"Hufff... hufff..."
Watanabe took heavy, ragged breaths, his knees trembling violently as he struggled to stay on his feet. The deep, horizontal laceration across his back began to hiss with intense heat, emitting a thick trail of steam as the flesh slowly began to knit itself back together.
'The energy circulation technique that Bushido-sensei taught us... Is the only thing that's keeping my body from falling apart right now.'
Wiping a streak of crimson from his chin, he turned to face Ayumi. The flowing hagoromo had already returned to its place, draping loosely around her shoulders.
Before he could even steady his stance, she vanished from sight once more.
BANG!
A brutal palm strike slammed directly into his sternum, tossing him backwards across the dirt. "If you must rely entirely on your physical eyes to track my movements, you have already lost," Ayumi's voice echoed coldly.
SPATTT!
Another heavy palm strike connected ruthlessly against his ribs, fracturing the bone. Watanabe collapsed into the dirt, heaving violently as blood began to seep from his mouth, his nose, and even the corners of his eyes from the intense internal pressure.
Through the haze of pain and blood, his gaze desperately flickered over to the side toward the spot where Shion lay unconscious.
"Ohhhh... so that is what has you so terribly distracted," Ayumi noted, materialising instantly directly above Shion's defenceless body. Her hagoromo fluttered wildly, its divine fibres instantly solidifying into a long, gleaming spear. She levelled the tip directly at Shion's throat. "You can never fully realise your true potential if you refuse to discard everything around you. You must burn away your attachments to build yourself back up from the ashes."
The spear came down in a lethal, flashing arc.
CRRRRREEECHHH!
Before the blade could pierce Shion's flesh, a blinding trail of frost cut through the air. Watanabe had somehow covered the distance in a fraction of a second, his katana violently colliding with the descending steel of the spear. Brilliant sparks illuminated the dark shrine walls.
"To hell with that!" Watanabe roared, his glowing blue eyes burning through the blood pooling on his face. "If I get rid of absolutely everything just to make myself grow... then what's the point of having all that strength?!"
Infused with a sudden surge of raw anger, he wrenched his blade upward, forcefully deflecting Ayumi's spear and breaking her guard.
She didn't retreat far. Mid-air, she fluidly adjusted her centre of gravity, her spear instantly shifting and expanding into a giant, uneven battleaxe. Grinning like a demon, she brought the massive weapon down with terrifying momentum. "Power! "
BOOM!
Watanabe met the crushing weight of the axe head-on. As the weapons clashed, he channelled his energy through the ground, manifesting a wave of smooth ice that safely slid Shion several paces away from the impact zone. With his friend out of danger, Watanabe fluidly pivoted his hips, turning the defensive block into a lethal counter-offensive.
The steel of his blade blurred.
SLASH!
In a single, continuous motion, Watanabe's sword cut cleanly past her defences, slicing a deep, crimson cross directly across Ayumi's chest and hips.
"Then what earthly use is all that power if I have no one to acknowledge it?!" Watanabe bellowed.
But his words barely had time to echo before the deep crimson slashes he had just carved across Ayumi's chest and hips suddenly hissed. With terrifying speed, the flesh instantly sealed itself back together, leaving not even a scar behind. Ayumi responded instantly, driving a lethal, high-velocity kick straight toward Watanabe's skull. Reacting on pure instinct, Watanabe threw his blade upward, catching the crushing impact of her boot cleanly against the dull side of his steel.
"Hmmmmpt, you are still green. What use is having people by your side?" Ayumi countered ruthlessly, balancing perfectly on her planting foot as she pointed a single, slender finger directly at his face, "If you don't possess the absolute strength required to protect them?"
BZZZZT!
A highly concentrated sphere of flame erupted from her fingertip. Watanabe tilted his blade, manifesting a flash-frozen shield of ice just in time to absorb the blast. A violent explosion of scalding steam ripped through the air between them, masking their movements as both combatants simultaneously leapt in opposite directions to reset their stances.
'His Reiryoku... It's still growing,' Ayumi mused internally. Through the swirling white mist, her sharp eyes watched as the glowing blue aura radiating from Watanabe's body slowly and steadily expanded its perimeter, pushing against the heavy atmosphere of the domain.
'Let's see how far he can push it.'
With a silent flick of her wrist, a volatile cluster of hidden embers ignited directly beneath Watanabe's boots.
"Ha! Flames!" Watanabe barked.
Before the trap could even build its explosive momentum, he read the shifting heat and leapt high into the air, abandoning the ground entirely.
BOOM!
A column of roaring fire erupted from the exact patch of dirt where he had been standing a fraction of a second prior.
'The flames... I could actually feel their intent a full heartbeat before they even flared up,' his mind raced with adrenaline as his sandals touched down safely on a distant stone ledge.
'Tch... I honestly thought he had reached his absolute limit,' Ayumi smiled, her tense posture relaxing into a fluid, casual stance once more. 'But his Reiryoku suddenly surged again. He has actually managed to unlock Spatial Sense in the middle of a live execution. This brat is a monster.'
Spatial Sense is the definitive next step a practitioner achieves after mastering internal Reiryoku control within their own physical bodies. By extending the radius of their spiritual energy outward into the surrounding atmosphere, a warrior could effectively map out their environment, turning their aura into a continuous, stretching sensory radar.
While well-versed masters of the era, such as Orochi, can effortlessly spread their Reiryoku across the entirety of Sanctuary Island, Orochi, though, has already advanced to the ultimate tier beyond that: flawlessly assimilating his personal energy with the ambient laws of nature.
'He will do nicely now,' Ayumi thought, her expression softening into a look of solemn satisfaction.
With a fluid snap of her wrists, her flowing hagoromo shattered into dozens of pristine, glowing fragments. The pieces rapidly reshaped themselves into heavy, metallic rings that slammed onto her forearms, floating and spinning loosely around her wrists with a low, resonant hum.
"Now... do your absolute best to stay alive," she whispered.
She charged. What followed was an unbridled, cataclysmic exchange of elemental martial arts, a blinding blur of fire and ice clashing in the twilight. Ayumi threw a blazing punch, but Watanabe parried it perfectly with the flat of his blade, throwing her off balance before instantly driving his sword straight for her head. But before the steel could connect, Ayumi used the floating rings on her wrists to smoothly slide his blade to the side, pivoting effortlessly to strike from Watanabe's blind spot.
The desperate exchange escalated instantly from one move to two, to twenty, and then to a hundred rapid-fire clashes. With each passing second, Watanabe seemed to grow stronger and faster. The rigid stiffness vanished from his posture; his stance softened, fluidly mimicking Ayumi's own serpentine grace.
'What is this...?' Watanabe thought, executing a series of precise micro-steps to narrowly dodge a lethal strike by a mere fraction of an inch. 'Why does it feel like she is actively teaching me how to move, instead of fighting to kill me?'
The revelation struck his mind like a lightning bolt. Before he could dwell on it, the massive, multi-fanged shadows of Ayumi's shikigami lunged out of the dark to snap him in half. Reacting instantly, Watanabe manifested a burst of ice beneath his feet, forcefully pushing himself far out of the danger zone to reset his stance.
"Heeeeeee... look at you. Now you are finally at a level where you can actually accomplish something," Ayumi chuckled softly, drifting backwards through the air as she elegantly raised two fingers.
Her playful demeanour completely vanished, replaced by an ancient, crushing sorrow as she looked at the young swordsman.
"Little mortal... " You don't have much time left," she spoke, her voice dropping to a heavy, desperate whisper. "I need you to get stronger. I want you to kill me, and rid me of this awful curse once and for all."
Before he could even process her tragic plea, the ground beneath them groaned violently. Both of them turned their gazes toward the heart of the domain as the massive, twisted silhouette of the grand shrine Orochi had constructed began to manifest through the parting fog.