?? The threshold for [Intoxication] has been reached ??

  Yuzuriha didn’t get the chance to ponder what Sawatari had just said, because in the next instance, Arthur shifted his arm forward to gently push her off her feet again, putting a little more effort.

  Just like the first couple of rounds, she could have been easily knocked down and found a pointy blade hovering in front of her face, and Arthur declaring his win.

  However, it played out differently this time. In the midst of his attempt, her blade rapidly cut through the narrow gap between them with sudden clarity, terrifying speed and deadly precision that Arthur immediately retracted his head back a millisecond before the sharp blade carved it off.

  After such a close call, he didn’t waste time standing around. He quickly opened a wide gap between them and adjusted into a proper stance for the first time since starting this session.

  Arthur had his guard up now. Just like the now trembling yellow hue of his astris, his voice carried a note of caution.

  “Your progress, Miss Drapes….is faster than I expected”

  He threw praise her way, but she didn’t know how to receive it. Mostly because she had no idea what just happened. The strands of his hair she had just cut off made her even more confused.

  “Uh, I—what just…”

  ‘Wait…I did that? I actually got a hit in? That wasn’t just luck, right? No, it had to be. I’ve been terrible at this sword stuff until now’

  Even so, she couldn’t deny how different she felt at that moment. When she didn’t know how to react, her body moved before her mind did. And that somehow got an almost clean hit on his face.

  In other words, she almost killed him.

  They were using very real blades here in this training session, not the typical wood. One wrong move is all it takes to spill blood.

  The very realization of that had her hesitant when she took her stance. Unlike before, this one felt…like a real battle stance. Her feet grounded, her grip balanced and her posture was just right.

  It was like slipping into clothing she didn’t know had been tailored for her.

  Yuzuriha wanted to ask, but Arthur didn’t give her the chance.

  “Again. Come at me”

  She followed as instructed and flashed her blade toward him again, her strike still had that precision and sharp edge as the one she displayed earlier. Now with his guard up, Arthur had no problem parrying the strike and following with one of his own.

  Yuzuriha’s body responded like it had been waiting for this. She met the downward slash with ease, prompting sparks to fly from their clash.

  ‘What…what’s happening?’

  Arthur didn’t say anything this time. He didn’t seem to be in the mood to lecture her anymore. Or was it because she was showing this improvement that he didn’t see it as being necessary anymore?

  At any rate, the gentleman pressed forward with a flurry of rapier strikes with a style that had been refined from years of battle and close brushes with death. As crazy as it seemed, Yuzuriha met him blow for blow.

  “...Splendid! You answer keenly!”

  Arthur blurted out as she turned to dodge his thrusts. At the same time, her blade grazed past his cheek, almost drawing blood from him. Instead, another lock of his hair fell away.

  ‘I got another hit?’

  She did get another hit in, but since that didn’t make him surrender. This sparring wasn’t over yet.

  As their exchange continued, she felt…change, strange change. Her body flowed like water, her blade was carried by forces she didn’t understand.

  The more she fought, the lighter she felt. The grip, the weight, the timing and skill were each being honed by the second. As if she was finally in her element, like she had entered a state people called…flow. Or was it adrenaline?

  ‘No way, adrenaline wouldn’t turn me into a sword master all of a sudden? I know I call myself a genius from now and then, but I’m not close to one. Is it Sawatar’s doing?’

  Before she got this good, she heard the Manifestation tell her something about a threshold being reached. Was this it?

  Arthur attacked with a horizontal sweep in blinding speed and she spun her sword to meet his, catching the strike at the last instant. Their blades groaned for a second, before she loosened her sword.

  Using the opportunity the confusion provided, Yuzuriha kicked him off balance before lunging with a straight sword thrust that nearly pierced his chest.

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  Luckily, he stepped aside. Barely. He was unscathed though so it was good.

  The gentleman’s wariness of the young blind girl had grown to where he was at a loss for words. His silence was heavier than words, and Yuzuriha could understand why.

  She wasn’t just matching him in skill and strength, she was actually overwhelming him!

  Without sparring a single breath, Yuzuriha slipped past his guard entirely. The tip of her sword stopped just short of his face, above the forehead of his right eye.

  Another strand of hair drifted down between them, severed by her last strike.

  Arthur froze and the entire room went quiet except for the sound of their breathing. Yuzuriha’s hand trembled as she realized what she had done.

  She tilted her head up to meet his face, raising an eyebrow as her lips curled into a wry smile.

  “One point for me”

  Those words, she recited the same words he used to frustratingly humble her over and over. Now it was her turn.

  For a moment, they stood like that in silence. Until Arthur exhaled a deep breath slowly. Then he let out a cheerful laugh.

  “One point indeed, Miss Drapes. However…”

  Yuzuriha was about to let the sword down, but stopped the instance Arthur said in a chilling tone.

  “ [Resonance] ”

  That word was the last thing she heard and what happened next was a complete mystery.

  She had lost consciousness.

  Darkness.

  Endless, empty , and suffocating darkness.

  That’s where Yuzuriha found herself. She couldn’t tell her state of being, whether she was floating, standing or lying down. In fact, she couldn’t feel or see anything.

  Even her recently acquired astris perception was of no use. When she tried to reach out with it, all she felt was a void so vast and empty that it threatened to swallow her.

  She tried to move her hand, her fingers, her legs, or anything. But nothing happened. Not a single part of her body was responding to her, even her senses were useless. Her ears picked up no sound and air neither entered nor left her chest, scratching off her sense of smell.

  ‘...Am I even breathing? No, wait. Better question, do I even have lungs right now?’

  The thought made her stomach twist. Wait, did she have a stomach? Or a body for that matter?

  Once again she tried to wriggle her fingers, putting all of her effort into that one simple act in hopes of getting some sort of answer, but it was pointless. It was like shouting into a collapsed cavern.

  ‘Oh, no…!’

  A grim thought crept into her mind and that’s when she began to panic. This place, this overarching darkness was all too familiar.

  Her mind snapped back to the moment of when she died from her previous life. Her soul was taken to a place like this before being thrown into the new world.

  If she had lips, they twitched into a snarl.

  ‘Arthur, you bastard!’

  If she had a mouth, she would have been screaming at the top of her lungs, cursing at the deceptive gentleman.

  Things right now were a bit unclear, but according to past experience, this didn’t look good for her at all. A lot of assumptions and conclusions could be made in a situation like this, one of the primary ones being…

  ‘Did he really…did he kill me? Did I die again?!’

  Either that or she could have been dreaming, but the fact she couldn’t tell the difference, frustration poured into curses spat silently into the endless void.

  Her voice didn’t reach her ears, if she had those, but she kept at it, if only to keep herself from losing her mind.

  ‘What did he even do to me? I don’t remember feeling pain so it couldn’t have been a direct attack. He said something before I lost consciousness, but what was it? Ugh, unbelievable! Is this really how I go out? Again?!’

  Her thoughts spiraled, going from rage, to creeping despair and back to rage!

  She couldn’t feel anything, yes. But it was different somehow. Unlike the last time, she was aware of a body, yet trapped inside it like a prisoner in a locked coffin.

  That slight difference made everything worse.

  ‘Which one is it? I’m I dead or dreaming? I could never tell the difference of what’s real or not in my dreams. So this is really tricky, not to mention frustrating’

  This silence in the vast darkness stretched on for a while longer. She had no sense of time, minutes, hours or maybe days all bled together. She used this time to think about a lot of stuff and process all the new information she had learned up to this point.

  ‘Not sure how this is going to be useful, but sure beats doing nothing. Ah well, here I go’

  With a deep internal sigh, she thought, re-thought, then thought again, until even her panic dulled to boredom. She even found herself singing at one point.

  Then, an idea hit her.

  ‘That’s right! How could I forget?!’

  There was still one thing left to try.

  ‘...Sawatari? Oi, Sawatari, you there?’

  She waited for a bit before confirming that the Manifestation won’t answer her.

  ‘Come on, please answer me. I really need you right now. This place really freaks me out. It would be nice to have someone to talk to’

  Still came no response. There was only silence in this vast darkness. Even so, she tried again, and again, waiting between each call like a fool clinging to hope. But that didn’t work.

  ‘Guess that wasn’t you back there with Arthur after all. Or maybe it was. Who knows with you!’

  Another sigh slipped into her mind. As more time passed, she could feel the edges of her frustration curling back into the same dry sarcasm she always fell to. Not that anyone was here to listen to her and all.

  ‘Lovely isn’t it. I got murdered by a man in both my life times. How pathetic can I get?’

  First it was her husband from her previous world, Kobayashi Junichiro. And now it was the comrade of her older sister, Arthur Ainsbury.

  Then again, maybe she was jumping to conclusions on the last one. After all, she hadn’t really confirmed whether she was dead or not. That left only speculations.

  Even so, there was nothing she could do right now other than wait for some divine miracle. All she could do now was resign herself to the emptiness.

  However, just as she was about to do that, there was a light. A blinding light rising in the horizon like the sun.

  It was distant at first, maybe miles away from her because she seemed like a spec of dust in comparison. It rapidly tore through the pitch, washing away the suffocating darkness.

  Yuzuriha flinched against it, she wanted to cover her eyelids, but she couldn’t move. And also, it turned out she did have a body, she just couldn’t see it since her astris perception was off.

  The light swelled until it swallowed the void entirely. And from its heart, a figure stepped forward.

  Yuzuriha saw a woman. A tall, impossibly tall, woman with curves in all the right places. Her body was naked yet shrouded in golden brilliance so overwhelming it made details impossible to discern.

  The only clear thing about her was her hair. That long, flowing strands of pure gold swaying like they were underwater.

  She couldn’t see the woman’s face as per usual, but yet the aura around her pressed down on Yuzuriha’s very being. It wasn’t suffocating like Marcille’s, it was warm, and nurturing.

  For the first time since waking in this void, Yuzuriha was at a loss.

  ‘...Just what kind of mess have I gotten myself into this time?’