"Flames?!"
Ryuji stared in astonishment at Esdeath, whose body was now wrapped in flames just like his own, and couldn't help but cry out.
But Esdeath had no intention of explaining. The flames around her kept dancing and shifting, sometimes vanishing and instantly transforming into ice, constantly layering different elemental attributes onto her sword.
Although Ryuji had never avoided practicing swordsmanship in front of Esdeath and had even shown her the prototype of his ice-and-fire intertwined sword technique, he had never imagined that the technique he himself hadn't fully developed would be perfected by Esdeath first.
Most importantly, Esdeath's swordsmanship already carried his shadow.
No, to be precise, Esdeath had absorbed his swordsmanship and integrated it into her own style.
He had never explained any of this to Esdeath, nor told her the secrets behind his movements. Not because he was stingy, but simply because Esdeath had never asked, while Asuna often did.
It had to be said, Esdeath truly was a genius.
"Hahaha!! When you were fighting imaginary opponents, I was watching from the side, thinking about why you swung your sword that way, why you threw your punches like that! But I still want to know just how much more you're hiding!"
Esdeath wasn't being arrogant, because she understood clearly that all of this was possible only because Ryuji hadn't hidden anything from her. If he had deliberately concealed his methods, she would never have reached her current level.
Ryuji immediately began dodging, and he roughly figured out what was going on with Esdeath's ice-and-fire sword technique.
Strictly speaking, Esdeath was still using ice as her core element.
But she had played a clever trick: the moment she released cold air, she gathered the expelled heat and condensed it using cold-element magic.
"No, it's not that simple."
Ryuji sensed the moisture in the air and directly perceived Esdeath's setup.
She was using the physical properties of heat and cold, accelerating the entire process with magic, and through a complex magic array, making the surrounding air cool faster while simultaneously gathering the heat together, forming flames for her to wield.
Normally, heat should quickly disperse toward colder areas, but she used a magic array to forcibly collect the heat that should have been conducted into the cold air she released. This created a situation where the more cold air she released, the more heat she gathered, and the faster the surrounding temperature dropped.
Yes! she had combined thermodynamics with magic.
Mana played a crucial role in all of this.
Calling this move by the name of a goddess was not an exaggeration at all.
But what Ryuji couldn't understand was who taught Esdeath physics?!
Ryuji believed Esdeath could learn magic, and believed she could quickly learn how to fight him.
But physics and mathematics?
That really didn't match Esdeath at all.
So, unable to suppress his curiosity, he asked.
"That's an incredible move, but how do you even know about physics?!"
Esdeath laughed loudly and swung her sword again, unleashing another searing sword slash. As Ryuji dodged, the heat wave she released was pulled back by the goddess statue behind her, rapidly gathering around it before intertwining and flowing toward Esdeath.
Yes, within this magic array, she would only grow stronger!
"Of course, from you and from our little slaves!"
Esdeath casually took out a phone. It was Ryuji's phone, the one that stored a large amount of study materials.
She had gone to ask Asuna about it in order to understand Ryuji better, wanting to know what was special about her, who could chat naturally with him and was always treated so considerately by him in bed.
And that was how she learned about modern society, and about so-called science.
After seeing the sections in physics textbooks related to heat and cold, she quickly became interested, and then… she learned middle-school and high-school level physics.
After that, she took these books to the sow-goddess and Olga, and from them she learned the secrets of magic.
"Although I still don't fully understand university-level physics, I've memorized it all! Honestly, darling... you've hidden things far too deeply!"
Esdeath really wanted to know, if she could gain inspiration from this knowledge and then use magic to develop new techniques, then what about Ryuji?
Ryuji couldn't help but nod. Esdeath truly was a genius, having successfully developed this in such a short time.
It seemed some sayings were true.
Some people scored a hundred because the test only went up to a hundred.
Esdeath was clearly the kind of person held back by her world. If the Akame ga Kill! world had possessed a more reliable power development system, she could at least have reached a level comparable to breaking through the void.
The strongest individuals in every world truly weren't to be underestimated.
"I'm sorry to disappoint, but my ability to control water and fire is different from yours. For now, the two can't be used together, so I never developed things in that direction."
Ryuji understood this clearly. The water bending power he obtained from the Avatar world was actually the ability to manipulate liquids, not temperature itself like Esdeath's.
Even his flames weren't about temperature either, they were about manipulating energy. That was an even higher-level concept, and something he still couldn't fully grasp.
After all, Esdeath had truly developed her ice powers to the point of freezing time.
Their levels of development were fundamentally different.
So, Esdeath could quickly use physics to help herself grow stronger, but Ryuji whose abilities had not yet been developed to their limits, couldn't rely on micro-management to achieve the same effect.
Moreover, with these two types of elemental manipulation, Ryuji couldn't see even a hint of "science" in them at all; they felt purely conceptual.
And since their worldviews were different, their abilities were naturally different as well. So what Esdeath could do now, he couldn't.
However...
"It's not like I haven't tried developing something myself!"
Ryuji stretched his hand toward the sky. A blazing fire dragon erupted from behind him, and under Esdeath's astonished gaze, it rushed straight into her magic array, colliding with the cold energy she was constantly releasing, spiraling upward, and then diving down toward her.
The clashing hot and cold energies were drawn together by the dragon's continuous heat output, forming two opposing air currents, one hot and one cold, which rapidly twisted together, creating a massive tornado over the land.
The surrounding space that had been condensed to defend against Ryuji's space-time slash instantly began to recover under the assault of scorching heat waves and roaring gales. Esdeath's magic array was violently disrupted by the rapidly forming tornado. The tall, beautiful ice goddess statue was instantly destroyed by the storm.
"This… you, so you really did try to develop something like this too!"
Esdeath stared at Ryuji with excitement. Her 'Dawn Goddess' was not some move that just anyone could casually break. Even she herself couldn't dismantle it this easily.
Only someone who thoroughly understood the principles behind her technique, had personally attempted similar development, comprehended its structure, and understood how mages operated could break it so effortlessly.
Which meant Ryuji's level truly surpassed hers. Before now, she had never actually touched his limits!
Ryuji's knowledge reserves, swordsmanship skills, realm of understanding, and all other aspects truly crushed hers.
"Ah, yes. But I can't perform this move myself. The reason I could break your move and even make use of it is because I once saw a similar technique recorded on a scroll from the Warrior Women Tribe."[1]
Ryuji clenched his fist. Esdeath's technique was extremely troublesome. If he hadn't experimented with similar ideas before, and if he didn't possess Observation Haki that allowed him to sense the breath of all things and precisely grasp temperature changes, then aside from brute-forcing through it, he wouldn't have had many options.
But he had indeed failed to develop this technique himself.
Simply put, the compatibility wasn't good enough. With magic assisting his abilities, he could imitate a similar effect, but because he hadn't reached the limits of these two abilities yet, the flaws were too significant, and investment didn't match output. Only someone like Esdeath, whose abilities fundamentally revolved around temperature manipulation, could achieve a state where the output far exceeded the input.
However, the technique he used to spark inspiration, he actually ended up learning it in the process.
Even if it was basically useless to him.
~~~~~~~~~~
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[1] From Ranma 1/2; Joketsuzoku, Tribe of Women Heroes.