"Five," Mai said, raising his hand, his fingers splayed casually toward the sky.
"What…" Jiro stammered, his grip tightening on the rusted cleaver.
"Are you so dense that I have to spell it out for you? Five exchanges," Mai's voice was like ice sliding over silk. "It will take exactly five exchanges to bring you down."
As those words dropped from Mai's mouth, the crowd went wild. The noise was a physical wave, shaking the amber dome.
"Why you Ingrid!?" Jiro spat.
"Did you hear that? He's calling the finish!" a student shouted. "That's a Minakaze for you, such terrifying confidence!"
"Kukukuku, that is certainly one way to make a name for yourself," Yasumasa laughed, his eyes glinting with sadistic delight. He raised his hand, the silk of his sleeve catching the wind.
"Begin!"
His hand dropped, the purple fabric fluttering as gravity pulled it down.
The moment the sleeve fell, Jiro vanished in a cloud of kicked-up sand. He moved with a swift, reaper-like grace, his rusted cleaver whistling through the air in a series of jagged, lethal arcs. His style was built on the efficiency of the slaughterhouse, low, fast, and aimed at the throat.
But Mai didn't even draw his sword.
With his hands tucked behind his back, Mai drifted through the arena like a ghost caught in a draft. Every time Jiro's blade was an inch from his skin, Mai shifted a fraction, the tilt of his head, a slight rotation of his hips.
He moved smoothly, his feet barely leaving a mark on the white sand, making Jiro's brutal strength look clumsy and primitive.
"One," Mai said softly as a blade missed his ear.
The crowd erupted. "Woooah! Look at that movement! He hasn't even used his hands, such grace!"
Mai spun effortlessly, his shoulder lightly brushing Jiro's chest, a subtle push that sent the larger man stumbling back five paces.
"Is this the 'warrior's way' you spoke of?" Mai mocked, his silver eyes narrowed in disdain. "You aren't even a third-rate warrior. You are a failure of the wastes, a stray dog barking at the moon. Every scar on your body is a testament to a battle you weren't skilled enough to avoid."
"Two," Mai counted as Jiro swung a desperate horizontal cleave.
Jiro's frustration turned into a visible, vibrating rage. His face was a mask of contorted veins, and his breath came in ragged, humiliated snarls. Every time he lunged, Mai was already gone, his voice ringing out across the silent quadrangle.
"Three." "Four."
The nobles in the stands were leaning over the railings, laughing into their fans. Every time a number rose, a new wave of tittering mockery followed. To them, Jiro wasn't a man; he was a toy to entertain their afternoon.
"Shut up! SHUT UP!" Jiro screamed. His eyes turned bloodshot, the capillaries bursting as he reached the limit of his sanity. "You think you're better than me? Stop scurrying around like a little rat, fight me!"
Jiro skidded to a halt, his chest heaving. With a savage movement, he gripped the edge of his cleaver and ran his palm along the rusted steel.
"Forbidden Art: Blood exchange!"
Thick, dark blood sprayed onto the white sand. The air in the arena shifted instantly, and the scent of mountain pine was replaced by the copper stench of a battlefield. Jiro's Reiryoku surged, turning a sickly, bruised purple that fought against the amber light of the barrier.
His body began to warp with sickening cracks of bone. Two new, muscular limbs burst from his waist, their skin raw and weeping. Each new hand clutched a jagged shard of broken steel that manifested from his own hardened blood.
He stood there a four-armed monstrosity of gore and rage, his presence now thick enough to make the weaker students in the front row gag.
The laughter in the stands died instantly. The nobles sat frozen, their cups of sake halfway to their lips, eyes wide with a mixture of horror and morbid intrigue.
"To think he will throw away his future just like that, what a disgrace." An old warrior said.
Mai finally let his hands fall to his sides, his eyes losing their boredom for the first time. "Five," he whispered.
As the four-armed monstrosity that was Jiro lunged, Mai finally moved. He didn't reach for his primary katana. Instead, his hand dropped to the wakizashi, the smaller companion blade at his waist.
Clink.
The moment the steel cleared the scabbard, a spark jumped from the metal, turning into a roar of sapphire light. The blade became a pillar of Blue Flame, so hot that the sand beneath Mai's feet vitrified into glass.
"The Blue Flames!" a master in the stands gasped, rising to his feet. "It's unmistakable, the legendary Ao-no-Minakaze. Only those with the purest lineage can manifest the blue heat!"
Jiro's four blades descended like a falling iron cage. Mai raised his single, short blade to meet them.
CLANG.
The sound was deafening. The sheer weight of Jiro's transformed body pressed down, four rusted edges grinding against Mai's lone sapphire spark. They stayed locked in a stalemate for a heartbeat, the air between them screaming as the two energies fought for dominance.
Then, the fire shifted.
The blue flames on Mai's blade didn't stay on the steel. Like living snakes, the fire crawled up Jiro's four weapons. The rust began to melt and rot instantly.
"Minakaze Secret Sword Art," Mai whispered, his eyes glowing with the reflection of the inferno. "Hell Flare."
In a sequence of flashes so fast the human eye couldn't track them, Mai moved through Jiro's guard.
Slash— The first extra limb fell.
Slash— The rusted cleaver hand.
Slash— The primary arm.
The blue fire cauterised the wounds as it cut, preventing Jiro from bleeding out but intensifying the agony. The four-armed beast was reduced back to a man in less than three seconds. Jiro collapsed onto the sand, his body smoking, the stumps of his shoulders glowing with dying blue embers.
"It hurts… it hurts… GAAAAAH!" Jiro shrieked, clawing at the sand with his one remaining, mangled hand. He curled into a ball, his "warrior's pride" completely incinerated.
The arena went silent, save for Jiro's pathetic whimpers.
Yorimitsu looked up at the noble balconies. There was no horror there. No disgust at the sight of a man being dismantled for sport. Instead, he saw The Smile.
It was a collective expression of pure, unadulterated greed and joy. The lords leaned over the railings, their eyes wide and glittering with a predatory hunger.
"Tch, how disgusting." He murmured to himself.
Their faces, lit from below by the fading amber barrier, looked more demonic than Jiro's transformation ever had.