Lucian's attacks were too fast.
Not fast in the crude sense of velocity, not the kind that relied on raw acceleration or overwhelming momentum. This speed carried intent. Precision. A sharpness that felt as if it had already been measured, corrected, and approved somewhere outside the present moment.
Each strike arrived like the final step of a completed equation.
Angles were exact. Force was neither excessive nor restrained. Entry points were chosen with surgical calm. There was no hesitation, no probing, no unnecessary motion—only execution.
Seven felt it immediately.
For the first time since the fight began, pressure pressed down on him in a way that could not be compensated for by physical reinforcement alone.
It wasn't a disparity of strength.
It was a disparity of information.
The air between them split again and again. Shockwaves overlapped before the previous disturbances had time to settle. The battlefield never returned to stillness—because it was never allowed to.
Seven's body enhancement remained active at full output. Neural feedback screamed warnings as his perception lagged behind execution by fractions of a second. His muscles reacted before conscious thought, driven by trained reflex and optimized pathways—
And still, he was late.
Half a beat.
That was all it took.
A half-beat delay was enough to turn avoidance into grazing impact, prediction into forced correction. His movements grew tighter, less flexible, each response consuming more margin than the last.
If this continued, there was only one outcome.
He would be driven into a corner.
And then killed.
Seven made the decision instantly.
No hesitation.
Second Tier—activated.
The world shifted.
Not dramatically. Not violently.
But decisively.
Color drained from the environment, as if saturation had been dialed down by an invisible hand. Edges sharpened, outlines thickened. Motion itself became more legible, every moving element pulled taut along clearly defined trajectories.
All dynamic lines straightened.
All vectors thickened.
At the center of Seven's pupils, two thick lines crossed, forming a rigid intersection—like coordinate axes, or analytical markers forcibly superimposed over reality itself.
—Mind reading.
Information surged in.
Not a trickle.
Not scattered impressions or emotional residue.
A complete structure flooded his consciousness in a single, overwhelming pulse.
Seven "saw" Lucian's sister.
Not as a scene.
Not as a moment.
But as a persistent psychological constant.
She existed as an anchor point, deeply embedded, shaping layers of decision-making that extended far beyond personal affection. Protection and control intertwined seamlessly. Calculation overlapped with sacrifice. Every long-term projection bent subtly around her existence.
This was not indulgence.
Not dependence.
It was an absolute-priority variable, elevated to strategic significance.
For a fraction of a second, a dry assessment surfaced in Seven's mind.
"…A siscon?"
The thought barely finished forming before he crushed it.
Hard.
The lesson from Daolf was still etched into him with painful clarity.
Anything read, once spoken, becomes a weapon in the opponent's hands.
Information, once externalized, ceased to be advantage.
It became vulnerability.
Seven kept his mouth shut.
And pushed deeper.
The analytical layer expanded further.
The shift was immediate.
The imagery no longer belonged to Lucian's active thought processes. It felt displaced, like something stored under pressure, compressed by time rather than distance.
A residual imprint.
Seven saw a boy.
Far away—like watching through an observation window, or standing beyond a safety boundary. The boy did not approach. He only watched from a distance.
Ahead lay a facility.
Its structure was indistinct, but it was clearly a sealed, highly controlled space—an experimental facility, or something similar.
In the next instant, the space itself became abnormal.
Not an explosion. Not a collapse. But removal.
A black, boundless space unfolded like an inverted pocket, swallowing the area bit by bit. No sound. No impact. Just erasure.
The image cut off abruptly.
Abruptly.
Seven's brows drew together.
Pain detonated behind his eyes.
Sharp. Immediate.
This wasn't external interference.
It was backlash.
His own memories surged forward without warning, compressed against the foreign imprint still lingering in his mind. Familiar fragments collided with unfamiliar imagery, producing a grinding pressure that threatened coherence.
"…Laboratory?"
The word surfaced instinctively.
And yet, it carried no clear origin.
No matching memory.
No confirmed reference point.
Wrong.
This wasn't the time.
Seven forced the analysis layer down, suppressing the intrusion with practiced efficiency. He dragged his focus back to the present, re-centering on the battlefield.
Read again.
This time, he locked onto real-time cognition.
Lucian's thoughts were clean.
Controlled.
"From the left leg. One shot through to the right shoulder."
The intent was unmistakable.
Prediction confirmed.
Seven's body had already begun responding, muscles aligning, weight shifting to match the anticipated vector. Defensive posture snapped into place—
Then, at the last possible instant, Seven reversed it.
Serpent Locking the Moon swung with visible strain. The blade carved an unnatural arc through the air, forcefully deflecting the path that should have struck cleanly.
Impact grazed him.
Pain flared along his side, sharp but shallow.
The fatal line was avoided.
The exchange reset.
Then repeated.
Again.
And again.
Some predictions aligned perfectly.
Others twisted at the final moment, reversed just enough to force correction.
The order broke down.
Timing slipped.
Seven recognized the pattern almost immediately.
Lucian wasn't thinking about how to attack.
He was thinking about what would be read.
He was feeding the ability.
Designing the information stream itself.
Lucian halted, gaze settling calmly on Seven. The corner of his mouth lifted, slow and deliberate.
It wasn't triumph.
It was confirmation.
A hypothesis validated.
"Mind-reading, perhaps?"
The words landed lightly.
Seven cursed internally.
Of course.
At this level, simple countermeasures were insufficient. Lucian hadn't merely guarded his thoughts—he had incorporated the opponent's ability directly into his combat framework.
Mind reading wasn't disrupting him.
It was being used.
Seven shut the second tier down without hesitation.
The intersecting lines faded from his pupils, collapsing inward until only a single horizontal thick line remained.
Stable.
Singular.
First Tier.
The world dulled.
But it stabilized.
Without excess data flooding his perception, Seven regained control. He abandoned predictive reliance entirely, recalibrating his timing through direct sensory feedback.
No foresight.
Only adaptation.
One step forward.
Then another.
The ground creaked faintly under pressure as his weight shifted. His breathing evened out, forced into rhythm. His heart rate slowed, dragged back into a manageable range through sheer discipline.
Distance closed.
Hunting range.
Now.
Seven accelerated.
His body launched forward like a released projectile. An arrow screamed in from the side—he slipped past it by the narrowest margin, its passage brushing the edge of his awareness.
No wasted movement.
Straight-line advance.
Serpent Locking the Moon swept outward, blade howling as it cut through the air.
And—
Lucian smiled.
Not with expression.
With certainty.
Before the blade could reach him, Lucian's body moved.
Not a jump.
Not a retreat.
A glide.
He slid backward across the ground, perfectly level, covering dozens of meters in a blink. The speed exceeded even Seven's burst limit, clean and effortless.
The blade struck nothing.
Air split.
No resistance answered.
Seven stopped.
He looked ahead.
Lucian stood at a distance, posture relaxed, balance unbroken. Azure light shimmered beneath his feet—not radiant, not overwhelming, but unwavering.
A propulsion system.
Fully controlled.
Seven did not pursue.
There was no need.
He understood.
The battlefield had reset.
Back to the beginning.
And this time, the conclusion was unmistakable.
Not all futures—
could be read.