The air in the clearing, once filled with the sounds of training, was now a canvas for violence. Kaguya moved, and the very concept of distance seemed to bend to her will. There was no blur, no tell-tale rush of air. One moment she was ten paces away, a statue of judgment; the next, the space between her and Kenta simply ceased to exist.
Her palm strike, aimed directly at his sternum, did not whoosh through the air—it crackled. It was layered with a golden, humming energy that smelled of ozone and ancient temple incense.
"The Buddha Art Style: Subduing Demon Palm," she intoned, her voice devoid of malice, filled only with the absolute certainty of a divine decree.
Kenta's world narrowed to that single, approaching hand. His own speed, so painstakingly honed, felt like wading through tar. There was no time to draw Hikari no Ha. Instinct, forged in a hundred life-or-death struggles, took over. He crossed his arms in a desperate 'X' before his chest, channeling his ki into a hardened barrier.
The impact was not a sound, but a sensation—a deep, resonant gong that shuddered through his bones and rattled his teeth. The force launched him backward, his boots carving twin furrows in the earth for a dozen feet before he skidded to a halt. Pain, bright and sharp, flared in his forearms. A lesser warrior's bones would have powdered.
"You are fast," Kaguya acknowledged, not a compliment but a data point. "But speed without decisiveness is a flailing limb. You carry the Blade of Light, yet you hesitate. Why do you not meet my challenge with its edge?"
"Because this is a test, not a duel to the death," Kenta gritted out, shaking the numbness from his arms. "Drawing a lethal blade against an unknown opponent is the act of a fool or a madman."
"A noble sentiment," Kaguya replied, her fox-like ears twitching. "And a convenient excuse for the fear you carry for its twin." She gestured to the dark sheathe at his hip. "Yami no Hikari does not merely grant power; it reveals truth. The rage you feel is not the blade's—it is your own, reflected back at you, amplified by its connection to the void. You fear the darkness in your own heart, Kenta Yazuru. And until you cease seeing it as a separate monster and accept it as a part of your own soul, you will never be its master. You will only be its prisoner."
Her words struck deeper than her palm had. They echoed the very fears that haunted his meditation, the cold sweat that broke out when he so much as touched the dark hilt.
Meanwhile, Sarah's universe had been reduced to a single, terrifying equation: Jokedone's fist. He was not a fighter; he was a force of nature wearing a cheerful grin. His attacks were simple—straight punches, sweeping kicks—but they were delivered with a physics-defying finality. Each time his fist met empty air, the resulting shockwave was a thunderclap that tore the earth asunder and sent splintered trees flying like matchsticks.
Sarah was a leaf in that hurricane, her body pushed to its absolute, screaming limit. Her SS+ rank speed was the only thread keeping her from being utterly unraveled. She wove between his blows, the wind of their passage whipping her hair and stinging her eyes. Fatigue was a poison seeping into her muscles, her breath coming in ragged, burning gasps.
I can't… I can't keep this up. He's not even trying! Her mind raced, a frantic animal seeking any escape. "System! Is there any way to win? Any weakness?"
A cool, sterile text overlay flickered at the edge of her vision, a stark contrast to the visceral chaos around her.
[ANALYSIS: Target designated 'Jokedone.' Energy signature: LR+ Rank. Physical combat capability exceeds Host's baseline by 847%. Direct victory is statistically impossible. Probability: 0.0001%.]
Despair, cold and sharp, pierced through her adrenaline. "No way to win? Then what's the point? What am I supposed to do?"
[HYPOTHESIS: Target's verbal data indicates primary objective is 'test,' not 'eliminate.' Sub-objective: Assess Host's latent potential and combat adaptability. Recommendation: Activate Auto-Battle Mode. Maximize efficiency of demonstrated capability. Display peak operational performance.]
It was a devil's bargain. The agony that followed was a price she knew well, a debt written in fire across her nerves. But to lie down, to be found wanting by this laughing titan… that was a different kind of pain, one her pride refused to accept.
"Activate Auto-Battle Mode!" she screamed, not with her voice, but with her will.
The shift was instantaneous and absolute. The fear, the fatigue, the searing pain in her lungs—it all vanished, siphoned away into a distant background hum. Her consciousness was pulled into a backseat, a passive observer in the vessel of her own body. Her eyes glazed over, the vibrant green bleaching into a pale, luminous silver. The System was at the helm.
Jokedone, mid-charge, his fist pulled back for another casual, earth-shattering blow, paused. The change was subtle but profound. The frantic, survivalist energy that had surrounded Sarah vanished, replaced by an unnerving, preternatural stillness. She stood poised, not like a cornered animal, but like a loaded weapon.
"Heh. Finally getting serious?" he laughed, unleashing the punch.
It never landed. The System-controlled Sarah didn't retreat. She flowed forward, into the killing zone. Her left hand slapped the inside of his wrist, a precise, minimalistic motion that deflected the trajectory of the mountain-shattering blow by a critical inch. Simultaneously, her right foot planted, and she used his own forward momentum as a lever, launching herself into a spinning heel kick that connected with his jaw with a sound like a giant striking a bronze bell.
THOOM.
Jokedone's head snapped to the side. He didn't cry out, but he stumbled back a single step, his eyes wide with pure, unadulterated shock. The grin was wiped from his face. A faint, warm trickle of blood seeped from the corner of his lip. He wasn't injured, but he had been touched. Marked.
He slowly raised a hand to his lip, staring at the crimson smear on his glove. "So," he murmured, the cheer in his voice replaced by a low, thrumming intensity. "This is the real you? This cold, perfect efficiency…" A slow, genuine grin spread across his face, one of discovery, not mockery. "It feels familiar. It reminds me of my sworn rival, Kanji."
The battle transformed. No longer a predator toying with prey, it became a seminar. Jokedone was the lecturer, and Sarah's body was the prodigy student. He unleashed a flurry of blows, each one capable of leveling a small hill. The System responded not with brute force, but with sublime, impossible geometry. It guided her body in arcs and parries that used his own overwhelming power against him, turning his attacks into her momentum. When he feinted high and drove a fist veined with crimson energy toward her ribs, the System didn't flinch or block; it guided her palm in a soft, circular slap that redirected the force harmlessly past her shoulder, the displaced energy tearing a canyon in the earth behind them.
"She didn't even flinch..." Jokedone muttered, his respect solidifying into something akin to awe. "No fear. No hesitation. Just… calculation."
Inside her mental prison, Sarah watched the fight unfold. It was like watching a masterfully choreographed dance where she was the dancer, yet had no control. A timer glowed in her vision: [AUTO-BATTLE DURATION: 02:00 REMAINING].
Jokedone fought on, a wave of nostalgia washing over him. The cold, analytical precision, the utter lack of wasted motion, the way she turned his own strength into a weapon—it was a mirror of Kanji's most terrifying fighting style. The similarities were uncanny, a ghost in the machine.
Yet, for all the System's flawless technique, the chasm in their raw power was an unbridgeable gulf. An attempted hip throw that would have shattered a continent's spine merely made Jokedone grunt in surprise before he rooted himself, unmovable. A follow-up dropkick to his chest landed with a thud, but it was like a sparrow striking a granite cliff. He absorbed the impact without a flicker of discomfort.
If only, he thought with a pang of genuine pity, if only she were my rank. This would be a fight sung about for ages. He was holding back, using a mere 20% of his true, LR+ ranked power, knowing that even 10% was enough to overwhelm most beings who claimed the title of 'god.'
The timer in Sarah's mind hit zero.
[AUTO-BATTLE MODE DISENGAGED.]
The return was a cataclysm. The System's cold buffer vanished, and the full, deferred cost of the battle crashed down upon her all at once. It was not just fatigue; it was a systemic failure. Every muscle fiber screamed in fiery agony, her nerves felt flayed, and a wave of nausea so intense it blinded her washed over her. She gasped, a raw, ragged sound, and collapsed to one knee, vomiting nothing but bile, her entire body trembling uncontrollably.
Jokedone looked down at her, his chest heaving slightly, a single drop of blood on his lip the only testament to her monumental effort. A satisfied, almost paternal smile graced his lips. "You passed the test," he said, his voice warm. "I'll be honest, I didn't think you'd last the full five minutes, especially when I was being… let's say, 20% serious."
The pain was instantly eclipsed by a surge of pure, incandescent fury. "Who the HELL," Sarah screamed, her voice hoarse and cracking, pushing herself to her feet on trembling legs, "are you to test me?! To put me through this without my consent?! I don't even KNOW you! You could have KILLED me!"
Jokedone simply chuckled, utterly unbothered by her outburst. "Calm down, firecracker. You don't need to know a storm's name to be tested by its winds. It was a necessary challenge to see the mettle you're truly made of." He then gave a casual, yet profoundly respectful, bow from the waist. "I am Jokedone, First Disciple of Buddha. My purpose, in part, is to wander this world and find those with hidden potential, to see if their spirit is worthy of guidance."
The title meant nothing to her, but the weight behind it was undeniable. "Why me?" she demanded, the anger subsiding into exhausted, bewildered curiosity.
"Your fight with Kanji," he stated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Even a glancing confrontation with that man leaves a… resonance. A mark on the soul. Surviving him, even for a moment, is a feat that signals a spark I simply had to see for myself. And you… you didn't just have a spark, Sarah. You have a forge inside you, waiting to be lit. You exceeded my expectations."
As the last of her anger bled away, replaced by a deep, aching exhaustion and a flicker of something that felt dangerously like hope, Sarah's mind finally cleared enough to remember. Her head snapped up, eyes scanning the ruined clearing. "Kenta! Where's Kenta?"
Jokedone nodded his head toward the other side of the training ground, where the air still shimmered with the aftermath of divine energy. "He is undergoing his own trial," he said, his expression turning serious. "My comrade, Kaguya, is testing him. And her examinations… are far less forgiving than mine."