Erza staggered a step but didn't fall. She steadied, lifting her blade again. Though she was frustrated, this outcome wasn't anything surprising.
How was somebody supposed to beat an opponent who can predict all your moves?
Overpower them? What if you can't?
Surpass them in speed? What if you can't?
What if your opponent is using all the tools you have and could predict you? How could you overcome somebody like that?
Erza had faced this question countless times, and she had several answers. Yet not a single one had yielded her the result.
However, it doesn't mean she has given up.
Erza inhaled once, deep and steady.
Then she emptied her mind.
No anticipation. No stance. No form.
She walked forward—not with a fighter's rhythm but with a strangely loose, almost wandering gait. Her blade dipped mid-swing, not in a feint but because her body simply… stopped moving the way a trained swordsman should.
Kazu's eyes narrowed. "What are you—"
Her upper body collapsed downward, dropping her stance entirely. Her guard opened so wide that any novice could've ended the match.
Kazu froze for half a heartbeat.
This wasn't a feint. This wasn't a move he could classify. This wasn't anything.
He adjusted instantly—blade shifting downward to intercept her—
But before the strike landed, she rolled sideways, clean and sharp, kicking dirt into the air as she moved. At the same time, she threw her sword low, catching it with her legs and swinging it at Kazu when her roll ended.
'???' Kazu twisted back, but not cleanly enough.
A thin red line appeared across his abdomen, just under the ribs. His clothes fluttered from the shallow cut.
He had consciously stopped himself from creating a barrier on instinct.
'Zoro, is that you?' Kazu hadn't expected Erza to wield her sword from her legs.
"You—"
He didn't finish. Erza didn't let him.
She rushed him—not straight, not angled, but in a roundabout, meandering path that made no tactical sense if she wanted to capitalise on him getting caught off-guard.
Every step looked wrong. Too wide. Too slow. Too open.
Kazu's instincts screamed at him to attack those openings, but with the experience of getting cut just now, he knew that his instincts weren't fully reliable.
He wasn't able to predict her anymore.
Kazu blocked a high cut but felt her blade twist off-centre mid-swing. He dodged a diagonal, only to realise she had overextended on purpose, turning it into a broken stumble that carried unexpected momentum. He stepped back from another attack—and she followed with footwork so sloppy he couldn't predict which direction her weight would go.
Her stance was so fundamentally flawed that he couldn't predict anything.
"Erza—this is ridiculous," he muttered, slipping past another jagged strike. "Did you steal one of Cana's bottles?"
"Maybe." Her breathing was tight, focused. "Can you predict me now?"
Kazu couldn't. He couldn't read her like a book before due to his instincts being rendered useless; however, Kazu wasn't helpless without them.
Even without predicting each of her moves, Kazu could still use his normal combat mastery to stall her until he seizes an opening.
Kazu's blade scraped against hers, narrowly deflecting a wild, off-balanced thrust. He shifted left to exploit her open rib—only for her to stumble forward, ruining the clean angle and forcing him to retreat instead.
She swung again—an ugly, crooked arc.
He predicted it, stepped into the opening, raised his blade—
And she didn't dodge.
She took the hit.
His sword sank into her shoulder. Blood splattered. Her body jerked from the force.
"Erza!" Kazu's eyes widened. He tried to pull the strike back, but she had already moved through the pain, pushing her shoulder deeper onto the blade to trap it.
His grip loosened from reflex—just a fraction.
That was all she needed.
She twisted violently, wrenching the sword out of his hand with her own body weight. The blade flew from his grip.
Before he could reclaim his stance, Erza moved one final time—ugly, staggering, but brutally effective.
Her sword pressed against his throat.
Silence.
The entire make-shift arena, along with the spectators, was rendered speechless by the turn of events.
What just happened?
Why was Erza suddenly fighting like a newbie?
How did it actually turn the tide?
And she won?
Kazu stared at her, chest rising with shock, disbelief, and a touch of something like pride beneath his irritation. She had actually won.
"…You're insane."
Erza tightened her grip, just slightly. "Random enough for you?"
He exhaled through his nose, a dry huff. "I didn't expect you to use your shoulder to trade off a blow." It would have been normal if Erza had been wearing armour; however, currently, she wasn't.
Moreover, the injury she got isn't something light.
"You gave me no choice."
"Clearly."
He looked at the sword at his throat, then at her bleeding shoulder.
"You win."
The words landed heavily in the air.
Erza lowered her blade, hand trembling but steady enough. The crowd erupted in noise, but the two of them heard none of it.
For a moment, it was just the student and the teacher.
And for the first time in years—
The student stood above the teacher.
***
March x781
Kazu stood in the training ground—the one far enough from Magnolia that Makarov wouldn't yell at him for breaking property again. The sun was low, the ground packed with old scorch marks, and a single stone pillar—waist-high, broad, thick—waited in front of him.
He flexed his fingers once.
"Internal destruction," he muttered. "Alright. Let's see if this stupid idea actually works."
The concept was simple in theory: Push ethernano into a solid object in the form of vibrations, let it bypass the surface, and rupture whatever was behind it. A technique that didn't care about armour, scales, hardened skin—anything.
Simple concept. Took Kazu a long time to come up with this theory himself.
He had been pretty motivated to create this technique after he lost ten per cent of his total reserves last year, especially after fighting that titan with terrifying defence.
Kazu placed his hand on the stone. He tried to form the vibration—tiny, rapid pulses of ethernano, focused in a tight stream.
The pillar hummed. 'Good start.'
Then the humming turned into a violent jolt. 'Bad sign.'
The top half exploded.
Stone dust spat into his face. Kazu coughed, waving a hand. 'Great. Perfect. I've invented 'external destruction.''
He walked over to the scattered pieces, rubbing his eyebrow. The flaw was obvious: the vibration wasn't penetrating. It was detonating at the surface like a badly-timed firecracker.
He moved to another pillar.
"Okay. Lighter. Much lighter."
He pressed his hand down again, feeding in a thread of ethernano—so thin it felt like pretending to cast.
The rock buzzed softly.
Kazu leaned in. "Come on… a little deeper…"
The stone heated. A hairline crack formed.
Then nothing.
He clicked his tongue. "Too weak. Great. We're at the opposite end of useless now."
He sat back, crossing his arms. Vibrations needed the right frequency—high enough to slip through the structure, but stable enough not to explode on contact. The problem was that every material had different resonance points, and he wasn't about to chart an entire library of frequencies.
He tapped the stone with two fingers. 'Maybe instinct can cheat this.'
He exhaled and placed his palm on the stone again.
This time, he didn't push ethernano first. He listened.
There—faint ripples, the way the stone held tension. Not detailed enough to map the whole interior, but good enough to sense where the structure was weakest.
He gathered ethernano.
"Don't explode. Please don't explode."
A thin pulse entered the stone.
The stone shivered—not broke, not cracked. Shivered. Like something inside shifted a millimetre out of place.
"Yes," he whispered. "…Yes. That's what I want."
He increased the vibration.
The shiver turned into a deep, internal tremor. The surface barely moved. The energy wasn't bursting out. It was sinking in.
Kazu's eyes sharpened. "Good. Good—stay with it—"
Then the entire pillar collapsed like wet sand.
The surface didn't break apart. There wasn't an explosion. It simply lost its internal cohesion and caved inward.
Kazu stared at it.
"…That's actually terrifying."
Then he groaned. 'And completely unstable. I can't control where it goes. If I use this on a living thing, I'll liquefy everything except what I'm aiming for.'
He kicked a stone chunk aside. "And that's just rude."
Still—progress.
He reset another pillar. His shoulder cracked as he rolled it. "I need to get the stability under control. The pulses shouldn't scatter through the whole object. They should aim at a single point. Focused and directed."
He placed both hands on the stone this time, hoping more control might help.
The vibration entered. Too wide. He narrowed it. Too sharp. He balanced the frequency—slightly higher, slightly steadier.
The pillar trembled again, but this time only one patch in the centre bulged outward, the stone swelling like something underneath pushed it.
Kazu felt sweat drop down his jaw.
"Good… keep it…"
He held the frequency—
The bulge popped, sending a cone of stone fragments outward.
Kazu's barrier caught them automatically, but he still winced. "Better. Still not good enough."
He stepped back, breathing a little harder. Creating vibrations through his Ethernano manipulation required precision at a level he wasn't used to.
'If I could use Eris's magic, then creating this technique would have been pretty easy. On second thought, the guy could do something similar. Though his vibrations were a bit too straightforward, destroying everything, which is just a waste of energy.'
He wiped his face and muttered, "I need more practice."
The destroyed pillars around him didn't disagree.
He smacked his hands together, re-focusing.
"If I get this right, armour won't matter. Shells, scales, metal plating—none of it. Even normal defensive spells would be useless."
He looked at the dust-covered training yard.
His fingers sparked with yellow ethernano as he approached the next stone.
"Alright. Round four."
***
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