A Fatal Mistake

Was Ran Jiuyi losing her mind in the heat of battle?

No. Cheng Ya found the answer. She realized that since the start of the fight, Ran Jiuyi had been receiving a constant flow of mana from an unknown source originating from her own body. This mana was so similar to Ran Jiuyi’s own that Cheng Ya hadn’t noticed it until now.

Furthermore, after Cheng Ya herself took damage, a similar flow of mana was generated from her body, which Ran Jiuyi was steadily absorbing. Whenever Cheng Ya was wounded, this mana spiked briefly; once the wounds healed, it slowly ebbed away. Simultaneously, whenever Ran Jiuyi’s body was repaired by the Corrosion Needles, that mysterious mana pool diminished slightly.

Connecting these strange phenomena with Ran Jiuyi’s recent outburst, Cheng Ya seemed to understand one thing: why Alice was certain that Ran Jiuyi could cause Cheng Ya’s abilities to evolve.

“Hahahaha!”

Amidst Ran Jiuyi’s relentless assault, Cheng Ya suddenly broke into a manic laugh.

“Wonderful! You’re truly magnificent! You derive mana from pain, don’t you?”

Facing the attack, Cheng Ya’s speed surged again, striking first despite moving second. An upper-cut shattered Ran Jiuyi’s head armor, exposing a face that had been more than half-replaced by Corrosion Needles. Innumerable needles writhed across her visage—a grotesque, terrifying sight where flesh and metal could no longer be distinguished.

Most of Ran Jiuyi’s body was now in this state; this was the capital that allowed her to trade blows with Cheng Ya.

“I’ve figured out your mechanism. First, you convert all pain within a certain radius into mana that only you can absorb. Second, when you take damage, you use Corrosion Needles to replace tissue that can no longer recover. Combine that with your self-healing as a safety net for after the battle, and you can recklessly trade life for life with your enemies.”

Cheng Ya continued, “In other words, the more you fight, the more pain is generated, and the more mana you gain. As long as there is pain within range, you can fight forever. And every time you’re hurt, you replace the part with needles. The more needles, the stronger you become. You’re literally stepping on your own shadow to climb to heaven!”

Seizing the opening before Ran Jiuyi could repair her head armor, Cheng Ya delivered a heavy downward punch to her skull. Blood sprayed from Ran Jiuyi’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Cheng Ya followed up with a direct strike to her face; the scattering of teeth and the caved-in features bore testament to the blow’s power.

“But your ability has a weakness: the more of your body you replace with needles, the less pain you can feel, and thus, the less mana you gain. That limits your combat duration. Moreover, if I’m right, you can’t replace your entire body. Even I can’t regenerate from nothing. Once your entire physical form is replaced by needles, you’re as good as dead. So… I wonder, what is your limit?”

At that moment, Ran Jiuyi suddenly grabbed Cheng Ya’s shoulders. With a burst of violent force, she tore both of Cheng Ya’s arms clean off.

“So what! You think knowing my ability means you can defeat me?!”

With a downward hand-blade strike, Ran Jiuyi sliced Cheng Ya in half.

The bisected Cheng Ya showed no panic. Within moments, the larger half of her body had regenerated completely. She let out a heartfelt sigh of admiration.

“No, I’m just saying that in my eyes, pain is a pleasure—something to be enjoyed and shared. In your eyes, pain is a challenge and a source of power. Honestly, don’t you think we’re the same kind of person?”

A punch was thrown and parried by Ran Jiuyi’s left arm. Cheng Ya’s left arm instantly pulverized into a mess of rotten meat, while the armor on Ran Jiuyi’s left arm shattered completely, revealing a limb now entirely composed of Corrosion Needles.

Utilizing Function Allocation, Cheng Ya’s explosive power surged again. To her, Ran Jiuyi’s armor was now nothing more than slightly thickened cardboard. However, Ran Jiuyi’s fully needle-replaced arm held firm, blocking the blow.

“What the f*ck are you babbling about?”

Replacing her injured parts with needles once more, Ran Jiuyi retorted in a raspy voice; even a portion of her vocal cords had been replaced.

Knowing the Multiple Corrosion Needle Armor could no longer provide effective protection, Ran Jiuyi deliberately guided Cheng Ya’s attacks toward areas she had already hit, using the needle-replaced sections as shields. These parts were incredibly sturdy and, since she could create needles at will, they were nearly indestructible. As long as the attacks didn’t hit her remaining organic tissue, Cheng Ya could strike those spots forever to no effect.

“You’re a freak! I’m nothing like you!”

Ran Jiuyi slammed her palms together. Like a watermelon struck by a bat, Cheng Ya’s head was instantly crushed.

Despite her verbal denial, a part of Ran Jiuyi’s heart admitted they were indeed similar. She also had to acknowledge that Cheng Ya was a formidable enemy whose comprehensive strength surpassed her own. Cheng Ya was the first person to ever deduce the nature of her abilities in their very first encounter without prior intel.

More importantly, most of Ran Jiuyi’s body was now saturated with needles. Her speed, strength, and defense had skyrocketed, allowing her to completely crush the version of herself that had started the fight. Yet, she still couldn’t gain any ground against Cheng Ya, because Cheng Ya’s physical capabilities were scaling perfectly with her own.

This was likely due to Function Allocation. Every time Ran Jiuyi’s power increased slightly, Cheng Ya would immediately match that increment, maintaining a total suppression in close-quarters combat.

This was the worst possible news for Ran Jiuyi. The amount of body she could replace was finite; the power she could gain was limited. If Cheng Ya could keep pace indefinitely, the plan to overwhelm her with escalating force was bankrupt. Her only hope was that Cheng Ya’s mana would deplete faster than hers.

However, despite diverting massive amounts of mana to physical enhancement, Cheng Ya’s regeneration speed barely slowed. By now, Ran Jiuyi was certain Cheng Ya had spent more than triple her own mana, yet there was still no sign of the bottom of Cheng Ya’s well. It was a bottomless pit.

Even with the mana recovered from their collective pain, Ran Jiuyi couldn’t fully offset the cost of such an intense, prolonged war of attrition. By her estimates, she could only last another three hours at this intensity.

This is a disaster, she thought. Just as she had expected, the odds were heavily against her today.

And yet, the corners of Ran Jiuyi’s mouth curled up. In the face of absolute disadvantage, a smile involuntarily surfaced on her face.

But this is how it should be! Only pain and difficulty this great are worth overcoming! Only an enemy this powerful is worth defeating!

The true battle between two monsters began. Disregarding pain and fear, they tore at each other like wild animals, abandoning all evasion and defense, living only to rip the other to shreds in the next heartbeat.

The battle fell into a stalemate. All of Ran Jiuyi’s attacks seemed futile against Cheng Ya’s perverse regeneration; no matter how many times she was torn apart, Cheng Ya was whole again a second later. Conversely, Cheng Ya’s attacks were losing their effect as more of Ran Jiuyi’s strike zones were replaced by needles. The needles absorbed the brunt of the damage, with only rare hits reaching Ran Jiuyi’s dwindling organic core.

On the surface, they looked equal, but both knew that Ran Jiuyi—with her smaller mana pool—was the one growing desperate for a breakthrough.

The monstrous slaughter lasted until the 90-minute mark, when the tide finally shifted.

Mana was draining faster than Ran Jiuyi had anticipated. In just an hour and a half, nearly two-thirds of her mana was gone, yet she still couldn’t find the bottom of Cheng Ya’s reserves. Realizing she would inevitably lose if this continued, Ran Jiuyi’s anxiety boiled over, pushing her to take a lethal gamble to break the deadlock.

Suddenly, Ran Jiuyi lunged into a bear hug, locking Cheng Ya firmly in her embrace and pinning her legs to prevent movement. Spikes generated on her armor began to move, saw-like, cutting into Cheng Ya’s body. The spikes were only generated at Ran Jiuyi’s abdomen and only cut into Cheng Ya’s abdomen.

As the core of the body’s power, the damage to the abdominal muscles prevented Cheng Ya from gathering the strength needed to break the bind. She could only focus on regenerating. This was Ran Jiuyi’s gamble: pin her down and use the armor to grind her away. She had noticed that Cheng Ya always regenerated from the largest cluster of remaining tissue first. By controlling the depth of the spikes, she could force a constant drain on Cheng Ya’s mana.

She was betting that Cheng Ya couldn’t regenerate from tiny scraps of flesh and that she couldn’t break the hold.

Little did she know, this move played right into Cheng Ya’s hands.

Cheng Ya hugged Ran Jiuyi back, her fingers slowly tearing through the armor on Ran Jiuyi’s back, burrowing toward her spine. Using Function Allocation, Cheng Ya massively boosted the strength and power of her arms. Even as Ran Jiuyi manipulated her back armor to repair itself and sprout spikes to hinder her, she couldn’t stop Cheng Ya’s hands from sinking deeper.

The development exceeded Ran Jiuyi’s expectations. She knew Cheng Ya could boost her strength, but she hadn’t realized it could reach such a level. Since Cheng Ya had rarely attacked her back during the fight, most of that area was still normal organic tissue.

Realizing she would take fatal damage first, Ran Jiuyi was forced to increase the intensity of her spikes, instantly shredding Cheng Ya’s torso into fragments. Simultaneously, she grabbed Cheng Ya’s shoulders and tore her reinforced arms off at the sockets.

Throughout the process, Ran Jiuyi spared Cheng Ya’s lower body, intending to control her regeneration point and keep her in sight.

But Cheng Ya didn’t regenerate from the larger lower half this time. Instead, she regenerated from the two severed arms that were already embedded in Ran Jiuyi’s back and had been tossed behind her.

Indeed, Cheng Ya could regenerate from any remaining part of her body. She had hidden this fact since the beginning of the fight, always choosing the largest piece as her starting point just for this specific moment.

By the time Ran Jiuyi realized what was happening, it was too late. Cheng Ya’s newly formed hands punched through the back armor and gripped Ran Jiuyi’s spine.

This was the decisive strike.

Cheng Ya planted her feet against Ran Jiuyi’s back and exploded with total power. Accompanied by the continuous, sickening crunch of bone, she ripped out Ran Jiuyi’s entire spinal column.

Losing her spine was a near-fatal wound. The trauma was so massive that Ran Jiuyi couldn’t repair it in time; she had to force her back armor to break down into needles just to fill the cavity and stop the bleeding. But the severity of the wound left her momentarily paralyzed.

Cheng Ya didn’t waste the opportunity. Tossing the spine aside, she unleashed a ferocious flurry of attacks upon Ran Jiuyi’s defenseless back. She didn’t stop until her vision was filled with nothing but writhing needles and zero organic tissue.

Grabbing Ran Jiuyi by the head, Cheng Ya accelerated vertically into the sky. Once they cleared the clouds, she reversed direction and rocketed toward the earth at light-speed.

“I believe in your strength. This shouldn’t kill you, right?”

A white beam of light struck the wilderness. The roar echoed throughout the city. A crater, resembling the site of a massive meteor impact, appeared on the outskirts, with cracks spider-webbing for kilometers.

The impact was so violent that even Cheng Ya wasn’t spared. Her body was reduced to a pulp in an instant. However, within seconds, she was back to normal.

Ran Jiuyi was in much worse shape. Her armor had shattered under the shockwave, and the last of her intact tissue was mostly destroyed. She lay powerless in the deep pit, with only the needles pulsing, still trying their best to replace her lost flesh.

“I knew that wouldn’t kill you. For someone like me who lacks high-output attacks, killing you is a chore. But there’s a limit to how much you can take. Once that limit is breached, you shouldn’t be able to fight anymore.”

The severed spine happened to land in Cheng Ya’s hand. She stroked it as if it were a rare treasure. “This should be enough for research. Let’s call it a day. I think we both had a pretty good time.”

“As for the ‘gift’ for you, I have an idea. Since you can make my ability evolve, I can do the same for yours in return.”

Having obtained precious research material, enjoyed a long-awaited fight, and met a “friend” with a unique understanding of pain, Cheng Ya was in an excellent mood.

“Oh, and I forgot to mention—don’t worry about that organization trading with Ken. We’ll handle them when they show themselves. Bye now. Looking forward to our next meeting.”

As Cheng Ya spread her wings to leave, Ran Jiuyi’s voice came from behind her.

“It’s… not over yet. We… we keep going…”

Innumerable needles stabbed into Ran Jiuyi’s body, forcibly driving a form that should have been beyond control. Ran Jiuyi struggled to her feet.

Her entire body was now composed almost entirely of Corrosion Needles. As Cheng Ya had said, her body had reached its absolute limit. Her remaining tissue could no longer bear any more damage.

However, in contrast, the number of needles in her body had finally reached its maximum value. In this moment, she was far stronger than she had been just seconds ago.

This was Ran Jiuyi’s strongest—and final—form.