The Glorious Evolution

At once, Levi transformed the Judgement Chainstaff into Requiem and drew the bow across its strings, sending a sharp note toward Akira!

A second melody joined his before the attack reached her.

Mournful Spirit struck her biwa’s strings with a measured sequence of low notes, fitting them into the spaces between his strokes.

”I knew we would sound lovely together.”

’...Let’s keep it to the music.’

Levi lengthened his next stroke, testing whether she would follow the rising pitch or hold her rhythm.

She chose the latter... and it suited him perfectly.

The biwa gave his violin a steady foundation, its lingering chords building pressure as his sharper notes swept toward their opponents. Akira reinforced her body with stellar energy, while the Taxman opened his briefcase toward the incoming waves.

Neither retreated.

Levi pressed two strings and swept his bow across them together.

BOOM!

Tiles burst around Akira’s feet, scattering fragments through a cloud of golden sparks! Mournful Spirit struck a heavy chord with the impact, and Levi answered before the echo faded.

’She even accounted for the collision? Impressive...’

She was listening to more than his violin. The clash of their attacks, the breaking floor, even the delay before an echo returned... she worked them into the next phrase without disrupting her rhythm!

Levi found himself the one adjusting to her timing and sent another wave toward Akira.

The Half-Radian raised an arm against it, only for a miserable wail to slip through the bombardment and strike her soul. Her defense faltered for an instant, allowing three nearly invisible etheric motes to drift past her elbow.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

They detonated against her ribs, knocking her sideways as Levi finished the phrase with three forceful strokes.

Akira drove her heels against the floor to halt her slide. Before she recovered, pale hands emerged from the dust around her ankles.

”Mourning Arts: Uninvited Guests.”

Mournful Spirit lowered the biwa’s pitch, drawing a collective wail from the figures gathering around Akira.

Several ghosts sank into the point struck by the earlier spiritual attack. An icy sensation spread across her subconscious barrier as they crawled over its surface, searching for an opening into her Spiritual Leywell.

Akira flooded the area with stellar energy, extinguishing them before they could breach it.

Unfortunately, dealing with the intrusion cost her another opportunity to advance.

Levi’s next wave struck from the front, forcing her back into defense. He reduced his bow pressure as the ghosts faded, threading a thin, wavering note through their cries.

The Throne Chamber disappeared from Akira’s sight... replaced by a swarm of haunting figures approaching from every direction!

’Cheap bastards!’

She recognized Levi’s illusions, but knowing they were false didn’t reveal the real ghosts hidden among them. Each time she committed to an attack, a change in the violin’s pitch distorted their positions again.

”What an unexpected duet!” Gamble announced. ”Melody Aspect wielders can strengthen each other when their music aligns... but one poorly timed note could ruin an entire technique!”

Levi understood the difficulty well enough.

Mournful Spirit’s spiritual energy traveled along his waves. Increasing their intensity at the wrong moment could scatter her ghosts before they reached either opponent.

He caught one such overlap forming and softened the approaching note.

’Go on... there’s room.’

Her ghosts passed through the gentler wave. Once they dispersed around the two Rifters, he brought his bow down hard!

BOOOM!

Sound hammered their defenses while pale hands reached through the gaps.

Mournful Spirit had felt his adjustment. On the next exchange, she ended her phrase early, leaving him an opening of his own.

Levi used it without hesitation.

A blade of sound cut toward Akira’s exposed side, and the biwa resumed on the instant she moved to block it.

’Good... she understands.’

He had expected a useful alliance. He hadn’t expected to communicate this easily with someone he had never played beside!

Across the chamber, the Taxman was finding their understanding increasingly expensive.

He angled his briefcase to swallow a cluster of green motes, only for a sound blade to cut into the floor behind him. A haunting figure rose through the broken tiles before he could turn the case toward it.

The Taxman caught it by the neck.

A faint spiritual glow coated his fingers, allowing them to close around its otherwise intangible body.

He swept a second ghost away with his foot and crushed the first before its hands reached him.

”Our dear Taxman has been making good use of his collections!” Gamble explained. ”He cannot touch those entities with his bare body, but the spiritual energy he has taxed makes a perfectly suitable coating!”

Thin threads continued flowing from the surrounding attacks into the briefcase, replenishing part of what he spent.

’So that’s how you’re handling them...’

Levi repeated the opening notes of his previous attack.

The Taxman raised his case toward the expected wave, but the final note changed. An illusory ghost became sharply defined in front of him while the real threat slipped through the dust at his side.

He recognized the deception when cold spread across his subconscious barrier.

”Refund.”

BOOM!

His spiritual prowess briefly doubled, and he released the increase in a violent blast!

Ghosts, illusions, and etheric motes disappeared around him as rubble flew across the chamber. The explosion drowned out the biwa, but Levi sustained a thin note through the disturbance, listening for his partner.

Three low plucks reached him as the roar subsided.

He joined her on the fourth.

This time, however, Mournful Spirit let the music settle into a slower passage.

The ghosts still crowded their opponents, and Levi kept his sound blades moving through the dust... but the melody guiding them became clear enough for him to hear something he had missed in the earlier exchanges.

Each phrase returned to the same sorrowful ending.

She gave that ending time to fade before beginning again, as though she were waiting for someone who struggled to keep up.

’Hmm?’

He reduced the force of his violin and listened.

Mournful Spirit noticed the change almost immediately.

’Does he dislike this part?’

Her plectrum struck the next string a little harder than intended. She had been enjoying their duet enough to slip into an old melody without considering whether he would welcome it.

Most people didn’t.

She prepared to quicken the passage, but his violin softened further, leaving her biwa clearly audible through the bombardment.

He wasn’t urging her to change it... he was listening, welcoming it.

’You want to hear the rest?’

Stunned, she watched him for a moment before returning her attention to the strings.

How strange... with two enemies trying to kill them, he had chosen to give her this small courtesy... to Mournful Spirit, this small gesture meant so much more than Levi had realized.

She played the next phrase as she remembered practicing it, allowing its final note to linger.

Back then, she had always left that pause for the dead.

...

Mournful Spirit had played that passage long before she entered the Nocturnal Ring.

As a child, she had spent more time among graves than among children her own age. She would visit graveyards and sit beside a headstone with the biwa propped against her small body, practicing until the evening grew cold.

The newly buried were often the most restless.

Faint wisps lingered after their families left, unable to accept that no one would answer them again... some repeated the same few words like a broken radio message, worrying over someone they could no longer reach.

Her Yūrei Trueborn lineage was said to descend from an Unburdened Warden who had fallen in love with a living woman and forsaken his duties to remain beside her.

Those spectral Wardens used lanterns to gather souls and guide them to their final rest in the Unburdened Realm.

Whether the legend was true or not, her race possessed a similar affinity for souls... even as a child, she could hear the lingering wisps that most people never noticed.

She listened to them between attempts at her melody.

”You can stay until I finish,” she would tell them. ”But you have to go afterward.”

Her early playing was clumsy... if she missed a note, she started again, sometimes repeating a passage until her fingers hurt.

She wanted those lingering wisps to have something gentle to follow when they were finally ready to leave.

The people passing the graves rarely heard it that way.

To them, the lingering notes sounded like crying, and the pauses made them imagine someone answering from the freshly turned earth... a truly harrowing experience for anyone visiting alone.

Children hurried past when they heard her practicing, while adults asked why she couldn’t learn something pleasant for once.

What a strange child...

She heard that often enough to stop explaining herself.

Instead, she waited until the visitors left before taking out her biwa... the dead had never asked her to choose a happier song.

Even after she improved, most living listeners found her melodies haunting. Some admired what her music could do... few wanted to remain and hear it without a reason.

Now, someone living was waiting to hear how it ended and gave her his attention even when they were supposed to be enemies on a battlefield.

...

Levi knew nothing about the graves or the child who had practiced among them.

He only knew that he wanted to hear more.

There was comfort in her sorrowful tune, and when she left another pause, he answered with a gentler sequence... the biwa resumed, completing the ending with him.

’So that’s how it should sound...’

Mournful Spirit wanted to play it again right away.

Unfortunately, Akira chose that moment to force her way through several ghosts, screaming furiously at their constant bombardment.

Levi intercepted her with a sound blade, then sent another volley across the chamber... These sound blades were using sound as a base, but carried multiple energies: aether, void, darkness, sunflame, and illusory ones to make the real ones harder to spot.

Some struck their targets, while others scattered against the floor, leaving marks concealed by his illusions.

The Taxman kept his briefcase open, collecting spiritual threads as he retreated from the bombardment.

’That should be enough marks.’

Levi quickened his bow.

”Shall we give them a proper ending?”

Mournful Spirit answered with a forceful sweep of her plectrum.

The haunting ghosts stopped pursuing their opponents individually.

Instead, they reached for one another!

Pale hands clasped pale wrists as the army divided, forming rings around Akira and the Taxman. More spirits descended from above, joining the formation until both Rifters were surrounded by layers of translucent bodies.

Their mouths opened together.

Screee!!

An anguished chorus shook the chamber!

Akira burned through the first ring with a sweep of stellar energy, but the ghosts behind it immediately closed the gap. Across the battlefield, the Taxman’s briefcase dragged several spirits out of formation, only for those beside them to seize their arms and pull back.

For a moment, both opponents were occupied.

Levi needed nothing more.

His illusions dissolved.

Golden ignition marks covered the broken floor around the Taxman, while pitch-dark inscriptions encircled Akira!

Akira’s expression turned ugly as she drove her blackened hand toward the nearest marking.

Too late!

Levi drew one final, violent stroke across Requiem.

Mournful Spirit struck every string of her biwa!

The linked ghosts surged inward, their rings contracting around both Rifters as the marks activated.

Their duet reached its climax.

BOOOOOM!

Golden fire engulfed the Taxman while a void implosion swallowed Akira!

At the same instant, the army of haunting ghosts crashed into them from every direction, releasing the spiritual energy gathered throughout the performance!

For a heartbeat, countless ghostly faces appeared within the golden inferno and collapsing darkness, their joined hands still visible as the two attacks consumed them!

Then the floor ruptured.

Broken tiles hurtled across the chamber, and the combined blast drowned out even the audience!

Mournful Spirit let her final chord ring through the destruction.

Levi kept his bow away from the strings until it faded.

”That was beautiful.”

She had been watching the dust for movement.

”...The ending?”

”The whole piece.” His reply came without hesitation. ”Especially the quiet part. I didn’t want you to finish.”

Mournful Spirit was left silent.

People had praised her power before. Some had even admired her playing while keeping as much distance from her as possible.

Meanwhile, Levi sounded disappointed that the song was over.

”You helped make it beautiful,” she said, smiling.

”I’d still like to hear you play it on your own.” Levi readied his bow as his senses picked up movement inside the wreckage. ”Somewhere with fewer interruptions.”

’You want to hear it again...’

She had spent years waiting for visitors to leave before taking out her biwa.

Now, she was already wondering what to play when they met again.

”Whenever you want, Celestial.”

The affection in her voice was entirely unconcealed... she had no intention of hiding it from someone who had listened so closely.

’As many times as you want...’