Sword Art: Sakura had already been ten times faster than Sword Art: Plumwood Branch.And now, Sword Art: Void was another tenfold increase over Sword Art: Sakura.
A simple calculation made it terrifyingly clear—
Sword Art: Void was fully one hundred times faster than Sword Art: Plumwood Branch.
At such absurd speed, Kidōmaru's slash carved out a literal vacuum. Within that zone, all matter was annihilated.
When an ultra–high-speed vacuum slash collided head-on with lightning condensed into a single, straight-line charge, the earth beneath them collapsed instantly.At the very center of the impact, even space itself became violently unstable, as if it might cave in at any moment.
The instant the attacks collided, raging lightning and glass-shard-like vacuum blades exploded outward in every direction, their shockwaves spreading far enough to engulf the surrounding yokai as well.
The Samurai Retainer and the Samurai Spirit fused almost instantaneously, relying on their exceptional defense to block most of the residual shockwaves.Kishigai Kozō raised a massive curtain of water in front of everyone in the blink of an eye, while Yamawaro stomped the ground, forcing a towering rock wall to rise from the earth. Only then did the remaining yokai of the Kidōin faction narrowly avoid being swept away by the aftermath.
The yokai on Hagoromo-gitsune's side, however, were not so fortunate.
Arakuro had already suffered injuries, and more importantly, Ren's strength had far exceeded their expectations. Considering that Ren might still rejoin the battle afterward, Arakuro had no intention of wasting yokai power protecting mere cannon fodder.
As a result, those Hagoromo-gitsune yokai caught in the shockwaves were either scorched into charcoal by the raging lightning or sliced into multiple pieces by the scattering vacuum blades.
As the chaos from the collision gradually subsided, a single bolt of thunder finally broke through the turmoil and shot straight toward Kidōmaru.
However, having been forced to block Kidōmaru's overwhelmingly powerful vacuum slash, Motion Like Thunder had already lost much of its force. Its speed, too, was nowhere near what it had been moments earlier.
Even so, Kidōmaru—who had just unleashed his strongest attack—was still stuck in a brief moment of rigidity. And with the distance between them already reduced to almost nothing, he ultimately failed to evade Ren's lightning thrust.
That said, the weakened and slowed thunder strike failed to hit a vital point. Instead, it merely pierced through Kidōmaru's left abdomen.
When the lightning finally faded, Ren's figure reappeared at the center of the battlefield—and compared to Kidōmaru's injuries, he was hardly in better shape himself.
He had taken Kidōmaru's vacuum slash head-on. Though the violent lightning enveloping his body had absorbed much of the damage, it couldn't block everything.
Ren's body was now covered in cuts of varying depths, leaving him looking utterly battered.
That exchange could only be described as killing a thousand enemies at the cost of eight hundred of one's own—neither of them had gained any real advantage.
"Bone Prison of Desolation!"
After that brief clash with Kidōmaru, Ren had already judged that crippling him as planned would be extremely difficult in his current normal state.
Just as Ren was preparing to activate Half-Demon Transformation—or perhaps borrow the power of the Divine Blade Spirit to finish Kidōmaru—the ground beneath his feet suddenly stirred.
A cage made entirely of white bones erupted from the earth in an instant, enclosing him completely.
"Did you forget something?" a voice roared smugly."Your opponents were never just Kidōmaru alone! You've still got me—Arakuro-sama!"
This sudden bone prison was, of course, the ability of Arakuro himself—who had been completely stunned by Ren's earlier maneuvers.
From the very start of Ren and Kidōmaru's battle, Arakuro had been trying to intervene. But the sheer speed of the two combatants had left him powerless to act.
Now, at last, he had seized this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and immediately used his fear, trapping Ren inside the bone cage.
And it didn't end there.
Almost the instant the prison restricted Ren's movement, Arakuro swung his massive arm. Countless bone spikes materialized in midair and shot straight toward Ren's position.
In just a few seconds, the bone cage transformed into something like a grotesque flower stand. One spike after another pierced into the ground, turning the spot where Ren had been standing into a dense forest of bone, leaving no gaps at all.
"A mere A-rank yokai managing to get this far is impressive," Arakuro sneered,"but in the end, you still die by my hand!"
Staring at the ground now bristling with bone spikes like bamboo shoots after rain, Arakuro naturally assumed that Ren couldn't possibly have survived.
Yet at that very moment, Kidōmaru—also injured but still maintaining absolute vigilance—suddenly sensed that Ren's yokai energy beneath the spikes had not vanished.
His expression changed dramatically.
"Be careful—he's not dead! And his yokai power just suddenly—"
Before Kidōmaru could finish, a thick, almost tangible surge of crimson yokai energy exploded skyward. The bone spikes embedded in the ground were blasted outward in all directions by the violent shockwave erupting from the center.
At nearly the same instant, a red figure vanished from the spot where the spikes had stood—and reappeared in a flash directly in front of the dumbfounded Arakuro.
The massive Arakuro hadn't even processed Kidōmaru's warning when he felt a devastating impact slam into his head.
A pair of size-42 feet left a deep, unmistakable imprint on his enormous skull. From that mark, visible cracks began spreading rapidly in all directions.
The next thing Arakuro's huge crimson eyes saw was his own body—still standing upright.
Only his perspective was retreating at high speed.
There was no mystery to it.
His entire head had been severed from his body and was now flying straight through the air at tremendous velocity.
Earlier, he'd been spun around like a windmill.Now, his head had been kicked away like a ball.
As Arakuro's vision caught his own body, he also saw the spot where his head had once been. Standing there was a figure with crimson hair, long horns, razor-sharp claws, and exposed fangs.
That was the culprit—the one who had just kicked his head clean off.
From the path of the charge, it was obvious this red-haired, horned figure was the same young man who had been fighting them all along.
What Arakuro couldn't accept—what shattered his understanding entirely—
was that Ren Kuroda's yokai power was no longer A-rank.
It was now, unmistakably, S-rank.