Mio was pushed to the very edge of the arena with her boots skidding across stone as an invisible slash crossed the air around her.

It took the full force of her mana to bear the brunt of that strike with her blade vibrating in her grip and her arms screaming from the impact.

The wide ground of the stadium trembled beneath them and a massive slash carved straight through the center of the arena floor, carving a trench deep enough to swallow a person.

The stone didn't split apart completely, but the structural damage was terrifying with cracks spiderwebbed outward from the cut like lightning frozen in rock.

The Mana suppressing band Itsuki had given Kaguya sparked violently on her arm making blue arcs of electricity danced across the metal before the clasps gave out with a metallic snap.

The bands detached and clattered to the ground smoking up completely and Kaguya laughed nervously, looking toward Itsuki.

The Aozora heir stared back at her with a glare that could melt steel.

"I guess I broke it..." Kaguya said while laughing.

Itsuki stepped forward to give Kaguya another suppression band but Mio lowered her sword and looked directly at Itsuki.

"I'd prefer if Kaguya didn't have to hold herself back," Mio said.

Itsuki blinked. "Are you sure?"

Mio nodded once.

The man studied her face for a long moment, searching for doubt or fear and when he found neither.

He stepped back to the edge of the field.

Kaguya looked at Mio with an expression that was equally curious and amused.

"Even though you're clearly outmatched…" Kaguya said slowly. "you still want me not to hold back?"

She laughed elegantly.

"I like you, Mio."

Pale still floated near Mio's shoulder as her ghostly form flickered with concern.

"Should I lend you a bit of my own power?" Pale asked.

Mio shook her head. "I'll handle this alone."

Without ceremony, without warning, she sprinted forward and Kaguya matched her instantly.

The lunar crescent on the ground vanished as both fighters accelerated, closing the distance between themselves from twenty meters apart.

They met in the center.

CLANG!

Their blades collided with enough force to generate a visible shockwave. The impact rattled the arena foundations and a ring of displaced air exploded outward, blowing Itsuki's hair backward despite him standing at the far edge.

The crowd roared.

"I like your footwork…" Kaguya said with their swords still locked.

Mio pushed her back and went for a horizontal slash aimed at Kaguya's ribs but Kaguya parried with the blunt of her blade.

The deflection sent Mio's hands upward, leaving her torso exposed and Kaguya stabbed forward, aiming for Mio's stomach but Mio flipped and used Kaguya's blade as a platform before kicking toward Kaguya's face.

Kaguya tilted her head back and the kick missed by millimeters. She countered with a flip kick aimed at Mio's back.

Mio twisted mid-air and their boots collided with force, generating another shockwave that sent them both flying.

Mio landed and Kaguya had already closed the distance again and their blades met again with sparks flying between them.

"How did you know to block the first step of the Beautiful Moon Dance?" Kaguya asked. "Most people don't feel the strike until it comes at the last instant… Have you perhaps seen it before?"

Mio didn't reply and Kaguya's grin widened. "It doesn't matter. I'll force the answers out of you eventually."

She forced Mio skidding ten meters backward and Mio's eyes flashed. She stepped forward and her body turned into a blur.

The Frame World appeared around her.

Animation frames materialized in the air in transparent rectangles that looked like glass. Unlike when Pale or a Kurohane used the Frame World, Mio's version was more subdued.

The real world still moved around her… just a bit slower so time hadn't stopped, it had merely… hesitated.

'I guess it's because I have a red crest…' she thought, choosing a frame directly ahead.

When Pale assumed control of her body, her crest turned blue and her body became more attuned to elemental mana but Mio's body remained red-crest aligned when she took back control.

Mio shot through the animation frame and reality skipped.

Before Kaguya could blink, Mio had already closed the distance with her sword held in a specific grip as she angled for an upward slash.

Kaguya looked at the incoming attack and raised an eyebrow.

'Is she trying to send me into the air?' Kaguya thought. 'Well, if that's what she wants then…'

Kaguya used her blade to defend. The strike connected with bone-rattling force and Mio held the hilt tight, using the power and momentum to launch Kaguya upward.

Kaguya flew toward the air and Mio shot up after her ready to finish this in one strike but she'd forgotten something vital.

Kaguya grinned mid-air and then she planted her sword into nothing… stabbing the air itself as if it were solid ground.

'Fuck!' Mio screamed in her head.

"Beautiful Moon Dance… Step 3." Kaguya said.

Instead of the crescent appearing on the ground, four mini crescents formed behind her. Her eyes flashed with lunar light.

"Orgasm!" she announced.

The name sounded wildly inappropriate for the situation but Mio knew exactly how deadly it was.

She brought her sword up to defend.

Two of the four moon beams converged on her blade, the impact sending shockwaves up her arms.

One beam blasted past her left side, piercing a deep hole through her ALI cloak and the fourth beam hit her dead in the stomach.

The energy burned on contact and Mio fell.

She hit the ground hard and coughed out blood, clutching the wound where the beam had burned a hole through her stomach.

She'd poured mana into defense at the last second, but it wasn't enough; however, Kaguya wasn't giving her time to recover.

The woman descended from above with her blade angled down at Mio.

"Beautiful Moon Dance... Step 2." Kaguya said. "Fall!"

Lunar energy surrounded her like meteorite fire… not as strong as the real thing but devastating nonetheless and she came down fast.

Mio's eyes flashed and a powerful explosion of mana erupted as Mio's desperate counter met Kaguya's descent.

A Professor raised their hand, erecting a barrier to protect the students and stream drone from the shockwave.

When the dust cleared, Kaguya's blade was stabbed into the ground while Mio stood several meters away in a fighting stance while breathing hard.

Kaguya pulled her sword free.

"I'm impressed…" Kaguya said. "Not only did you react quickly to the first through third steps of the Beautiful Moon Dance, you did it beautifully too. This makes me want to study you even more."

She smiled.

"Ever since the moment I could hold a sword, nobody has ever been my match. I'm very happy this battle has lasted this long."

Kaguya then pointed her blade at Mio. "I want to know all your darkest secrets… Everything you keep bubbling up inside. I want to know what you're afraid of."

"Fuck off…" Mio said.

Kaguya smiled wider. "Such barbaric language is unfit for a girl like yourself."

Then the lunar mana in the air shifted, flowing around them both as Kaguya's gray eyes flashed.

"Illumina."

The energy rushed into Mio's body and her eyes widened as the world turned dark.

...Drip! ...Drip! ...Drip!

Mio opened her eyes.

She was laid across the ground and she clutched her sword and looked up at Pale, who was staring forward.

Mio followed her gaze and saw three familiar figures standing around Kaguya.

"Oho, finally up," Kaguya said. "You were only out for a few seconds. I knew I recognized you, and this just proves it. You're the head daughter of our branch clan, right? The one who could only do Beautiful Moon Dance Step 1 and couldn't do the rest? You ran away because of how useless you were. I can't believe it's actually you in the flesh, and we've been attending the same school all this time…"

While Kaguya was blabbering, Mio gripped the ground and pulled herself up.

'No...'

Her Order memories were secured by the seal in her spine, it would detonate per Hakai's automatic command if someone tried to pry it open but this was something she didn't want to see.

Three people stood before her.

Her father with his long black and white hair and beard, holding a sword. Her older brother with that familiar annoyed look on his face holding dual swords and her little sister… not Kuu.

Kuu wasn't her real sister, she was just the daughter of a woman who said she didn't want her child growing up in the clan.

Her real little sister was a prodigy who had mastered the first to third steps when she was five so Mio couldn't compare.

Her current appearance also came undone. Instead of her bobbed hair, she had long black hair and gray eyes again.

"What is this?" Mio asked.

Kaguya placed a finger on her lip. "This is my special Illusion spell, Illumina. It brings out one's unhandled fears, Oh and don't bother thinking this isn't real… It will hurt."

Mio's lips thinned and she held her blade up as the crowd cheered even louder.

"Attack…" Kaguya commanded and the three figures moved.

Mio's father came first with his blade becoming a silver blur cutting through the air aimed at her throat.

She parried making steel meeting steel with a sharp ring but before she could counter, her sister materialized at her side and slashed into her ribs.

The impact drove the air from Mio's lungs as she defended herself with her mana. She kicked out reflexively with her boot connecting with her sister's face, sending the girl stumbling back but her brother was already there.

His kick caught her in the spine, and Mio pitched forward barely keeping her grip on her sword.

Her father stepped in again, raising his blade overhead.

"Beautiful Moon Dance… Step 1…" He said. "Split!"

The crescent moon formation glowed beneath his feet, but it was weaker than Kaguya's version.

Mio brought her sword up, blocking the invisible slash that followed, but the force still drove her to one knee but her sister didn't give her time to recover.

"Beautiful Moon Dance… Step 4…" She said. "Rapid Heels!"

Lunar energy coalesced around the girl's blade as she thrust forward in a rapid-fire barrage. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

One stab… Two… Three… Four…

Each strike glowed with pale light and each one was aimed to kill. Mio twisted left, then right, dodging by inches as the lunar-charged attacks carved through the air where she'd been standing.

She backpedaled and collided with her brother.

"Beautiful Moon Dance… Step 3…" he said from behind her. "Orgasm!"

Four mini crescents materialized around him, and before Mio could turn, they detonated and the blast hit her square in the back.

Mio's body became a projectile.

She shot across the arena, tumbling end over end until she slammed into the far wall with a bone-rattling crunch.

Blood trickled from her mouth and her vision swam. Across the field, Kaguya examined her nails with bored disinterest.

"This way, I don't even have to beat you myself…" she said idly. "You'll do it all on your own."

Mio staggered to her feet and her hands trembled as she reached for her sword's sheath then she did something that made everyone… Kaguya included freeze in place.

She sheathed her blade and Kaguya's eyes narrowed.

"Why the hell would you do that?"

Mio looked up at her as blood dripped from her split lip.

"These aren't the real people, right?" Mio asked.

Kaguya tilted her head. "What are you getting at?"

Mio didn't answer, instead, she raised one hand to her left eye and gripped at the socket.

Pale screamed something but Mio didn't stop, she gripped the soft tissue and pulled and the pain was immediate. Her left eye came first, ripping free with a wet tearing sound as blood poured down her cheek in thick rivulets, dripping from her chin onto the arena floor.

The eyeball dangled from optic nerves for half a second before she tore it completely free and let it fall and the crowd gasped in horror.

Kaguya's face twisted in shock and disgust.

"What the fuck are you doing?!"

Mio didn't answer but she reached for her right eye.

This one came harder.

The nerves resisted, and she had to yank as her fingers became slick with blood. She grunted through gritted teeth as the eye tore free with more blood gushing from the empty socket.

She dropped it beside the first.

"Are you insane?! Mio, what—"

But then Kaguya felt it… the lunar mana in the air was being siphoned. It poured into Mio's body like water into a drain.

"What... what the hell is going on?" Kaguya whispered while holding her own blade.

Mio couldn't see anymore… Not with her eyes, anyway but she could see everything.

The field lit up in her mind's eye… not in color or shape but in mana signatures.

Four distinct reservoirs of energy glowed like beacons. Three smaller ones stood in front of her but thin threads linked them back to the fourth that had a much larger signature at the far end and that was Kaguya.

'So the person at the far right is Kaguya…' Mio thought with blood streaming down her face. 'And the other three are my former family.'

Their mana looked real.

The density was perfect but those connecting lines gave them away as umbilical cords of lunar energy were feeding them power from Kaguya's reserves… they were Illusions if one could even call them that.

But why could she suddenly absorb lunar mana like this?

She had a red crest and red crest holders weren't supposed to have elemental affinities… they relied on physical enhancement and weapon skills however the lunar mana poured into her body in torrents.

'Probably because of Pale…'

Or maybe it was the blindness itself. She'd experimented with this before, back when she was on the run with Kuu, she'd tried everything to make the Beautiful Moon Dance more powerful… blindfolds, meditation and stuff.

She could only use the Step when her eyes were closed after all and one desperate night, she'd tried removing her eyes, it had been excruciating but it had worked.

Without eyes, her body had opened to lunar mana like a flower to moonlight. The Beautiful Moon Dance required sight to see the crescent formations but it also required blindness to truly feel the lunar energy… at least for her own unique body.

Mio reached for her sword and Kaguya recovered from her shock and barked an order.

"Engage the blind woman! Now!"

Mio's little sister rushed her first with her blade raised for a killing strike. The girl moved fast but without eyes, Mio could track her perfectly through her mana signature alone.

Mio gripped her sword with both hands as lunar mana poured into the blade until it glowed with pale light then she activated partial Frame Skip.

The world slowed and animation frames appeared around her in her mind's eye. She chose one directly in front of her sister's charging trajectory and stepped through.

One moment, Mio stood ten meters away and the next, she was behind her sister with her sword already completing its arc mid-swing.

The slash bisected the girl cleanly through the midsection and the illusion disintegrated.

Her sister's form came apart into wisps of lunar mana that dissolved like smoke caught in wind, leaving nothing behind but Mio felt no satisfaction.

Her brother called out from above, falling toward her with his blade angled down in a killing dive.

"Beautiful Moon Dance… Step 2, Fall!"

Lunar energy coated his descending form like meteorite fire but Mio sidestepped and let him crash into the ground where she'd been standing a heartbeat before.

The impact cratered the arena floor, sending cracks spiderwebbing outward. Before he could recover, she bisected him too in half this time from the head down to the dick.

He dissolved into mana wisps.

'Two down.'

Her father stood ahead raising his sword calmly… The way he'd always done when training her as a child… The stance was perfect and his form was flawless.

It made her chest ache.

"Beautiful Moon Dance… Step 1…" Her father said but Mio didn't let him finish.

She used Partial Frame Skip again and her body blurred across the distance in a streak of motion too fast for the eye to follow then her blade carved through his midsection before the crescent formation could even manifest and he fell apart into wisps of light scattered into nothing.

'They were far easier to cut through than humans…' Mio thought distantly then she turned toward Kaguya.

The Class 1 representative stood with her sword drawn.

"Congratulations for facing your fears," Kaguya said slowly recovering her composure. "But what do you want to do now? Use a miniature First Step or what? You could only ever manage tiny formations, right?"

Mio held her sword to the side as she ran forward.

Blood streamed from her empty eye sockets in twin crimson trails, painting her face like war paint. It dripped from her chin, spattering on the arena floor with each step.

She looked like death itself walking across the battlefield.

"Beautiful Moon Dance… Step 1…" Mio said, her voice carrying across the silent arena as her sword ignited with lunar energy.

The light was blinding and it wrapped around her blade in spiraling ribbons of pale luminescence then the crescent moon expanded.

It was not small… instead it was massive.

The formation spread across the field like dawn breaking over the horizon, growing larger and larger until it covered not just the arena but the entire field just outside the stands.

Kaguya's eyes widened.

Mio had been training… If she could only use one step then she had to train it to perfection to make sure that nobody would ever be able to beat her at it.

"Split!" Mio roared with everything she had left and an invisible slash tore through the center of the field with devastating force.

The arena floor cracked and stone split, the very air seemed to scream as the attack carved through space itself.

Kaguya brought her sword up to block, pouring every ounce of mana into defensive reinforcement.

The slash collided with her guard and she held on… barely. Her feet skidded backward with her boots carving deep trenches into the cracked stone ground beneath her weight.

Her arms screamed in protest and her blade vibrated so hard she thought it might shatter but she held firm.

"Is that... all you—" Kaguya started to say.

Then Mio grinned, the blood had reached her mouth now, seeping between her teeth and staining them crimson red.

With her empty eye sockets and blood-painted face, she looked like a demon wearing human skin.

"Multi-Strike…"