Mind Over Matter

“I guess that finally answers a question,” Yuki replied as Takako let slip a rather important detail about her power.

“Knowing doesn’t give you an advantage.”

“You’re right.” The pondering of the situation with Takako’s power made him pensive. ‘This is even worse than even I anticipated from my theory. I expected that her mind powers were an off variant from the standard fare, if she was really using other powers. However, I expected her to fall within the normal logic of not being versed in the power and that being a weakness I could exploit.

‘This is even worse since I can’t even anticipate her powers now. It seems I was right that what Takako was using was stolen powers from Fumiko, but to make a forest from magic. This far exceeds what Fumiko’s current power is. The scale as well… with an army of hundreds or thousands, the number of powers she has to use has suddenly made this fight my worst nightmare.’

Chapter 355 – Mind Over Matter

Barely hanging on to a branch high up in the canopy of the forest laid Hiroshi. When the forest was created, he lost his support to rest on. Takako rudely ripped that away from him. His body didn’t enjoy the ride that he took up further into the sky. While Yuki patched him up, rough movement still shot pain through his body. “Damn, Takako…who knew she could do this…”

He held tightly onto the branch struggling with his body to keep balance. It seemed that the threat to his life or at least health forced his body to start responding to him again. It wasn’t perfect, but he could manage himself.

“This is just insane,” he commented, staring down at the two. They seemed less impressed with what happened than him. Just that fact alone left him a little unnerved.

Yuki panned around the forest getting a judge on the scale. The density of it wasn’t so thick that he couldn’t see between the trees. They were thick, gigantic trees, but not spaced too closely. It was easy enough to see the weak lights of the city around them, though it suddenly felt very weird seeing it through such a view. The sky however was painted out completely.

Yet he could still see in the forest. Part of it had to come from him already being a little adjusted to the night. But it was clear that there seemed to be a very soft glow coming off the green life Takako sprung out. ‘Glow of magic?’ It was the only guess that he had for the reason. However, it made things simpler for him. A backup Law Set wasn’t needed to keep fighting.

“Fumiko seems to have a lot more potential than we realized.”

Takako smirked a little, feeling the confidence of being in control of everything. “This isn’t her limit. There’s plenty in her powers that I’ve yet to show.”

“Figured as much.”

“Fumiko?” asked Hiroshi, to himself, “That name’s familiar. Yuki seems to know her. Wait, the way they’re talking…Takako can use that girl’s power? Then that means…” It all finally started to come together for him. He lacked the same sort of inherent understanding of powers in the way that Yuki did. His mind didn’t work like that, though he doubted most people’s minds thought the same way that he did.

So the pieces didn’t all fit together for him completely. But it started to make sense to him now that he listened to them in Yuki’s stalling tactic. “Does that mean Takako’s power isn’t mind control, but the ability to steal other powers and use them better than the owner? But that doesn’t explain her army. What is it about her powers that I don’t understand?”

Hiroshi still felt lost when it came to Takako. She had thrown several different powers at him in their fight. None of it he saw coming. His power could do nothing against her. “I guess I at least now have an answer to why she had so many powers. But we’re still missing a very important piece to the puzzle that makes this whole thing make sense.” Hope was all he had to rest on finding that answer before Takako’s new power.

Even hope seemed a strange thing to bet on. He felt like he was being shallow and fickle waffling on Yuki’s chance to beat Takako. It changed back and forth between the two as the battle carried on. And as he learned more about Takako there was less hope to pass around. It worried him more than he cared to admit.

“With the ability to master any power and use it at will, she’s the worst sort of person for Yuki. She can do similar things that he can, but is superhuman and immune to his powers. This situation just keeps getting worse and worse…”

Jumping to the next branch in front of her, Takako looked to be taking on a new stance to resume the fighting. “Enough of your delaying. It’s time that we put an end to you.”

“It’s going to take more than what you’ve shown to do that.”

“Then let’s get started!” Several magic arrays appeared in the air around Takako, rapidly finishing their casts. “I’ve been taking it easy on you until now!”

“Is that so?” Even while he spoke, he saw her attacks launched. ‘Metal? That’s an unexpected magic power. It’s pretty rare for any fiction to consider metal an element. But it makes sense, like fire or water, metal comes from nature as well. It’s more natural than the fire commonly used in fiction.’ While he took a moment half admiring and half analyzing it, hardened metal rods flew at him.

Mist still hung to his legs and pulled him away into the air to dodge the attack. Where he stood the metal ran straight through the wood completely unaffected by the thickness of more than a meter of wood. ‘I don’t know how dense that wood is, but that’s a little worrisome it has that much force. Any sort of direct hit is going to be near lethal with blood loss…’

Flying around the forest, Takako kept up the assault. Yet none of them hit him. Yuki started to question the seriousness of her intent. It lacked the same sort of intensity as the fire. But his detection system suddenly alerted him to an attack from a different direction. He dodged it without too much trouble, but it was the fact of where it came from that bothered him.

Yuki glanced back in the direction trying to understand what happened. ‘She’s not in that direction… So far I’ve only seen attacks come from her. It appeared that was her limit. However, she can control the magic at will even after release. Is that at work? She stopped doing that with the metal magic, treating it like a projectile.’

As he analyzed the situation more, Takako didn’t give him time to pause. Most of her attacks came from the same direction that he came to expect, but every so often she tossed in another stray that didn’t act like the others.

The fact he kept avoiding her sneak attacks began to show visibly on her face. She didn’t like that he seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. Her attempts were getting nowhere. Confidence in her own cleverness revealed her inexperience. She immediately jumped to more direct and less disguised attacks.

It began to give Yuki all of the data he needed to understand what was happening. While it was faint and gone almost immediately after it finished, he saw it long enough, a magic array. One that was nowhere near to where she stood. ‘I see…that explains that then…’ The more he dodged, the easier it became to see confirmation of it. ‘Well that’s going to make things even more complicated… In the hands of someone more experienced, I’d probably be in a lot more danger than I feel…’

What she lacked in experience, though she made up in sheer power. The vast reserves that she seemed to have to manage the magic had to give her credit to her natural talent. And to make things worse for Yuki, she was only more annoyed with him dodging everything. Arrays rapidly began to increase until it felt like there was a mini sun with how much light the magic generated around him.

All Yuki could do was keep moving. ‘The moment I stop is the moment I get surrounded… I can’t do anything about this…’ Below or above, left or right, he already nearly was surrounded by her attacks. Behind him, he left a wake of destruction as shards of wood exploded and rained down.

‘There’s nothing I can do but evade right now. I’m back again with the fire… I need to turn this around…’ Yet, Takako was already thinking of other things for Yuki. A brighter light than all of the magic arrays suddenly filled Yuki’s vision. “…damn…” He recognized it and it was an even worse threat.

She forced him to fly down to avoid the massive pillar of flames coming at him. Fire and metal made the combination even worse for him. And now that he had to change his direction away from what he had been driving, he went straight into a trap.

Yuki paused in the air, seeing all of his exits closed. A sphere of arrays surrounded him. “Dammit!” His eyes scanned the area looking for any point of weakness. ‘Didn’t expect her to actually lay a good trap. She’s getting smarter in the middle of the battle… Her inexperience was my one major advantage…’

Delaying her attack, Takako jumped around to get closer to Yuki. She grinned with satisfaction. “Can’t talk your way out of this.” The magic in the arrays grew brighter as she taunted him with his death.

Not giving her the look that she wanted, Yuki held a determined expression. Harsher lines painted around his mouth and eyes watching her. “Only a complete amateur gloats about having victory without actually having it.”

“Is that right?!” Anger surfaced quickly on her face. She lifted up her arm wanting to execute him with her own hand, as unnecessary as it was. “Let’s see if you can even speak after I’ve reduced you to nothing but bloody holes!”

‘She’s firing soon… She should have not made it clear when she was attacking…’ Yuki watched her hand slowly move for the action.

Just before she fired, a thick mist spread out through the entire space all the way out to the arrays. It completely blocked out Yuki from Takako’s sight. “I don’t need to see you to kill you!” She fired everything that she had gathered shooting through the mist.

Ill-omen wet sounds escaped from the uncertain void containing Yuki. “Yuki!” shouted Hiroshi from far above, unable to do anything to stop his friend from being killed.

Blood dripped out of the air from the bottom of the sphere of mist. Despite everything, the mist seemed to still hang around making it very clear to Takako that Yuki still lived. A large array appeared over her head completely eclipsing her in size. “Die, you bastard!”

A ten-meter thick column of flame erupted out of the array in a straight line for the mist. It completely engulfed the mist punching straight through with nothing stopping it. The massive amount of magic couldn’t be maintained for long as it faded out. But the mist couldn’t be seen.

Cracking sounds of wood breaking echoed through the forest. Several of the giant trees had been completely cut through with the upper parts falling while large holes bore through trunks of those that remained standing. The earth rumbled heavily like an earthquake as the forest began to settle from Takako’s attack.

Takako grinned with delight to see that Yuki had been completely obliterated by the attack. “He’s gone! No one can stop me now!” She laughed with her victory secured now.

A low cough came from a short distance away from Takako interrupting her. “You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Yuki corrected.

“What?!” Takako’s grin quickly disappeared as her reality was shattered. She looked around, narrowing in on Yuki’s location. He laid up against a tree with blood dripping from several shallow cuts along his arms and legs.

Anger surfaced again as she repeated her pattern. “How?! How are you alive?!”

“…luck…” he answered with a slight mocking grin.

Countless arrays appeared behind Takako. She shouted like a crazed person at the sight of Yuki. “See if luck will save you from this!” Metal rods fired out of the arrays repeatedly no longer closing up after their discharge.

Yuki’s mist pulled him away from the target zone as the tree he left shuttered under the pressure of hundreds of quarter-meter long rods punching through it. The mist alone kept him out of harm’s way. But it only angered Takako more.

All of the arrays merged into a single array and their magic shifted. Fire roared forth, but couldn’t touch Yuki. Takako brought in more arrays from different angles, though smaller. She moved the arrays around while keeping up with Yuki. She pushed him closer into another trap. “Luck won’t save you!”

The fires converged on his position as Yuki came to a stop further up the tree. As it moved in on him, he no longer looked to be dodging. Takako grinned, looking like she had him pinned this time. However, something suddenly flew in the last moment, stopping the fire and turning it away as it could make it through.

“Impossible!”

Yuki whipped his arm around, throwing off all of the magic flames as tiny embers hung in the air. A surprise appearance of a metallic gauntlet covered up his right hand and forearm. “I won’t need luck. I have my mind! Now I’ll show you what real experience means!”