CHAPTER 94: REN VS LYRA! (1)

The moment the witch’s command echoed across the arena, both combatants moved with explosive precision.

Lyra immediately connected to the loom, her enhanced mental capabilities allowing her to weave with blazing speed.

The first layer threads of time magic responded instantly to her will, and the familiar glow of a time affiliated weave erupted in her violet eyes like twin stars.

The world around her slowed as her perception accelerated, revealing the branching possibilities of the next second with crystalline clarity.

This was a temporal sight weave and it allowed her to see the future!

In her enhanced vision, she saw Ren drawing his kusarigama while simultaneously beginning his own weave connection. But more importantly, she could see the attack pattern he was most likely to attempt—a diagonal approach with his weapon’s chain extended for maximum reach.

Ren, for his part, had already begun his own rapid analysis. He observed Lyra’s immediate connection to the time loom and recognized the telltale signs of predictive enhancement with sharp awareness.

Her positioning shifted subtly but decisively, preparing for an attack she couldn’t possibly have anticipated through normal means.

’She’s seeing ahead,’ he realized with grim satisfaction. ’One second, maybe less. Not much, but enough to be dangerous.’

Instead of rushing forward as Lyra’s temporal sight had predicted, Ren did something completely unexpected—he stopped moving entirely and began a second weave connection while maintaining the first.

His chaos mental sea allowed him to split his focus in ways that should have been impossible, preparing two different weaving approaches simultaneously with ruthless efficiency.

Lyra’s temporal sight flickered with confusion. The probability stream she was observing suddenly became muddled as Ren’s actions diverged from her predicted timeline.

Her enhanced cognition raced to recalculate, but the dual weave preparation was creating variables her predictive magic couldn’t properly account for in such a short timeframe.

"Interesting," she called out, raising her crystal staff defensively with fluid grace. "You’re adapting faster than my sight can track."

Ren smiled grimly as he completed his preparations with mechanical precision but he didn’t reply. One second of foresight was only useful if your opponent stayed predictable.

He launched his first attack—not with his weapon, but with devastating weaves.

A Space Lock weave manifested violently around Lyra’s position, creating invisible barriers that slammed into place with crushing force, restricting her movement in all directions. But simultaneously, he was preparing something infinitely more dangerous.

Lyra’s temporal sight had given her just enough warning to begin reacting. She switched weaves with lightning expertise, abandoning her predictive magic in favor of Time Dilation.

The transition was rougher than she’d hoped since weaves weren’t designed for seamless body enhancement, and the temporal magic fought against her physical form as it tried to alter her personal timestream.

Her perception of the world stuttered and slowed unevenly while her physical responses accelerated in jarring bursts. The imperfect enhancement still allowed her to analyze the space lock’s formation, but the disorientation made identifying weaknesses more difficult than it should have been.

Instead of trying to break through the spatial barriers directly, she attempted a Temporal Echo with breathtaking speed.

The weave partially succeeded, creating flickering afterimages of herself, but the echoes were unstable and inconsistent—side effects of forcing temporal magic to interact with physical matter.

But Ren had anticipated this limitation perfectly! The moment she began her compromised movement, he released his second prepared weave with lethal intent.

"Mind Arrow!" he whispered with cold fury.

The attack was invisible, intangible, and absolutely unavoidable. Pure mental force lanced across the arena like a bolt of lightning, striking directly at Lyra’s consciousness with precision that bypassed all physical defenses completely.

The effect was immediate and catastrophically devastating. Lyra’s concentration shattered like glass as overwhelming pain exploded through her mind with volcanic intensity.

Her time dilation weave collapsed instantly, and she stumbled violently as a migraine of incredible intensity disrupted her enhanced cognitive processing!

For the first time in the battle, Lyra was operating without magical enhancement, and the disadvantage was immediately apparent.

Swoosh!

Ren closed the distance with his kusarigama explosively, the heavy weapon spinning in complex patterns that showcased years of dedicated training with deadly efficiency due to the evolution forge.

But Lyra was still an Amethyst, and elite training didn’t disappear just because of pain. Fighting through the mental agony with iron determination, she managed to activate her Stage 1 rune.

And not just an activation, it was a resonance!

Roar!

The mirage of an Amethyst Temporal Wyrm materialized dramatically behind her—a crystalline dragon-like creature that existed partially outside normal time. Lyra had achieved resonance, and her abilities doubled in potency with earth-shaking power!

Her resonance special ability activated with overwhelming force. Despite the lingering effects of the mind arrow, Lyra’s consciousness expanded to encompass tactical possibilities with supernatural clarity.

She could see not just what Ren was doing, but why he was doing it, and what he would likely do in the next few seconds. She called this ability Perfect prediction, and it turned her into an absolute monster!

The kusarigama strike that should have connected instead met empty air as Lyra moved with prescient grace, her body flowing around attacks with fluid precision. Her crystal staff blazed with light magic as she began her devastating counterattack.

"Prismatic Barrier, second layer," she intoned with commanding authority.

Walls of crystallized light erupted around Ren’s position with explosive force. But these weren’t just simple defensive constructs, they were ingeniously crafted trap components designed to create a tactical maze by manipulating light.

Ren found himself surrounded by reflective surfaces that turned his own spatial awareness against him viciously. Every direction he looked showed multiple reflections that made determining real space from magical illusion nearly impossible.

But instead of panicking, Ren analyzed the construction with ice-cold precision. The barriers were designed to confuse and disorient, but they had structural requirements that created exploitable weaknesses.

He didn’t try to break through the barriers directly. Instead, he began weaving again with deadly purpose, preparing another mind arrow while using his spatial magic to locate the exact positions of the real barriers through dimensional sensing rather than visual confirmation.

With his space affinity boosting his spatial awareness, this sort of mental attack would still find it’s way to Lyra whether she wanted it or not. This was a benefit of the mind path!

Lyra’s Perfect Prediction warned her of his intent with crystal clarity, but the solution created devastating new problems.

To maintain the barriers, she needed to keep her light weave active. To defend against the mind arrow, she needed to prepare mental defenses. Her single-weave limitation meant she had to choose.

She chose offense with ruthless determination.

The barriers dissolved as she switched to a second-layer Light Lance weave. Concentrated radiance gathered at her staff’s tip with blinding intensity. It was enough destructive power to pierce through most magical defenses and deal serious injury!

But the moment her barriers dropped, Ren was already moving with explosive speed.

His spatial magic let him pinpoint her exact location despite the lingering light-based disorientation effects, and his kusarigama’s weighted chain extended in a complex throwing pattern that used the arena’s dimensions to create an unavoidable attack vector.

Woosh!

Lyra’s Perfect Prediction showed her the chain’s trajectory with supernatural clarity, but it also revealed something terrifying—dodging conventionally would only move her into the weapon’s secondary strike path.

The prediction was perfect, but the solution required something beyond normal capabilities. Ren had essentially made an unblockable move!

She made a desperate decision that required absolute confidence in her predictive abilities.

She stepped directly into the chain’s path!