"I'll take you to a world that doesn't exist yet."

I didn't understand those words, they weren't spoken to me and yet, I felt something between fear and excitement. I wonder if Lady felt the same when Grim said that to her.

Lady hadn't moved much from where she was. Grim was sending wave after wave of that black mass but she was able to avoid all of them without moving so much as an inch.

Seeing as this wasn't having effect, Grim stopped and watched her silently. He then smirked. He'd realized her trick. Those black waves had served their purpose, now he could go all out.

Grim remained on the offensive for most of the fight, it seemed to me that Lady was being very cautious, or perhaps reserved is the word for it.

Grim raised his scythe towards the sky and seven portals opened up. Out of them, came black cubicle pillars. They were so overpowering, you could feel the pull of them. Like magnets...or perhaps black holes. Lady looked up at them as they were about to rain down on her. Then she set her fur coat free from her shoulders and it flew away into the dark haze-like wind. She was a lot slender under those layers. Almost too fragile-looking, in fact. It seemed she'd be squashed by those masses that hung overhead.

But she seemed calm enough for now. With one wave of his hand, Grim brought the hellish rain down on her. The cubicle pillars kept reappearing from the portals. They rained down on her with all their might, sending the mountain into an upheaval. It had begun to break down. If not for Chopper holding me up, I wouldn't have been able to stay standing.

"Sight, better put up a barrier now", Chopper said to him.

Sight nodded and acting upon his instruction, secured us all in a floating barrier. Lady was out of sight now. With the whole ground breaking down, there was a storm brewing where they were fighting. I couldn't see anything beyond the unbelievable smoke and debris.

"Chopper-san", I muttered, "Is she really going to be alright?"

"Of course! If anything, you should worry about the mountain Grim's pounding flat. You aren't supposed to do that to mountains, you know!", Lubbock replied in his stead.

When the rally of pillars stopped and the smoke settled, we were able to see Grim. He held his hand high, halting the pillars mid air. He was searching for Lady too. But she was nowhere to be found on the ground. Had she been crushed? Quite the contrary.

Grim looked up to find Lady standing on one of the pillars he held midair. He grinned.

She was unscathed.

He then let the pillars down and Lady disappeared again. She shot towards Grim, jumping over the pillars and this time we were actually able to see her. Soon enough, she was right above Grim. She went in for a kick over his head, aiming to pummel him to the ground. But Grim managed to avoid her. He summoned a portal right over his head and a pillar went flying upwards, thwarting Lady's plan midair. It shot her away from Grim but she wasn't exactly injured by it.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

I didn't quite understand how Lady was able to keep up with this much pressure. She was able to withstand Grim's decay with seemingly no problem.

"Chopper-san, what's her power?", I finally asked.

Chopper sighed.

"Ain't that the question of the century?", he mumbled to himself, shaking his head.

"5%!", Deli said, extending her palm and stretched fingers as a five in my face.

"Huh?"

"That's her power", Chopper said, "It used to be 1% but..."

"Wait, hold on", I was wrapping my head around it, "Are you saying her powers grew? As in...transformed? And what is that power? How did it go up?"

"Well, long story short, she went up against a bunch of idiots and earned a boost. A whopping 2% when she bumped heads with Sight. We think that was how high it went with him. But of course there were others."

"So her power...is it like...is she ever gonna get to a 100%? Is there even a limit to begin with? And wait, Sight is that strong?!", I was more concerned about the later part.

But Sight just grinned like an idiot and I wondered if Chopper wasn't just joking around.

"We won't let it get to a 100. That's the whole point about the rules", Chopper replied, his eyes glued to the fight.

"Why not?"

"Think about it, Seraph. Does she look like she's giving way to Grim? That's just 5%. She's already uncontrollable enough. So we plan to stop her growth at five. Maybe we should have done it a lot earlier. For the sake of balance, there always has to be someone that can stop her."

"But...it seems like...oppression of a sort, doesn't it?", I said, hesitantly.

"Perhaps so, but its for her sake too. She's already in a world of her own, a place where no one else can get. To her, perhaps, Valhalla is meant to protect us. But it's the other way around for us. Though, to be fair, we can't say either way, because we ourselves aren't sure who's protecting who. But when the time comes, someone needs to make the hard choices", Deli replied.

"So what is this power?", I paused to think for a moment before asking.

"She's always 5% stronger than her opponent. If she faces off against more than one opponent, then she's 5% stronger than all their strengths combined. Its all about the opposing force really", Chopper explained, taking a cigarette out of his pocket and placing it between his lips.

"The power that manifests in her is the counter of her opponent, like fire for water. But for powers which don't have a counter, like brute strength, she just surpasses their strength", Deli delved in a little further, "But that means there's a toll on her too. Say she went against a really muscular opponent, her small body would have to accommodate that much muscle on the go. And that means she breaks down inside."

"But her 5% isn't exclusive to opponents. So it fights against her own body. It fights the tear. Her power breaks her, and its her power that rebuilds her. But as you can imagine, it doesn't accommodate for factors like pain", Chopper went on.

"Just what is the limit of this power?", I asked.

"We don't know that either. But if it comes to it...her 5% can overpower death too. She can't die. For now, that about seems the limit but...maybe, just maybe, it isn't."

"She can't...", it felt like I understood why she was the way she was, just a little.

"What this means is that if she's ever critically wounded, something that would normally kill her, she'll just...not die from it. She'll suffer the agony and keep on being alive. She might lose her senses, her consciousness, everything. But she'll stay alive", Deli had a grave look on her face as she said this.

Lubbock and Sight looked solemn too.

"Is it a curse?", I asked after a pause.

There was no answer. They all looked as if they were in a deep somber thought. I thought that I might find the answer to that myself. But for that to happen, she needed to make it out of this fight. Though, of course, she wouldn't die. Was there even a need for concern anymore? And yet, why did my fellow Valkyries looked like they were praying from the bottom of their hearts. Even though, I'm sure none of them knew any God.