Rimuru the sin of love

Lets finish this Bridal style?!

Sariel's POV

She blinked out with that strange spell—Special Return, she called it and reappeared exactly where she'd stood at the start of the duel. Calm. Untouched. Not even breathing heavily.

That smirk again. She was in complete control, but still... that sword.

The one humming with demonic energy. The one no celestial should be able to wield without burning from the inside out. The one that had been sitting on her hip this entire time like it wasn't cursed, forged in darkness, or humming with barely-restrained menace.

Why hasn't she drawn it?
Was it bluff? A symbol? A distraction?

No. Nothing Rimuru did was meaningless. That sword, whatever it was, it mattered. Which meant this wasn't her at full strength. Not even close.

She was dancing through my techniques, countering my spells, and she hadn't even reached for her weapon.

I grit my teeth.

The restraint was insulting. Even worse, it was intentional. She wanted to see what I could do first.

Fine. Then I'd give her something worth reacting to.

I surged forward, summoning the divine winds to my wings, not for speed this time but pressure. She liked space? Grace? Movement?

I'd take the sky from her.

I channeled my next phase, Tempest Form. Light wrapped around my body, cracking with wind-aspected divinity. The very air above the arena began to churn violently. I twisted mid-flight and shot forward like a blade caught in a hurricane.

"Let's see you dance through this," I muttered.

I launched a barrage of arc bursts from multiple angles, shards of divine force forged from gale-split air. They weren't meant to be precise. They were meant to close her options.

As expected, she flowed through the first two. She was barely shifting her position. Then I curved in low, close to the ground, and redirected upward, spinning through the center of the arena and scattering a storm of piercing currents in a dome around her.

She twisted her body with uncanny agility, grazing between gaps like a thread through a needle.

Still not panicking. Still not drawing that sword.

I flew in again, my palm glowing, preparing a focused strike meant to bind, not to blast, an immobilization field crafted from wind-locked sigils.

She backflipped midair, right over my hand, landing on a platform of magic she conjured mid-motion. She made it look effortless.

"Tch. Draw it!" I shouted mid-assault, frustrated despite myself.

"Why?" she called back with a mischievous tilt of her head. "You haven't earned it yet."

The words hit harder than the last spell exchange.

She's waiting. She's measuring me.
She thinks I'm still not a threat.

I clenched my jaw, wings expanding to full span as I shot higher into the sky, pulling in light from the upper boundary of the realm. The clouds parted under the weight of divine magic.

"Then let me give you a reason," I whispered to myself, channeling everything into my next move.

Rimuru's POV (Inner Thoughts – Split Second)

He's getting serious.

I could feel it the moment the wind around him changed. This wasn't just divine energy, it was divine pressure. The kind that reshapes the battlefield. He was done holding back.