Shiki had known early on that Yuuki had more backbone than he looked. But the moment she truly recognized how dangerous he could be—was only recently.
Even so, hearing Yuuki declare something like that made Shiki freeze.
Then an unnamed anger surged up in her chest.
"Ah… I see. Fine. I get it!"
Before the last word even fell, Shiki moved.
No warning. No prelude. As if she merged into the surrounding darkness, leaving only a blue-green afterimage at the edge of vision.
Seven paces might as well not have existed. A faint shriek tore through the air as the spring knife's point stabbed straight for Yuuki's chest—
No flourish. A purely lethal strike.
"—!"
His heart felt clamped by icy iron.
Even though he'd been in the forest long enough for his eyes to adjust, he still couldn't catch Shiki's attack with vision alone.
Yuuki moved almost entirely on muscle memory—instinct beaten into him over the last month by Ryougi Mikiya's relentless training. He barely managed to lift his short blade horizontally across his chest.
Clang!
Steel rang out, exploding through the dead forest silence.
He deflected the stab just in time, but the force still shoved him a step back.
At the same time, Shiki rotated half a turn, using the scattered moonlight slipping through the canopy like a dancer—
She absorbed the recoil as if it were nothing. Not only did her tempo not break—she used that force to press in harder, attacking from the side.
Yuuki couldn't block in time. His arm split open. Blood sprayed. His thin underlayer, of course, offered no protection.
He tried to counter with a wild swing, forcing Shiki back a step—but he didn't even get half a second to breathe. The next instant, her sharper, more violent assault crashed down again like a storm.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
This was nothing like sparring with Ryougi Mikiya.
The low hum of blades slicing air, the sparks from metal scraping metal, the chill of the edge passing close enough to feel against skin—every detail made Yuuki's hair stand on end.
Compared to this, fighting with dojo bamboo swords padded with cloth was a joke.
So this was what "slaughtering each other" meant.
Because Shiki—unlike Mikiya—didn't have the power and endurance. In battle she exploited her lightness and agility to the fullest.
Yuuki understood that now with brutal clarity.
Even after forcing Shiki to burn a lot of stamina, even with Yuuki giving everything he had, even with Intuition pushed to its limit—
He still couldn't avoid it.
Clang! Clang! Rip—
Another spray of blood. A cut opened across Yuuki's cheek. A few millimeters more and his right eye would have been ruined. Yuuki fell, rolled sideways in panic, scrambled up, forced himself back into stance—
And Shiki was already on him again.
No chance to strike back. He was being crushed, one-sidedly overwhelmed.
And yet, in the middle of it, Yuuki's mind was analyzing with frightening calm—like an outsider. He stripped away emotion, stripped away impulse, and forced every movement Shiki made into calculation.
Understanding through battle—that sort of composure usually only came when the two sides were evenly matched.
But Yuuki was an exception.
Overlapping Thought layered his consciousness, splitting thinking from instinct.
And that let him notice something deeply off—inside Shiki's assault that gave no room to breathe.
Yuuki wasn't a master, but after training at the Ryougi estate, he had a basic grasp of the Ryougi style.
It wasn't brute force that toppled an opponent. It wasn't endless speed that crushed through pressure.
The core of ruleless fighting was a single principle:
Find the weakness. Kill in one strike.
When Ryougi Mikiya knocked him away and ended him with one hit; when he'd watched Shirazumi Rio fight Shiki a month and a half ago—both followed that rule.
Shiki had burned more stamina than he had. Maintaining this kind of relentless tempo would only make her rhythm collapse, exposing openings—and the one who would suffer would be Shiki herself.
And there was something even stranger.
To confirm it, Yuuki gritted his teeth and deliberately shut off the Intuition that had supported him all along.
Losing his greatest tool in combat, forcing himself through the anxiety, he charged forward.
Clang! Clang!
Click.
That faint sound—and Shiki's tempo broke. She retreated several steps in a row.
It confirmed Yuuki's suspicion.
Was her first strike truly aimed at his chest?
That second blade, riding the turn's momentum—Yuuki had been completely unprepared. From that angle, cutting the throat was the cleaner, more precise choice.
When he fell, why didn't she pin him like she had last night, stripping him of resistance? Why did she wait for him to scramble up and assume stance again?
Shiki wasn't Shirazumi Rio.
She wasn't cruel.
She didn't have a habit of playing with prey.
Ryougi Shiki… she was—
After a short, delicate silence, Yuuki asked the question that had formed.
"Shiki… are you regretting what happened last night—how you almost really killed me?"
"Shut up."
The only answer was a cold blade.
But Yuuki could see through it now.
The blade was cold.
It wasn't heartless.
As if to deny him, Shiki lunged again, steel flashing at Yuuki's throat—seeming to seek his death.
Yuuki rushed forward at nearly the same instant. The distance vanished under both their advancing steps.
Yuuki didn't meet her knife with his blade.
He let her strike for his throat—while he threw himself into Shiki's chest.
A suicidal trade. A mutual kill.
Shiki's spring knife would pierce Yuuki's throat.
And at the same time, the blade of Aoi-crested Echizen Yasutsugu would punch through Shiki's chest.
But right before it could cut Yuuki's throat, the knife clearly hesitated—then shifted, stabbing empty air along the edge of his neck.
Yuuki caught the opening. Without even swinging his knife arm, he used his body to twist Shiki's lunge off-line. Her posture collapsed; her balance broke—
And Yuuki slammed her to the ground.
Thud!
The situation completely reversed from last night.
The spring knife spun away, tracing a silver arc through the air before sticking into the dirt some distance off.
Yuuki's heart thundered from the reckless gamble. His body pressed against Shiki's—close enough to feel her rapid breathing, to smell the soap-like scent rising from skin damp with sweat.
And the cold edge of Aoi-crested Echizen Yasutsugu rested against her slender throat.
This life-on-the-line gamble—
He had won.
The system prompt that usually appeared whenever he was in mortal danger never sounded once during this fight.
....
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