rank was also suicide.

Suddenly released, all those different feelings and sensations almost drowned her, but she was still the master of herself. She no longer suppressed them, but that didn't mean she would bow to them. She was merely acknowledging them and letting them exist in their entirety rather than muting them to base whispers. She would hear what they had to say and let them help more when deciding her next steps, but she was still the decision maker.

The moment her emotions surfaced in this specific situation, everything changed—

—for her domain was called the Unforgotten Inequitable Annihilation.

Liya hadn't forgotten how her people had been almost annihilated or how she wanted to bring retribution to the entire Alliance. However, with muted emotions, those things hadn't felt as urgent.

Liya hadn't forgotten how her life had been defined by injustices. She had been born and raised the way she was due to the True Enemy and the Alliance's rules. That's what put her right here, right now, where a B-rank was allowed to do whatever they wanted in a supposedly C-rank world.

And Liya hadn't forgotten how she had vowed to annihilate all such injustices from existence. But without letting herself empathize with the cries of the suffering, how could she keep caring?

She hadn't forgotten anything but hadn't cared enough.

But now, standing before her was Uk'Gaar.

The orc fit everything she stood against.

He was known for committing countless atrocities against weak beings, orcs and otherwise, and was protected by his people. Even moments ago, he had tortured illusions, which he believed to be real living beings, to torment Shen. He used the Alliance's legal loopholes to further his Path of Carnage and Destruction. There could be no Carnage with countless bodies, and there could be no countless bodies if all his opponents were as strong as him.

Liya had always wanted to live to bring a Final Dusk to beings like him, but before now, before she felt everything at once after not feeling for so long, before finding the perfect personification of the final enemy before her, that want had been just that: a want.

Not anymore.

Maybe she would die here, but she didn't care. Not because she would die walking her Path or for the weak drow below her. No, it was beyond that.

She simply knew that the Path she walked would one day ascend to the Laws of Reality itself. Even if it weren't her, it would happen. It was a matter of time. In the same moment that she found herself, she also found she didn't matter. Only furthering her Path did. And maybe, just maybe, her death would inspire someone like her to pursue the same justice she did.

That's what gave her peace. Knowing that one day, true justice would be a cosmic reality in the multiverse.

It was inevitable.

She knew that, felt that conviction on the core of her being, for there could be no other outcome.

Final Dusk, her Annihilation-cored style, resonated with her domain and newfound realization like a fish in the water. Aided by Darkness and the Spear, her Path would bring justice for everyone. Those who deserved punishment might try to hide in the shadows, but where would they hide when the shadows themselves fed on their sins and rose to reap their lives?

Finding herself while being at peak C-rank, not a mere G-rank, gave Liya an unmatched perspective on everything. Freeing her emotions gave her a boost of willpower. Finding an opponent that fit everything her domain was created to fight against and that she believed in pushed that even further. Having a fighting style that also suited the same purpose and thoughts was the confirmation of her Path.

So, in the meta battlefield, her willpower met Uk'Gaar's like a phoenix meeting dragon fire.

Both sought to destroy each other, but what was Destruction before complete Annihilation? What was Carnage when it couldn't find its targets in absolute Darkness? And what was a pitiful Saber when a Spear had already killed the former's wielder with its longer reach?

Like a phoenix, Liya's willpower didn't crash against Uk'Gaar's dragon fire. It kept going unbidden by the very elements it thrived in.

All that happened in a split moment.

The armor fragments in Liya's body were being pulled back by the armor's self-repair enchantment, and her mana was repairing her crushed but still exposed heart. She had been laid bare before herself and opponent, but she had survived.

And in understanding herself and her future, she became stronger beyond everyone's expectations.

The slightly red-tainted overlapped domains instantly turned pitch black under her will—and then broke. The Laws of Reality decided that her extra willpower meant there would be no overlapping anymore. Her domain was much stronger than Uk'Gaar's, which couldn't exist there anymore.

And inside her domain, he was nothing.

Liya didn't just kill him. Instead, she lifted the darkness to let everyone witness what was happening.

Foolish, any drow would say. Yet, her Realization demanded delivery. Some walked a good path by nature, but most wicked would only fear justice if they saw it met. She had to let them see what awaited them in the hopes they might repent.

Then, she raised her arm with a closed fist.

That wasn't for her Path, but for herself. Liya didn't need to do that for her next attack, but she wanted the last thing the orc ever saw before her domain blinded him forever to be her victorious gesture.

Another foolish action. One that filled her with joy nonetheless.

A titanic-sized spear made of her entire Path materialized above the orc, pointing down. It was longer than Planet Seventeen. A show of dominance that pleased her Realization and herself.

She lowered her arm as if pulling the heavens down, and the spear descended.

The Spear cut and pierced every atom in Uk'Gaar's body and every particle of his soul. Annihilation made even the energy that split atoms should release cease to exist. And Darkness shrouded his insignificant existence in a world of nothingness that he would never leave, not even if he had any lifesaving artifact.

Liya's final display of might was to make the weapon never strike the world.

All that power was condensed and kept into Uk'Gaar. It saw its origin in her Realization, which was anathema to him, and its end in completing its purpose. No innocents were hurt, and no undesirable byproducts were created. The one who deserved death found it, nothing more, nothing less.

At high levels, fights didn't take forever to finish, especially one-on-ones.

That was still something else altogether.

For Liya had birthed perfect justice into Reality. She had brought retribution to all those who had suffered under that tyrant's antics.

Karma had been met.

Almost as importantly, Liya was still very far from A-rank, but she now knew exactly how to get there.