My mind was racing as I was thinking about how to adjust for maintaining this stack of . King Ilrymax had this obnoxious habit of subtly casting his while fighting that was grating. How could I deal with him? My approach was not getting me any ground whatsoever against him. Unfortunately, my time for maintaining my halos was dwindling while I was debating how to proceed against King Ilrymax. His seemed to effortlessly track my motion and position whenever I attacked him. There was a nonzero chance was King Ilrymax's for dealing with speed.

  King Ilrymax was at least giving me time to think over how to make the combination work; something about my approach needed to be refined. What was I doing wrong? I began attacking him again, trying to see him from all angles as I renewed my assault. speed seemed to do nothing because King Ilrymax effortlessly kept adjusting to my newest location or angle of attack. I tried kicking off, pivoting, or moving faster which King Ilrymax kept using his to either make a shield, attack to deflect me, or simply moved out of the way of that lunge. No amount of speed seemed to make any difference against King Ilrymax and his blasted . There had to be some adjustment I could make to overcome his defenses., I had no idea what that was unfortunately.

  What? What was I doing wrong? How did I adjust my attack plan? Could I be faster? King Ilrymax was effortlessly able to adjust to where I was by moving his body or having a at the ready for wherever my next attempt was from. Despite having a contained of my own combined with and , it still fell woefully short of what I needed to make a scratch on King Ilrymax. What should I do? Could I dissolve my body to a further extent? I mean, let me turn my body to light temporarily, and I could temporarily become light with

  as well. I don't think either helped me much at the moment.

  Wait, maybe it was my order of application. King Ilrymax was thankfully not going on an endless offensive, giving me a few moments to think it over. I rearranged the order of my , dissolving my body with a combination of and . I could sense all around the dissolved form with great detail, allowing me to see and hear all the motions of King Ilrymax. Now, how to solidify myself for an attack? I made lines of around him, but that did nothing offensively. I solidified myself as I kicked off with to resume my assault where he immediately adjusted and had a blade of wind waiting for me. I knew

  “What’s wrong, Lux?” King Ilrymax asked while keeping his voice surprisignly professional.

  “My combination is wrong.” I grumbled at him. Something needed more of an adjustment than I could do in a spar.

  “You are getting there.” King Ilrymax informed me, like that made me feel any better.

  “It is not right as you can easily adjust for it.” I pointed out to him.

  “Gee, the childhood friend of King Miril knows how to deal with the extreme speed of ?” King Ilrymax taunted me.

  “I knew you had practice!” I snapped, feeling slightly vindicated.

  “Plenty of it. Your method is distinctly different than that of King Miril’s, which is quite interesting. Her assault method is a bit more direct.” King Ilrymax assured me.

  “I will make it work.” I assured him bitterly. The challenge was how to make it work.

  “I am curious to see what your definition of correct is.” King Ilrymax stated before he flew off.

  Not that I was brave or dumb enough to say that out loud while he flew into the distance. I needed to figure out how to combine the to some working methodology. What would that look like? That might have been a problem, not having a clear vision of what I wanted the final version to look like. Some form of light-based assault strategy? It was a descriptor, but not exactly a clear vision of what it looked like. and combined well. I looked at the sky, seeing the sunlight covering the Kniclad Mountains around us. When I combined and I could see around King Ilrymax fairly well in that minor spar we just did.

  My needed a bit of work as it clearly couldn’t match what King Ilrymax was capable of given his ability to effortlessly adjust for wherever I was coming from. His were likely buffered and prepared in advance before he moved them to where he needed to in order to stop or divert me. No reason to cast a that is easy for her to dodge, prepare the and use to predict the path. That was a thought, King Ilrymax likely predicted where I was going to be based off where he estimated I was about to be. Just because I realized that did not instantly give me the insight of how it was possible to use to adjust my in progress.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  With those thoughts in mind, how did I become like sunlight? Something that enveloped everything with its inescapable light? allowed for even more speed when wanting to move with . My mind flashed back to when I was a baby with Nil, and he panicked when he learned . That was something I thought of as the incorrect way to perform , but it may not be wrong when performing this idea.

  I tried turning myself into light by mimicking , but instead of matching the ambient I turned it into through and through. My body dissolved into concentrated light itself unlike when I made which was more a spread-out form. I couldn’t breathe or overly feel my body, so I switched my back so I could breathe again. If I tried doing it without making first, I realized I was unable to overly perceive what was around me. The order of influenced the final outcome, it was simply figuring out the correct combination and order.

  I made the structure for , attached to it, turned my body to light with (or would it be ?), and kicked off with . I rocketed towards the edge of my structure, feeling a bit faster as I stopped and kicked off again. I was forced to turn solid again as I needed to breathe yet again. Did any of the three halos I didn’t know the function of help? I went in order to see what they did, seeing my eighth halo alleviated my need to breathe a bit. It wasn’t like I didn’t need to breathe whatsoever with it engaged, but I could at least move around a little bit before I needed to stop to breathe. Did this get me anywhere? Did adapting like that help enact my vision?

  It did technically get me closer to being the sunlight like I envisioned, but was it useful for attacking? compensated for the lack of sensory perception for the adapted version, but did it help? It kind of helpfully blended and which would smooth out the overall motion. Now how did I attack like that? I made the version where I could perceive around myself with , holding my breath as I saw the ball of light that I was. I tried with the adapted and non-adapted variants of . The version using might have been ever so slightly faster, but it was difficult for me to tell.

  I let out an annoyed sigh as I knew that I would need to adjust my vision a bit more. I could keep myself in the matrix made by with relative ease, but how did I attack? I made a , seeing the solidified in my paw. Wait. Would that even work? I remade each , feeling myself turn into light as I used to jump around as the little light ball, before trying to solidify just my claws. The blades of grass I solidified them over were cleanly sliced through. Now was for juggling which halos I was using to not have to gasp for air while maintaining some version of this.

  I knew I wasn’t able to engage each and everyone of them all the time; I let out another sigh as I realized that was something else I needed to work on. I needed to figure out what they all did and remember each effect because I couldn't afford to think it over in the middle of a fight. With that in mind, I did a few more , seeing if I switched between the versions of if I was able to breathe sufficiently without needing to stop cold. It did work! By my best estimate I could maybe maintain the stack of for five minutes before the mental strain, halo use, and general need for air would force me to stop. This was still an improvement, as I at least had a basis and idea to work on. I looked at the sky, seeing it took me a lot longer than I thought to get to this point. I signaled for King Ilrymax, waiting patiently for him to come.

  “Want to try again?” King Ilrymax checked, smiling with immense confidence.

  “I think I have tweaked it to somewhat work now.” I informed him. Now was a matter of practicing and refining the idea.

  “It’s only been about two hours.” King Ilrymax taunted me.

  “I know, but I made great strides in those two hours.” I replied, taking a starting position.

  “Show me then.” King Ilrymax directed as he took his starting position and put protective around him.

  I instantly formed the of mine, seeing he was a bit caught off guard by my willingness to go without air. I did a few test bounds around King Ilrymax with , shooting the tiny ball of light that was me around him. As I suspected, he didn’t formulate any until he was sure it would be able to block whatever idea I had or connect with me. I did a bit of fancy maneuvering as my body howled at me from the lack of air, shooting passed King Ilrymax while solidifying my claws. I was not sure which of us was more surprised when I saw red shoot out of his side. I made myself slightly more solid as I recovered a bit, seeing King Ilrymax’s gaze burn into my soul. Uh oh, he was about to take me a lot more seriously.