"Huh? How in the hell did I get here? Are ya fuckin' around here, you?"

Reid Astrea's crazed grin transformed into a snarl as his eyes bore into yours, not knowing why he was suddenly having to look at people not worth his time.

"H-hey, there's a child over there, so you gotta watch your language!" You tried to joke around and ignore the fact that you couldn't get your arms to stop shaking, but that only seemed to make Reid more upset.

Taking a step even closer to you so that you could feel his breath now, the red-haired examiner lowered his voice to an eerie level. "The hell's up with you? You ain't tellin' me what to do. I oughta beat the shit out of you for that one, ya know."

You gulped and prepared to move if Reid suddenly attacked.

The master swordsman noticed the anticipation in your movements and laughed menacingly. Seeing that you were insignificant, he took a step away and took a look to see who else he was going to have to ask to get an explanation.

He didn't have to squint for his blue, uncovered eye to see what he needed to see on the other side of the room. "Hmmm..." he said under his breath as he began to stroke his clean-shaven chin. "Pretty lookin', runt, small fry, clown..."

Reid assessed the party and returned to speaking to you. Speaking about the unconscious Shaula, he said, "Hey, you, why're you lettin' that beauty over there sleep all alone? If I were you, I woulda bedded her already. She's real damn frizzlin', ya know."

It didn't take much for you to already dislike Reid. Was this really the legendary Master Swordsman who saved the world centuries ago? You were already getting a few bad impressions on Flugel, but this was on a completely different level.

Letting your negative reaction to Reid fuel your body, you took a deep breath. "Talk about disillusioning... Now, if you don't know how you got here, I certainly don't know, so what about we get this challenge started? You know about that much, don't you, since it looks like you're the examiner?"

Reid clicked his tongue. "I ain't got a clue. I ain't interested in some title like 'examiner' for a fuckin' trial, but ya know what?" Crossing his arms and increasing the intensity of his gaze, he continued, "Ya wanna challenge me? Get me to move even a step from here, you."

Get Reid to move a single step?

You remembered the lines he had been chanting before apparently gaining consciousness- "Gain his forgiveness, by hand of the Fool who has reached the Heavenly Sword."

Was Reid the Fool here, or the one granting the forgiveness?

'(Y/N), you do not know this, but in the past, Reid Astrea was referred to as the Heavenly Sword. You, in this riddle, are the Fool who has reached the Sword. I believe that you must defeat him in this challenge in order to clear this trial.'

'That's a pretty good joke... Can't you come over here and help me? There's no way I'm beating him in a 1v1.'

'Unfortunately, I am unsure, so I will not come to your assistance. The challenge was issued to you alone, so if I were to attempt to complete it as well, there is a possibility that I break a rule of this trial, which goes unsaid as to be lethally dangerous in its implications. With that said, you must retreat if this proves to actually be Reid and not merely a weaker imitation of him.'

'Well, then-'

"Hey, you! Done chattin'? Or are ya just gonna fuck around and stare?"

Reid interrupted your telepathic conversation with Echidna, and the fact that he mentioned chatting sent a cold chill down throughout your body. If this comment wasn't by chance, how in the world did he know that you and Echidna were talking?

Since you had to go about this all by yourself, you steeled your resolve and chanted, "El Akra!"

El Akra was the second spell in the Akra series, and it made you exponentially stronger than the base Akra did. However, it also burned through your mana at an equivalently exponential rate, so instead of the hour that you trained to be able to use with Akra, you would only have twelve minutes at most before you ran out of mana by using El Akra.

Of course, you didn't care about the mana limitation because you needed to go all-out to even have a chance against Reid.

Reid still stood right in front of you, so you pointed the katana that you had taken out of the ground straight at his lower chest. No matter how he dodged this, if he could even react in time, he would have to move his whole body in some direction, and you would hopefully be able to use the split-second where he was not completely balanced to change the direction of your swing to force him to move away from his spot.

You took a firm stance and without hesitating, you swung the katana at Reid, with full intent to bisect him if he didn't dodge.

The swing itself, because you were buffed with El Akra, happened in less than a tenth of a second, but even with that speed, Reid's body hadn't budged. In fact, your new sword was stopped in its tracks.

In the time it took for you to swing, Reid had grabbed a pair of plain, wooden chopsticks from inside his red kimono and expertly stopped the edge of the katana between the two delicate sticks.

His movements had been so fast that you thought that your sword was stopped by a force field or something before the sight of the chopsticks was finally processed from your eyes and into your brain.

Seeing this feat of impossible speed, strength, and precision, your heart began to beat faster as the unfathomable gap in your strengths registered to you.

Reid, on the other hand, yawned and used his free hand to scratch his chest. "You're pretty shit at using a sword, you," he said casually.

With a flick of his fingers that seemed to be loosely holding the chopsticks, Reid forced the katana out of your El Akra-buffed hands. "You're fucking weak, so why don't ya give up, 'cause you're pretty boring? How about it, ya prick?"

Reid moved his head so that he was literally looking down on you, and the fact that he didn't even look like he was trying in this fight let you know that there was an insurmountable difference in skill between the two of you.

But even so...

"A weakling?" You said, now unarmed. "Maybe, but I'm not about to give up anytime soon."

Reid didn't seem to care about anything you said, so you used a few seconds to dash away and start running in a circle around him. As you did this, you whispered, "Phantasm."

This was your illusion spell, and you gradually slowed down as you had the illusion continue to circle around Reid at full speed. With El Akra, you had been going faster than what Elsa could even achieve, so even Ried should only have seen a blur race around him, and his depth perception should be off since he had an eyepatch on one of his eyes.

Simultaneously, you finally had the illusion show you attacking him from the front while you actually flanked the first Master Swordsman.

Gathering as much strength in your arms as you could, you prepared to punch Reinhard's ancestor with enough force to make a normal person turn into a bloody mist.

As fast as you were going, Ried's movements still looked fast to you, but thankfully, he used that speed to slash the illusion. Using his chopsticks, Reid severed the illusion, making it disappear, but at the exact moment he attacked it, you were right on his back.

Because of this, your fist actually connected to its target, and the floor underneath Reid made a large 'boom' under the amount of force that he had been struck with from behind.

However, the Heavenly Sword didn't budge.

"Ya know, I just gave ya that free hit, and I faced away from ya to make ya feel better, but that punch was disappointing, you."

Reid slowly turned back around to look you in the face, and you took a step back as fear was beginning to take back control of your body. At this point, the challenge hadn't been going on for twenty seconds, but your body felt as if it couldn't handle El Akra anymore as you couldn't find the strength to attack him again.

'(Y/N), there is no doubt about it! I do not know how it was achieved, but this seems to be an exact replica of the Reid of the past! I have reason to believe that this copy's strength and abilities are the same as the original, so I do not recommend continuing this fight!'

'Echidna, hear me out! I know that my chances are near zero, but what if I hit him with a really strong spell? That would at least have a chance to get him to budge a little, right?'

Echidna didn't answer, so as your mind scrambled in fast motion to decide which spell would actually work, Reid sighed to himself.

"Stop that, you."

Before you knew what was happening, his chopsticks were aimed right at your chest, and he must have been moving slowly because you were able to swivel out of the way before you could be touched by his odd choice of a weapon.

Even though you dodged, your chest started to hurt. Looking down, you saw that there was a hole in your clothes where Reid's chopsticks had passed by, and you could see some of your skin turn red from irritation. There wasn't any blood, but you could tell that there was probably going to be a bruise on your chest based on how much it was already hurting.

Looking back up at Reid, you saw that he seemed to be looking at his hand. Was there something going on? Was there a reason why he was slow enough for you to dodge?

Your confidence shot up after seeing him distracted, and without waiting to think about it, you disengaged El Akra and put everything into a magical finishing move.

You cupped your palms together, aimed right at Reid, and shouted, "KAMEHAMEHA!"

Kamehameha was actually an extension of your Strahl spells, which essentially create varying levels of light beams that you use to blind enemies. The only difference was the fact that Kamehameha was much denser, so instead of acting as a blinding beam of light, it was more like a blast from a laser cannon in sci-fi movies.

However...

Kamehameha was a relatively new spell that you had learned, and since you used 99% of your remaining mana to cast it, you weren't able to concentrate it in a complete, solid beam toward Reid.

Instead, it formed more of a cone, and while Reid was still in its area of effect, the fact that the beam was more spread out meant that the density of the attack would be less than what you had wanted it to be.

And forget not making Reid budge... at the worst, there was a chance that part of the spell would completely miss Reid and keep going until it damaged the tower, which would violate one of the rules that Shaula had mentioned.

Your mind raced with these thoughts as your deformed Kamehameha blasted toward Reid, but you weren't able to be relieved of any anxiety caused by the faulty casting. This was due to the fact that, as soon as the spell reached its target, there was a violent explosion, and you were thrown backwards. You tried to make a smooth landing, but your body went limp because it was dangerously approaching mana deficiency, so you painfully fell on your back before your body flipped over, causing you to hit your face on the ground.

You didn't know if Kamehameha, especially the one that you didn't fire correctly, was very effective against such a monster of a person, but all you had to do was make him move from his spot. That seemed much less impossible than defeating him in combat.

With hope that you might have made Reid budge, you mustered your shaking neck to raise high enough so that you could look at where he should have been. You couldn't see him since your attack had raised some dust, but from within the dust, you could hear Reid loud and clear.

"The fuck was that?!" Reid bellowed, a hint of a laugh in his voice. "That almost caught me by surprise, you! Here I was, holdin' this for you, and you tried to destroy it! If I wouldn'tna stopped it, you'd be short a pretty necklace! Or what's left of it!"

'Necklace? Echidna, what's he talking about?'

'...'

'Echidna?'

'...'

You were met by silence, and as the dust cleared, dread overcame you as you realized what he meant.

Even though your body was so sore that every movement took a tremendous amount of effort to make, you forced yourself to turn over onto your back so that you could touch your chest again.

Slowly putting your hand inside the hole that had been torn in your clothes at your chest, you tried to feel for the pendant that allowed you and Echidna to communicate to each other telepathically.

It wasn't there.

"Reid!" you yelled as soon as you realized what he had taken from you. "Give it back!"

Reid grunted from within the settling dust. "I refuse. And how the fuck do you know my name? That's creepy, you." Reid swiped his arm, and the dust cleared. He didn't walk over to you since that would mean his defeat, but he held up the pendant so you could vaguely see it. "Now, if ya want it, get up," he commanded.

Gritting your teeth, you used your arms to prop your body up so that you were now sitting up. Between the thousands of steps that you had to climb since coming inside the Pleiades Watchtower and challenging Reid and nearing mana deficiency, your legs were exhausted, and no matter how much you struggled, you couldn't stand up. To make things worse, the white room of the trial seemed to be spinning around you now because of how dizzy you were getting, and the already trippy visual that this room created made you feel even more disoriented.

You punched the ground in frustration, but since your body was so weakened, you didn't hit it hard enough to hurt your hand.

As you did this, you almost collapsed back onto the ground, but then you felt a hand on your chest, keeping you from falling to the ground.

"(Y/N)... Thank you for the hard work. I should not have allowed you to remain in this situation, so please allow me to atone for that mistake."

This was Omega, and you could tell that she was healing you as she said these words to you. As soon as you felt some of the burning in your muscles and the pain from your rough landing ease away, she walked in front of you and crouched down so that she was almost eye-level with you.

"I will challenge Reid in your place, so you must rest now," Omega said in a calm voice, and she didn't seem to be afraid of the Sword Saint.

"But-"

Omega finished healing you and placed a finger on your lip, silencing you. "No buts," she interrupted. "You cannot fight anymore, so you must rest to regain as much strength as you can as quickly as possible."

You weakly nodded your head, and you felt a new set of hands pull your body from behind. By the size of the hands, you guessed that this was Meili.

"D-Don't worry, onii-san. I'll get you to safety!" she said from behind you as she began to help you get on your feet.

You felt terrible that Meili was having to help you up, but you appreciated the fact that she came even remotely near Reid to come help you. Now, since Omega healed you, the effect that the stairs had on your legs was more or less gone, but that didn't help much since your body was dangerously low on mana.

This resulted in you having to lean on Meili as you stumbled around, and you couldn't turn around to watch Omega as she faced down Reid.

"(Y/N) has been defeated, and therefore, his challenge has ended with you as the victor," Omega announced to Reid from behind your back. "Reid Astrea, I will now challenge you to both complete this trial and to have the pendant returned."

"How the fuck does everyone know my name, and who is (Y/N)?" Reid questioned. He didn't care for titles or names, and since he never asked for your name and you didn't give it, he honestly didn't recognize it. He also had no idea who Omega was, but he could tell that she wanted the 'necklace,' so he dangled the pendant so that she could see that it was split in half.

Omega nearly stopped in her tracks, since the pendant was clearly broken. This meant that it would no longer work, even if she won it back.

However, she continued moving forward since she still wished to get it back regardless of this fact and felt it necessary to pass this trial so that you would not have to challenge it again.

Ignoring Reid's remark about your name, Omega asserted, "I will challenge you now. The objective is to force you to move from your current position, correct?"

Reid sneered as he put the pendant inside the folds of his red kimono. "Fuck that. I'm tired of that shit already. You just gotta get past me and you win. How about that, you?"

"I accept," Omega agreed immediately. This was quite the ideal scenario for her, since getting past Reid would be a much more feasible task for a mage than to attempt to move him.

That was to say, she prepared to teleport behind Reid and pass this trial.

"Now," she stated before she began the challenge, "as usual, I cannot condone your tasteless comments toward Shaula. If you have any respect for Flugel's apprentice, I would apologize, although I recall that you were quite terrible at doing so."

Hearing all of these names, Reid scratched his head. "I keep on hearin' a shit ton of names, but I ain't heard of any of them before. Are ya just tryin' to get me confused, ya twat?"

Omega was taken aback by this response. Reid, or whatever this thing was that was standing in front of her, didn't have memories of Flugel or Shaula, and that meant that he didn't remember her either.

If so, then she could do a certain something without him interfering.

Without a warning, Omega projected her true form from out of her body, and as strong as Reid was, she knew from experience that even he wasn't completely immune from the effects of her unique miasma. Only Flugel, Subaru, (Y/N), and one other person were capable of standing in its presence totally unaffected.

The moment that she did this, Reid's face contorted to one of disgust, and one of his hands twitched, as if he wanted to use it to cover his mouth.

In the moment that he was distracted, Omega cast the teleportation spell without any warning or incantation, and she disappeared from Reid's sight.

This confused the slightly nauseous, red-haired swordsman for a split-second, but by intuition alone, he instantaneously swiped his chopsticks through the air, and Omega landed in front of him.

As Omega landed before she reached her target, she cursed at herself.

Reid was the ultimate swordsman, and it was no exaggeration to say that he could cut through anything. Not only did the physical realm stand no chance against him, but the man known as the Divine Sword could cut through magic itself, and Echidna had finally confirmed one more thing...

Her teleportation spell wasn't tangible magic, yet he managed to cut it. Reid possessed the ability to not only cut through any physical thing and through magic like the Kamehameha that didn't even reach his clothes, but he could also cut the intangible. Echidna knew from experience that Reid stood at the top of the world of swordsmanship, probably even above Reinhard, but she never imagined that he could cut through the uncuttable.

At this moment, mere seconds into her challenge, Omega retreated, declaring her loss because she knew...

She knew that there was no defeating the being called Reid Astrea.

Time Skip

No words were spoken on the trip back down the stairs, and the defeated silence made the patter of everyone's steps of retreat seem