Chapter 98: Fiery Lucy 3
Karl lay in the crater, laughing through blood.
Then the laughter stopped.
His eyes went empty, like someone blew out the candle behind them. Golden rings of energy rose from his skin and broke apart into dust. The dust didn’t fall—it hung there, then spun into a slow orbit around him, faster, tighter, until it collapsed inward and slammed into his body.
The ground buckled.
Lucy shifted her stance, shoulders square, fists still burning. "So that’s the real you."
Karl stood.
No glow, no flare—just pressure. The air around him thickened until the heat of Lucy’s flames warped. Veins of white-gold traced his skin like etched constellations. When he inhaled, the clouds above pulled closer. When he exhaled, they rolled back.
"Full release," he said, almost bored. "Let’s see if you’re still fun."
He vanished.
Lucy felt it, not saw it—the floor ghosting under her feet a blink before his knee cut up through her guard. She blocked, forearms ringing, slid half a meter and planted. Karl stepped into the opening he forced and hammered a straight punch toward her face.
She didn’t dodge.
Her head dipped a hair, her right shoulder rolled, and she slipped the punch by an inch. Her counter walked up his ribs—body, body, chin—each hit detonating with black fire that chewed at his aura. Karl’s head snapped back. She followed with a hook that clipped his jaw and sent a fountain of blood to the side.
"Still fun," he said, grinning.
They collided again.
To the watching hunters, it was a storm they couldn’t enter. Every hit cracked the air. Every miss made the dirt scream. Lucy’s flames weren’t just flames anymore; thin threads of bright silver ran through them, making each strike bite deeper, cut cleaner, erase harder. Karl’s aura kept reassembling under the damage, like light knitting light.
He grabbed her wrist. She rotated out and torqued his elbow; the joint popped and reset in the same motion. He slammed a palm to her chest; the shockwave launched her back, feet skidding trenches. She leaned into the momentum, sprang forward, and headbutted him. Bone crunched. They both grinned—feral, honest.
Karl spread his fingers. Golden sigils flared along his knuckles.
The world hiccuped.
He was behind her, then above her, then below—three angles at once collapsing into one hit. Lucy crossed her arms and took it, flames howling. The force buried her to the shins. Her eyes narrowed, and the black fire tightened around her like armor.
She moved.
No wind-up. No tell.
Her fist speared his abdomen. The cursed heat punched through muscle and light at once, and for a flicker Karl’s aura went thin. She stacked hits—left, right, knee, elbow, hammerfist—each carrying weight like falling towers. He slid, boots carving V’s into the ground.
Karl laughed breathlessly. "You’re climbing."
Lucy didn’t answer. She felt it too—that thin edge between what she was and what came next. The black fire licked at it. The silver lines inside it sang. Her skin prickled, her bones hummed, her pulse turned to thunder.
She took a step.
The step sounded like a drum.
Karl’s pupils tightened. "Oh."
She arrived.
Her punch didn’t make noise. It deleted it. Karl’s head jerked; the light along his jaw shattered into glitter. He tried to counter, but she was already on his blind side, flame-wrapped knee driving into his liver. He folded, and she brought both fists down on the back of his neck, planting him face-first in the dirt.
He pushed up, spitting earth. "Yes."
Lucy’s aura climbed again.
The sky dimmed like it was giving her room.
Karl wiped blood with the back of his wrist. The white-gold lines along his skin brightened to a hard, painful light. "All right. No more holding back."
He lifted his foot and set it down.
The ground caved in a perfect circle for two hundred meters.
He lifted his hand and closed it.
Gravity snapped sideways. Dust, pebbles, even the hanging smoke bent toward his fist as if space itself owed him a debt. Lucy’s hair tugged toward him. Her flames leaned, resistant, snarling.
"Come here," he said.
"Make me," she said, and stepped into it.
She walked against the pull like it was a hill. Each stride left glass. The black-silver fire along her arms turned needle-thin and precise, cutting the field of force away from her body as she moved.
Karl’s smile sharpened. "Good."
He let the field go and met her halfway.
They traded close.
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t clean. It was elbows and shoulders and short hooks and knees; it was heads knocking, teeth cutting lips, blood painting the dirt. His strength tried to crush. Her flame tried to erase. And somewhere in the middle, something evened it—will carving a path between them.
Karl slipped her guard and hammered a fist into her ribs. She felt three cracks, tasted iron, and swung through the pain, her forearm crashing down across his neck. He stumbled a half-step. She seized the beat and drove a straight down the pipe; his nose broke, and a spray of red gleamed in the dark firelight.
He laughed through it. "More."
She gave it.
Her aura hit the threshold—and leaned over it.
For one breath, Lucy was lighter, faster, heavier, slower—everything at once, trimmed to only what she needed. The black fire went matte, the silver threads snapped tight. Karl’s next punch whistled past the space where her head would’ve been, and her return clipped his temple so clean the world blinked.
Karl staggered. He hadn’t staggered like that yet.
He steadied, grin crooked, eyes wild. "Rank X without a frame. You’re going to burn yourself out."
"Then I’ll burn out after you," she said, and blitzed.
She ripped him across the field with a flurry that sounded like a row of detonations going off in a straight line. The final hit launched him skyward. Lucy chased, heel flipping over her head in a brutal axe kick that sent him crashing back down, a plume of dust and rock blooming.
She landed hard, shoulders heaving, black fire coughing ash.
Karl lay in the crater, chest rising and falling fast.
Then his hands pressed to the dirt.
The white-gold veins along his body sank into the ground and came up again in a grid. Light lines snapped into a lattice over the battlefield—thin, perfect, merciless.
He stood inside his web.
"Playtime’s over," he said, voice flat. "Anchor Field."
Lucy’s flame flared to meet it—and flickered. The lattice wasn’t just pressure. It was rule. Every motion she made dragged weight, every jump asked permission, every breath paid a tax. Her fire ate at it, but the lines grew back as fast as she burned them.
Karl moved.
He didn’t blur this time. He walked. Fast.
His first punch drove through her guard and hammered her sternum. Her back bowed; breath left her in a soundless grunt. His second caught her jaw, turning her head. His third sank to the body, and the world sparked white behind her eyes.
She bit down, planted her feet, and answered—a hook that made his ear ring, an elbow that split his eyebrow. He took both, stepped through them, and collided with her like a battering ram.
The lattice tightened.
Her flame thinned.
She forced it wider, stole another breath of power from that humming edge—and paid for it. Something behind her heart burned wrong. Her knees almost dipped. She refused to let them.
Karl saw the stutter.
He went for it.
His palm rose, two fingers extended, and the air between them went clean and surgical. He tapped her chest once.
Everything inside her jolted.
Her flame went out for a blink.
That was all he needed.
He hit her like a falling building.
The first blow smashed across her cheekbone; the second slammed the same spot; the third hit the rib he’d cracked earlier; the fourth hammered her stomach; the fifth came from above, forearm dropping across her back and driving her to one knee.
She tried to rise. The lattice dragged her down.
Karl’s hand hooked into her jacket and flung her high. He leaped after, knee driving into her midair and folding her around it. She crashed, skidding through dirt and stone, leaving a long dark smear.
She pushed her palms into the ground and lifted her head. Blood ran from her nose and split lip. She grinned anyway—thin, stubborn, mean.
"Still... not enough," she rasped.
Karl’s breath came hard now, chest shining with sweat and blood. He looked at her like a craftsman looks at a blade he respects. "You’re past SSS," he said. "You really did it."
He raised his hand.
The lattice brightened to a blinding white.
Lucy stood.
She dragged the last of her flame up from wherever she kept it, packed it around her fists, and sprinted.
They met in the center—her punch and his palm.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved.
Then the world did.
Light stormed outward in a perfect ring. Dirt lifted and hung. Sound died. And in that quiet, the black fire started to unravel, thread by thread, the silver lines snapping as the white lattice folded over it like a closing book.
Lucy’s eyes widened a fraction.
Karl’s did not.
"Sleep," he said.
The palm strike slid past her fist and set on her sternum. The force didn’t throw her. It flattened her aura, pressed it closed, and her body followed.
She hit the ground on her back.
The lattice faded.
The dust fell.
Lucy tried to get up. Her arms shook, elbows locking, then slipping. She made it to one knee, swayed, and her eyes rolled half-closed. The black fire guttered, then winked out.
She pitched forward and caught herself on trembling hands. Her breath came in short, hard pulls. She looked up at Karl through a mess of hair and blood and smiled like a dare.
"Go ahead," she whispered. "Gloat."
Karl stepped closer. The grin was gone. He was breathing, too—deep, steady, masking how much she’d taken out of him.
"No," he said. "You earned better than that."
He looked down at her—at the cracked ground, at the fist marks and scorch scars and the stubbornness that wouldn’t die.
"You’re the first one here to touch that ceiling," he added, almost to himself. "He won’t be far behind."
Lucy tried to spit a laugh and coughed instead. "Told you... you weren’t worth him."
Karl’s mouth twitched. "Maybe not. But I am worth this."
He turned his head, gaze cutting past the ruined field to the line of hunters watching in shocked silence.
"Don’t get in my way," he said, voice carrying. "I’m not done."
He looked back at Lucy, the white-gold veins dimming on his skin as his full release eased.
"Rest," he said softly. "When you wake up, be stronger."
Her eyes slipped closed despite herself.
The wind moved again. The world’s noise crept back in—the crackle of dead grass, the far-off crack of a failing wall, a single, shaky cheer that didn’t know if it should exist.
Karl rolled his shoulders, blood dripping from his chin, and turned toward the next gate forming on the horizon.
"Lucian," he murmured, smiling to no one. "Hurry up."
"You don’t have to look for me anymore."