The distance between us ceased to be a measurement; it became something that was simply erased, as if space itself had folded and vanished all at once.
One instant he was a hundred meters away, the next he was right there, so close I could feel the heat radiating from his skin.
I could have called upon the earth to raise a wall of stone between us.
I could have commanded the wind to shove me aside, or to drag him away.
But I didn't.
And I saw in Tsukumo's eyes that he wouldn't use anything other than brute strength either.
My shoulders rotated in perfect sync with his.
I felt every fiber of my muscles contract to the absolute limit, as if they were about to tear.
My right arm shot forward as if I had packed my entire being, all my anger, fear, and determination into that single fist.
My fingers clenched so tightly that my nails dug into my palm, and the air around my forearm hissed, superheating from the sheer velocity of the motion.
On the other side, Tsukumo's left fist came with the exact same speed, the exact same ferocity.
It felt heavier than last time—dense, as if he had strapped entire tons to his wrist.
Then came the impact.
CRACK — BOOOOM!!!
First came the sharp, dry crack of bone against bone, like two boulders of granite colliding in mid-air.
Then the roar—deep and guttural, sounding as if it erupted from within my own chest. It made my ears ring and vibrate, feeling like they were submerged in water.
My knuckles sank into Tsukumo's cheek at the exact moment his fist crushed the side of my face.
His skin deformed under my sheer force, his jaw shifting slightly to the side. I felt the shockwave travel up my arm, slamming into my shoulder and then rattling my skull, while the crushing weight of his blow made my own face cave, my neck whipping back as if struck by a steel chain.
The kinetic energy our bodies couldn't absorb had nowhere else to go, so it exploded outward.
An invisible shockwave, dense and heavy as an avalanche, rippled outward from the point where our fists met, shoving away everything in its path.
The air tore apart with a sound like the scream of something ancient and furious.
Far below, the ocean of black, rain-laden clouds covering the entire valley was pushed aside like water splashing out of a basin.
First the edges curled, then they were swept kilometers away, piling up into thick atmospheric walls and leaving an immense hole in the center—a nearly perfect circle, miles across, completely devoid of clouds.
The rain vanished all at once.
Millions of drops falling hard enough to sting the skin were crushed by the sudden pressure, instantly vaporized or hurled so high they disintegrated before ever reaching the ground.
Then, the force keeping us locked together abruptly snapped.
We were launched in opposite directions as if fired from cannons.
I was thrown backward and downward, spinning through the air. The wind whipped my face, leaving behind a trail of white mist where my body had displaced the atmosphere to clear a path.
Tsukumo flew upward and to the left, a streak of darkness carving through the clear sky like a scar.
The distance between us returned, but neither of us lost our footing.
I flipped mid-air, extending my arms and using the gale to brake my momentum.
And when I looked up, he had already stopped as well. He hovered about three hundred meters away, wiping the back of his hand across the cut on his face. He stared at the blood left on his fingers and smiled at me—a smile completely devoid of malice, brimming only with the savage joy of finally finding someone who could survive his absolute best strike.
The silence following that first impact lasted less than a heartbeat. Before I could even wipe the blood from the corner of my mouth, Tsukumo was already cutting through the air toward me, moving faster than the eye could track.
His left foot shot straight for my chest, loaded with a pressure that made the air itself whistle around it.
I leaned back by a fraction of a millimeter, but the tip of his boot still grazed my clothes, and the glancing impact launched me dozens of meters backward like a feather.
I unleashed a laminated blade of wind that sliced through the clouds like a razor, purely as a distraction. He didn't even bother dodging; he slammed his closed fist against the current, shattering it into sparks of raw pressure, and was already on top of me before the remnants vanished.
CRACK!
His elbow caught my temple, and I countered with a left hook that sank deep into his ribs.
THUD!
He spun his body and landed a roundhouse kick on my shoulder. I felt the bone rattle, but I didn't yield, driving my heel right into his jaw when he stepped in too close.
No punch was fully blocked, no strike missed by much. We both chose to take the hits just so we could return our strongest blows—each movement a brutal mirror of the other.
I pulled currents of wind to boost my jumps, conjuring layers of dense air beneath my feet like makeshift platforms to keep my movements entirely unpredictable.
Tsukumo seemed to read my every thought, counterattacking before I even finished my motion.
When I sent a wall of wind to push him away, he used the gale itself to gain momentum, launching himself at me like a boulder fired from a catapult.
We traded blows as we tore through the gap we had ripped in the storm, descending until we brushed the canopies of the tallest trees in the valley, spiraling around jagged peaks that looked tiny from that altitude.
Every clash of our fists unleashed a fresh shockwave. Lightning from the clouds arced away from us as if the electricity itself was fleeing our path. The air grew so sweltering that humidity clung to my skin like thick water. I lost track of how many times I had hit him or how many times he had hit me; there was only the constant, coppery taste of blood in my mouth and the endless ringing in my ears.
At one point, he snatched my wrist with one hand and used his other arm to block the knee I drove toward his face. He grinned, his teeth stained crimson, his eyes shining like a man standing at the absolute pinnacle of his life.
"This is what I'm talking about!" he roared. Before I could respond, he twisted his torso and hurled me downward with every ounce of strength he possessed.
I plummeted like a stone, the wind lashing my face. I watched him dive right after me, arms outstretched as if he wanted to dig his hands into me before I hit the ground. He struck me mid-air, further accelerating my terrifying descent.
My back slammed first against the castle's western wall—a vertical stretch of granite dozens of meters high, its ancient cracks harboring green moss.
The stone groaned, fist-sized chunks exploding in all directions when my dead weight crashed into it.
Before I could slide down to the parapet, Tsukumo was already there, his boot raised to crush my chest against the cliffside.
I tucked and rolled to the side. He struck the wall exactly where I had been a second before, punching a perfect crater into the thick rock. The impact shuddered through the structure so violently that loose stones tumbled from the tower above, rolling off the ledge and plummeting into the valley hundreds of meters below.
"You won't stop me with just that," I snarled, slamming my palm against the rock beneath my feet.
The earth responded instantly. The stones around his boots jutted upward into razor-sharp spikes, and I blasted a gale strong enough to shove him backward.
He leapt before the spikes could skewer him, touched down on top of a shattered battlement, and then descended upon me like a thunderbolt.
I ducked around a thick stone pillar, and he circled from the other side. As our paths crossed, his elbow clipped the surface, splitting a fissure that snaked all the way to its base.
I grabbed the ledge of a toppled tower, swung my body, and launched myself to the other side of the gap. He pursued relentlessly, stepping on loose beams that crashed loudly into the abyss below, never once losing his speed.
One of his hooks knocked me straight into a column. He leaned in to deliver the finishing blow; I kicked the base of the stone, shattering it under our combined force, and we used the collapsing structure itself as a springboard.
I shoved the tumbling block to distance him, riding the momentum to vault over a fractured archway right before it caved in completely.
When he charged again, I dodged behind a pilaster. His hand clamped onto empty air, ripping a massive chunk of stone molding right out of the wall and hurling it at me. I ducked beneath the projectile, touched down on the sill of a broken window, and used the wind to propel myself right back into the fray, my fingers grazing the rough surface of the ramparts as we traded savage blows.
Then he threw a hook I couldn't fully block. I was blasted through an iron-reinforced oak door that tore open like wet paper. I tumbled straight into the main hall far below, a flurry of splintered wood and iron nails raining down around me.
Tsukumo entered right on my heels, but I was already on my feet. I used the swirling dust as cover, calling the wind to whip it into blinding vortexes, and flanked him from behind. But he tracked my movement solely by the sound of my footsteps. He pivoted and planted a kick right into my abdomen, sending me skidding back until I slammed into the stonework of the rear wall.
"Nice try," he said, panting as he brushed a wood splinter from his cheek.
I kicked a half-cracked stone pillar right next to him.
It collapsed toward him, but he simply caught one of the largest boulders with both hands and hurled it back at me. I shredded it mid-air with a concentrated blast of wind.
The shrapnel blew out the hall's remaining windows, allowing the pale, ashen light of the reforming storm outside to bathe our faces.
We blasted out of the hall through the crater I'd made in the wall, vaulting back onto the rampart path, and the melee resumed with even greater ferocity.
One of my punches caught his shoulder, knocking him hard into a watchtower. He answered with a kick that sent me crashing into the opposite tower. Both stone structures swayed ominously, their clay-tiled roofs shattering and raining down like hail.
I grabbed a loose brick to pull myself up, only to see him vaulting toward me from twenty meters up, twisting his body to funnel every ounce of kinetic energy into a single downward fist.
I braced myself for the impact, but then the parapet beneath my feet gave way completely. We both plummeted down the sheer cliffside leading from the castle walls to the base of Mount Ruitan, tumbling over moss, thick roots, and jagged scree, refusing to uncurl our fists or back down for even a fraction of a second.
We slammed into the bottom at the exact same time, tumbling for another ten meters. We only separated when a massive ancient tree root stopped my momentum, and a jagged boulder finally caught his.
The air down here was frigid, smelling of pine and the damp earth bleeding from the mountain's deep crevices.
I braced a hand on my knee to pull myself up slowly; every slight twitch made my ribs scream in agony.
My muscles shrieked in protest, feeling like ropes stretched to their breaking point.
I spat a mouthful of coppery blood into the damp dirt.
"Shit... this is too intense," I muttered, my voice hoarse and breathless.
I shook my head to clear my blurry vision, and a small, ragged laugh escaped my lips before I could suppress it.
"But why the hell am I enjoying fighting this guy so much?" I said softly, almost to myself, but loud enough for the wind to carry it over to him.
Tsukumo was already back on his feet.
He dusted off the dirt and stone chips clinging to his pants with the back of his hand, wiping away a fresh trickle of blood snaking down his chin. The feral grin he wore hadn't shrunk by a single millimeter.
"You're not the only one," he replied, his voice slicing through the silence settling between the rocks.
"I haven't felt this way in a... very long time."
"But now tell me, Suki."
He took a step forward, planting his foot firmly on the earth that still bore the cracks from our clash.
"You can go further, can't you?"
I curled my fingers into a tight fist with every ounce of strength I had left. The sharp crack of knuckles popping echoed through the mountain gorge, crisp and heavy.
I felt the earth hum beneath my boots; the wind began to spiral around my wrists, eager and ready to run.
The pain was still there, but it felt insignificant compared to the roaring flame growing in my chest—a volatile mix of fury, respect, and a ravenous hunger to test exactly how far I could go.
I raised my clenched fist to shoulder height, looking him dead in the eye as an equal, and the grin I shot back was every bit as razor-sharp as his own.
"Of course I can," I answered, my voice steady.
Tsukumo let out a sharp, booming laugh that seemed to awaken the shadows lurking in the crevices of the rock.
The wind picked up, scattering the scent of an impending storm and shattered stone.
And I knew it right then. Round one was over, but the worst, the strongest, the true clash... was only just beginning.