Emily's mother, Katherine, never cared for love or any man.
While other women dreamed of finding someone to share their lives with, Katherine found the very idea… inefficient. Love was useless in war.
Yet, she did marry and even had a daughter.
Not out of affection, nor companionship, but out of ambition.
Katherine wanted a successor, someone who could challenge and surpass her. Someone who could carry her legacy further than she ever could.
The world remembered her as the most brilliant mage of her era. But she was haunted by a single, unfulfilled truth: her own power had reached its ceiling.
And the only solution she thought of was to get a successor that could smash that ceiling.
That being said, gifts, those mysterious powers granted to women by the unknown, were rarely hereditary. In fact, the chance of a daughter inheriting her mother's gift was a mere 12.5%. The odds of inheriting a grandmother's gift were nearly nonexistent.
Still, Katherine knew.
She just knew that her child would be extraordinary.
And with that belief, she searched and found the right man.
He was strong, healthy, physically gifted, and more importantly, his mother had a gift that could really complement hers.
Surprisingly, her intuition was right.
Emily was born under the crimson moon, and from her first cry, Katherine knew: this child was different.
Emily was a miracle, a statistical impossibility.
She had not one, but two Gifts.
The first was inherited from her mother; the second, which came from her paternal grandmother, was named Simulation.
Her grandmother had once been famous for it: the ability to create multiple hypothetical worlds within her own mind, running them in parallel like living dreams.
She could test a dozen outcomes before making a single move in real life.
Even being relatively weak on its own, this ability made her dangerous in combat and extremely useful in many situations.
But Emily…
Emily shattered those limits before she turned twenty.
Her current record was 137 simulations running simultaneously, and she aimed for two hundred.
In a single second, Emily could live, fight, and die a hundred and thirty-seven times.
Each failure taught her something.
Of course, Nolan didn't know any of this. He only saw a girl smiling at him through the haze of magic, her breathing steady despite the exhaustion.
"Thank you," Emily said, her voice calm and resolute. "But I don't need thirty seconds."
Before Nolan could even question her, mana shimmered faintly in her hand inside his nullification field.
A sword of blue light flickered into existence, unstable and trembling, but real.
She swung. Fast. Too fast.
Nolan barely managed to dodge, feeling the air split near his throat. Then the sword vanished, disintegrating the moment the strike was complete.
Emily's chest rose and fell heavily. That single strike had drained nearly everything she had. But her eyes burned with something fierce, a spark that refused to die.
For her, their combat had already played out 137 times.
She lost in all of them, but with each failure, she'd learned something new.
Even though the mana around her was paralyzed, she found a technique to briefly break through that inertia.
That said, the process was exhausting, and she wouldn't stand a chance if she remained within Nolan's range.
With that in mind, the girl used a burst of mana to propel herself away. Truth be told, if Nolan had wanted to, he could have grabbed her before she escaped, but he decided to let her go.
"So, you've already evolved…" he murmured, genuinely impressed.
Nolan advanced across the arena, dodging the blows Emily launched from a distance. Before he realized it, a smile had formed on his face as adrenaline compelled him forward.
Emily was evolving rapidly, and her attacks were becoming faster and more dangerous. The spears took longer to vanish when they entered his range.
But all of that caused the man to evolve as well.
Before, he would simply activate his ability without worrying about it, but after keeping his magic nullification active for so long, he began to feel its effect.
It was hard to comprehend, or even put into words, but he could feel it, as if there were something around him.
And whenever mana was fired in his direction, this "something" moved to catch the mana, wrapping around it and paralyzing it.
But what if, beyond just feeling it, he could control it?
Nolan tried to think about it, but nothing happened. It wasn't as if it were simple.
Emily fired a volley of azure arrows at the boy, who had to take several steps back to get out of the attack's reach.
Where is she? He thought, looking around. Emily had used that attack to hide herself.
"Damn, I got too distracted thinking about how to control my ability…" he muttered to himself.
He didn't have time to evolve during combat. If he wanted to win, Nolan needed to act fast.
But before he could think of anything else, he felt a sharp pain as Emily opened a deep cut on his left shoulder, attacking him from behind.
If he hadn't dodged by instinct, the wounds would have been so severe that the fight would have ended right there.
"Ha… Ha… Ha…" the warrior breathed heavily.
She had sneaked inside Nolan's range without being noticed, saving every bit of mana possible for one explosive attack.
Emily knew this would leave her practically exhausted, but she still felt a thread of energy coursing through her body.
Any normal person would have accepted defeat by this point. There was no reason to go this far in a simple training match.
But she couldn't stop, not when her heart was beating this hard. Her whole body ached, begging her to stop, and yet, that only drove her forward.
A manic smile formed on her lips, and her eyes locked onto her prey.
Nolan, for his part, could barely move his left arm; blood dripped onto the floor, and pain throbbed in his head like a drum. He felt like he could pass out at any moment.
The human body was weak; that was why a simple strike could cause so much damage.
But he didn't want to stop either, not when he saw the flame of determination burning in his opponent's eyes. No, he wouldn't accept losing here.
Emily charged.
Inside Nolan's range, all mana was static, immobilized. Setting it in motion was practically impossible.
However, Emily had discovered she could rely on the mana inside herself. Of course, compared to the ambient mana, her reserves were minuscule, but they were enough.
She expelled the little energy that remained, creating an explosion at her feet that propelled her forward.
In her hand, she held a knife, not a magic item, just a simple, sharp blade.
In an instant, she was in front of him.
Nolan didn't retreat. He waited.
The moment Emily raised the knife for the final blow, Nolan moved his body a centimeter to the side, just enough to dodge the blade, and, with his right hand, grabbed her wrist.
Using Emily's own momentum, he spun his body and slammed her hard against the ground.
The blade flew from her hands and embedded itself in the dirt nearby.
The impact knocked the wind out of her, and all the energy left in her vanished at once.
Nolan remained standing, panting, watching her try to move.
"That was a good fight," he murmured, with a tired half-smile. "But you're still far from being able to defeat me."
Emily let out a weak laugh, then looked at the state of her opponent practically exhausted, his blood painting the floor.
"It was an incredible fight," she admitted.
"You two, that's enough!" Ana shouted as she approached. "Enough duels for today. How can you hurt yourselves this badly?"
The two laughed as Ana healed them, her eyes filled with worry.