Chapter 168

Before, her style of fighting was best described as erratic, with little in the way of direct confrontation. From flashbangs, to directional mines, to her scarf used as a whip, most of what she had done was very far from what a Saber would do in a fight, making it very evident why she was placed in the Assassin class. However, that was not all she was capable of. In fact, it was barely scratching the surface of her abilities.

On paper, her ranking in the six parameters were above average, but not to the point of being absolutely overpowered. Her main parameter of agility was A+, which was to be expected of the Assassin class, and her strength was high for an Assassin as well, though it was a cut below Sigurd's. Endurance and luck was C and D for her respectively, which while quite low, wasn't as bad as Lancer class rank E luck which seemed to actively cause misfortune for people qualifying in said class. The Cosmo Reactor serving as the basis of her suit and powering her actions boosted her mana to B, equivalent to a first-class magus, though not yet to the level of a proper Caster.

In this moment though, what Sigurd was facing was far beyond those statistics and rankings.

Everytime he blocked her with Gram, he could feel his entire body shift backwards as his feet slid on the sand, his arms that had weathered her blows so easily earlier now trembling with effort when she caught his sword in a deadlock. The sand flew into frequently with each step he took, shaken from both his heavy steps and her rapid blows that were followed by a swift tailwind, the sound of air parting before her blade audible above the hum of her blade and the rhythmic clashing of their weapons.

There were no tricks, no distractions, no bluffs. She was simply fighting with two swords in her hands, relying on pure skill and strength.

With every step she took, Sigurd went a step back. Far off, Gray could only see the halos of her sword as she slashed and stabbed with frightening speed, the swords whirling around her until all Gray could see was black and white, a cyclone of light spinning around MHX. \

Gritting his teeth, Sigurd realized what she meant earlier that he had to cast aside his preconceptions regarding her. It was almost like he was fighting an entirely different person from before, the tactics and strategies he had planned to use now entirely useless with how she had changed. Still, he wasn't someone that would just go down like that, even if his opponent had gotten a little stronger.

Sand slid off his daggers as they rejoined the action, all of them attacking MHX while he fought her at the same time.

Almost casually, she shrugged off their attacks, her swords moving to accommodate their added presence in addition to his attacks with Gram. Spinning like a top, her swords moved to each of the daggers path of attack as she angled the blades to catch them and drive them off course, the daggers shooting into the ground. There was no opening to strike as well, with Gram getting rebuffed by as she swiveled around to strike against his sword, both blue and black edges combined to stand against his greatsword. The momentum she gained from her spin added to the strength of the blow, and while it was true that one-handed swordsmanship was weaker than two hands, when both swords were placed against the same point, it was no weaker.

Turning, she drove her feet deeper into the sand, her hips and legs twisting as well to add even more force against Sigurd's immovable strength. Beneath her feet, the force fields activated to give her more solid footing, allowing her to suddenly completely switch into the opposite direction with little warning. Secret-caliber and it's counterpart gave way beneath Sigurd's Gram, pushing her away as she leaped backwards while riding the momentum. The force fields activated once more as she was about to touch the ground, her legs bunching up for another leap backwards or even more distance. In the blink of an eye, she was already a fair distance away from Sigurd, his eyes trained on her swords in front of him.

Then she was behind him.

A tall wall of sand shot into the air with a second's delay after her rush, clearly visible even at the distance Gray and the old man was at, under the light of the stars and the moons.

Sigurd's eyes could barely follow when in the time it took to twitch his eyes in her direction, she was already only a step away from him. It was only because his body had begun moving before he'd even seen her, his hands operating independently of his brain, that he was able to just deflect the slash that was aimed at his throat. As it was, Secret-calibur skated past the surface of Gram, cleaving the air next to his head as he felt a shallow cut drawn from his cheek to his jawline from the very tip of her sword.

He didn't have time to think as she launched into another full speed sprint from his back, interposing Gram between his spine and her sword since he wasn't able to turn around in time. The result was that he was blown forward, his body going chest first as he was flung into the air clean off the sand.

His eyes darted left and right as he shifted his sword, using both hands to grip the blade to brace himself. His palm throbbed slightly from the vibrations her blow had created, his back feeling the force of her sword that if not blocked, would have cut him in half easily even with his skin.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a blue streak that was barely visible under the moonlight.

LEFT!

She came at him like a battering ram, his body shooting to the right this time as he lost his footing, his cheek pressing against the cool surface of Gram when it was pushed by MHX.

This time, it glided in the air even longer, taking a full three seconds to touch the sand again. In the meantime, MHX dashed into place, starting her charge from further away to gather more momentum.

His eyes flicked to the right, seeing another blur of blue.

FRONT!

Bending his knees, he was barely able to receive her attack, but then he felt a sense of vertigo, and a moment later he realized the ground was receding.

Stopping on a dime, and then placing both swords beneath Gram to launch him upwards with one massive jump, lifting him easily despite his weight. Sand flew in a circle from her shockwave, a shallow crater created in an instant.

A sense of weightlessness seized Sigurd as he floated in the air, reaching the apex of his ascent soon after his abrupt departure from the ground.

Under the light of the moon, his eyes narrowed as multiple figures appeared in the air all around him, encircling him in the middle of a sphere. They were holograms, but he couldn't disregard the fact that she could use them as a bluff, camouflaging her true route of attack.

Before he could react, all the holograms converged on him.

*ZUKYUN*

The hum of her sword filled his ears, countless shadows obscuring his sight, yet his body felt nothing as the multitude of illusions charged at him.

A heartbeat later, he moved.

His body started descending, gravity once again acting on his body and dragging him back to the ground. There was still no sign of MHX even as the holograms bombarded him, the projection technology she used giving no hint as to her current location. He waved his sword once or twice, but it did little to affect the holograms. In any case, there was little he could do except-

He heard it before he felt it coming, the high-pitched shriek that was akin to a jet as it screamed through the air.

Half a second later, the edges of a glowing blue projectile pierced through the cloak of holograms surrounding him, barely a foot away, and then he pulled his feet up as he folded his body until his head was facing the ground, feet in the air and head pointed straight down in a divers pose.

Raising Gram above his head, he felt the impact of the mysterious projectile explode against his sword, it's size and his gauntlets protecting him from most of the damage, but it managed to halt his progress and send him further into the air.

He burst out of the cloud of holograms, rising even higher than before.

Far away from where Gray was standing, she watched as a slew off cross-shaped energy blades enveloped Sigurd after he rose out of the cloud.

Taking advantage of his inability to maneuver in the air and the cloaking abilities of her holograms, she had dashed from place to place at high speeds with the aid of her forcefields on her boots, dashing through the air as she released what Ecchan would later name 'X-Saber Killing Flash', or 'X-flash', which stuck despite MHX's objections.

Slashing arcs of energy left her blades, one so bright it was closer to white than blue, the other a pure void with a red tint surrounding it's outline. As she flashed from place to place, she continuously released energy blades from her two swords, constantly bombarding Sigurd with a dizzying array of strikes from all directions at once.

Crescents of light and darkness cut across the night sky, the night sky disappearing behind them as they filled Sigurd's entire field of vision. Then he was moving like a madman, performing triple flips and sweeping his sword across the space around him in wide arcs, Gram turning into a rotating shield that covered his body as runes appeared in the air to assist him, blooming fire, crystal ice, swirling wind and ever expanding repertoire of runes that deflected, blocked and destroyed the blades of energy coursing through the air.

MHX picked up more and more momentum as she bounced through the air, each dash adding a fraction of speed that boosted her to ever greater heights, turning into a line of marine blue that blitzed through the air, only redirected through the assistance of her force fields that created footholds in empty air and allowed her to redirect her trajectory. In less than a minute, she was already moving fast enough to leave afterimages in the air, all the while never letting up on her 'X-flash'.

Her control slipped the faster she went, but they were so numerous that they blanketed Sigurd with sheer quantity, despite the fact that some were on the verge of outright missing him.

Gray soon lost sight of Sigurd from the arcs surrounding him, and the afterimages from MHX's movements. Under the light of the night sky, it looked like MHX had multiplied tenfold, the images of her body left in various positions in the air.

Slowly but surely, he became overwhelmed by the pure numbers and speed of the strikes he was receiving. It wasn't just coming from any one direction, or multiple at once, but from almost every angle of attack conceivable as MHX leveraged her gathering momentum to almost teleport everywhere. As she picked up speed, it became less and less about where she wanted to go, and more about where she could direct her body to go, the stress of her movement making it increasingly difficult to control her direction.

Still, it was taking its toll on Sigurd too. A scratch on his cheek, a broken pauldron, his hair getting cut, gradually the attacks were getting through his seemingly impenetrable guard, his attention and stamina getting worn down through constant frenetic activity in trying to block everything, with even one crescent getting through to score a clean hit on him enough to spell doom as it would allow the rest to descend on him like a pack of hungry piranhas, ripping his body to pieces.

At this point, his wisdom was taxing his stamina with how hard it was working, neurons constantly firing faster than a machine-gun, overclocking and crunching calculations to predict the best course of action and movement, estimating every single trajectory of the projectiles thrown at him in the heat of battle. His trained body carried out these orders flawlessly, aligning both body and mind for the optimal path, speed-casting weaker runes to cover for him while he dealt with the closest threats. At the same time, his daggers shot in straight lines to intercept what they could, bending at sharp angles as they flew to the next spot that needed shielding.

It was just that, she was throwing too many too fast.

A solid wall of slashes that bore down on him, even his rapid defense of swordplay, runes and daggers had cracks in it. They were so infinitesimal no ordinary opponent would find them, but when he was being besieged on all sides at a furious pace, they were bound to be exposed.

Bit by bit, his body accumulated damage, his stamina draining with every slash he blocked, finding it harder and harder to move the more he used his body, a steady burn setting into the muscles.

When she felt it was enough, she stopped hurling energy beams at him.

The air rippled as she moved, the entire area that she had traveled through constantly vibrating from her passage through space. Even for Servants with high Agility rank, it was almost impossible to reach such speeds, much less consistently stay there. For MHX with the one of the highest ranks of Agility possible, she was only able to do so through immense periods of stress training, getting her body used to it, innate talent, and innovative usage of cutting edge technology that was the force-fields installed in her boots.

It was a warped image, a sphere that would fluctuate and distort every time MHX made a move around Sigurd. Gray couldn't see MHX clearly from all the afterimages she was leaving behind, but it was clear how fast she was going from the fact that the very space where she moved through was changing the refractive index of the air, making it look like the entire area was under a lens of some sort, distorting the image that Gray could see.

So what would happen if she traveled towards Sigurd, instead of dashing in the air around him?

It came without warning. One moment, he was putting up a staunch defense against all her attacks, the next he was aware that his left arm was suddenly no longer there.

Or to be more precise, it was no longer at the position he expected it to be, instead bent at the elbow almost ninety degrees backwards, completely wrenched out of its socket. The gauntlet and vambraces protecting his arm too, were shattered, and he was left holding Gram with his right arm.

Then the vortex of wind hit him, the result of MHX moving at high speeds.

The trail of air blasted him in the side, tightly focused enough to not throw him completely to the side, but still pushing him at least a foot or so away from his original position.

Without the 'X-flash' MHX continuously sent out to keep him afloat, his body succumbing to gravity.

Behind him, he heard multiple bangs as MHX whizzed through the air, travelling at greater and greater velocities.

The scent of ozone filled the air as MHX charged her swords, mana gathering into the two energy blades, then swelling as more and more was added in, surpassing the amount she had used to throw the energy blades before.

Blazing a trail of solid plasma through the night, her figure zig-zagged from place to place, before inevitably heading towards the falling figure of Sigurd.

In a flash, it was over.

When Gray spotted MHX making the final turn towards Sigurd, there was already a pillar of light coursing from her afterimage towards the ground.

The sands lit up in electric blue light, a silent cloud of sand rising from the ground at where MHX had landed. The pillar hung suspended in the air, a bolt of lightning that enveloped Sigurd, thick enough to encompass his entire figure.

Then the shockwave accompanying the charge finally kicked into action, throwing a massive wave of sand into the air and hiding the pillar of light as it flickered and faded away, the trails of energy scattering to the winds. Gray was buffeted by the pure force of the sound that the charge released, shaking the very structure of the building behind her even from that distance. Beside her, the man sat silently, the starlight reflecting off his pupils, the image of the pillar burning into his eyes.

Kneeling in the crater that was quickly being filled in by rushing sand, MHX breathed heavily, her arms trembling with the two swords in her hand resting against the ground, the energy blades hissing and spitting against the grains of silicate. Slowly, she caught her breath, the immense effort and adrenaline required to perform that strike fading away as fatigue washed over her body. Inhaling, exhaling, she repeated the process until she felt she could stand up.

With her knees against the smooth sand, she lifted one leg and placed the sole of her foot against the ground, forcing herself to stand up with both swords still clenched in her palms. Even the simple act of standing felt draining, but she managed to accomplish this feat, once more standing at her full height. Her ahoge wagged on her head as she turned around, expecting to see the corpse of her opponent.

Turning her face, she was met with the turquoise edge of a flying dagger.

With barely any room to dodge, caught by surprise, she could only just barely tilt her head backwards, the dagger cutting a long gash along her cheek bone mirroring the thin wound that she had given Sigurd with one of her first few sword beams.

Ducking into a crouch, she brought her swords up in anticipation of more threats as she spun to face the direction dagger had come from.

There was no sign of Sigurd.

A shiver ran up her spine, and before she knew it a clawed hand closed around her throat and hoisted her up into the air.

Feeling her windpipe cut off, she reacted immediately and twisted her body as much as she could, arms swinging to bring her blades down on her assailant.

In response, the grip tightened around her neck as she moved, and then she felt a heavy blow to her spine connect.

A shock traveled through her entire body, her arms turning nerveless as the hilt of the both swords slipped between her limp fingers. Paralayzed, she could only jerk and twitch as the lack of oxygen clouded her mind, unable to even lift her hands to claw at the monstrous grip around her throat.

Bit by bit, the edges of her vision darkened as the world blurred in front of her eyes. Spit flew from her mouth as she opened it wide in a desperate attempt to breathe, but nothing passed into her lungs. A gurgling sound filled the air as she hung in the air, gasping like a fish out of water. The neon blue lines on her suit dimmed as she choked, the color in her eyes fading the longer the hand maintained it's hold.

Turning whiter and whiter, her skin turned an unhealthy pallor as it became deathly pale, her eyes beginning to bulge out of their sockets. The ahoge that had been madly twitching when she had first been grabbed was now weakly waving from side to side, drooping more than ever. The spasms that ran through her body grew less and less frequent, her struggles ceasing as bloody froth started to spew out of her mouth.

Ten seconds passed, then half a minute, then a minute.

After waiting for two more minutes, seeing that she wasn't so much as twitching anymore, he released his hold around her neck.

Like a sack of potatoes, she dropped to the ground, her limbs loosely splayed around her as the body went face first into the sand.

Standing next to her corpse, Sigurd looked down at it with an unreadable expression.

Originally, he hadn't expected to come out of that final strike alive, but his gift of wisdom had unexpectedly pointed out an avenue of resolution that he had yet to consider. While he was unable to do anything beyond protecting himself under the intense barrage of attacks, the majority of his brain occupied with intercepting the attacks and blocking the beams, one small part stayed calm, seeking for a way out of this stalemate.

That small part calculated until it reached a conclusion, that it was all a setup for MHX to unleash a killing blow against Sigurd while he was heavily preoccupied with all the sword beams raining down on him. However, it was also true that if he diverted even the slightest attention away from the projectiles, they would definitely cut him up, or at least severely injure him to the point of being unable to combat. Therefore, he had to wait until she stopped throwing the arcs of energy towards him, and grab the opportunity when she performed the fatal strike herself, since that was what his calculations indicated she had the highest chance of performing.

When the break in the projectiles occurred, he would take advantage of the slight opening to enact a last ditch resort he would never have considered using if it was under normal circumstances, but owing to the fact that he was close to defeat, and that Brynhildr was waiting for him as well, he couldn't fall here.

Instead, he would live as a dragon.

Coded deep into the genetic makeup of the Saberverse Sigurd, was the dragon factor. While in the universe of Emiya Shirou, Sigurd had bathed in the blood of a dragon after slaying it to receive the benefits that came along with it, in MHX's universe he had been born, or rather made, with it. Genetically engineered and raised in an environment with external stimuli that induced the ability into his body, much like how MHXX was made, he had grew up with the blessings of a dragon in his body, allowing him to display superhuman abilities that far exceeded that of other Servants in the Servantverse. The factor of a dragon was nothing to sneeze at, even in the massively technologically advanced Servantverse, and with the decline of true dragons, even those with the least thread of connection with them gained power as mystery consolidated and crystallized into those that contained dragon-like traits.

F.A.F.N.I.R. had been the organisation to create and raise him, in order to have a fully obedient agent that was powerful enough to serve as a weapon against any obstacles that required finesse and power to deal with, as well as to create a symbol of fear to threaten their enemies and competitors.

In the end, he had broken free of their captivity, along with the other experiment who became known as Siegfried later on, and went on the run with the man he could call his brother in all but blood, the two of them travelling the galaxy while growing up, getting stronger and stronger while they went on adventure after adventure, defeating armies, quelling rebellions, delivering fast-food and rescuing sparrows from the clutches of space octopi.

Then Sigurd met Brynhildr, then masquerading as an agent of F.A.F.N.I.R., and he fell in love at first sight.

After various twists and turns, including exploration of uncharted space regions, a trip through an ancient temple, plus the discovery and subsequent destruction of a planet altering ark, he and Sigurd finally embarked on a crusade against F.A.F.N.I.R, Sigurd for his love, and Siegfried because he wanted to, in his own words, 'stand up for what he believed in".

The rest went without saying. They had succeeded, but in the process, complications occurred, and he and Brynhildr were branded as fugitives by the Galactic Police, with Siegfried standing trial for crimes he never committed. In the end, they could only entrust Siegfried's life into the expert hands of the Watson Agency, and pray that he could be proven innocent. In the meantime, they decided to lay low, waiting out the unwanted attention on deserted planets and out of the way systems.

This was the first time though that he had been forced to fall back on such a backup. In all his long years fighting and battling, against opponents ranging from your run of the mill thugs, to great Sabers that were once feared across the galaxy, he had never fought against someone like MHX. To force him to come to this, meant she had been his strongest enemy so far.

Flexing his hand, he stared at it through red eyes, the right eye a slitted pupil just like a reptiles, red irises surrounding it with a flaming wave pattern encircling it. Scales dotted the right side of his face, growing more and more numerous until they completely replaced the skin just below his jaw, going all the way under his ruined gargot and protective collar. The burnt patches of his clothes exposed the skin, revealing that at least part of his chest was also coated in gray scale like material, and it led to his right arm, now completely transformed into something else.

Ridged scales ended in a sharpened point at his elbow, a particularly prominent arrow shaped scale poking out of the back. The inner side of his arm had a thin line of smoother, less protruding scaly skin, with the individual scales larger and more separated the further away from the inner side they were, overlapping on each other to form an impenetrable wall of draconic armour, a dull sheen coating the surface of the scales. His wrist was covered on the back by one large, oval shaped scale that branched off to three paths, the one in the middle leading tapering to the sharp arrows shaped scale on his elbow. Even his fingers were wrapped in layers, the ends where the fingernails would have been replaced by ivory claws that glistened under the stars. He still had five fingers, but he noticed that they seemed to be more or less equal in length, with the sole exception of his thumb, which had also shifted closer to his wrist in terms of position.

Two spiraling horns similar to Siegfried's own that had manifested after an excruciating fight had appeared on his head, though his were curved in a 'V' shaped that ended up pointed downwards somewhere towards his chin, with two sharp lines running down the sides. His teeth as well were more pointed than flat as well, the majority of his teeth sharpened to a point. Most of his hair had turned white, with the sole exception of two black streaks running just above his ears.

He could also feel random sections of skin that had turned into scales scrape against what remained of his armour on the inside, some parts of his armor going so far as to fuse with the flesh and become part of his body, partly due to the extreme heat from MHX's blow, partly from the change his body had undergone that had required materials to incorporate in order to carry out of the metamorphosis. Much of his original flesh had been destroyed by MHX, but in exchange it gave him an easier time of becoming the hybrid that he was right now, expressing his draconic traits more overtly as they rose to the surface.

Not just the outside, but the inside had changed too. The moment when MHX had unleashed her final strike in the sequence, his mind had blanked out from the pain his body went through, the baseball cap wearing 'Saber-killer' coming very close to actually completely destroying him entirely. For a brief moment, he could almost feel his core naked against the all-consuming slash, the pillar of energy no metaphor as he felt himself disappear, his mind floating away even as the runes that he had carved out one by one earlier activated automatically. Sparing as much time and attention as he could while enduring the barrage earlier, he had painstakingly made the preparations for his transformation, making as much allowance as he could in the hits he could take while ensuring that he didn't mess up.

As a result, he seemed to be worn down from MHX's perspective, taking more and more damage, injuries that seemed to increase in severity as time went on. Yet the blood hid the shape of the runes that burned their way onto the surface of his armor, her constant movement also preventing her from getting a good glimpse at the minute, but significant changes on his body. Using a close shave as a disguise, he destroyed the mask on his face, the Crystallized Wisdom disappearing as he incorporated it into his bodily modification.

But he still needed sufficient energy, his own body a catalyst that required a kickstart. In addition, it would be much quicker if his own body was destroyed, to allow for rapid growth of the draconic cells that would replace the body he currently had. The more that was destroyed, the more he could just regrow after he triggered the modifications, without having to change the flesh one cell at a time. Speed was of the essence if he wanted to catch MHX by surprise. It would be more painful for sure, but he didn't see any other way to do it without revealing his survival to MHX.

Without revealing his hand, he had quietly endured until he felt the barrage ease up slightly, the momentary break occurring when MHX charged up for her final attack in the sequence, her twin swords glowing in her hands. At that moment, instead of guarding, he instead moved Gram to the side as he embraced the undodgeable blow with his entire body, making no attempt to safeguard himself against the torrent of pure energy that lit him up like a candle.

There were no words to describe the pain he felt. The skin that had easily withstood MHX's earlier strikes, deflecting blaster bolts from thugs all across the galaxy and protected him against even the vacuum of space was vaporized, the surface flaking off into ash. The sinew and muscle underneath had a moment of brief agony where they were superheated, his nerves exploding trying to convey the sense of pain to his mind, and then those nerves were gone as well. Bit by bit, even the armor that refused to yield against the strongest warriors in F.A.F.N.I.R. melted, the metal crumbling and warping in the face of immense heat and pressure.

Unable to see or hear anything, all he could tell in that interminable span of undeath was the vague sensation of his body being destroyed and remade almost instantly, flesh, bone and skin disappearing, only to be replaced by something else, something more. Unexpectedly, there was a brief lull of peace and quiet as all of his senses shut down, both from overloading and being destroyed outright.

Then he started howling in agony inside of his mind, a seasoned and experienced warrior that had stood against an organization that could rival the Galactic Police, reduced to a screaming, shivering wreck in his own mental landscape. The feeling of having his nerves forged alongside his muscles and bone was excruciating to say the least. Having them taken away was bad enough, but regrowing them was at least triple that sensation, if he could quantify in such a way.

Within his body, a surge of searing heat accompanied the regrowing parts of his body, large quantities of energy being released from a previously dormant part of his body, locked deep away in his core when had been mostly human. It was now fully activated, his entire being embracing the repressed draconic traits as they surfaced, and even his organs themselves were modified to accommodate his changing body, his internal systems sporting some differences from his previous body. One more obvious part was the material that was used to construct his organs, a fleshy material that was grey in color, replacing all the pinkish meat most humans and Servants possessed. Another was that his lungs had changed, becoming closer to what a dragon would have, a living and breathing world in and of itself.

The magic reactor core that he originally possessed as a human expanded, jumping from being the equivalent of a nuclear power plant to a country filled with nuclear power plants. There was simply no comparison for before and after, with his physical and magical capabilities greatly heightened, his body now a moving fortress that was capable of devastating a city in a day, a country in a week. Beside him, the shards of Gram and the sword itself melted under the sustained heat, the red hot pieces of metal melding into his body and sinking under his skin, becoming one with him. The same happened with most of his armor pieces as well, the intense pressure compacting them and pushing them into his flesh as he regrew them, the modification ritual also actively seeking material to nourish his instantaneous growth.

Throughout all this, the pillar of energy that MHX created with one single slash persisted, appearing long before she swung the swords and continuing long after, an indicator and after-effect that continuously existed to exterminate the enemy utterly. Yet for Sigurd, the ether was consumed for energy, even as it wrecked his body and atomized him, his transformation signature masked by the abundant energy she released. In a matter of seconds, Sigurd was able to complete his ritual under the protection of her attack, and with her exhausted state both physically and mentally, she was unable to detect anything amiss from him.

Constantly moving at speeds that created afterimages exacted a heavy price on her body, and having to attack and redirect her own body at the same time required pinpoint control and attention to prevent herself from running into her own slashes. In the face of such backlash, she only reserved such an attack for the final killing blow.

If Sigurd had wavered for a single moment during his preparation, carving the runes and opening his magic reactor, if he had suffered one more injury than he had during his defense against MHX, if he had lost his will during the extreme endurance of the modification, he would have died without question. Despite the odds though, he managed to muster the strength to last through it all, his soul urging him onwards, to push through everything and grasp at the slightest chance of victory.

If he died here, he would be leaving Brynhildr alone in this galaxy.

Instinctively understanding this, his spirit refused to give up, and the Cool Glasses Strategist of Bolverk Gram (his actual title given in the bounty poster MHX saw earlier), in spite of all that he went through, his mental composure completely shattered, his mind blank and unresponsive, he still did not die.

Then his eyes opened, and he was staring at the starry sky above, unfiltered by light pollution, belts of sparkling diamonds and colorful nebulas filling the dark canvas of the night. Before, his eyes could easily pick out the most distant specks of blinking lights, rendering the majestic view in its entirety, but now it was different. Looking up at the sky, he realized he could zoom in like a telescope, his vision closing in on one small dot that he would just barely have been able to spot before, unless he had the aid of runes assisting him. A heart-shaped spear, a curtain of pale hair that could be mistaken for the clouds of cosmic dust drifting lightyears away behind her, blending in with the nebulas and constellations. For him, she shone brighter than any of the breathtaking views in the sky, arresting his eyes and demanding his attention.

Closing his eyes, he smiled.

In a blur of movement, his body lifted off the sand with as little noise as possible, taking advantage of MHX's exhaustion and her lack of attention as she perceived him as being defeated. With her guard lowered, she took a moment to recover on the sand, kneeling on the rough ground as she caught her breath.

In that fatal gap, he struck.

The moment he started moving, he almost overshot her by a full mile. He could feel immense power gathering in his limbs, not just his muscles pulling and tugging, but mana also injected into his body from the rampant core in his body, distributing energy throughout his body to prepare for a massive leap that would carry him far from his planned destination.

It was only because of his split-second reflexes that he managed to rein in his newfound power and freeze in place, keeping his body from shooting forward and alerting Assassin to his presence. Acting quickly, he shot out a dagger from within his arm, the turquoise tip poking out beneath his wrist as it streaked forward through the air, a green dart aimed at her head that failed to penetrate, the girl whipping her head aside at the last second.

However, it distracted her long enough for his sudden rise and overflowing mana from his core to go unnoticed, her attributing the sudden spike in her sixth sense to the dagger thrown at her, and he sealed it off as best he could, though since his new body wasn't exactly adapted for stealth, there was only so much he could achieve. But it was enough.

In the brief moment it took for her to notice the dagger, dodge it and whirl around, he had managed to cut off his presence to the best of his ability and utilize his newfound speed to circle around her, easily catching her unaware and grabbing her.

In her exhausted state, there was no contest between the two in terms of strength. As an added precaution, he ruthlessly slammed a fist into a spot along her spine that immediately paralyzed her, perhaps permanently for the rest of her life, on the infinitesimal chance that she survived past having her neck squeezed to death.

He could easily have punched his fist through her core and ended it, but at this point, seeing her dangle from is fist helplessly, spit and saliva staining his fingers as he held her aloft as easily as a feather, his heart relented. Instead of staining his hands with blood, he opted to remain as he was, even though the result would be the same. Slowly, he felt the life leave her body as she grew slack in her hands, unable to twitch or even spasm anymore, and then once he felt her grow completely still, he released her.

She felt to the ground ungracefully, a ring of purple hand marks around her neck, bruises inflicted from his incredibly tight grip. Looking down at her, he waited for her to show signs of life. After a full five minutes of simply staring at her corpse, he waved the dagger he had shot out earlier, and sent it piercing through the small of her back. Slowly, it sank into her limp flesh, easily parting the flesh and blood, forcing its way deeper and deeper into her body. Despite what his newfound senses told him, he still wanted to make certain that she was down for good.

Before it reached a third of the blade into her, he stopped, satisfied at the lack of reaction. The dagger released from its place pierced into her body, floating back into his arm as a slit opened up to receive it under his wrist.

With his battered body, now a strange fusion of both draconic and humane features, he gazed up at the sky.

"I'm fine darling. You can come down."

The words rang in her head, and she smiled before plunging down to return to her beloved, the need for her position in space as insurance gone with MHX dead.