CHAPTER 7

EVENING

“Claudia, are you okay?” Ayato called out as he shielded her from her opponent.

He wanted to tend to her wounds as soon as possible, but first, he would have to deal with the danger standing across from them.

“I can’t say that it doesn’t hurt… But at least my life isn’t in immediate danger anymore.”

“Right. That’s a relief.”

In that case, the worst seemed to be over. But when he thought about what would have happened had he arrived even a moment later, he couldn’t stop a violent wave of anger from welling up inside him.

“Boy… You must be the Murakumo?” the old man asked softly.

Ayato nodded, raising the Ser Veresta toward him. “And you must be Bujinsai Yabuki?”

“Oh, so you’ve heard of me?”

“From your son.”

Bujinsai scratched at his chin in apparent embarrassment. “Yes, I see. You share a room with that idiot son of mine, don’t you? Does he give you any trouble?”

“Please, step aside.” Even knowing that the old man would never agree to it, he had to ask.

After all, Bujinsai was his friend’s father. He could barely hold down his rage at the thought of what he had been about to do to Claudia, and he would, of course, never be able to forgive him for it, but it would be best for everyone if they could resolve the situation peacefully.

“Ha! You’re direct, I’ll give you that. Not a bad quality… But I’m afraid I can’t oblige.” Bujinsai’s lips curled into a broad smile as he began to spin his staff in a circle.

Ayato’s sense of warning continued to grow more urgent.

“…Then, can you at least give me a minute?”

“Hmm?” The man frowned.

Ayato’s sense of warning abated slightly. Taking this to mean that the request had been agreed to, he bent down to face Claudia—without, of course, letting down his guard.

“Ayato…” Claudia, her eyes damp with tears, stretched a hand out to his face.

Placing it softly in his own, Ayato used his free hand to take something out of his pocket. “Claudia, a friend of yours wanted me to give you this.”

“Huh…?” Confusion spread across Claudia’s almost-feverish face. “What…?”

“It’s from Laetitia,” he added, placing the silver amulet into her hand. She was so exhausted that she almost dropped it, so Ayato instead put it into her breast pocket. “I think it’s supposed to be a good luck charm.”

“N-no, I know that… But why…?” She seemed genuinely confused, but before Ayato could ask her why, he sensed a sudden foreboding emanating from just a short distance away.

Bujinsai, it seemed, wasn’t willing to wait any longer.

“Sorry, Claudia. It’ll be over soon.”

“Um…” Claudia reached out to him as if to hold him back, but she quickly relented, flashing him her usual smile. “No, it’s nothing. Good luck, Ayato.”

Ayato returned the smile, before turning back to Bujinsai.

“My apologies. I don’t mean to interrupt your final tryst, but I’ve got a lot on my plate. I can’t afford to waste any more time.”

“…That’s okay. Because this won’t be the last time,” Ayato replied casually.

Bujinsai immediately launched into his attack, casting a flurry of tobi-kunai in Ayato’s direction, along with a volley of shuriken arcing down from above. Ayato deflected the blades with the Ser Veresta, about to rush toward his opponent, but during the short instant he’d taken his eyes off him, he had disappeared.

“—!”

If he hadn’t fought Eishirou, if he hadn’t already been familiar with this strategy of circling around one’s opponent’s back, that would have been the end of it.

His forward dive to dodge the oncoming strike was all but reflexive, and while he plunged headfirst into a pool of water, that was by far the better of the two options. Had he not done so, his head might have been sliced clean from his body.

“Oh?” Bujinsai, his staff having carved through nothing but air, glanced toward Ayato suspiciously. “Don’t tell me you saw that coming…?”

He seemed to have realized how he had done it.

“So be it. In that case, I’ll take your head from the front.”

Bujinsai’s body swayed back and forth, melting into the rain, until all of a sudden, he was standing directly in front of him.

He’s fast!

Ayato quickly raised the Ser Veresta to counterattack—when he remembered what Eishirou had told him earlier:

“Are you listening, Ayato? If you’re gonna fight my father, let me give you a word of advice. It’s practically impossible to land a blow on him. The same thing goes when trying to dodge his attacks. So—”

Ayato readied the Ser Veresta in a defensive stance, concentrating his prana.

“Ugh…!”

“What?!”

The attack, aimed squarely for Ayato’s neck, reached its target, but fortunately, Ayato’s head was still in place. He had focused his prana on several places throughout his body to increase his defense—the areas not protected by the Ser Veresta, such as his neck, hands, and feet. The older man’s strikes were so precise that they ended up being easily read.

Bujinsai recoiled slightly, giving Ayato an opening to slash back with the Ser Veresta and put some distance between them.

He lifted his free hand to his neck. It seemed to be bleeding, but the wound wasn’t deep.

“I see. Knowing that you couldn’t dodge it, you decided to withstand the blow. I suppose that’s only possible thanks to that incredible amount of prana you seem to have.”

It was as Bujinsai said—Ayato’s defense had consumed such a large amount of prana that if a regular Genestella had attempted it, they would have quickly run dry.

“You must realize that you’re only sprinkling water on parched soil. You seem to have some idea about my techniques, but if you pour everything into defense, how will you strike back? Sooner or later, you’ll have exhausted everything you have.”

“…”

Bujinsai’s words were spot-on.

Even if he was able to hold out for a short while, without changing his strategy, there would be no way to defeat the older man.

However—

“Just in case, I prepared two strategies before coming here. Do you want to see them?”

“Oh?”

“Then again, they both involve outright attacks, so maybe strategy isn’t the right word.”

Ayato tightened his grip on the Ser Veresta, before lashing out with his first one.

Bujinsai jumped backward diagonally, jumping against the side of a nearby crane and onto the platform above.

Ayato chased after him the same way, swinging the Ser Veresta to the side. Bujinsai spun through the air, before landing on the roof of a warehouse—and swung his staff toward Ayato’s head just as he landed beside him.

Again, Ayato concentrated his prana to endure the blow, before lashing out with an attack of his own. He sliced upward from below, then downward from above, as his opponent tried to dodge.

The older man’s staff-shaped Lux might have been of unusual construction, but it was unable to block against the Ser Veresta. He could do nothing but throw himself in the opposite direction, just as Ayato followed through with another lunge.

This first strategy that Ayato had prepared was to drastically increase the number of his attacks.

It stood to reason that even Bujinsai couldn’t keep using his techniques indefinitely. In that case, no matter how many times he managed to dodge them, Ayato simply had to keep pressing the assault, up until his opponent exhausted himself.

“Heh…heh… You’re certainly pushing it, calling this a strategy,” Bujinsai goaded, continuing to launch his own attacks while dodging Ayato’s blade.

Even so, Ayato concentrated his prana and withstood them all, frantically swinging the Ser Veresta at his opponent. His body was taking on one injury after another, and blood was beginning to soak into his clothes, but he couldn’t afford to falter.

“Amagiri Shinmei Style, Middle Technique—Ten-Thorned Thistle!”

But Bujinsai effortlessly dodged the surprise swing.

“Ha-ha, I know that move!”

“Wha—?!”

During the brief window in which the technique had left him open, the older man lunged out at him with the palm of his hand, throwing him from the top of the roof.

He landed flat on the ground, and while he wasted no time pulling himself to his feet, Bujinsai was already there to meet him.

He’s much more powerful than I was expecting…

To begin with, their techniques were at a completely different caliber. If it was to come down to brute physical strength, Ayato would have probably had the lead, but taking into account their respective tactics and the timing of their attacks, the advantage undoubtedly lay with Bujinsai.

On top of that…

“Oh? So you noticed? That’s right—I’m familiar with your Amagiri Shinmei style.”

“…I see…”

Whether he had mastered the fighting style or not, there would have been no way that he would have been able to take advantage of the opening left by the Ten-Thorned Thistle if that was his first time seeing it.

“My clan has been around for a long time, boy. We’ve kept records of every opponent that we’ve faced over the centuries, all passed down and recorded for posterity. And in that time, we’ve faced several users of your style.”

The Amagiri Shinmei style was an old school of swordsmanship, so it wasn’t altogether unusual that that should be the case. And it explained how Bujinsai had seen through not only the technique itself, but also the trajectory of his attack.

But in that case, it would probably be difficult to defeat him simply by increasing the number and rate of his attacks.

“Now then, why don’t you show me this second strategy of yours?” Bujinsai asked, as if reading his thoughts.

“I don’t need you to tell me that…!”

“Oh…?”

“Haaaaaaaaah!”

With an almighty cry and his hands gripping the Ser Veresta as tightly as he could, Ayato poured his prana into the blade.

He was using Meteor Arts.

According to Eishirou, the Yabuki’s techniques involved affecting their opponents’ subconsciousness to disrupt their actions.

In that case, he would use an attack so large that it wouldn’t matter even if his aim was disrupted.

“Yaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Ayato poured his prana into the sword, instantly triggering mana excitation overload in its urm-manadite core, causing the blade to extend to more than five yards in length, before swinging it down in front of him.

“Hmph…!”

The blade, however, made contact only with an afterimage of his opponent. Bujinsai, it seemed, had effortlessly evaded the strike. Ayato had succeeded in cutting through only the streetlight behind him, which came crashing down into the lake.

The rain, still pouring around them, evaporated as soon as it hit the long blade of the Orga Lux, causing a haze of white steam to rise up around them.

“I see you’ve turned to a brute-force approach. Do you really think that gigantic thing will be able to reach me?” Bujinsai scoffed, casting a flurry of at least a dozen more tobi-kunai toward him.

“Ugh!”

In its current state, the Ser Veresta was too large to knock them all down. His only option was to leap to safety.

But as if having already anticipated that, Bujinsai suddenly appeared right in front of him.

“I won’t let you get away this time. Even if you do try to withstand it, I’ll just have to whittle your prana down bit by bit…” The old man’s eyes glowed darkly as he approached ever closer.

This was the chance that Ayato had been waiting for.

Letting go of the Ser Veresta and concentrating his prana into his stomach to endure the powerful slash, he clasped his hands around his opponent as strongly as he could.

This is the only way to bring down a faster, more skilled opponent…!

“What?!”

It was the same strategy he had used in a duel against Kirin.

The Amagiri Shinmei style was originally developed to be used by those dressed in full battle armor, and so the purpose of its grappling techniques wasn’t to strike one’s opponents or knock them aside, but rather to pin them down. After all, once an armored opponent was pushed into the ground, further resistance was all but impossible.

As such, he had resorted to one of his school’s oldest and most inelegant moves:

“Amagiri Shinmei Style Grappling Technique—Twisted Vine!”

He grabbed Bujinsai’s arm, pushing himself toward his opponent as he kicked his legs out from under him.