Chapter 98: Fiery Lucy 3 Karl lay in the crater, laughing through blood.
Then the laughter stopped.
His eyes went empty, like someone blew out the candle behind them. Golden rings of energy rose from his skin and broke apart into dust. The dust didn’t fall—it hung there, then spun into a slow orbit around him, faster, tighter, until it collapsed inward and slammed into his body.
The ground buckled.
Lucy shifted her stance, shoulders square, fists still burning. "So that’s the real you."
Karl stood.
No glow, no flare—just pressure. The air around him thickened until the heat of Lucy’s flames warped. Veins of white-gold traced his skin like etched constellations. When he inhaled, the clouds above pulled closer. When he exhaled, they rolled back.
"Full release," he said, almost bored. "Let’s see if you’re still fun."
He vanished.
Lucy felt it, not saw it—the floor ghosting under her feet a blink before his knee cut up through her guard. She blocked, forearms ringing, slid half a meter and planted. Karl stepped into the opening he forced and hammered a straight punch toward her face.
She didn’t dodge.
Her head dipped a hair, her right shoulder rolled, and she slipped the punch by an inch. Her counter walked up his ribs—body, body, chin—each hit detonating with black fire that chewed at his aura. Karl’s head snapped back. She followed with a hook that clipped his jaw and sent a fountain of blood to the side.
"Still fun," he said, grinning.
They collided again.
To the watching hunters, it was a storm they couldn’t enter. Every hit cracked the air. Every miss made the dirt scream. Lucy’s flames weren’t just flames anymore; thin threads of bright silver ran through them, making each strike bite deeper, cut cleaner, erase harder. Karl’s aura kept reassembling under the damage, like light knitting light.
He grabbed her wrist. She rotated out and torqued his elbow; the joint popped and reset in the same motion. He slammed a palm to her chest; the shockwave launched her back, feet skidding trenches. She leaned into the momentum, sprang forward, and headbutted him. Bone crunched. They both grinned—feral, honest.
Karl spread his fingers. Golden sigils flared along his knuckles.
The world hiccuped.
He was behind her, then above her, then below—three angles at once collapsing into one hit. Lucy crossed her arms and took it, flames howling. The force buried her to the shins. Her eyes narrowed, and the black fire tightened around her like armor.
She moved.
No wind-up. No tell.
Her fist speared his abdomen. The cursed heat punched through muscle and light at once, and for a flicker Karl’s aura went thin. She stacked hits—left, right, knee, elbow, hammerfist—each carrying weight like falling towers. He slid, boots carving V’s into the ground.
Karl laughed breathlessly. "You’re climbing."
Lucy didn’t answer. She felt it too—that thin edge between what she was and what came next. The black fire licked at it. The silver lines inside it sang. Her skin prickled, her bones hummed, her pulse turned to thunder.
She took a step.
The step sounded like a drum.
Karl’s pupils tightened. "Oh."
She arrived.
Her punch didn’t make noise. It deleted it. Karl’s head jerked; the light along his jaw shattered into glitter. He tried to counter, but she was already on his blind side, flame-wrapped knee driving into his liver. He folded, and she brought both fists down on the back of his neck, planting him face-first in the dirt.
He pushed up, spitting earth. "Yes."
Lucy’s aura climbed again.
The sky dimmed like it was giving her room.
Karl wiped blood with the back of his wrist. The white-gold lines along his skin brightened to a hard, painful light. "All right. No more holding back."
He lifted his foot and set it down.
The ground caved in a perfect circle for two hundred meters.
He lifted his hand and closed it.
Gravity snapped sideways. Dust, pebbles, even the hanging smoke bent toward his fist as if space itself owed him a debt. Lucy’s hair tugged toward him. Her flames leaned, resistant, snarling.
"Come here," he said.
"Make me," she said, and stepped into it.
She walked against the pull like it was a hill. Each stride left glass. The black-silver fire along her arms turned needle-thin and precise, cutting the field of force away from her body as she moved.
Karl’s smile sharpened. "Good."
He let the field go and met her halfway.
They traded close.
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t clean. It was elbows and shoulders and short hooks and knees; it was heads knocking, teeth cutting lips, blood painting the dirt. His strength tried to crush. Her flame tried to erase. And somewhere in the middle, something evened it—will carving a path between them.
Karl slipped her guard and hammered a fist into her ribs. She felt three cracks, tasted iron, and swung through the pain, her forearm crashing down across his neck. He stumbled a half-step. She seized the beat and drove a straight down the pipe; his nose broke, and a spray of red gleamed in the dark firelight.
He laughed through it. "More."
She gave it.
Her aura hit the threshold—and leaned over it.
For one breath, Lucy was lighter, faster, heavier, slower—everything at once, trimmed to only what she needed. The black fire went matte, the silver threads snapped tight. Karl’s next punch whistled past the space where her head would’ve been, and her return clipped his temple so clean the world blinked.
Karl staggered. He hadn’t staggered like that yet.