CLEAVER OF SIN

Asher's eyes gleamed with a sharp brilliance as he moved. Though he had undergone training in hand to hand combat, it had never been his true focus; his mastery lay with Virelass, his rapier.

Shifting his entire style mid-training was impossible. But, even with the limited time he had devoted to hand to hand combat, he had become a force formidable enough to command recognition.

Still, in the realm of pure technique, he could not rival Ryaen. She had been honing her craft since the age of five, and now, at eighteen, carried over a decade of endless refinement in her every strike.

And yet, though Asher could not equal her in polished skill, he held his ground through sheer strength and speed.

More than that, he learned.

His extraordinary intellect and Absolute Physique seemed to merge seamlessly in the heat of battle. His eyes followed every nuance of Ryaen's movements, capturing each form, each motion, and mirroring them in real time as though instinct itself had transformed into mastery.

Whenever Ryaen discovered a flaw in Asher's assault and moved to exploit it, he would parry or evade with his Instinctive Adaptation.

And each time such an opening revealed itself, his Perfect Muscle Memory and Optimal Movement Efficiency wove together seamlessly, erasing the weakness altogether, as though it had never existed, not even in the recesses of his subconscious.

He studied her carefully in real time: her strikes, her movements, the cadence of her footwork, the flow of her counters. To him, Ryaen's entire existence unfolded like an open book, every action exposed to his sharp gaze.

In those moments, Asher seemed both student and predator, learning from her mastery while simultaneously stalking her every move.

He did not call upon his Omni Perception. No, this time, he wanted his raw talent to blaze on its own, and it did.

Each time Ryaen recalibrated, shifting her attack patterns or reshaping her style, Asher would falter only briefly. Then, with sheer speed and strength, he would catch up, until his Battle Intuition ignited, allowing him not merely to match her force, but to mirror her skill in real time.

At that moment, to any onlooker, it would have seemed as though Asher were Ryaen's twin rather than her brother Ryan. All he lacked was the cascade of long white hair trailing down his back and the dark, obsidian eyes that defined her.

With those, he would have been the very image of her, male and mirrored. Such was the absurdity of his capacity to learn in real time.

His Battle Intuition rendered him a sponge, while Ryaen became the overflowing bucket of water, and Asher was determined to absorb every drop she had to give.

That Battle Intuition intertwined seamlessly with Perfect Muscle Memory and Optimal Movement Efficiency: the first dissecting and internalizing Ryaen's style to an unfathomable degree, the second instantly embodying it in flawless form, and the third stripping away every flaw, every error, every imperfection.

Together, they transformed Asher into something monstrous, an evolving force born anew with each passing second of combat.

Their fists collided once more, like meteors crashing against one another, and the shockwave tore through the battlefield as though the earth itself recoiled in terror at their fury.

Each exchange grew more brutal, more unrelenting, as momentum surged between them, compounding with every passing second until it felt less like combat and more like a storm tearing reality apart.

Jagged cracks spiderwebbed across the mountain's surface, racing outward with terrifying speed before the entire mass gave way beneath their feet.

The once proud peak collapsed in an instant, reduced to rubble, boulders, and shards of stone that plummeted like rain from the sky as gravity dragged everything violently toward the forest floor below.

And yet Asher and Ryaen neither flinched nor faltered. They did not blink, did not panic.

Suspended in midair, they continued their savage exchange, striking with absurd speed and efficiency, the absence of solid ground doing nothing to diminish the efficiency, or the lethality, of their blows.

Then, with a thunderous impact, both crashed down upon the earth. The ground roared in protest as the force surged up their legs and through their bodies.

But they merely shrugged it off, eyes locked, and without hesitation launched once more into a blur of afterimages, phantoms of pure speed clashing in defiance of mortal limits.

With a thunderous impact, a wall of water erupted skyward as Asher and Ryaen broke upon the surface of a vast lake.

For the first time since their exchange began, Astra coursed into existence at the soles of their feet, flowing from their Astra veins with seamless ease. But it was not used to amplify strength or speed.

No, its sole purpose was balance, granting them footing upon the trembling lake's surface as their forms tore across it in blinding blurs of motion.

Another bone-rattling collision followed as their ankles met midair. The force shattered the water beneath them as if it were fragile glass, the lake splintering outward under their fury.

From below, lifeless fish drifted upward, slain in an instant before their eyes could even close, their blood rising in dark trails to stain the once-pristine waters. The lake, once clear and serene, became a canvas of red, green, and murky hues as life perished in their wake.

But Asher and Ryaen gave no thought to such fragile creatures. Their eyes were fixed only on each other, their conflict less like a duel and more like a toxic bond, two forces too destructive to coexist, but too entangled to separate.

Thus, their devastation shifted from forest lands to forest aqua, the lake itself becoming their battlefield as every clash unleashed another burst of unending lethality.

The lake roared beneath their mad fury, waves spiraling outward with every clash, shattering trees along the distant shore. Neither yielded, neither slowed; their strikes blurred into echoes of chaos, each exchange birthing shockwaves that split water and sky alike.

Locked in unending combat, Asher and Ryaen became less like fighters and more like forces of nature, two storms entwined, destined to rage without end, neither finding triumph nor surrender.