....
Somewhere else in the Sanctuary.
.....
Da-dam... da-dam...
The frantic thumping of his own heart echoed in his ears. Watanabe stood firmly on the damp earth, his fingers gripping his hilt with white-knuckled intensity as his eyes tracked the deceptive, shifting movements of Ayumi, who had completely boxed him in.
'Tch... am I scared?' he questioned himself.
Taking a long, deliberate breath, his sandals shifted slightly against the ground, readjusting his centre of gravity. A sudden, fierce grin broke across his face.
'No. I don't think this is fear. Unlike the hopeless nightmare of fighting inside that last Kekkai barrier, this... this feels doable.'
"Oh? You are smiling?" Ayumi mused, her voice echoing from all directions at once. "Mortals truly are such fascinating creatures, aren't they?"
"Mortal this, mortal that... do you people honestly believe you are gods?" Watanabe shot back.
The air immediately surrounding his body plummeted in temperature, and a delicate sheet of jagged ice began to flow outward beneath his stance.
Woossh!
Within a single heartbeat, highly pressurised wind strikes shot toward him from every single direction.
'Ah... I can actually see them!' Watanabe realised. Using minimal but precise movements, he fluidly twisted and turned his torso, managing to narrowly avoid every single incoming pressurised palm strike.
But before he could even celebrate the dodge, Ayumi materialised in front of him. With a casual, mocking smirk, she flicked her finger straight against Watanabe's forehead. The sheer force of the impact launched him backwards, flying.
'Oh? He actually managed to freeze my finger in that brief fraction of a second?' Ayumi thought to herself, glancing down at the fine layer of frost coating her skin with mild amusement.
She didn't give him room to breathe. Reaching up, she ripped the flowing hagoromo from her shoulders and flung it forward. The fabric instantly hardened and elongated, transforming into a massive, iron-like staff that rushed straight for Watanabe's head.
"Ouuhhhh!"
Watanabe yanked his arms inward, crossing his forearms just in time to block the incoming blunt force.
"Heavy!" he muttered through gritted teeth, his feet skidding across the stone as he barely caught his footing atop the head of a nearby god statue.
With a flick of her wrist, the massive staff shrank back down to a standard combat size. Ayumi spun the weapon gracefully around her torso, dropping into a flawless martial stance of her own.
'Ha?! I was certain she would have resorted to high-level Onmyōdō by now!' Watanabe thought rapidly, catching his ragged breath as he straightened his posture.
Bending his knees slightly, he raised his weapon and fell back into the foundational battle stance of the Bushido Blade Technique. Though it was a basic, ordinary form taught to every low-ranking recruit at the Academy and one he had initially failed to advance with due to his apparent lack of innate talent, everything was different now. Ever since Yorimitsu had redirected the flow of his curse, Watanabe was improving faster in the heat of battle than he ever had in years of training.
"You must be wondering why I haven't resorted to high-level Onmyōdō yet, aren't you?" Ayumi spoke, twirling the heavy staff around her shoulders with effortless, hypnotic grace.
"Tch... what are you, a mind reader?" Watanabe scoffed, adjusting his grip on his hilt.
"Hehehe, you truly are an amusing little creature," Ayumi laughed, the sound echoing lightly off the surrounding stone. "But no. You practitioners of the modern era are all entirely alike.' Her stance relaxed a little.
'Of all the sorcerers I have fought and slaughtered, every single one of them commits the same sin: they spend their entire lives trying to master Omnyodo, completely forgetting that if you do not first master your own body and Reiryoku, whatever technique you cast will be nothing but a half-cooked skill."
Watanabe's eyes suddenly widened. As his spiritual perception finally adjusted to the heavy atmosphere, the shadows directly behind Ayumi began to warp. Looming in the darkness were massive, floating, disfigured heads, their jaws lined with jagged, razor-sharp teeth; all of them seemed to be screaming as they were covered in flames.
"You finally see them now, can't you?" Ayumi purred, noticing his shifting gaze. "My shikigami have been active even before our duel began. I simply prefer using my martial arts. And quite honestly, you haven't given me a single reason to actually try yet."
She snapped the staff forward, aiming the tip directly at his chest.
'Tch... I hate to admit it, but that monster is entirely right,' Watanabe thought, sweat dripping down his neck. 'Maintaining a summoning technique while fighting at full physical capacity takes a monstrous amount of Reiryoku, yet she isn't even breaking a sweat. He glanced down at his hands, his jaw clenching with fierce determination. 'I don't care who she is. I will force her to acknowledge my strength.'
Bzzzzzzzt!
With a casual flick of her staff, tens of blazing fireballs materialised in the air, rocketing toward him in a devastating wall of heat.
'First Form...' Watanabe whispered to himself.
Holding his blade perfectly vertically, he crouched low and drove the weapon upward from the dirt in a fierce, rising arc. As the steel cut through the air, a massive, jagged curtain of solid ice tore out of the ground alongside the blade, forming a frozen barrier that instantly smothered the incoming flames.
CLING!!!!
Brilliant sparks flew through the steam as Watanabe instantly spun around, his sword flawlessly colliding with Ayumi's staff. She had materialised behind his blind spot, exactly as she had done before.
"That trick isn't going to work on me a third time," Watanabe grunted, matching her strength as their weapons locked.
"Mmmm... not bad at all," Ayumi smiled, her eyes gleaming with an eerie, unbothered light. "But you are still failing to pay attention to your surroundings."
"Ahh?!"
Sluuuck!
Out of nowhere, a second Ayumi materialised on Watanabe's flank, a gleaming blade gripped tightly in her hand. Before he could even react, the steel plunged straight through the side of his skull, poking out the other side in a horrific spray of fluid.
"Kekekekeke... now how exactly did you manage to pull that off?"
Ayumi turned around, her eyes widening to find the real Watanabe standing perfectly intact right behind her, his blade pointed directly at her throat. The "Watanabe" she had just impaled dissolved into a harmless mound of glittering snow.
"The moment I raised that wall of ice, I shattered the frost and moulded a decoy using the ambient snow," Watanabe spoke, his gaze locked firmly onto her.
'Hufff... hufff...' His chest heaved as his heart pounded violently. 'I didn't even know if that would actually work... but ever since we crossed into this domain, I can feel my strength increasing exponentially and so is my understanding.'
Looking down at his hands, he realised his pupils were glowing with a brilliant, luminous blue light. 'Is this... my Reiryoku? This is the first time I've ever been able to see it clearly.' He flexed his fingers, watching the energy ripple like cold neon. 'If I can learn to mould this correctly, I can manifest anything I want. This is truly brilliant.'
"I told you before: do not get distracted!" Ayumi warned.
With blinding speed, her leg blurred, completely vanishing from sight for a split second before bypassing his defensive perimeter. Her boot connected heavily with his ribs, launching him into the air, and she immediately shot upward after him, her staff twirling dynamically in her palm.
"Ah?!"
The staff is changing its form again, Watanabe thought rapidly. Re-gripping his hilt mid-air, he concentrated his newly awakened energy beneath his feet. Snap! A solid platform of compressed ice materialised out of nothingness beneath his feet. Planting his weight against it, he kicked off the frozen construct, rocketing directly back down toward the ascending maiden.
"Funeral of a Thousand Blades!" Watanabe roared.
In an instant, his physical form vanished from sight. What followed was a breathtaking, lethal barrage of ice-infused slashes. The strikes rained down from every single direction at once, cutting through the twilight like a relentless, blinding storm of frozen steel targeted directly at Ayumi's centre.
"Nice! That's it—come on!" Ayumi cheered, her eyes flashing with exhilaration.
Mid-air, her staff fluidly morphed into a gleaming steel katana. With blinding, rhythmic precision, she pivoted and swung, parrying each and every lethal strike that rained down on her from the frozen storm. 'He is genuinely improving,' she analysed internally, her grin widening as the vibration of his sword travelled up her arms. 'Even the weight behind his strikes is getting heavier by the second.
Her weapon shifted forms seamlessly with every breath, perfectly receiving the relentless barrage. 'And there it is, that's the core combination. His Reiryoku nature aligns flawlessly with his blade technique.' Had he been matched against any other practitioner, he would have easily won this day. But against someone whose spiritual origin is rooted in the eternal flames, his ice is utterly useless.'
"Ahhhhhh! Is this truly all you've got? It is still not enough!" she roared.
'Ha?!!!' Watanabe's eyes darted frantically across the sky.
She had completely vanished from his line of sight, leaving his ultimate technique striking empty air.
SPATTT!
Before he could even process her disappearance, Ayumi materialised directly behind his blind spot. Her blade flashed through the twilight in a brutal, horizontal arc, slicing deeply across his back.
"Ahhhhhhh!"
Watanabe choked out a scream of agony as the force ploughed him out of the air. He crashed heavily into the dirt below, coughing up a spray of crimson as thick, warm blood began to rapidly pool beneath his torn uniform.
"You need to get stronger than this!" Ayumi shouted down at him from above, her stance perfectly still. The exhilaration had vanished from her features, replaced by a cold, deeply disappointed expression as she looked down at the fallen swordsman.