Unseen Umbra was one of the secret techniques of the Kuroyami clan allowing the user to wield the power of shadows that couldn't be seen by the naked eye, that was the skill that she had just attacked Shion with.

'I mean I did tell her to look out…' Yoru thought with her expression remaining chillingly passive as the pink-haired heroine hit the ground on the far side of the arena.

The impact echoed with a sickening crunch that reverberated through the stadium sending a visceral shudder through the audience.

A plume of pulverized concrete and dust exploded upward, obscuring the crater where the Shiden clan heiress had landed.

'You can't blame me for attacking like this…' Yoru mused, letting out a small exhale. 'Though, if it was truly so easy to kill an heiress of the Great Shiden Clan, then it would have been done a very long time ago by someone far more ambitious than me.'

Through the settling dust, movement stirred.

Shion took a sudden, explosive backflip while still on the ground, utilizing the momentum to enter her combat stance once again.

The physical toll of the Unseen Umbra was evident with dark, crimson blood flowing heavily down her nose, dripping past her chin and her shattered ribs making a horrifyingly audible creaking noise with every breath she took.

However, her glowing eyes told a different story.

The vibrant, neon-purple irises flared and in an instant, her body was completely covered in violently crackling purple lightning that converged outward from her core.

Flesh knit together and bones snapped back into flawless alignment while the blood on her face evaporated into red mist under the sheer heat of her mana.

She healed completely in the span of a single heartbeat.

A warm wind blew at Yoru's dark hair as she stood entirely still watching the woman recover from all the devastating damage that she had dealt in one go like it had been absolutely nothing to her.

'No matter how many times I see it in person, the blessing of lightning that the Shiden clan possesses is truly intriguing…' Yoru thought.

It wasn't only her clan that had deeply guarded secret skills, but all the other Great Clans as well.

'Like the Kagutsuchi clan, for example. They have the eternally burning black flame… a fire that consumes life itself to sustain its existence though they won't ever use it unless it's a strict life or death situation.'

Immediately, Shion gritted her teeth with the purple arcs of electricity snapping off her uniform.

"I gave you the chance to stand down!" she yelled, her voice amplified by the roaring thunder that seemed to passively generate around her. "And since you did not, then I, Shion of the Great Shiden clan, will respond with full force!"

Yoru offered a small serene smile. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

Shion held her blade tightly with the metal singing as it absorbed her elemental affinity and then she shot forward.

The movement of her clearing the massive distance between them was practically instantaneous.

It wasn't just a dash; it was the literal physical embodiment of a lightning strike.

The movement was immediately followed by the deafening rumble of thunder as Shion slashed her blade horizontally aiming to cleave Yoru in two.

However, Yoru's combat instincts were terrifyingly sharp.

She had bent her upper body backward, going completely straight and parallel to the ground in a perfect, physics-defying limbo. She seamlessly dodged the blinding purple slash that cut furiously through the air directly above her nose.

However, the sheer wind force and displaced atmospheric pressure that followed the supersonic blade sent Yoru spinning violently into the air.

Shion immediately pivoted on her heel, the ground beneath her cracking under the force and turned around to slash at the airborne Yoru.

However, before the blade could connect, shadows writhed furiously around Yoru's suspended form.

They condensed and materialized, forming a massive, highly visible hand made of pitch-black darkness that perfectly caught the razor-sharp blade in its palm.

BOOOOOOM!

The purple lightning exploded alongside the volatile shadow mana in a blinding flash of concussive force, pushing both of them violently backward.

Shion went skidding backward with her boots carving deep smoldering trenches into the stadium floor while she held her violently vibrating sword.

Yoru, on the other hand, tumbled a bit through the air before gracefully landing on her feet, skidding backward as well to bleed off the kinetic energy.

The crowd was absolutely roaring around them.

The sheer spectacle of two Clan techniques clashing was exactly what they had wanted to see.

Half the stadium was on their feet shouting, "Shion! Shion!" while the other half… mesmerized by the dark underdog were cheering loudly on Yoru.

Hell, even the live stream was going completely crazy.

「 BRO THE ANIMATION QUALITY OF THIS FIGHT IS INSANE! 」

|__ 「 Dude this is real life, not anime.」

「 Did you see that dodge?! Yoru's core strength is ungodly! 」

「 Shion's healing factor is basically cheating at this point. 」

「 Step on me Shion-sama!!! 」

「 Both of them are literal goddesses. Class 3 and Class 2 are cooking! 」

「 Nah, Yoru got this. Unseen Umbra is too broken. 」

So far, this was undeniably one of the most interesting and longest battles of the entire Buffer Day Tournament.

Yoru elegantly wiped a tiny bead of sweat from her face, her mind racing through tactical permutations.

'The Shiden clan is well known for their ability to close in the distance with their lightning movements, leaving the destructive rumble of thunder in their wake. That automatically puts me at a severe spatial disadvantage. Meaning…'

Yoru stomped her foot on the ground to anchor herself, extended her right arm, and pointed two fingers outward exactly like she was a gun.

Shion raised a skeptical eyebrow at the bizarre posture as she clutched her sword with her leg muscles coiling to start moving again.

'I just have to shoot her down before she ever gets the chance to reach me…' Yoru thought.

Instantly, a bullet entirely made of hyper-compressed shadow coalesced around her fingertips.

With a deafening CRACK that rivaled a sniper rifle, it shot forward. The recoil generated a localized shockwave that violently blew Yoru's dark hair back.

Shion's eyes widened, and she was just about to move to dodge the visible black projectile.

However, exactly mid-way through its trajectory, the shadow bullet seamlessly turned completely invisible.

The tracking on Shion's eyes failed.

Relying entirely on her raw survival instincts, she barely managed to cock her face a fraction of an inch to the right before she got hit. The invisible bullet slid dangerously past her cheek, leaving a clear bloody line carved perfectly across her right cheek and fresh blood trickled down from the fresh wound, staining her pristine skin.

'She can turn these shadow constructs invisible too?!' Shion thought with a flash of genuine panic gripping her heart.

She quickly raised her blade up, blindly blocking the next invisible projectile that Yoru shot out.

The shadows were so densely compressed that when they impacted, they violently rattled her blade, sending bone-jarring vibrations up her arms before exploding outward, making her skid back another two feet.

If this were a normal visible magical attack, then Shion would have been entirely in control of the pacing but when the attacks became Unseen, they completely defied the laws of physics… they no longer interfered with the air, they cast no reflections, and she couldn't see or feel them coming until they made physical contact.

She was essentially being attacked blindly by a firing squad.

Another unseen bullet came specifically for her thigh, ripping a deep line through the side of her uniform. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Several other bullets rained down in a suppressive volley, drawing out more blood and forcing the lightning heiress strictly onto the defensive.

Yoru momentarily pulled back her hand to rapidly recharge her shadows with a soft hiss escaping her lips as the mana drain took its toll.

Seeing the microscopic opening, Shion's eyes glowed with blinding intensity.

Purple lightning soared around her whole figure like a raging storm. With a sonic rumble that shattered the remaining debris in her vicinity, she closed the distance exactly like before but this time, before Yoru could erect any shadow constructs to throw herself out of the way, Shion violently grabbed onto the girl's shoulder and threw her straight up into the air with monstrous superhuman strength.

Yoru shot up into the sky like a launched missile, flying past the hovering streaming drones and higher into the atmosphere with stray arcs of Shion's purple lightning still aggressively surrounding her form.

'This isn't good…' Yoru thought, her stomach dropping as gravity began to take hold.

A terrifying rumble came from directly downward.

Shion was already pursuing her into the sky and Yoru instantly erected a thick, multi-layered wall of shadow mid-air in front of her.

However, Shion didn't take to that defensively lightly.

In a singular, upward purple blur, she effortlessly cut completely through the dense shadow wall, aiming her crackling blade directly for the Kuroyami woman's neck but Yoru was already ten steps ahead.

She had instantly erected a dense sword made entirely of shadow right at her neck, holding it firmly with her hand.

The two blades violently collided in mid-air and the resulting shockwave was so massive that the people from the ground could clearly see the ripples in the air displacing the clouds above the stadium.

Both girls fiercely pushed against each other in freefall with the purple sparks illuminating their gritting teeth.

Yoru casually glanced down at the ground below them, her eyes locking onto the specific shadow she had secretly prepared earlier.

Shion gripped her sword with both hands and without ceremony, she sliced forward, producing a massive, highly concentrated bolt of lightning in a slash that completely cut through the air, lighting up the sky in blinding purple electricity.

However, when the light faded, Shion looked down at the arena.

Yoru was no longer in the sky. She was now standing perfectly safe on the ground, casually waving up at her without so much as a single scratch on her face.

It utterly infuriated the young heiress of the Shiden Clan.

Suspended at the apex of her jump, she angled her body properly in the air.

The very atmosphere beneath her legs began to violently tremble and distort as she prepared to shoot forward in a singular, devastating bolt of lightning.

'How do I handle the Unseen shadows that I'm entirely sure she's spread all over the arena floor already?' Shion thought as she began to tear downward through the air.

As her mana output peaked, the world around her began to terrifyingly turn into slow motion as she moved.

The invisible hands could easily grab her out of the air right now, and she couldn't see them to evade.

Furthermore, it wasn't like she could just destroy the whole stadium with a massive AOE lightning nuke because that would be heavily damaging school property, and the ALI administration would absolutely charge her an astronomical fine of Individual Points for that.

'I think I just have to move faster…' She finished the thought.

Currently, she was closing the distance incredibly quickly, but compared to her grandfather who could literally attack someone at the literal speed of light, she was still pathetically slow.

The descendants of the Great Shiden clan not only had the destructive element of lightning as their affinity, but they also possessed highly specialized genetically altered bodies.

Much like the Kurohane clan members who could step entirely into the Frame World to attack you before you even knew time had passed, every true-blooded Shiden clan member could mathematically reach the speed of light.

Though, it was strictly through the use of a highly classified secret technique that the original clan head and the oldest among all the current clan heads, her Grandfather called the 'Speed Zone'.

Usually, according to the laws of physics, if someone with mass were to reach the Speed of Light in a planetary atmosphere, the resulting atomic friction could most probably destroy the whole world as a whole, igniting the atmosphere in nuclear fire but with their special, mana-insulated bodies, they could temporarily subvert relativity and reach it without causing any catastrophic change to the physical surroundings around them.

It was incredibly complicated quantum magic since Shion still didn't fully understand the whole theoretical thing, but the Speed Zone technique was exactly what she would use here to bypass the invisible traps.

'I'll just forcefully increase my speed enough so that I don't accidentally hurt her by the kinetic friction of it…' she thought.

And even though she couldn't fully reach the true Speed Of Light yet, she could still clear a spectacularly long distance seamlessly.

The body of the Shiden clan heiress seemingly glitched out of reality.

She moved further, making everyone in the stadium blink simultaneously as she was no longer in the air. Instead, with zero transition time, she had already created a massive, smoking crater on the ground.

Yoru was pinned violently beneath her.

Shion was pressing her crackling blade directly against Yoru's head panting heavily from the exertion.

"You should stand down now."

'I did it…' Shion thought with a surge of triumphant adrenaline hitting her system. She had successfully outsped the Unseen Hands before they could have ever collided with—

"Checkmate," Yoru said with her voice completely devoid of panic.

Before Shion could even process the word, something impossibly dense and completely invisible impacted her from directly under her jaw.

It hit her squarely under the chin with the force of a freight train.

The sheer kinetic energy of the invisible shadow uppercut lifted the Shiden clan heiress entirely off her feet, making her spin wildly in the air before she landed heavily on the ground outside the crater, completely and utterly knocked out cold.

Yoru calmly got up, dusting off her uniform, and smiled coldly as she looked down at Shion's fainted twitching body.

"Next time… don't waste your time talking and just finish the job."

A distance away from them, Itsuki raised up his hand. "Yoru is the winner!"

He announced it clearly, making the whole crowd erupt into deafening cheers.

Medics in white coats immediately rushed onto the field toward Shion and desperately tried to grab her to administer first aid but her unconscious body still aggressively trembled with residual electricity.

Even while she was down, the sheer voltage shocked one of the medics, violently throwing him backward and making him collapse to his knees with a pained "Hargh!"

The residual lightning finally died down shortly after, and they safely loaded her onto a stretcher, carrying her out of the arena to a standing ovation.

Itsuki cleared his throat.

"Class 3 has won themselves 10 points and now strictly qualify to go into the Semi-finals!"

However, before the celebrations could truly begin, Yoru lazily raised up her own hand to obstruct Itsuki.

"Class 3 will be surrendering to Class 5."

Itsuki raised his eyebrow, genuinely taken aback by the sudden forfeiture. "Are you absolutely sure? Class 3 will lose their hard-earned ten points."

To which Yoru simply waved her hands off dismissively, saying that it was perfectly alright with her.

With her job seemingly done, she turned her back on the stunned audience and casually walked off back into the dark corridors leading to the ALI waiting rooms.

Itsuki sighed, rubbing his temples before raising his hand again.

"Class 3 has officially withdrawn! Therefore, Class 5 has ten more Class points to their name and has successfully passed the Semi-Finals by default! They will be moving to the Finals against Class 1 momentarily!"

The crowd, though confused by the sudden anti-climax, cheered anyway at the prospect of the final showdown.

…

Several minutes later, the stadium had been completely repaired by the earth awakened, leaving the battleground pristine once again.

Mio walked slowly back into the stadium.

She had been the very first battle that officially started this chaotic Buffer Day Tournament, and it seemed perfectly poetic that she would be the first battle in the grand finals.

Her sleek sword hung securely at her side and her dark ALI cloak flowed majestically behind her in the wind, complementing the sharp cut of her bobbed hair.

The crowd was furiously cheering her name but unlike Koya, who bathed in the adoration, she didn't even bother to turn to face them.

Her eyes were locked strictly forward.

"Mio, are you perhaps nervous?" Pale asked.

The silver-haired goddess was casually floating around her in her ethereal, astral form looking completely unbothered with her legs crossed in mid-air.

'Well, me and this particular Class 1 student have a bit of a complicated history, you see…' Mio replied internally in her thoughts keeping her face stoic.

When the two of them had initially merged their souls, Pale had strictly agreed not to invasively look through her personal memories, so the goddess genuinely wouldn't know the context.

"A history, huh?" Pale asked, her spectral eyes immediately lighting up. She floated closer, grinning pervertedly. "Is it some kind of spicy, forbidden lesbian lovers to bitter enemies shit that I always see in those anime?!"

Mio let out a long, deeply exhausted sigh, utterly ignoring Pale's degenerate theories.

She continued walking with absolute focus until she reached the designated starting distance then, with a fluid motion, she got into her combat stance making her right hand resting lightly on the hilt of her blade.

On the precise other side of the arena, her opponent stood waiting.

A woman with raven-black hair and striking cold gray eyes stood with her own beautifully crafted sword resting in an ornate sheath.

Unlike Mio, who kept her blade on her right side, this woman kept hers on the left side of her waist.

She wore her pristine white Class 1 robe with absolute pride, along with the academy tie that was gently fluttering in the wind.

This was Kaguya Tsukuyomi.

Itsuki, looking significantly more exhausted than when the tournament began raised his hands high.

"Thirty seconds to prepare!" he shouted out.

The two women looked dead at each other.

They didn't say anything initially, drastically unlike the other competitors that had been relentlessly telling each other to surrender beforehand.

However, Kaguya Tsukuyomi's perfectly manicured lips suddenly moved. She elegantly cleared her throat.

"Hey, Mio…" Kaguya said.

Mio slightly raised an eyebrow, not breaking her stance. "What?"

Kaguya tilted her head, a mockingly curious expression crossing her beautiful features. "What exactly does it take to become a lover of Koya-kun? I must admit... I am quite interested."

Mio froze. She looked around in sheer disbelief.

They were literally standing in the dead center of a massive stadium, broadcasted online with currently over fifteen million viewers watching their every move.

Mio desperately wanted to scream into the microphone that she absolutely wasn't his lover, that it was all a massive misunderstanding.

However, she suddenly remembered that Ryouma was sitting right there in the crowd, watching them closely. If she denied it here, it could compromise everything so, she tightly thinned her lips, refusing to give Kaguya the satisfaction of an answer.

Seeing the visible struggle on Mio's face, Kaguya chuckled softly.

"Maybe I was completely joking... or maybe I was not." The woman looked joyous.

Itsuki, sensing the psychological warfare had peaked, brought his hand down sharply.

"Begin!"

Before Mio could even twitch her muscles to activate her partial Frame Skip, the world profoundly changed.

The woman had already placed her hand delicately on the hilt of her sheathed blade. Instantly, an overwhelming, suffocating wave of lunar mana flooded the arena.

A massive, glowing pattern perfectly resembling that of a crescent moon rapidly spread across the entire tiled ground of the arena illuminating the ground in an ethereal silver glow.

The very air itself became instantly eerie dropping in temperature and feeling heavy like the stadium had been abruptly submerged under a deep dark ocean.

Mio paused with her instincts screaming at her to not step forward blindly.

She held her sword tightly in a desperate defensive stance with her eyes scanning the shifting environment as she nervously awaited what was to come.

Kaguya smiled, her gray eyes reflecting the silver light as she slowly pulled on her sword.

The movement was incredibly elegant, looking more like a ceremonial dance than a preparation for murder.

"Beautiful Moon Dance…" Kaguya whispered. "Step 1…"

The ambient mana in the air visibly snaked and twisted, funneled directly into her sword as she drew it fully out of her sheath making the blade gleam with a terrifying otherworldly sharpness.

The instant the whole sword came free from its scabbard, her gray eyes flashed with killing intent, and she finished the incantation.

"Split!"

SHRKKKKKKKK!!!!!!