Wood splinters whirled through the air as sunlight, no longer blocked by the roof, poured down and lit up the entire dojo.
A blinding pillar of light fell between the two men, and the dust kicked up by the shockwave floated clearly within it.
Zaraki held Murasame in one hand, still frozen in the posture of a downward slash.
Blood surged through the muscles in his arm, staining them a dark, heated red.
Murasame trembled faintly, letting out a low hum that sounded hungry for blood.
The force of the collision ran up through the hilt and into his palm, sending a numbing thrill up his spine.
This was it.
This feeling.
Nothing like cutting down those weak pirates.
Nothing like splitting open dead water.
The bamboo sword in front of him looked fragile enough to snap at a touch, yet it felt harder than a slab of Sea Prism Stone wrapped in Armament Haki.
Koushirou's bamboo sword held Murasame's edge in place. The eyes that always seemed to carry a smile had narrowed into cold, razor-thin slits.
The wooden floor beneath Koushirou's feet had already caved in completely.
His legs had sunk several inches into the ground, but his body did not move an inch.
"Didn't want your students seeing you like this?" Zaraki grinned, his teeth flashing white in the sunlight.
"Or are you worried you'll scare that little brat who's running back here?"
The moment the words left his mouth, hurried footsteps and ragged breathing came from beyond the shattered gate.
"Hey! You bastard! What the hell are you doing?!"
Zoro had rushed all the way back from the docks.
The moment he heard a villager shout, "A man with a blade blew the dojo roof off," only one scene came to mind.
Zaraki.
That lunatic who could split the sea!
And Koushirou, smiling like a fool while getting crushed.
How could someone like his teacher—good-natured, always talking about lofty principles—possibly stand against a mad beast like that?
Zoro stumbled into the dojo through the dust, Wado Ichimonji still sheathed in his hand.
Then he saw the scene in front of him.
His mind went blank.
The shout of "Stop!" froze in his throat.
Koushirou, who usually sat around with a teacup in hand, now stood there gripping a bamboo sword with one hand, firmly blocking that ominous cursed blade glowing red in Zaraki's grip.
Two overwhelming auras crashed against each other in the center of the dojo.
The air between them had started to warp under the pressure. The moment Zoro tried to step forward, the shockwave forced him back two steps.
Splinters mixed into the wind lashed across his face and left a sharp sting behind.
That was... his master?
The same man who normally hated stepping on insects?
"Zoro-kun, Stay back." Koushirou's voice was still calm, but the weight in it hit like a bucket of ice water dumped over Zoro's head.
"If you come any closer right now, you'll die."
The moment he finished speaking, Koushirou's wrist moved.
"One Sword Style: Star Thrust."
The bamboo sword vanished.
Or at least, it looked that way.
What remained was a streak of light too fast for the naked eye to follow, sliding up along Murasame's blade and driving straight for Zaraki's throat.
It was absurdly fast.
But speed wasn't the most frightening part.
Every ounce of force, every thread of killing intent, had been compressed into a single point. The control behind that strike was terrifying.
The old Zaraki might have been skewered on the spot.
But the one standing here now carried the instincts of Kenpachi Zaraki.
Before his eyes could catch it, his body had already sensed the danger.
Just before the bamboo sword's tip touched his throat, Zaraki's pupils shrank.
His neck bent backward at an almost impossible angle while his left fist tightened at his side.
Armament Haki coated his knuckles in an instant.
Then he smashed his fist sideways into the bamboo sword with a roar that ripped through the air.
BAM!
A dull, heavy impact rang out.
Koushirou felt a jolt of numbness spread through the web of his thumb as the brute force knocked his strike off its line.
Borrowing the recoil, he leapt back and landed lightly on the remains of a broken wall five meters away.
The look behind his glasses had changed completely now.
In that split second, Koushirou had not sensed any real style in the young man's movements.
No school.
No form.
No technique worth naming.
He was fighting like a wild beast, trusting nothing but his instinct and overwhelming force!
To a swordsman, that way of fighting was crude to the point of insult.
But it worked.... brutally well.
"So that's your gentleness?" Zaraki rolled his neck, and a crisp crack sounded from the joints.
He didn't chase after him.
Instead, he casually drove Murasame point-first into the floor and lifted his right hand to undo the black wrist guard hidden beneath his sleeve.
"That thrust just now wasn't bad. Had a nice bite to it, like a viper!" The red light in Zaraki's eyes deepened as he stared at Koushirou.
"For an ordinary bastard, that would've been enough. For me? that's too light."
"Too light?" Koushirou frowned.
A layer of deep black slowly spread across the bamboo sword in his hand.
Armament Haki.
And not the shallow kind.
The fragile bamboo was now coated in a black sheen so dense it looked like an unbreakable blade.
"Since you insist on going this far," Koushirou said quietly, "then for the peace of the village, I'll have to get serious."
"Save the pretty talk."
Zaraki undid the clasp on the wrist guard.
The black metal ring looked no different from ordinary training gear.
Then it fell.
BOOM—!
It didn't strike the ground with a clean metallic clang, but it hit with a heavy, suffocating crash.
The dojo floor sank on impact.
Spiderweb cracks burst outward in every direction, rubble flying and dust erupting into the air.
At the entrance, Zoro's eyes nearly came out of their sockets.
'That thing...'
'That thing was supposed to be ordinary training gear?'
'Bullshit!'
'A boulder slamming into the floor wouldn't look much different from this.'
The moment the wrist guard hit the ground, the aura around Zaraki changed.
"Huuuu..." Zaraki let out a long breath thick with heat.
The exhale actually left a visible white trail in the air.
His whole body felt light.... every cell in him was screaming, greedily swallowing oxygen and turning it into fuel for violence.
"Come on, Second round!"
He ripped Murasame from the floor as his figure disappeared from sight.
He moved so fast even the afterimage blurred!
"So fast—!" Koushirou's heart lurched. His Observation Haki howled at him like an alarm.
He raised the blackened bamboo sword almost on instinct.
Sparks burst.
The impact was so violent that the broken wall beneath Koushirou's feet collapsed at once.
Before he could steady himself, the second slash came.
Then the third.
Then the fourth.
They crashed down one after another with no room to breathe.
There was nothing fancy about them.
Just cutting.
A slash from the left.
A slash from the right.
An upward swing.
A brutal overhead chop.
Each strike dragged a suffocating gale behind it.
Every blow looked like it wanted to cut through everything in its path—wood, stone, flesh, even the empty space itself.
The pillars, floorboards, and shelves inside the dojo were crushed apart by the aftershocks alone.
Zoro had no choice but to retreat outside in disgrace, gripping the doorframe with all his strength just to avoid being blown away.
He stared at the back of the man swinging his sword madly through the storm of flying splinters, and everything he thought he understood about swordsmanship began to crack.
'Was this really swordsmanship?'
No.... this was two monsters trying to tear each other apart!
"HAHAHAHA! Yeah... that's it! That's the feeling!"
Zaraki laughed from deep in his chest, and Murasame in his hands had already become a swirling storm of blood-red light.
He didn't care about the wood splinters carving lines across his cheeks.
He didn't care about the shallow cuts Koushirou's counters left on his body.
Pain only wound him tighter.
Only made him hungrier.
The longer Koushirou fought, the worse the feeling in his chest became.
'This young man's stamina was monstrous.'
'His slashes were growing heavier and faster'
And inside that chaos, some kind of rhythm was beginning to take shape.
He was evolving mid fight!
This couldn't be allowed to continue!
Koushirou drew in a slow breath, and his gaze sharpened to a frightening degree.
He stopped retreating.
His grip shifted to both hands on the bamboo sword, and in that instant, his entire aura folded inward.
The surroundings went silent.
"One Sword Style: Secret Technique—"
Zaraki did not wait for him to finish as the red in his eyes flared.
Defend?
Dodge?
What for?
He threw all of that away and lunged forward head-on, hurling his whole body into the charge as he raised Murasame with both hands.
Like a madman trying to split the sky itself, he slammed straight toward Koushirou's sure-kill strike.
"Let's see what's harder—your secret technique, or my bones!"
For one instant, all sound vanished.
Then the explosion hit.
It slammed into the eardrums hard enough to make the world ring!
Wood screamed as it split apart.
The remaining roof of Isshin Dojo was torn loose by the raging airflow and hurled straight into the sky.
Countless roof tiles shattered in midair, turning into a rattling rain of debris.
At the center of that storm, Zaraki felt Murasame bite into something immensely tough.
Koushirou had built a layer of defense out of pure Armament Haki.
It lasted less than half a second.
Then raw power ripped straight through it.
"GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY!"
Zaraki roared, veins bulging across both arms as the monstrous strength in his body flooded into the blade.
There was no skillful redirection.
No elegant softness.
No room to maneuver.
Just force.
Force enough to shake a mountain!
Koushirou's defensive line, famed for its yielding strength, shattered completely.
The usually refined, gentle dojo master was blown away by an irresistible impact.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
His body smashed through the three remaining wooden walls of the dojo one after another, every crash exploding into a spray of splinters.
Then came one final muffled thud.
Koushirou vanished into the dense bamboo forest behind the dojo, leaving behind a ruined path gouged violently through the grove.
"Hah... hah..."
Zaraki remained in his finishing posture, chest heaving hard.
By now, everything covering his upper body had been shredded by the shockwaves from the clash.
The muscles underneath looked as hard as carved stone.
The small cuts scattered across his body had started bleeding freely under the rush of excitement, thin streams running down the lines of his muscles and giving him the savage look of a man fresh out of a bloodbath.
Exhilarating.
Too damn exhilarating!
Every bone in his body felt like it was groaning.
Every inch of muscle felt hot enough to burn.
Zaraki wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand, then stared toward the dark depths of the bamboo forest.
He hadn't felt the clean finality of killing his opponent.
At the last instant, that bespectacled bastard had shifted the point of impact.
He looked battered, sure, but that absurdly deep Armament Haki had still protected his vitals.
"So this is the threshold of the New World..." Zaraki grinned.
It was a smile cold enough to make the air feel sharp.
From within the quiet bamboo forest, he could already feel that aura rising fast.
The earlier gentleness, the probing restraint—it was gone.
What came back now was honed to a razor's edge, like a blade pressed lightly against the throat.
Any ordinary man would have turned and run by instinct.
Zaraki's whole body screamed the opposite.
'Charge.'
"Hey, you moss-head over there."
Zaraki spoke suddenly and drove Murasame into the floor without even turning around.
The peerless cursed blade gave a low hum as it sank several inches into the wood.
At the entrance, Zoro—already frozen stiff by the destruction in front of him—jerked violently and tightened his grip on his sword.
His throat was so dry he couldn't force a sound out.
"Gonna borrow something."
Zaraki ignored his reaction and walked toward the weapon rack in the corner of the dojo.
A few wooden practice swords were still scattered there.
Swinging Murasame had been fun.
Too much fun.
But he didn't come here to kill Koushirou.
More than that, the Kenpachi Zaraki Template inside him was already roaring itself half-mad.
That craving for a fair fight—or better yet, a fight where he shackled himself and clawed his way up through it—was chewing through the last of his reason.
Koushirou was using a bamboo sword.
So he'd use wood.
This wasn't mercy, it was about getting more out of the fight!
Zaraki bent down and picked up a thick, heavy wooden sword.
The moment his fingers closed around the rough hilt, something surged up from deep inside him.
Something new and it wasn't just Armament Haki.
There was Spiritual Pressure mixed into it—golden, violent, and unmistakably his.
Power that belonged only to Kenpachi.
Crack.
The wooden sword gave a faint sound, like it was already failing under the strain.
Zaraki didn't ease up.
He poured even more power into it.
Deep within the bamboo forest, hundreds of meters away, Koushirou had only just managed to steady himself when his head snapped up.
His Observation Haki, was now shrieking warnings without pause.
The aura coming from the dojo had changed again!
Before, it was like facing a crazed beast.
Now—
Now it felt like a golden sun of destruction had risen there.
...
Zaraki gripped the wooden sword and turned toward the bamboo forest.
The pitch-black surface of the blade began to leak a brilliant golden light.