Genetic Ascension novel Chapter 2472

Chapter 2472: Rivers

Cassarae’s next strike tore across the plains with enough force to open a trench several kilometers long, but Tomoe slipped past the edge before the earth finished collapsing into it.

Without a sword in her hand, the sword maniac moved differently than before, her attacks compressed into smaller motions as every finger became an edge, every turn of her palm redirected the Sword Will already filling the air, and her hair occupied whatever space her hands could not.

It was all so natural and fluid, so beautiful and almost structured in an odd way, especially considering how chaotic and jumbled it might all seem from an outside observer.

Tomoe stepped inside the next slash and brushed two fingers against the flat of Cassarae’s rusted blade instead of meeting its weight directly. Sword Will entered from the side and altered the weapon’s path by only a few degrees, enough to let the edge pass Tomoe’s shoulder before her opposite hand rose and opened three narrow cuts across the Guardian Angel Set.

Cassarae twisted with the impact instead of fighting it, using the turn to pull her sword around her body and bring it down again from above. That was the first thing she had begun taking from Tomoe.

The woman almost never allowed an action to end where it began; a dodge became a better angle, a block changed her footing, and even being launched backward merely gave her more room to prepare whatever came next.

Cassarae had always thought in cleaner divisions. Attack, recover, attack again, but the rhythm felt wrong now that she could hear her sword properly, so when her horizontal slash missed Tomoe she stopped pulling against the momentum and simply stepped through it, allowing the rotation of her shoulders to become the beginning of the next strike.

The formation surrounding Earth reacted with her.

Water high above the atmosphere shifted as buried Runes beneath the plains aligned along the path of Cassarae’s sword, then an enormous pressure fell with the descending blade.

Tomoe crossed both forearms and gathered Sword Will between them, but the impact still drove her through the ground hard enough for the stone below to collapse in layers and form a crater across the plain.

Cassarae didn’t wait to see whether the attack had worked. Tomoe had already taught her how stupid that was. She turned the end of the swing into a thrust, and the point of her rusted blade had barely angled toward the crater when a narrow stream of white-blue Sword Will erupted from below and chased Tomoe through the broken earth.

Tomoe twisted aside and let the attack tear across her ribs rather than through her chest, then stabbed sharpened strands of hair into the crater wall and used them to pull herself free.

She landed several hundred meters away with blood pouring down her side in a volume that should have left anyone else staggering, yet all she did was press a palm against the wound and let grey-black Sword Will condense beneath her skin.

Fresh blood pushed out almost immediately.

Cassarae stared for half a second before understanding what she was seeing, and the realization irritated her enough that her nose wrinkled. "You’ve got to be fucking kidding me."

Tomoe laughed as Sword Will continued turning into blood inside her body, replacing what she had already lost while the pressure around her dipped by only the smallest amount.

She wasn’t healing the blood vessels first and waiting for her body to catch up. She was simply making more blood because her Sword Will allowed her to erase the distinction between what her Will was and what she needed it to become.

Cassarae rushed her again before Tomoe finished smiling.

The next exchange carried them farther across the plains, Tomoe slipping beneath the first slash and carving five lines toward Cassarae’s stomach with one hand while strands of hair attacked from behind.

Cassarae turned just enough for the Guardian Angel Set to take the worst of it, then brought her sword upward through Tomoe’s thigh and tore away a strip of flesh large enough for blood to spray across the ground.

Tomoe used it before the droplets landed.

The blood sharpened into hundreds of crimson needles and reversed direction in the air, forcing Cassarae to sweep her sword across her body while dragging the surrounding formation into the motion.

Wind, Aether, and the pressure of Earth’s distant waters rolled together and crushed the returning attack, but Cassarae barely noticed the destruction.

Something about Tomoe’s control had clicked for her. She wasn’t consciously guiding every droplet, it was like she had just given them a law to abide by, a truth to follow, one condensed into a single word... Sword.

Maybe if Sylas had been there he would have seen it for what it truly was.

Will Priming.

Cassarae’s gaze sharpened, and when she attacked again she stopped dragging as much raw force behind the strike. Instead, she reached into the answer Earth was already giving her and imposed the same direction on a smaller portion of it, causing a ridge several kilometers away to split at the exact angle of her swing.

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