This time, Miryeong stepped forward.
The wind no longer gathered.
Wherever Miryeong’s foot touched, the air was pushed aside first.
Rina saw it and raised the corner of her mouth ever so slightly.
Yes.
This was the fight Rina had wanted.
Bido tightened her grip on Fibula.
The cold metal dug deep into the lines of her palm.
The center of the clearing was wide,
but that very breadth made it harder to breathe.
Instead of “gathering,” the wind
pushed the air low, close to the ground.
An invisible wave.
With every step Miryeong took,
it felt as though the clearing’s centerline moved with her.
Miryeong’s first strike was a knife-hand.
It was not her hand that reached out first, but the air.
Compressed wind pressure swept past Rina’s chest and stole her breath for an instant.
Rina immediately raised her sword and cut through the flow.
Shhk.
When the tip of Rina’s blade cut the wind,
the sound came not from the sword, but from the air.
The severed current stood for a moment like a “spear.”
The gap was extremely thin,
and that thinness was what made it most dangerous.
Rina wore the expression of someone who had created that slender opening.
And so Miryeong’s next step
had no choice but to grow a little faster.
The gap formed where the wind had been split.
Rina drove her body into it.
A wasp-sting thrust.
Once, twice, three times.
Miryeong dodged those stings.
Her neck snapped aside,
her shoulder twisted,
her feet shifted by half-beats.
As she evaded, Miryeong’s elbow struck Rina’s wrist,
and her knee rose, aiming for Rina’s side.
Rina blocked the attack.
She pushed it aside with the back of her blade,
folded her body, and slipped away.
But Miryeong’s wind was no longer a wind that “flowed aside,”
but a wind that “drove forward.”
Miryeong’s breathing grew rough.
With each breath, anger leaked out,
and beneath that anger, sorrow she had kept pressed down boiled with it.
Rina could feel it.
That Miryeong was finally standing before her.
Rina cut through the flow once more.
As the wind’s connection was severed, Miryeong’s foot lagged for the briefest instant.
In that moment.
Rina came in.
This thrust was not shallow.
The tip of the sword drove in fast, aiming for Miryeong’s side.
Miryeong’s body flinched.
There was no sound of blood spraying.
Only the sound of breath breaking.
Bido reflexively started to take a step, then stopped.
Bido was now standing in the position of one who “watched.”
The instant she interfered, this would cease to be a duel and become a melee.
That rule
now felt like a cord binding Bido in place.
Miryeong’s breath escaped once.
The scent of blood did not spread.
Instead, the air grew heavy for the briefest moment.
That weight made Miryeong’s anger even clearer.
Miryeong clenched her teeth.
More than pain,
anger surged upward.
Miryeong did not retreat.
Instead, she dug even deeper inside Rina’s arm.
Then she swiftly pressed her palm to Rina’s chest.
It touched.
What Miryeong’s hand pushed away was not Rina,
but the air in front of her.
Compression and release.
This time, what came first was not wind, but a dull impact.
Rina’s body was shoved half a step back,
and the area near her ribs went numb for an instant.
There was pain.
Her breath stopped once.
But it did not feel as though bone had broken.
It was not a fracture like on the night of the full moon,
nor an impact that ruined a joint.
Only a pain and numbness that rang through her insides.
Rina clenched and unclenched the fingers gripping her slender sword once.
Sensation followed a moment late.
But that was all.
Rina drew in another delayed breath.
Her ribs throbbed,
but her center did not collapse.
Once she confirmed that fact,
Rina’s eyes became even clearer.
“This much will do.”
The moment that judgment was complete,
she no longer hid her calculations.
From now on, her face said, she would guide,
draw out,
and end it.
Rina did not smile.
Instead, she looked satisfied.
“Yes.”
Rina spoke low.
“Now... it’s finally proper.”
Miryeong’s eyes grew sharper.
“Shut your mouth.”
Miryeong charged at her again.
The wind did not follow Miryeong.
Miryeong dragged the wind with her.
The air was pulled behind Miryeong’s body,
then burst all at once in front of her.
Rina endured by cutting through that flow of wind.
Sssk, shhk.
Wherever the sword passed, the wind was severed.
But the severed places were soon covered by other currents.
Miryeong did not allow severance to become a “stop.”
At every instant it was cut, she closed in further,
driving forward even more violently.
The air was pressed again and again,
then burst once more.
Rina drew lines to block it,
but beyond those lines, another plane came crashing in.
Miryeong’s attacks continued without pause.
Like an unbroken breath.
Bido, from a place one step farther back,
held Fibula in her grip.
So tightly that her palm grew cold.
Her eyes did not lose sight of the two of them.
If Rina’s sword was a “point,”
Miryeong’s wind was a “plane.”
And yet now,
there was a sense that plane was trying to narrow into a point.
The instant Miryeong thrust out her hand again,
Bido sensed something strange.
The approaching wind
was hot.
Bido knew that “hot” was not the right word.
To be precise, the air where the wind had passed changed for a moment.
It was neither cold
nor warm, yet when she inhaled, the inside of her throat prickled strangely.
Each time Miryeong compressed it,
the humidity in the clearing snapped off with a “tuk,” then reconnected.
Bido could not tell whether that change was because of the wound
or because of Miryeong’s ragged breathing.
But one thing became certain.
Miryeong’s wind now
was not the same wind as before.
Miryeong’s breath broke short.
Whether it was because of the wound in her side or for some other reason, Bido did not know.
Then Miryeong’s eyes wavered for a moment.
Her pupils reflected the light like white glass.
And very faintly,
green seemed to brush the edges of her irises.
So briefly it could have been an illusion.
Rina saw it and narrowed her brow ever so slightly.
The texture of a “sign” she had sometimes seen on battlefields.
Rina lifted the tip of her sword.
As if to say that this was where the real fight began.
Miryeong also drew in a breath.
This breath was rough,
but somehow different.
Like a breath trying to “touch” something within the air.
And Miryeong came crashing toward Rina again.
Miryeong exhaled as she fixed her gaze on Rina.
Rina was fast.
Not the sword, but the intent came first.
Miryeong tried hard to read that intent.
When she had first come here, she had not cared whether she won or lost.
But not now.
She did not want to lose to that woman.
That name had come from Rina’s mouth,
and after those words had passed, Miryeong had lost any place to retreat.
Anger rose to her throat,
and beneath it, the sorrow she had kept pressed down clung heavy.
Miryeong pushed that emotion in as it was.
Forward.
The wind circled around Miryeong’s body.
As always, she only had to ride the flow,
compress it,
and release it.
I am an Arquin who controls the wind.
Miryeong thought she knew that.
And yet—
this time, the wind felt strangely different from before.
Not the wind,
but the place where the wind passed was what she sensed first.
Air.
The air was not one single mass,
but like thin membranes layered over one another.
When she reached out, it did not feel as though it was pushed, but “split.”
Miryeong unconsciously breathed in.
The air entering her lungs was neither cold nor hot,
yet it tickled the inside of her throat strangely.
This air,
what I’m touching isn’t only the wind.
Miryeong’s vision sharpened for a moment.
In that instant, she saw where Rina’s toes would go,
and what line the tip of her sword would enter through.
But more than that—
she saw the air in front of Rina “first.”
Before Rina came in, the air along that straight line was already making a path.
Miryeong felt déjà vu.
I feel like I can change it.
Not the wind,
but the air itself.
Its conditions.
At that moment, Miryeong’s eyes drank in the light once more.
The white reflected like glass, losing depth.
Bido saw it from afar.
“Lady Miryeong’s eyes...”
And the edges of her irises spread into a pale green.
Rina saw it too.
For the first time, Rina’s expression hardened coldly.
A dangerous pattern she had seen on the battlefield.
“......”
Rina steadied her breath once and took another step forward.
When her foot touched down, the blades of grass were pressed flat.
An extremely faint sound.
And yet that faintness
made it clear that this exchange was close to the “end of the duel.”
Miryeong read it too.
So she decided not to dodge.
If she dodged, she would return to Rina’s rhythm again.
If she did not receive it head-on, the sensation of “air” she had just grasped would scatter.
Miryeong did not lower her shoulders,
and fixed her gaze straight ahead.
Rina’s rhythm now was different.
Not a shallow barrage,
but a deep single blow that drew up her strength.
The preparation to end it, driving one straight line toward the heart.
Miryeong decided to receive that line from the front.
She did not dodge.
Miryeong did not lower her hands.
Instead, Miryeong gathered the air.
She was not gathering wind.
The air itself was pressed and gathered in front of Miryeong’s fist.
A sense of something transparent growing harder and harder.
The air in the clearing grew heavy,
so much so that even breathing in felt dangerous.
Miryeong’s eyes drank in the light once more.
At the edges of eyes turned white like glass,
inside that green,
a single ember lit at the center of her irises.
Orange light.
Very small.
But a color that seemed ready to spread in an instant.
Bido saw it and lost her words.
The moment Rina saw that orange light, she took one more step.
A straight line from which all hesitation had vanished.
A deep single blow aimed at the heart.
Miryeong did not dodge.
Instead, she received that line head-on and compressed deeper.
The air did not “cling” to her fist,
but folded in layers before it.
Miryeong’s fist went out.
Rina’s sword tip came in.
Their two points overlapped head-on.
For an instant,
the air lost all sound.
And then,
only belatedly did the light of collision follow.