The Music Speaks

Calvin is seated, far away from the battle, observing us. I am still on the receiving end of the ferocious onslaught from the woman [enlightened] and the other man keeps firing arrows in my direction. I remain stalwart in my defense with no idea what the mystery attack was. If I want to prepare a counter, I may need to uncover its mystery first.

When the woman tries to claw through me, I dodge, if she attempts to kick, I am able to block it with my sharpsong. At the same time, each arrow fired by the man is adequately stopped in its tracks by my shield which I move based on my needs. There is a semblance of balance in this fight where I can barely hold on while they shower me with attacks. Regretfully, the balance can be jeopardized at any moment by the mystery attack form before. Eventually, I feel a sharp pain on my left side. However, I do not let it destabilize me. On the outside, I pretend to be affected, this leads the woman to launch a wide and powerful attack with her right arm, but this time I am expecting it. I summon my shield in the path of her attack and use this chance to retreat further away.

"Scared boy? Have you finally realized that you bit off more than you could chew?"

"..."

What she hasn't realized yet is our current positioning. She is in front of me, but I've been slowly retreating in a particular manner so that the melo-string user would no longer be directly behind her. As of now, he is on my left side and on her right side. What follows next is a gamble. I direct as much pure flow as I can towards my legs and lunge in the direction of the pale looking man. Immediately understanding what I am doing, the woman follows me.

"YOU THINK YOU CAN OUTRUN ME LITTLE BOY?"

The melo-string user, slightly nervous, rapidly fires arrows in my direction while backing away. Once again, I feel sharp streaks of pain across my entire body; it is assuredly the pale man's ability, but it is bearable. As I'm heading towards him, the woman is rushing in my direction attempting to block my path.

Unfortunately, she is right, I cannot outrun her, her mastery of pure flow for simple physical enhancement surpasses mine. Thankfully, that would be an issue only if my goal really was the archer. When she is upon me, I stop in my tracks, turn around and perform a stabbing motion towards her neck. She does not try to block it, why would she? My weapon has already proven to be ineffective against her hardened skin. Instead, she performs a slashing attack with her nails towards my neck as well. Her attack is met with my shield and it resonates. I smirk.

"Bad move."

My attack, still heading towards her neck, is amplified with as much pure flow as I can muster in this instant. Then, in a fraction of a second, it rapidly changes direction and pierces her heart instead.

'I knew it...'

During her incessant barrage of attacks, I had gained nearly sufficient insight into her [melody] by using my sharpsong as a replacement for my shield. When she directly struck my shield with a powerful blow, I had finally found a way to dampen the effects of her hardening, but I felt that I could not do it for long, maybe half a second at most. I remember her mentioning that she can choose which parts of her body she wants to harden and when she wants to do it. This made me wonder if she really was hardening most of her body all the time or if she was concentrating it on the specific areas she needed at any given moment. The more I thought about the less it made sense for it to be the former, she is a 1st stage like me, it would be illogical for her to harden everywhere constantly, receive my attacks and still have enough flow to subject me to an unending barrage of enhanced blows.

As for me redirecting my attack, it is because she also mentioned that her hardening was instinctive. If I obviously aimed for her neck, the area would have been fortified. This was a plan with two things ensuring her demise. First, creating an opportunity where I could take her by surprise. I would then rapidly change the orientation of my attack to out-speed her selective hardening, and if the hardening out-sped me instead, use 'harmonic destruction' to make it weak enough for my instrument to prevail.

This was a gamble and it paid off. She tries to speak has a torrent of blood is flowing out of the whole created by my instrument

"W-what, what did you do!?? WHY DID MY [MELODY] GET WEAKER?!!"

She tries to reach me, but she stumbles. Her strength is slowly leaving her body. Inevitably, she loses consciousness and falls to the ground. I do not waste a second and resume my charge towards the man with the melo-string. He appears to make an attempt at using his [melody] once again, but I do not let him. I use the song of idleness to prevent him from moving. This gives me enough time to reach him and leave a large diagonal wound on his torso using my sharpsong. He falls to the ground without having been able to do anything. I suppose I will never know what his ability really was. I turn my attention to Calvin who is still seated leisurely, observing me.

My current situation is not ideal. My left arm is useless, I am extremely low on flow, and I will most likely be able to reconstruct my shield only one or two more times.

Yet, none of that matters, Calvin is not an [enlightened]. In the small off chance that he is hiding a secret weapon, he is unlikely to be able to fire it accurately or fast enough to hurt me. I run in his direction. About halfway to his location, someone appears in front of me. I react quickly, place my shield in front of me, but he breaks through it with his fists and sends me flying backwards.

'W-what the hell, he shattered my shield in a single hit! Super strength?!'

I take a good look at my opponent, and the color drains from my face.

'S-second stage....!!?'

The man rearranges his hat and speaks to me.

"That will be quite enough young man."

What is a second stage doing with someone like Calvin? I understand that he has acquaintances because of his tuning pill business, but a second stage?! That makes no sense at all. Clearly, this whole affair is much bigger than I thought. This is not something I can handle.

The gap in flow strength and usage efficiency is night and day once someone enters the second stage. The stage represents the start of perfecting one's [melody]. For those who have stepped foot in this stage, their understanding of pure flow and their [melody] is such that they managed to bring a qualitative change to their abilities. This is an incredibly impressive and difficult thing to achieve, this is why some people spend their entire lives in the first stage. I can't even begin to fathom how strong he is compared to me with pure flow only. I accept my defeat and press the middle button on my watch in hopes to receive help from Maestro Lauren. However, I do not get the confirmation message for a sent SOS. Following the obvious look of worry on my face, Calvin chuckles.

"Did you think we would let you call for reinforcements? The other two were useless trash, but you're not escaping this one. I'll soon know who sent you"