The moment she crossed the Voidborn mage's presence, her lips parted and a single word left her mouth.
"Speed."
Her body blurred as she vanished from where she stood and reappeared several meters closer. The Crystal Lotus kept spinning around her. The petals kept opening and snapping shut in perfect synchronization with her movements.
Vastarael's eyes narrowed. She was way faster than the last time he had seen her fight seriously.
The Voidborn reacted too late. Runner was already among them. The lotus petals slashed then with each carrying enough force to send five-meter-tall Voidborn bodies flying before being torn apart by the void's own instability.
"Weight."
Mass multiplied on her petals. Every strike landed with the force of a shockwave. Voidborn were driven into the ground. Their forms dispersed in violent implosions before the void swallowed what remained.
"She's layering Physical words mid-motion."
That alone was impressive but what stunned him was how clean it was. There were no wasted syllables or hesitation. She spoke exactly what she needed when she needed it, and nothing more.
The mage raised its staff but Runner felt it immediately. She stopped completely. For less than a few seconds, she stood still.
The Crystal Lotus snapped shut around her like a crystalline fortress just as void projectiles headed toward her position, slamming into the petals and shattering harmlessly into nothing, not even scratching the surface. Runner's voice rang out from within the Lotus.
"Force redirect."
The petals exploded outward, sending the void-lances back in reverse trajectories but covered with Soul Energy, ripping through the ranks of Voidborn behind the mage and scattering them like debris.
Vastarael's lips parted slightly. Her Speech Manipulation was better. It followed the same universal laws as Runes. Physical words were easiest. Elemental came next. Spiritual strained the Soul. Conceptual demanded a lot of energy. Runner knew that and she wasn't reckless.
She moved again but faster than before.
"Speed."
She barely lost some her Soul Energy.
Limitless, one of the Base Tethers of the Aeterium, was doing its work, Soul Energy was circulating endlessly through her pseudo-cores, replenishing almost as quickly as she spent it. Vastarael had made her an Aeterium for this exact reason.
The mage slammed its staff into the ground. Runner skidded to a halt as the void warped beneath her feet. They formed tendrils charging upward like jaws.
"Anchor."
The word was heavier. It cost more Soul Energy but the effect was immediate. The Crystal Lotus embedded itself firmly as the ground stabilized beneath her.
Speech Manipulation demanded stillness, focus and vulnerability just like runes. That was why the Lotus existed. Forged from his sapphire, reinforced with Divine Metal and tempered by Reynolds' crystal authority until the very concept of "breaking" no longer applied to it, it acted as the perfect defense for her whenever she spoke.
"Silence."
She meant it as a Conceptual word.
The cost hit her instantly, Soul Energy surged outward in a violent wave. Her knees bent slightly under the strain-but the result was catastrophic.
The mage's staff went dead. The void around it stuttered. Its scream died in its throat as the words asserted itself. In the space around Runner, expression itself was denied.
"She used a Conceptual word in live combat?"
Runner didn't give the mage time to recover.
"Shatter."
The mage's form fractured. Its soul flickered violently as its body collapsed inward as it tried-and failed-to hold onto something that no longer had meaning. The remaining Voidborn rushed at her.
She smiled, breathing heavily now.
"Good. Now you're worth my time."
Runner made a very deliberate choice in that moment. She stopped speaking. Vastarael noticed it instantly and the realization hit him harder than any display of raw power ever could.
"She's not using her Divinity of Speech Manipulation?"
She was relying purely on the Crystal Lotus.
The Divine Weapon he had designed down to the last curve of sapphire responded to her intent as if it were an extension of her.
The Lotus began to bloom with her at the center.
Soul Energy surged from Runner's body, flooding into the Divine Metal embedded within the sapphire, activating the Enlargement Runes stacked endlessly atop one another. The Lotus became colossal. Petals the size of towers unfolded around her, overlapping into a rotating sequence that swallowed incoming Voidborn whole, crushing them between impossibly dense crystalline planes before their bodies could even destabilize and reform. Runner didn't flinch. She moved her fingers slightly without effort.
The main twenty-five petals rotated outward while the fragments awakened. Each petal possessed fifty smaller petal-shards per main blade, each one detaching, spinning and accelerating into controlled orbits around her body.
Thousands of crystalline petals filled the air.
Miniaturization Runes triggered next. The fragments shrank to sapphire needles reinforced with Divine Metal, each one humming with stored Soul Energy. The needles surged ahead of her in waves, carving paths through the hundreds of Voidborn ranks, shredding bodies apart into unstable void mist before they could even attempt to reform.
Vastarael's eyes widened slightly.
"Since when did she become so powerful..."
The Lotus expanded again before shrinking mid-swing to increase density and penetration. Each strike was perfectly timed, perfectly angled and highly efficient.
Runner moved through the battlefield as if she rehearsed this exact scenario a thousand times. The petals formed shields where projectiles emerged. The fragments moved defensively whenever her movements slowed down but the main Lotus always positioned between her and the most dangerous threats. In midair, the petals rearranged themselves beneath her feet, forming a rotating platform that launched her forward while the rear petals snapped shut, deflecting void projectiles aimed at her back.
The moment she landed among the Voidborn, the Lotus closed.
The petals converged inward, compressing everything caught inside into a singular point before releasing all stored energy in a silent implosion that erased the Voidborn entirely. Their forms scattered so violently that even the void struggled to reconstitute them.
Biolumine, watching from a distance, went completely still. Even Vastarael felt it.
She wasn't fighting like a child. She was fighting like a weapon master.
Every feature of the Crystal Lotus was being used exactly as intended and in ways even he hadn't fully anticipated. She switched between enlargement and miniaturization fluidly, using size not as a measure of power but as a tactical variable, turning defense into offense and offense into control.
When a wave of Voidborn surged from below, the Lotus split apart, the petals flew downward, anchoring into the void itself and forming a massive rotating grinder that erased everything that tried to pass through it. Runner stood at the center of it all.
Vastarael let out a slow breath, something dangerously close to a laugh escaping him.
"She's using it better than I ever imagined. I guess she really has grown up."