Chapter 105 - Zero

Layton stood in front of a spacious courtyard where a huge dojo style building was erected, he had been sent here through the teleportation system of school city by Isaac apparently he had some important things to attend to and was unable to continue showing Layton around, Before Isaac left he had inquired using his status as a council member as to whether the other members of Layton's team were present in the city.

Layton was aware that the team members he was referring to were zero and Lilith, since plane erosion was a dangerous activity, it was mostly never done alone, so the members who underwent the test with him would be his team members for a long period of time. According to Isaac, zero was in the courtyard right in front of him, he wasn't sure how she would react to his intrusion but Layton was currently still had a lot of questions about the city and he figured since they were going to be on more dangerous missions it was vital to at least cultivate a good relationship.

Entering into the building Layton felt the mage net connector release some signals and the faint dangerous aura that surrounded the dojo was dispelled and he walked in unimpeded.

Upon entry, he felt the space around him rapidly change and he found himself in a room where two figures were clashing. Metal sounds resounded through the hall, the clashing figures were a male and a female, the male had a faint smile on his gender-neutral face and donned a simple black shirt and trousers, his well-trimmed nails were his weapons as he used them to parry the numerous dagger stabs that had bee aiming for his vital points, despite being in battle the seemingly inherent grace and charm of the male did not diminish if anything he had made what was supposed to be a fierce battle seem like a dance.

The female flashing figure finally slowed down to take a breath allowing Layton a clear view of who it was, she was a female with crystal clear blue eyes spotting a short blond bob hairstyle, just seeing those eyes Layton knew it was zero, it was the first time he was seeing her without her cloak.

She was wearing a black fitted jumpsuit that hugged her shapely curves her hairstyle did nothing to diminish her femininity and beauty if nothing else it accentuated it and gave her a strange charm of a strong confident woman, her face was expressionless as her slender fingers were wrapped two daggers as she attacked her opponent.

Her simple steps seemed to outline a mysterious path as a surge of energy flowed from within her according to the frequency of the steps as she vanished from existence and memory before reappearing at the very same moment at the back of her opponent.

It was this subtle movement that enabled Layton to notice that the spatial structure of the ring was randomly changing, although his peculiar perception did not enable him to directly notice the spatial changes but through the general magnetic field of the surroundings and the subtle unintelligible information it gave off he could slowly perceive when the structure underwent changes, but that wasn't really what caught Layton eye, what amazed him the most was zero's movements most especially the energy that followed which allowed her to make use of the peculiar environment.

Although Layton did not know what her rune contained or represented but he had come in contact with the energy it produced the mystery, back then Layton could perceive it was a simple mixture of the minute traces of faith energy produced by an individual's cognition of her presence and the unique structure of a certain subspace Layton guessed was in her mind or pinned on her rune, But right now it seemed to have gone a step further, the energy that flowed with her movements just now did not arise from anyone's cognition but was based on herself, that is, she had started to come in contact with her soul and mind and was generating the reality twisting energy based on her own cognition of herself.

Normally an individual's perception about his or herself was prone to flaws that is the perception was most of the times wrong or incomplete, most people tend to look at the good sides of them selves when creating a cognition or describing themselves and for the few who were broad minded enough to also look at their bad sides, it was still not enough as there were certain unconscious behaviours that individuals exhibit which bring about a change in how others perceive the person, in summary, the mind and soul were very complex studies prone to accidents as there were no correct or straight answer's to the subject and zero's behaviour of basing her mystery on her own cognition was very dangerous to say the least any minor mistake could lead to devastating damage to her personality which would then involve damage to her soul, she was literally walking on a thin wire any misstep would plunge her into the abyss.

The energy surged into the twin daggers in her hand subtly twisting the reality of the metal material properties, the daggers still looked the same but there were runes on its structure runes repressing sharp, strengthen and piercing.

The daggers gave a low whistling sound as they travelled swiftly through the air piercing all obstacles in its path as zero swiped them in a peculiar trajectory towards her opponent, the movement of her arms seemed to lock all possible directions of escape but her opponent was unfazed, with the slight tilt of legs the opponents body swayed turning into an afterimage as zeros attack went straight past him and then stretching out a finger, he flicked her on the forehead sending her flying straight into the wall.

The slight movement of his legs were essentially simulating a peculiar spatial trajectory which allowed him to escape zero's attack, it wasn't that he went away from the current space but that he had somehow made use of the fluctuating spatial environment of the ring to subtly create a delusion a subtle illusion of a warped sense of reality which pulled the focused zero into a deeper level of space than she originally planned making her attack unable to reach the surface level which he was still residing.

But that wasn't the scariest thing, the scariest thing was that through all this complex almost impossible movements he still did not give off any fluctuations, he was essentially battling with a mortal body and mind with no extraordinary power involved.