The battlefield had become a monument to my fading strength. Every muscle in my arms throbbed with a dull, nauseating ache; the vibrations from the previous parried blows still trembled through my bones.
My resolve was crumbling by the second, slipping like sand through my fingers.
What the hell am I doing wrong?! The thought screamed in my mind as a massive fist grazed my cheek.
The sheer displacement of air sliced a thin cut across my skin.
I threw my body backward, leaping several meters to create some distance.
Landing in a crouch, my chest heaved, my eyes locked onto the terrifying entity before me.
I studied every inch of him, desperately searching for a flaw, a hesitation in his stance, the slightest twitch that might betray some vulnerability.
There was nothing.
He stood there like an apex predator, completely indifferent to a nuisance.
Slowly, Tsukumo brought his hands to the clasps of his heavy garments. With a metallic thud that made the loose gravel tremble beneath his feet, he discarded the upper pieces of his attire, letting them sink into the dust.
He was left bare-chested, showing off a physique that looked as though it were carved from primordial mountain rock.
Every muscle group was perfectly defined, dense, and crisscrossed with ancient battle scars.
He stretched his arms, casually twisting his torso from side to side in a slow, insulting stretch.
"You couldn't even provide a decent warm-up, Suki," Tsukumo murmured, his voice carrying effortlessly through the gales.
"You should be deeply ashamed of yourself."
He pointed at my sword with a slight, arrogant tilt of his head.
"That blade of yours will never cut me. Do you know why?"
A sudden gust of wind swept through the crater, kicking up a whirlwind of ash and dust.
The air whipped my hair, making his dark locks dance over his broad shoulders.
"Because you are weak."
The word hit me like a physical blow, igniting a primal fire deep in the pit of my stomach.
A sharp crack echoed beneath the wind's roar as my thumbnail snapped under the hysterical pressure of my own grip.
Warm, crimson blood began to well from the tear, trailing down my hand and making the leather hilt slippery.
Weak? After everything I've survived?
I dug my foot into the dirt, channeling the white energy of the gale directly into the soles of my feet.
The air compressed, spiraling into a furious, localized tornado that tore apart the ground beneath me.
I didn't care about the Queen's orders anymore.
It didn't matter if she wanted him alive for whatever political game she was playing.
I am going to kill him.
When my killing intent reached its peak, something shifted.
From the darkest, most neglected corner of my soul, a sinister heat began to bubble up.
A black aura seeped from my skin, twisting against the pure white wind, corrupting the cyclone with a chaotic, blasting darkness.
It had been so long since I'd felt this volatile power.
A dark, involuntary laugh rose in my throat.
I like this. I like this a lot, I thought, a maniacal smirk tugging at the corner of my lips.
I blasted the air beneath my feet.
The propulsion was deafening.
I launched forward like a supersonic projectile, the combined force of the corrupted wind and my shattered muscles tearing a trench through the earth behind me.
I raised Kazekiba, locking my vision entirely on the center of his throat.
As the distance closed in a fraction of a millisecond, I saw Tsukumo slowly open his arms wide, leaving his chest exposed in a gesture of pure surrender—or supreme mockery.
Bastard! Do you really think you'll survive this?!
The voice in my head wouldn't stop screaming.
My own voice roared for his blood.
In the final moment of the approach, I twisted my entire torso, pivoting on my heel to channel every ounce of centrifugal force into the swing.
I swung Kazekiba in a devastating horizontal arc, sinking the edge of the blade squarely into his throat.
BOOOOOOM!!!
The resulting shockwave was apocalyptic.
Pure energy exploded outward in a blinding ring of force, flattening the surrounding terrain.
Jagged shrapnel of broken iron and shattered rock rained down on the distant ranks of the imperial army, sending the soldiers scattering.
Along the crater's edges, I could hear the panicked screams of fleeing slaves trying to dodge the collateral devastation.
Gradually, the dust began to settle, and a familiar horror crawled its way back into my chest.
My hands shook—not from a successful strike, but from the brutal feedback of having hit something utterly insurmountable.
The blade hadn't cut through.
Tsukumo's thick hand was already raised.
His heavy fingers were firmly locked around the edge of Kazekiba once again.
"I told you, Suki," Tsukumo said, his golden eyes staring at me with crushing calm.
"You are weak."
Instead of retreating, instead of falling into despair, a low laugh escaped my lips.
The brief chuckle soon morphed into a loud, full-bellied laugh that echoed through the crater, right in the face of the strongest entity I had ever fought.
"No," I whispered, the smile on my face widening into something feral.
My eyes drifted down to my own forearm.
A thick drop of dark crimson rolled down my skin, hot and viscous.
But my arm wasn't injured.
The angle of my strike meant the blood was dripping down from above me.
Tsukumo's golden pupils contracted into millimeter-thin pinpricks; his stoic, unreadable face fractured into an expression of pure shock.
That blood wasn't mine.
It was pouring steadily from a hairline laceration—thin, but deep and undeniable—carved directly into the side of his neck.
"You bleed too, Tsukumo."
Instantly, Tsukumo lowered his head like an enraged bull and delivered a brutal headbutt dead center to my forehead.
The impact was like being struck by a living anvil.
A dry CRACK echoed inside my skull.
My body was launched meters backward, my feet scraping deep furrows into the cracked earth.
Kazekiba slipped from my numb fingers; Tsukumo's hand seized the hilt and, with a casual flick of his wrist, flung the blade far away.
The sword sliced the air with a sharp hiss, vanishing into the distant dust of the crater.
"Let's fight like real men," he growled, his deep voice vibrating with savage contempt.
Tsukumo charged like an avalanche of flesh and muscle. The punch came straight down the line—a hammer of bone and sinew.
I could barely raise my left forearm in time. His fist collided against my guard with crushing force, deflecting just enough to clip the side of my face.
Pain exploded across my cheek.
I tasted the metallic tang of blood flooding my mouth as my head snapped to the side, but I didn't fall.
With a guttural grunt, I grabbed his wrist with my left hand, fingers digging into his hot, sweaty skin like claws.
My right arm drew back and shot forward.
My fist struck dead center on his face—a clean blow, loaded with all the rage pulsing through my veins.
THUD.
Tsukumo's head snapped back.
A fine spray of blood flew from his nose. He staggered two heavy steps backward, his boots sinking into the dirt, but he didn't go down.
He simply shook his head once, spitting blood to the side, his golden eyes gleaming with something between fury and... savage amusement.
Blood dripped down his chin, mingling with the thin cut I had opened earlier on his neck.
His broad chest rose and fell with heavy breaths, muscles glistening with sweat in the light.
He smiled, baring teeth stained with red.
"Much better," he murmured, wiping the gore away with the back of his hand.
Before the sadistic compliment even finished echoing, the ground beneath Tsukumo's boots exploded into a shower of gravel.
He moved like a battering ram; the strike came from the bottom up, a left hook aimed straight at my ribs.
Instinctively, I crossed my forearms downward, condensing the white wind and black aura into a compact barrier in the split second before impact.
THUUM!!!
The energy barrier shattered like glass.
I felt the radius bone in my left arm crack with a crisp snap. The impact was so absurd that my feet left the ground, all the air expelled from my lungs in a violent choke.
I was still airborne when Tsukumo rotated his hips with terrifying fluidity, unleashing a roundhouse kick with his right leg that caught me flush in the chest.
I was launched horizontally, skipping twice across the rocky terrain before digging my hands into the dirt, forcing my legs down to arrest the momentum.
My nails tore up shards of stone, carving a trail of destruction until I finally ground to a halt.
I can't block. If I try to parry his brute strength, my arms will be destroyed.
"What's the matter, earth boy?!" Tsukumo's voice thundered from right above me.
He was already there. Without giving me a second to breathe, he brought his heel down in a vertical axe kick, aiming squarely for my head.
I rolled aside at the absolute last second. Tsukumo's foot sank nearly half a meter into solid rock, tearing open fissures that spiderwebbed across the entire depression.
The resulting tremor tossed me slightly into the air, and I used that momentum.
I channeled the black aura straight into my muscles, ignoring the agony of my fractured arm.
The black aura numbed the pain, replacing it with murderous adrenaline.
Twisting my body midair, I fired off a flying knee with my right leg, aiming directly for his jaw.
Tsukumo raised his left hand to catch my strike, but I was expecting that.
Mid-motion, I released a blast of compressed wind from the sole of my left foot, altering my airborne trajectory.
I bypassed his hand and came down with a diagonal left elbow, driving straight into the god's temple.
The impact was sharp and dry.
His skin was tough as hell, but the black energy cloaking my elbow acted like a drill, piercing through the divine resistance.
Tsukumo's head whipped to the side, his golden eyes unfocusing for a fleeting instant.
Using the momentum of my descent, I planted both hands on his broad, bare shoulders.
Using his body weight as a fulcrum, I tucked my legs and delivered a violent double dropkick, planting both heels dead center on Tsukumo's chest.
BANG!
The shockwave repelled us in opposite directions. I landed on my feet, skidding a few meters backward as I felt every muscle burn.
Tsukumo staggered back, his heels gouging deep trenches into the soil as he tried to regain his footing.
For the first time, I saw the armor of muscle on his chest bearing two distinct purple bruises from my heels.
He raised a hand to his chest, touching the contusion.
His breathing now came in a ragged hiss, his nose dripping blood onto the cracked ground.
The look he gave me was the expression of an absolute monster.
He bent his knees, fists clenched at his sides. His dark purple aura flared so massively that it began to physically crush the small debris around him, grinding pebbles into fine dust before they even hit the floor.
I did the same, rooting my feet into the damp earth.
White wind and black darkness fused around my fists, creating razor-sharp vortexes.
My vision narrowed solely onto him.
I prepped a right straight, concentrating all the darkness at my fingertips with the full intention of tearing his jaw off.
Then he vanished.
"Where…?"
Faster than a blink, he appeared right in front of me.
Too fast, I thought.
He raised both arms simultaneously, thrusting his forearms out with hands open—rigid palms acting like steel plates loaded with destruction.
His golden eyes were cold, fixated like the very judgment of the apocalypse.
He lunged forward in a dry, explosive motion, shoving both palms squarely against the center of my chest.
"Temman Gōraku!"
The open palms struck dead-center against my sternum.
CRAAAQUE!!!
I heard bones shatter and the deep, sickening thud of my sternum being compressed into my spine.
The sheer pressure cascading beneath me cratered the ground of Orin in a three-hundred-meter radius, reducing the final stones of its foundations to fine powder.
And the world turned upside down.
I was launched upward like a cannonball.
The acceleration was so violent that the air around my body superheated into plasma, engulfing me in a sphere of flames as I soared.
I broke the sound barrier in a heartbeat. The subsequent sonic boom made the eardrums of the soldiers on the ground throb and bleed.
I ruptured the layer of purple clouds blanketing Ruitan, punching a perfect, kilometer-wide circular hole through the overcast sky.
Scraps of metal and gears from the Last Forge drifting in my path disintegrated at the slightest touch, turning to dust before they could even scatter.
Gravity lost all meaning as the kinetic force of the strike continued to propel me, tearing through the space around me.
High above, past the storm and the sea of clouds, stood Tsukumo's fortress—a monstrous construct of black stone dominating the entire sky.
I smashed into the outer defensive barriers; they snapped like old cobwebs.
My body blasted through the ramparts, bringing down tons of granite in a cascade of shrapnel.
I crashed through vaulted ceilings and thick pillars, shattering massive stained-glass windows depicting the empire's victories into a thousand colorful fragments.
Finally, I tore through a set of solid iron double doors—they splintered into fragments before my back even touched them.
I plummeted onto the polished marble floor, skipping and gouging the stone for dozens of meters until I slammed brutally against the golden steps at the base of the throne.
I lay there on my back, covered in glass shards, dust, and gold flakes, right in the center of the empty hall.
The silence up here was dense, almost palpable, broken only by the steady dripping of my own blood.
Seconds later, the roar of the initial shockwave finally caught up from below, rattling the walls of the castle, as if the heavens themselves were trembling.