“See, you should have just done the sensible thing and stabbed me right when you could,” Umanien mocked Aclysia across the space between them. They had no arena, not even a hastily assembled ring of tires on the ground, instead they just stood in the middle of the littered green area. The commotion quickly spread as gossip from one person to another.

A crowd of about twenty people, predominantly female, gathered with their backs against the wall. Aclysia heard them shout a series of unflattering things towards her and dirty-worded support for Umanien. Words they would doubtlessly have for her if they thought her the favourite to win.

Aclysia hadn’t just made the decision to fight in the spur of the moment. Should this Umamien turn out to be a foe she actually couldn’t beat, she could teleport away. That John wouldn’t work with him was already a given, so this battle was her last attempt at fixing what was already broken. With both hands, she grabbed Eclys and raised it in an aggressive stance, ready to thrust forwards.

The scum she was about to fight had more words. “Ambush is as viable a tactic as anything else. Seriously, what the fuck is this even? An honourable duel? What use is honour for a puppet?”

“I have no need for surprise to be victorious against you,” Aclysia returned, her focus as sharp as her blade. “For that nickname, you will pay in a few moments. My name is Aclysia and the only strings that hold me are those I chose. Fulfilment lies in purpose and I have found mine.”

“Yeah, yeah, spout your lines. I don’t give a shit about what your upper mouth has to say anyway,” Umanien grinned like the stupendously bad guy he was. “You can imagine how I’ll use you when I defeat you, right? Always wondered what a real doll would feel like.”

Aclysia had enough of this ridicule. If he said that fighting here was allowed at any point and that this wasn’t a duel, there was no reason for her to stand there and chat any longer. Her skirt fluttered in the wind of her sudden acceleration.

Credit where credit was due, Umanien did see her coming. That squarely put him outside the horribly weak bracket. At a sum total of 200 Agility, Aclysia knew she wasn’t the fastest person around for her level. If he was quick enough to handle what came next was another question, however.

Umanien assumed a stance ready to duck under Eclys, and that was his first mistake. Aclysia didn’t even intent on striking him with it, only feigning the beginning of an attack to force him to make a move anyway. Going under the feigned thrust, Umanien’s open palms collided with her chest. It was a mixture of a proper attack and open groping. Bitter cold spread over her breasts, the physical kind. It penetrated past her surface and caused the metal inside her to freeze up.

The weaponized maid had already figured she was dealing with some sort of ice mage. That he was adept at the same armour-penetrating martial art as Rave was did honestly surprise her. It could be chalked up to her own arrogance that she was hit by something like this.

Now it was just important to come out on top of this trade of blows.

Eclys disappeared and was replaced with her knife, much quicker than her usual re-adjustment of weapons would allow. Cutting Flurry was activated, increasing her Agility on top of all of that. Without a second, the knife had sunk into her opponent’s shoulder.

Umanien was of a high level, admittedly, but not high enough to dodge an attack from a disadvantaged position. The man squealed in pain and tried to jump back. If Aclysia’s goal had been to kill him, she could have grabbed him with her off-hand and rammed Eclys through his back. As it was, he may still have been of use to master if kept on a tight leash, so she let him go.

However, the three-hit combo was still ongoing and she wasn’t going to let him off with just one wound, no matter how crippling. Although Eclys’ white blade missed him by a hair’s width, it pulled after itself a silver shimmering trail of energy that cut his bare chest open. A phenomenon that would have repeated with Marath, as Aclysia spun around her axis to whirl the massive cleaver around. It was a movement too much for the frozen segment of her torso; metal shattered inside her body, throwing the attack off her aim as her magically animated tissue was displaced.

It hurt, it hurt a lot, but it wasn’t a grievous wound. Not as long as she kept her crystalline heart away from those now sharp shards inside her own body. Umanien backed further and further away, the slash across his chest only shallow despite how far it ran. Aclysia inspected herself to make sure the damage wasn’t too severe.

Much to her interest, much less than her shock anyway, the ice prevented her regenerative capabilities from kicking in. She couldn’t even properly feel that part of herself. Even trying to actively replace it with other materials stored inside her only worked around the edges, at a rate basically equal to thawing.

It would have been a much bigger problem hadn’t she been in possession of her own body heat, fed by magic rather than a beating heart. Due to that origin, there was a steady increase of temperature in that shock frozen part. Although it hindered her regeneration, it was ultimately not that much of an issue.

‘As long as it stays just one strike at a time,’ she reminded herself to remain cautious, keeping her eyes on Umanien. Having kept up on his steady steps back, Aclysia now set after him. Her foot had barely hit the ground for the first time when the guild leader turned tail and ran. Hesitating for a moment, she glanced over to the onlookers.

The lack of an arena made it hard to make out when this duel was decided. That the crowd was still cheering him, although way less enthusiastically, indicated that the fight was still supposed to be ongoing. With that in mind, Aclysia changed back to Eclys and chased after him. Apparently, this was only over if he was either dead, unconscious or admitting his defeat.

She chased Umanien into the house and then stood in the main room confused. The small hesitation had allowed him to get enough of a lead that she now didn’t know what sideroom he had fled into, it might as well have been up the stairs. The sound of numerous glass bottles clunking against their confinement in a crate was what tipped her off. In response, her entire body turned with robotic abruptness and she charged towards the door.

Fully expecting an ambush, she only acted like she was going right in. A strategy that turned out to be extremely wise, as a bottle of beer flew through the chokepoint of the door frame as she pressed against the wall outside of the room. It exploded into a myriad of pieces, and pieces of cold glass hit Aclysia’s frame. Although it ripped into the cloth of the maid uniform, it did no harm to her main body. It was just an inconvenience that the skin-like metadermis (a blend of silicone and metal given to her by one of her many perks) didn’t extend to this emulation of clothing.

The glass wasn’t the main danger anyhow. Under Umanien’s touch, the beer had turned into a volatile liquid more dangerous than a Molotov cocktail, even if less terrifying in its appearance or explosion radius. A cloud of frost hung around where the bottle had landed just now, settling over a piece of cement that could now be used as a makeshift mirror.

“Gotta hand it to you, puppet,” her opponent shouted from his presumed kitchen. “You pack a big punch in that little body. My shoulder is totally fucked.” Aclysia didn’t blindly trust that statement, but between using Cutting Flurry and Servant’s Strike, that initial stab should have hurt a lot. “But I just have to hit you with one of these!” he threw another bottle out of the door. “And you will be frozen down to your pretty ass. Can only say again that your master has taste. I can see that fat bottom even with that skirt.”

Aclysia let him chatter away as she distanced herself from the wall. Careful to remain at an unseen angle, she stepped away and changed weapons. Double checking that her Devotion was indeed maxed out, a resource that she felt like a flowering tree in her heart, she put her plan together. Eclys made room for Marath once more.

Running like blood coloured mana, lifeforce drained from her hands and seeped into the bulky handle. The silver-white weapon emanated a dangerous glow, one desire sated, the inhuman consciousness inside now awaited slaughter. Aclysia was in no haste to satisfy that as well. First, she let her lifeforce recover. The stalemate could only change in her favour if he moved out of his position and she only got one shot at this before she had to try something different.

Adjusting her grip on Marath, she made sure it was sitting perfectly. Aclysia took one more breath and then swung. The cleaver was much too big for this environment and the wide arch she used didn’t help. She was slowed down by the piece of staircase and the pillar the blade cut through, then she unleashed the shockwave.

More potent than Eclys, although with less availability and a self-harming requirement, the red ranged slice was buffed up by Servant’s Strike and cut through the wall, dissipating into a largely harmless wave of force behind.

Which was exactly what Aclysia was banking on as she switched to Eclys and broke through the now damaged wall with her body. If she couldn’t pass the chokepoint, then she would just make the entrance wider. Umanien could still have reacted in time to that sudden deconstruction effort, were it not for that disrupting energy opening up his ready stance.

In that situation, Aclysia reckoned her opponent had two choices. Either face her and try to fight despite his disadvantaged position or run away again. If it was the latter, she would use Master’s Shield and swing Eclys with the immense buff, destroying the house and hopefully intimidating him enough that it wasn’t necessary. He chose the former case.

Dropping the beer in his healthy right, he went into a swing. Aclysia adjusted the course of her blade. Silver-white turned red as the entire length of her blade smoothly impaled his left hand. Metal penetrated flesh, penetrated concrete and soon the hand of his damaged arm was nailed to the wall. Letting out an amused grunt, thinking she had just made a mistake, Umanien went to punch her now open side.

Devotion drained to 0 moments before the impact, then Aclysia felt her side freeze to a cracking sound. The cracking of bone. Letting out a pained rattle, the guild master looked at his now ruined hand. Fortification, the more seldom used of her two spender skills, had just increased her already buffed up body hardness by another 117%.

As she had to fear the magic more than the actual impact of his punches, Aclysia had little reason to go for the healthy hand over the one attached to a damaged shoulder. Indeed, she needed the hulk of a man to punch her with all the force he could muster. After all, she was relying on the force of the punch crippling him.

If it hadn’t succeeded, she would have disengaged, letting go of Eclys. Although it would have displeased her to let go of one of her weapons, it would have kept him nailed to the wall long enough that she didn’t have to fear further retaliation. In a few minutes, she would have gotten it back anyway.

The back-up plan hadn’t been needed anyway. She stepped back and pulled the blade out smoothly. “Your loss,” she stated, kicking the legs away from under the shocked man. He landed uncomfortably on one of the many crates of beer in the dirty kitchen. “Admit it.”

“Fuck you,” he growled and spat at her face. Luckily for him, it fell short.

Aclysia narrowed her eyes regardless and moved Eclys up to his neck until it drew blood. That she wanted him alive was something he didn’t know yet and that want wasn’t pronounced enough to allow such disrespect for too long. “Admit it,” she repeated, drawing a shallow line over his neck. One gulp, one move too hasty, and he would have killed himself.

Something which, to her immense surprise, he ultimately did by ramming his throat right into her weapon as he forced himself to get up. Although she despised this man, she had to admire the willpower needed to actually rise on his feet while having a katana in his windpipe. Two words, more gurgles than articulations, left him, “Fuhrk yhrou…” He spat again, this time the red-stained saliva hit her face. Then the tip of her blade cut something vital and he collapsed dead.

‘At least a principled scumfuck to the end, to borrow a term from Eliza’s vocabulary,’ Aclysia thought and grabbed a washing cloth from a nearby kitchen counter. It wasn’t exactly clean, but it would suffice to rid her blade and face from the staining liquids.

That done, she dragged the corpse into daylight, to present it to the crowd. They were adequately surprised, although nobody seemed overly sad about it. “According to the statements he made, I am now your leader,” Aclysia said, realizing that she hadn’t thought much further than this. Of course she was going to add them to Fusion now, but John wouldn’t be able to administer this part until he returned from his business with the Hidden Tradition.

Even once he did, would they just accept him, because he was her master? Or would they insist on keeping her at the helm because they knew she was stronger? All these questions that she couldn’t answer because a culture focusing around the strongest, sneakiest asshole reigning was so odd for her. Well, one thing she understood.

“Feel free to leave and notify the rest of the Small Lake Pact of this change. Tell them also that they’re welcome to challenge me.” Three people went ahead with that allowance, immediately moving away. All of the men, as Aclysia noticed, leaving her with the entire harem of the now deceased.

The coming days would doubtlessly hold a few challengers for her. Also assassination attempts and the likes, since they really didn’t like foreigners apparently. Good for her that she neither slept nor ate food that could be poisoned. However, she would have to think about leading this bunch, regardless of if it was permanent or not. She had no idea how to lead anyone in anything… aside from one thing.

“Say, what are your opinions on high-heels, stockings and French maid outfits?” she asked the assembled group of pretty girls with biker aesthetic. Although Aclysia still wouldn’t fuck any of them (even if she really, really wanted to satisfy her Libido somehow), the spirit of the question wasn’t anything lewd. They looked at each other, unsure how to take this.

“Whatever our opinions needs to be, Aclysia?” one of them, the redhead that had brought her onto the island, stated with some confusion.