4 July 2018

  Sea of Japan. . .

  As per Neo's request, the Judge of Envy, Yuki, and the 9th Strongest Believer in the world, Claudia, have decided to hold off on their clash and move out of Karin's house, Neo's ex-girlfriend. They are currently in the middle of the ocean, right at the Sea of Japan.

  Yuki and Neo are flying on a giant bird made of ice, while Claudia is riding a chunk of magma floating in the air. They fly at about the same speed as one another.

  "Let's do it here." said Yuki.

  "Huh? I mean this is perfect cause nobody else will come here, but at the same time, how?" responds Claudia.

  Yuki warns Neo to stay on the bird, and then she jumps off of it. On the way down, Yuki creates a pair of dragon wings on her back. As she almost reaches the surface of the sea, she stops herself in midair using her wings. She then slowly descends towards the water's surface. The moment her right foot touches the water, the entire ocean as far as the eye can see freezes in an instant. She now stands on the frozen sea waiting for her challenger to come and join her.

  "So, this is what you meant?!"

  Claudia slowly descends with her floating magma, and when she is at a safe distance, she jumps off of it. She then lets the chunk of magma fall and crumble towards the ice.

  *?*

  But given how hot that chunk of magma is, the ice that the magma touched wasn't affected even the slightest. When the magma fully falls apart and disintegrates into nothing, the ice beneath where the magma falls remains frozen solid. No amount of heat was transferred to the ice below.

  "Although obviously, that chunk of magma is nowhere near my full capabilities, I've never seen any ice on this planet being fully resistant to that amount of heat. Perhaps, this will be more fun than I anticipated." Claudia hypes herself up.

  Claudia looks to her left and right, as well as to her front and back. No matter every direction she faces and turns to, she only finds ice and more ice.

  "This is kinda insane. How big is this ice? I didn't see any water, even on the horizon, no matter where I looked."

  "About. . .15 kilometers in all directions from where I stand, including down under the water. But I made sure to keep the temperature below the water safe to not harm any ocean creatures."

  *!*

  "Heh, you didn't give any impression of being marine biologists whatsoever. Impressive feat! Okay then, let's start right away!!"

  Claudia enters her battle stance.

  ". . .actually. . ."

  "Huh? What now ?"

  Yuki suddenly bows her head towards Claudia.

  "I wanted to apologize for losing my patience back in the room. I immediately froze you when you mocked my senpai. I have trouble holding back my anger when it comes to the most important person in my life. I'm sorry."

  ". . .You serious? After all this built up, you're just gonna apologize? I was looking forward to this, maaaaan. . ."

  "I apologize once again. I have a God who tells me not to submit to my own emotions. I still have a lot to learn."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about. . . *Sigh* I guess I'll have to provoke you."

  All of a sudden, a giant hand made of magma rises from the surface of the ice. The giant hand forms a fist and tries to punch the giant bird of ice, where Neo was flying about 1km above the ice. Yuki reacts quickly and gently taps the ice below with her right foot.

  The giant hand made of magma was frozen in an instant. Just as soon as the giant hand was frozen, it immediately crumbled apart into nothing. And then giant towers of ice rose from under the ice. There are thousands of them, and they all rose randomly with no specific pattern or order. Each of her giant towers has cylindrical spikes coming out in no specific patterns, with each spike having a wide enough space from each other to not clutter the tower's design. The rising towers made the ice under their feet shake so much that it felt like an actual earthquake.

  "W-What the heck?"

  Claudia tried to stay on her feet during the entire time the ice was shaking and rumbling. After a few minutes, it finally stopped. There are snow clouds high above, and it made the surroundings darker, and it also started snowing.

  *!!*

  All around the ice where she stood, there were ice towers with heights that reach and pierce above the cloud that Claudia couldn't see the top of it. The towers are spaced out with each other far enough yet it still looks like they are suddenly inside of a jungle that has been completely frozen for ages.

  "I may have apologized to you, but that doesn't mean you can just harm my senpai so easily like that."

  "HAHAHAHAHAHAHH!! I'm happy, Yuki-san!! NOW I'M FIRED UP!!"

  Claudia starts to steam from all over her body. And then magma sprouts everywhere from her entire body. She raises her left fist upwards, and then she launches balls of magma consecutively towards the sky above. Each of those magma balls is 20 meters in diameter. There are about 50 of her magma balls heating the sky, interfering with the snowy weather that Yuki created and partially stopping the snowing only near the vicinity of each of those 50 balls of magma.

  Yuki tilts her head upwards and looks towards the sky. She saw 50 chunks of magma falling from the sky towards her. Yuki taps the ice underneath with her right foot, and a giant hand made of ice appears next to her. The giant hand of ice was 10 meters thick and 50 meters in length. The giant hand of ice opens its palm, and then a gigantic spear of ice appears in its grip. The gigantic spear of ice was 50 meters in length.

  The giant hand of ice throws the gigantic spear towards the 50 falling meteors in the sky. At the moment of clash, it explodes into an even bigger and gigantic ball of ice spikes that freezes the entire 50 balls of magma in its vicinity in just one moment. The gigantic ball of ice spikes falls towards the ice below. It fell for about 3 seconds until it hit the ice below and broke apart into tiny pieces.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "Very nice, Yuki-san! My turn!"

  Claudia was in awe of Yuki's exhibition of her Faith power; she plans to respond to honor her. Magmas are pouring out of Claudia's body in excessive amounts that there is now magma all around her in about 10 meters in all directions. The magma almost reached Yuki from where she stood, but she was unbothered by it.

  From the pool of magma, Claudia made an army of creatures whose bodies looked like a mash of a human being with a slime monster. The upper part of their body is humanoid, but the lower half is entirely slime-like, and they're all made out of magma. They also emit extreme heat that any snow that comes near them is immediately thawed out and vaporized. There are about 50 slime-human magma army spawned by Claudia.

  "GO FORTH AND BURN EVERYTHING!!" Claudia commands her army to march forward towards Yuki.

  Yuki swiftly summons her entire army as well. The same army as previously, 20 Swordsmen, 10 Great swordsmen, 10 spear users, 10 Ice magicians, 20 ice archers, 20 ice wolves, and 10 ice hawks, all created out of ice. Yuki, with a simple arm-raise, commands her entire army to march forward to clash with Claudia's slime-human magma army.

  The first to clash was the Ice Swordsmen in the front. They march with their shield upfront to bash them all away, while the front 10 of the slime-human open their mouth big and wide and spout out lava the size of a basketball as if they're spitting like a human. The lava touches the ice swordsmen's shields. Their shields start to melt slowly, but before they completely melt away, the 10 swordsmen bash the 10 slime-human on their stomachs, and they follow up with a sword slash towards their torsos, slicing them in half diagonally. As a result of the clash, the 10 swordsmen lost their shields, and the 10 slime-human were dismembered.

  But then the 10 slime-human multiplied into 20 slime-human when they were cut, while the 10 swordsmen had their swords melted away as well, rendering them completely open. The newly 20 slime-human magma are now reinforced by another 20 coming from behind. All of the 40 slime-human magma merge and combine into one giant slime-human magma standing at a height of 20 meters. The giant slime-human magma curled its right hand into a fist and punched down towards Yuki's army troops. Its giant fist turns into flowing magma and envelops all of them in its magma. With just one punch, the giant slime-human has melted most of Yuki's army without most of them doing anything significant.

  The 10 ice hawks escape the magma punch easily. From above, the 10 ice hawks are now flying at high speed towards the giant slime-human, doing kamikaze attacks. On contact, they explode into ice spikes that freeze various body parts of the giant slime-human, and one of the ice hawks even dives into the giant slime-human's head and bursts its head open.

  The giant slime-human magma topples and falls on its side. The magma on its body stops glowing and cools down gradually until it dies. But then, from the pool of magma from the giant slime-human's fist, the 10 great Swordsmen burst open the cooled magma pool from under. Turns out, they survived the heat, but they are all still badly damaged, as most of them lose either their arms, their torso, their legs, or even their head.

  ". . .Claudia-san, are you done playing with toys?"

  "I could say the same thing to you. I've still got 10 more of my army left, but yeah, this is just boring. I need to be the one moving, or else I don't get the thrill of the fight!"

  "Same thing here."

  "(. . .I know she said that's just how her face is, but it is jarring when she says things like, 'I'm excited' but with that dead flat expression and flat tone of hers.)"

  Yuki and Claudia dismiss their army entirely, and now the battlefield of ice is empty again, leaving them with all the giant ice towers looming in the background, and it's also snowing. They both stare at each other while entering their battle stance.

  Yuki lifts her left hand and creates a gigantic hand made of ice with a diameter of 50 meters and 200 meters in length. Claudia also raises her left hand, and she creates a gigantic hand made of magma with a diameter of 40 meters and 230 meters in length. Both of them clenched their fist as they were ready to throw a punch, while the two gigantic hands followed the motion of their creator down to a tee.

  "LET'S GET THIS STARTED, JUDGE-SAN!!"

  "Understood, 9th Strongest-san."

  They both throw a punch, and the two gigantic hands follow their motion, and their gigantic punch connects.

  *BAAAAAAMMM*

  *BWOOOOSSHHHHH*

  *GROOOOOOOO*

  *SSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*

  The sheer collision alone shakes the entire ice floor yet again, but this time the force of the impact is a lot stronger than about 100 of the giant ice towers around them break apart and topple from the sky. As the impact shakes the ice underneath them, the giant towers falling and hitting the ice also shake and vibrate the ice floor even more.

  "Woaahh!!"

  The force of the shockwave from the impact even shakes and causes turbulence for Neo, who's been on top of Yuki's ice bird floating in midair this whole time. Neo tries to hold on to the ice bird so as not to fall from it. He and the bird were also pushed away out of sight from the two women fighting on the ice below.

  "Those two are insane. Their Faith powers are out of my league."

  *!!!*

  All of a sudden, there is an extra hand made of magma coming and rising out of nowhere, reaching the height where Neo and the ice bird were.

  "This is bad!!"

  The giant hand of magma approaches, but instead of trying to catch them, it stops.

  *?*

  "This should've been my cue to leave, but I can't really control this ice bird since it's Yuki's creation. I might have to jump off!"

  But then, out of the palm of the giant hand, Claudia emerges. She jumps off of it and lands on the giant ice bird.

  "Hello, Neo-san!!"

  *!*

  "Who are you and why do you know me?"

  Neo enters his battle stance as he also transforms all of his limbs into silver; he's completely combat-ready. Claudia stares at Neo quite passionately.

  "Tch. . . Why did it have to come to this. . ."

  "Uh. . . What are you saying?"

  "It's complicated. . . Alright, first of all, I am Karin's older sister."

  *!!!*

  "(What?)"

  "And second, I fell for you at first sight a few years ago."

  ". . . . WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTT????"

  "And thirdly, I also despise you from the bottom of my heart!!"

  ". . .Huuuuuuuuuuhhhhhh?"

  "Wow, you got yet another girl to fall for you, huh, senpai? You are officially a womanizer from now on."

  "K-KOUHAI-KUN?"

  All of a sudden, Yuki appeared from behind Neo. Another giant bird was floating in midair, and Yuki came here with it.

  "Kouhai, I can guarantee you I have never met this woman in my entire life!! I promise!"

  Neo looks towards Claudia and asks.

  "If I'm not mistaken, didn't you guess whether I am Neo or not when you first saw me back at Karin's room? That pretty much confirmed that you've never even seen my face. Realistically, how did you even have a crush on me??"

  ". . .I saw a picture of you one time on Karin's phone wallpaper. It was love at first sight. . ."

  Hearing all of this, Yuki got ticked. She immediately clings to Neo's left arm and puts her chest against his arm.

  "Just so you know, this man is taken. By me. This man is mine and I'll never hand him over to anyone else even when I die."

  Neo covers his face with his right hand and looks away as his face goes red and blushes so hard from Yuki's direct confession of her ownership over him.

  "*Sigh, I don't need the romantic antics! Alright, how do I explain this. . ."

  After thinking to herself for quite some time, Claudia speaks again.

  "So, it's like this, my feelings have changed since the first time I fell for you! I genuinely liked you! You were in my mind for a long time! I fantasized about us going on dates to an amusement park and aquarium. I can't stop thinking about you that which actually disturbed me one time during my job. So, you can bet my feelings were genuine because someone like me would've never done any of those romantic things given my position and how busy I am on a daily basis."

  But then Claudia looks downwards for a bit. And then she suddenly looks towards Neo with a different kind of passion than love.

  "AT LEAST UNTIL I FOUND OUT ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO KARIN!!!"

  Claudia's tone changes significantly. It was clear how angry and hateful she sounded. But then her hateful stare and words suddenly evoked a memory from Neo. A very precious memory that he tried to forget as many times before, since the day he became Yuki's Support.