Kondo looked at Hakuro, instantly recognizing his abilities. The next moment, the piercing clang of steel against steel echoed through the air. Kondo drew his sword and struck with a classical iaido move; Hakuro used his own hidden sword to catch it.
“Oh? You can catch this?”
Heavengaze, Hakuro’s “third eye,” was open on his forehead. It had now surpassed the framework of an extra skill, even going beyond the realm of unique skills, and it allowed him to keep up with Kondo’s sword drawing.
“A brilliant piece of work. But you share in the same school as my grandfather? Strange bedfellows indeed. You may call me a monster, but why don’t you see for yourself just how well I understand the true meaning of the sword?”
“Heh… Interesting. If you’re that insistent about it, let me show you just how good I am.”
Thus began the battle between Kondo and Hakuro, with Gazel there to watch.
Kondo liked his chances. There was no denying Hakuro’s abilities; that much he could tell at a glance. But it was an unquestionable fact from his point of view that no monster could understand the true nature of a sword. Oboro Shinmei-ryu, after all, was a style invented for the purposes of combat against demons. It should have been naturally repellent to monsters, and there’s no way a monster could master it—that conclusion seemed totally natural to Kondo. What’s more, there was no way anyone could imagine that the true founder of Oboro Shinmei-ryu—the elder brother of the school’s creator—would be in this world in the first place.
He can use the school’s innermost techniques, and that was beyond my expectations. But anything beyond that was only passed down to members of the original family. I don’t know how capable this visitor was, but it’d be impossible for him to impart Oboro’s innermost secret moves to a monster.
It was perhaps inevitable that Kondo would use his common sense to come up with that judgment. But it was a big mistake, a rare unadvised assumption on his part, and the cost of making it would be high.
Hakuro and Kondo squared up against each other. The moment they were within killing range, they simultaneously launched their attacks.
“Baika…Goka-totsu…”
Staking his pride as a swordsman, Kondo showed off his well-trained technique. It was a foolish move to make, and he had the temerity for it only because Hakuro was in the same school as him. He thought, in one corner of his mind, that he needed to wrap up this duel quickly and efficiently—but the move he chose would do nothing for that. It was a violent outburst, well out of character for the normally calm, collected Kondo. He wanted to show his prowess to his peers in this world by breaking out the best techniques he knew from the start.
Goka-totsu was a stabbing technique meant to symbolize a plum blossom. It was one of the loftiest techniques Kondo was taught, a closely kept secret that would never be found outside of his own school. A five-strike move, it aimed at five of the ten vital points of the human body—the eyes, throat, heart, kidneys, solar plexus, groin, and (as a diversion) the shoulders. What it aimed at could be changed depending on the current situation, requiring skillful technique to pull off. Few of his fellow swordsmen had mastered this art—and that’s why unleashing it against Hakuro was a miscalculation.
“Multilayered Blossom Flash…”
Hakuro countered with the greatest of his own secret techniques, a continual, flowing strike that slashed the enemy eight times in an instant, in any of a thousand different combinations. Kondo and Hakuro were equal in level, but there was a big difference in their core fighting abilities—and by Hakuro’s reckoning, Kondo was dozens of times more physically gifted than him. If this skill didn’t work, in essence, Hakuro’s defeat was all but certain.
It was with that resolve in mind that he drew his sword.
“Nngh…?!”
“Hohh…”
Kondo was aiming to overwhelm his foe; Hakuro wanted to deliver a fatal blow, even if he had to go along for the ride. That’s what both were hoping for with this clash of skills, but both of them wound up off the mark.
Hakuro’s blade slashed eight times, like a multilayered cherry blossom shedding its buds, faster than any regular person could see. But they were offset by Kondo’s five plum petals, failing to reach their destination. Kondo reared back, and thanks to that, Hakuro only managed to graze his cheek—even that, however, was an unfortunate result from Kondo’s point of view.
“I never thought there was a swordsman in this world who could surpass me.”
Hakuro’s Blossom Flash was superior as a technique to Kondo’s Goka-totsu. That fact shattered all preconceptions for Kondo, forcing him to admit his mistake. But it was still Kondo who won the duel. Hakuro was brilliant up to the point where he offset Kondo’s technique, but the difference in power was too great. The clash just now had cut Hakuro’s arms to gruesome ribbons, rendering them useless.
“Not even the most powerful of my moves could reach you…”
“No, it did. Allow me to apologize for looking down on you. That, and I wish to ask: What was your grandfather’s name?”
Kondo was sorry for looking down on Hakuro as a monster. He wanted to pay his respect to this man, now clearly a better swordsman than he. When it came to the blade, at least, he was a sincere person—but at the same time, he never judged matters based on his personal feelings. That was how Tatsuya Kondo worked.
“Ho-ho-ho! My grandfather was named Byakuya Araki. A swordsman without equal, but he sadly left us for the afterlife long ago.”
“A pity. And Araki is the surname of the head family of Oboro Shinmei-ryu. He may have been related to the founder indeed. If he had at least reached the level of Enlightened, he surely would have been one of the most powerful people in the world.”
Kondo offered him a silent word of prayer. When it came to his own sword school, he was all business. Hakuro looked down on him and sighed.
“My grandfather was an eccentric man, you see. He preferred to live life at his own pace. But do you think you could step aside for now?”
Hakuro decided to risk the question, sensing Kondo’s respect for him. But it was not to be.
“I will ensure you are protected, but I cannot stop this war. The way I see it, the worst thing you can do is take half measures.”
Kondo was nonchalant in his reply. Hakuro assumed as much. He was in no panic about it anyway.
I already knew I was going to lose. I’ll never make it back to the battlefront with these arms, but I suppose I’ve done what I set out to do.
No, Hakuro’s goal here was not victory, but rather to show Gazel how he fought against Kondo. If Gazel Dwargo, Master of the Sword, could see Hakuro’s innermost skills in action, he would be able to understand them and make them his own. Even if he didn’t learn it all immediately, he’d certainly receive some hints, at least. And what’s more, Kondo revealed a secret move of his own—and that would improve Gazel’s chances as well.
“I suppose I am done here, then. No need for further protection. I have zero intention of living in disgrace. If my last moments are nigh, I want to take as many enemy soldiers as possible along with me…but now is not the time. For now, I need to concentrate on healing these hands.”
They were gravely wounded, beyond what even a Full Potion could heal. One of the deepest secrets of Battlewill involved permeating a target with one’s own fighting spirit to destroy it, and Kondo’s spirit had penetrated Hakuro’s defenses during combat. The only way for Hakuro to heal them was to neutralize the force with his own aura. But Hakuro looked unaffected as he turned toward Gazel.
“Now, King Gazel, have you cooled down yet?”
“Of course. Seeing your techniques in motion astounded me, my master.”
“Ho-ho-ho! I actually did not intend to teach you that…but I wasn’t in any position to hold back. The rest, I leave up to you.”
“Yes, Master.”
Hakuro stepped back as Gazel stood in front of Kondo. Then he slipped away from the front lines, holding his head high, as if his part of the war was now over.
Now Kondo and Gazel were facing each other again. Kondo, still ashamed of his own shallowness, mentally flipped the page.
“I suppose I lost my cool a little. That’s enough playtime for now, though. Time to get back to work.”
“Pfft! I hate to say it, but I agree with you. I must live up to my master’s expectations…and so, I will give it my all.”
Kondo and Gazel both looked different from before. They knew each other’s full abilities now, and they were serious about this. Gazel was grateful to Hakuro; if he’d kept fighting Kondo earlier, his defeat would have been inevitable. The secret Goka-totsu move Kondo used would’ve been impossible to defend at first sight. Even if it miraculously failed to fatally wound him, Kondo’s fighting spirit would have destroyed him from the inside like it did with Hakuro, rendering him incapable of fighting.
I didn’t realize all that driven fighting spirit could be so much of a threat. I knew that was one of Battlewill’s most powerful secret techniques…but perhaps I didn’t fully understand it before now.