Chapter 299: Amakakeru-Ryū-no-Hirameki VS Raikiri!
Boom—!
The command to begin the match rang out, and along with it came a deafening roar of thunder.
Countless bolts of lightning swallowed Luke in an instant.
Unlike before the match began, once they truly entered battle, neither Luke nor Touka said another word.
Boom, boom, boom, boom—!
Touka did not stop after a single strike.
She knew that a bombardment of this level was unlikely to defeat Luke. It probably could not even hurt him.
So Touka did everything she could to mobilize her mana and drive her ability forward.
Luke's mana capacity was C-rank, while Touka's was B-rank. With an entire rank of difference between them, Touka, who had investigated him beforehand, could afford to spend her mana freely.
By common sense, once the battle became a war of attrition, the one who would fall into a mana shortage first would definitely be Luke.
However, just as Touka had predicted, lightning strikes at this level truly could not do much damage to him.
Whoosh—!
With the sound of air being split apart, the lightning Touka had unleashed with all her strength instantly scattered.
Mana clung to the Starfall Sword, and with his ability to "cut," Luke now had a much easier time facing large-scale magical bombardments than he once did.
Touka did not lose heart when her first attack failed.
This had been within her expectations from the very beginning.
Activating lightning strikes did not require her to draw her blade.
Because of that, even now, Touka's Device, Narukami, remained sheathed.
That meant she could unleash that fatal strike, Raikiri, at any moment.
However, one thing had to be noted.
Raikiri had a weakness.
Although both were iai techniques, Touka's Raikiri and Luke's Amakakeru-Ryū-no-Hirameki were different.
Amakakeru-Ryū-no-Hirameki was a secret technique that included two parts: super-speed movement and a super-speed draw.
Raikiri, on the other hand, only excelled in the act of drawing the blade.
Within the secret technique called Raikiri, there was no movement technique included.
That was also why Touka had been pinned outside her attack range by Moroboshi Yudai, a spear user, during last year's Seven Star Sword Art Festival.
The distance between Luke and Touka right now was clearly not close enough for her to use Raikiri.
If Touka wanted to use Raikiri while Luke was breaking through the lightning, she would first have to move.
And at that timing, Touka, who had no super-speed movement method, would fall into an absolute disadvantage.
That was the thought that appeared in the minds of every spectator who could see through the situation on the field.
However, in the very next instant, Touka proved through action that she had changed completely compared to last year.
Crackle, crackle—!
The sound of dense lightning instantly rang out.
Golden electricity wrapped around Touka's long, slender legs, gathering beneath her feet.
Then…
Whoosh—!
Under the effect of electricity and magnetism, Touka's entire body seemed to transform into a bolt of lightning as she rushed toward Luke at extreme speed.
Noble Art: Electromagnetic Propulsion!
This was the technique Touka had created to support Raikiri after experiencing last year's defeat and witnessing Luke's Amakakeru-Ryū-no-Hirameki.
Movement plus iai.
The birth of this technique pushed Raikiri into an entirely new realm.
Luke had drawn his weapon first in order to cut through the lightning.
Originally, the distance between them should have been more than enough for him to sheathe his sword again.
But before Touka's Electromagnetic Propulsion, the advantage of time and distance was shattered in an instant.
Even if Luke could still sheath his sword in time, how much power could he unleash after losing the initiative?
Carrying that thought and absolute confidence in her victory, Touka charged toward Luke.
And directly in front of her, Luke's movements were exactly as she imagined.
However, the very moment Luke finished sheathing his sword and Touka closed in on him, something unexpected happened.
Faced with a distance of only two or three steps, nowhere near enough to accelerate, Luke's figure crossed it as though he had flashed forward.
In that single instant, Luke raised his speed to the limit.
It was the extreme shift between stillness and motion, from zero to one hundred.
It was the strongest swordsmanship in this world, something Luke had learned from Twin-Wings, Edelweiss.
Before this ultimate skill, the concept of moving first or second had already lost all meaning to Luke.
Amakakeru-Ryū-no-Hirameki VS Raikiri!
Blue starlight and golden lightning collided in an instant.
Boom—!
The stage split apart, and the violent shockwave swept broken stones toward the surrounding spectator seats.
The reason Luke and Touka's match had been arranged in the First Training Ground was because this training ground was the most durable one.
Yet even Hagun Academy's strongest arena was destroyed by the aftershock of their very first clash.
That terrifying force blew away everything around them.
If the teachers had not prepared in advance, some spectators probably would have already been injured.
However, that strike was only the beginning.
Touka had no time to be shocked by Luke's almost divine technique.
The moment the clash ended, she immediately focused her mind.
Lightning flashed in her eyes.
Through the effect of her Noble Art, Reverse Sight, Touka could accurately predict every one of Luke's movements.
She knew Luke's attack was not over yet.
Amakakeru-Ryū-no-Hirameki: Second Stage!
A tremendous pull came over her.
Only now, after experiencing it personally, did Touka truly understand why Ikki had lost during that battle at the start of the school year.
Under this enormous suction force, even stabilizing her body became incredibly difficult.
However!
Touka was different from Ikki.
Golden lightning instantly wrapped around the girl's entire body.
Driven by Touka without any concern for the consequences, her Noble Art, Shippu Jinrai, raised her physical ability to a terrifying level.
At the cost of damaging her body, Touka's physical ability at this moment even touched the edge of an S-rank evaluation.
Using that to stabilize herself, Narukami and its sheath erupted with brilliant lightning in her hands.
The instant Luke used the force of the rotation to unleash his second strike, Touka completed the motion of sheathing and drawing again at a speed impossible for ordinary people to understand.
Raikiri: Second Stage!
Boom—!
Before the first shockwave had even ended, the second swept across the field once more.
Amid the flying stones and dust, Touka looked at Luke's slightly surprised expression with a hint of pride.
This was the new technique she had developed specifically to counter Luke's "unsolvable" two-stage iai.
In a duel of iai techniques, Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu's two-stage draw held an overwhelming advantage, enough to be called absolute.
In this regard, even Raikiri, which had been praised as "unbeaten," could not surpass it.
But Touka did not want to run away.
She wanted to defeat Luke head-on.
Since that was the case, if he could launch a second strike, then why couldn't she launch a second strike too?
In the end, with that idea in mind, and under the enormous pressure Luke had brought her, Touka had forcibly recreated the "unbeaten" Raikiri again and again.
Using a principle completely opposite to the super-electromagnetic iai, even when she was in a state where moving was difficult, even after she had just released Raikiri and needed to catch her breath, she could still act.
Through electromagnetic attraction, Touka completed a high-speed sheathing movement during that recovery, at a speed no slower than when Raikiri was drawn.
Before the sighing wall named Luke, a wall she seemingly could not cross, the girl did not give up.
Instead, she forced herself to evolve, step by step.
The instant the clash between the two-stage iai techniques ended, Narukami and its sheath shone with dazzling lightning for the third time under Luke's delighted gaze.
At the same time, the girl's cry, filled with unyielding will, rang out.
"Raikiri: Third Stage!"
Bang—!
…
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