Of course, in a fight with a monster, the first and most obvious thought was to go for the head. But given the difference in our sizes, and my fear of losing my footing against a creature like this, I decided to play it safer.
I closed the distance in a flash, slipped past the lazy swing of my enemy's enormous leg, and struck the back of his knee. Goketsu staggered, though he stayed on his feet with a quick half step. But I'd barely started to be glad that this was beginning to look like a fight and not a game of tag with a deadly ending when I felt his murderous aura behind me. The blow that followed hurled me to another part of the stadium.
Damn it all… how much power does he have?!
I rolled to the side and realized I'd broken at least ten bones. For a superhuman like me that wasn't critical, but it was seriously unpleasant. With difficulty, I got to my feet anyway. And he… was just walking toward me as if out for a stroll, wearing that terrifying smile.
"Ha ha, you're tough… I'll say it one last time. Find the monster cell in this mess and devour it. I won't ask again."
I see… so the games are finally over now?
I silently took my stance, doing my best to ignore the pain in my damaged body, and took another deep breath. The breathing technique had helped me narrow the gap between us, but that was all. My attacks were still almost useless… which meant I'd have to survive…
The next instant, Goketsu loomed right in front of me. I'd run out of time to think up any kind of plan; all that was left was to rely on my skills. This time, at least, I saw his strike. Swinging his leg, the monster threw a feint, and when I jumped, he immediately struck with his hand, this time for real.
His massive fist slammed straight into me. Only a Mountain Stream Fist technique, used just in time, saved me from death and helped me redirect the bulk of the energy.
Flying into the distance, somewhere toward the center of the city, and seeing the sheer scale of destruction Goketsu had caused with nothing but the aftershock of his blow, I clearly understood that he wasn't invincible after all. Monstrously powerful? Yes. The scariest monster I'd ever faced? Without a doubt. Stronger than me by at least a couple of heads? That too. But his strength still had a limit. What's more, I could feel out where it was… which meant… let's gamble!
The moment I finally crashed to the ground, Goketsu vanished from my perception again and appeared right in front of me, already raising his fist to strike. This time, I didn't try to minimize the damage to my body, or avoid it altogether. Instead, I put everything I had into staying where I was, turning half-sideways. And when the monster's huge fist slammed into me from one side, I let all of its force burst into my body, pass through it, and then exit from the other side as my own strike.
Goketsu crashed to the ground, while I remained standing. Setting aside the fact that after a feint like that my bones and internal organs were in terrible shape, it was a success.
The move from the Whirlwind Fist style that I'd performed was a basic one. The only catch was that it assumed the opponent it was used against could be stronger than the user by two times, three at most. And Goketsu… well, even now it was hard for me to gauge his strength.
"Good technique." The voice of the monster, already rising to his feet, was murderously calm. Frankly, it scared the crap out of me…
The next instant, the monster's blows rained down on me one after another. Left, right, above, behind. I was physically incapable of deflecting even half of them. But now, even though a bloody haze covered my eyes, I could see… I could see his movements! Which meant I could dodge them.
Seizing the moment, and knowing perfectly well that I couldn't keep running forever, I performed the full-redirection move again. This time, Goketsu's face twisted in pain for the first time. But… it was still not enough! Considering our speed, hardly more than a minute could have passed in the real world, and I could barely stay on my feet. Meanwhile, my opponent, though I'd managed to land a couple of hits, hadn't gotten so much as a scratch on his spiky hide.
I'm burning out too fast. A little more and I'll just collapse…
Breathing heavily and struggling to focus on my enemy's attacks, I smiled weakly to myself.
And if my senses weren't deceiving me, I'd stopped getting stronger. Well, that was to be expected. Growth like that in the middle of a fight couldn't go on forever. Every creature has a limit… and I seemed to have reached mine… but… was that really true?
I jumped back, watching a new blow from that enormous leg rushing toward me, and clearly realized, or rather felt, that if I redirected it back, I would definitely cross the line of what I could endure in accumulated damage and wounds. Simply put, I would die. In that very moment, facing inevitable death, my mind involuntarily replayed my journey through all kinds of dojos, before I'd settled on my three main styles. Yes, all the other martial arts had been so mediocre in execution that I'd taken only their most outstanding parts, supplementing my basic skills. But what if I took only the idea from them and brought it to something worthwhile? I was a martial arts genius, after all! And when would I ever pull something like this off, if not now? There simply wouldn't be another chance…
At the moment Goketsu's foot slammed into my long-suffering body, which could barely stay upright, I finally found what I was looking for. A way to avoid death had been found… a new form of technique, one that didn't even have a name, was invented and executed by me on the first try, almost perfectly.
Instead of opposing my energy to the hostile energy as I usually did, or using it to "catch" and "redirect," I abandoned every attempt at resistance. If anything, the energy that poured out of my body was so "relaxed" and "light" that it was as if it didn't exist at all.
So when the monster's foot met my body, it felt no resistance. My body moved freely along with the blow, so I flew backward and upward, and all the energy aimed at me simply flowed around me, with nothing to meet. Without dealing me any damage, it dispersed, destroying a city block somewhere behind my back.
To put it in comparison, it was like an ordinary person's fist meeting a feather drifting through the air. No matter how much force was put into that punch, the feather would only fly away, and hardly take any damage…
That's it! The perfect, fully defensive technique! A crooked smile crossed my badly beaten face. Maybe I've hit my ceiling, but that doesn't mean I can't get stronger! All I have to do is perfect every halfway interesting style I've ever seen!
I stopped maintaining my new technique, tumbled in the air, and only just managed to use it again to avoid another blow from Goketsu. Now the big guy wasn't even trying to taunt me. He was taking this battle seriously. Maybe that was exactly why his upward side kick was so powerful that even though I'd gone relaxed and light again, as if weighing nothing at all, I still felt it, even if I took no damage…
Flung high into the sky, I returned my energy to its normal state and landed on the roof of one of the skyscrapers that was still standing and more or less intact, then rushed toward my enemy. The style I could use to hurt him was already forming in my head. Fairly simple, but capable of being effective.
In the whole time we'd been fighting, I hadn't managed to break through the monster's hide. But from my experience in my hero days, I knew that guys like this were often far less tough on the inside. So all I had to do was stop banging against the wall and strike straight inside!
Crashing down on my huge opponent from above, I barely managed to dodge his counterattack and hit him in the shoulder. My fist struck his tough, spiky skin and stopped… or at least, that's surely how it would have looked to an observer. In reality, the successive back-and-forth movements of my hand were so slight that they were genuinely hard to make out. Even so, they were there, and those movements created a vibration that gradually built up and spread through the monster's gigantic body… but before I could see it through, something enormous slammed into me from the side. It was Goketsu's arm, folded at the elbow and spinning like a propeller, as I understood a moment later.
Not that it mattered anymore. With no time to use the "relaxation" technique, I was forced to defend with a standard Whirlwind Fist technique, which may have spared me instant death but couldn't redirect all of the incoming damage. And in my current state, even that was enough. I crashed to the ground with no strength left and no illusions about what would follow. My eyes were slowly closing on their own.
Well, I don't want to believe it, but this looks like the end. It's a real miracle I even lasted this long against a monster like that. Who knew he was THAT strong… Damn it, no! I almost had it! I just can't die at the hands of some mindless monster! I have to… have to… have to beat him…
Familiar female voices echoed from somewhere far away. I couldn't make out exactly what they were saying. One of the girls sounded extremely worried, and the other terribly irritated… wait a second! Was I… still alive?!
Carefully, afraid of scaring off my hope, I tried to assess the state of my body. Pain, hellish pain everywhere. My limbs were so heavy I couldn't even move them. And my head felt like it was about to explode… but still, overall, I seemed to be alive? Only… those female voices… why the hell were they sounding right inside my head?!
Before I could think it through, I heard a noise right beside me, and then bright sunlight began to blind me even through my closed eyelids.
Damn it…
"Garou!" Fubuki's voice, I could identify her now, reached me through my ears. "Are you alive?!"
"Looks… looks like it." Despite all my efforts, my mouth moved with real difficulty, so instead of articulate words, only a barely distinguishable jumble of sounds escaped me.
With real effort, I finally opened my eyes. Fubuki, leaning over me, was pretty badly wounded, but nothing serious, it seemed. Bending down, she helped me up with a joyful smile.
Hanging on the arms of a fragile girl wasn't something I was used to, but I didn't exactly have a choice. Slowly turning my head, I realized I was on the outskirts of the partially destroyed City C. As far as the eye could see, there were only ruined buildings and nothing else. I hoped the evacuation that had started earlier had been effective… it was strange, though, that I was lying right here. Goketsu and I had fought in the very center of the city, near the stadium…
Above, right over me and Fubuki, who was carrying my body, Tatsumaki was grumbling something displeased. But I simply didn't have the strength to react. Turning my head and glancing over my shoulder, I saw a truly unexpected sight. The opponent I'd just faced and fought to the death… well, considering that I, apparently alive, was now looking at his beheaded body, almost cut in two… in a way, I'd won…
"I'm afraid to ask Tatsumaki, so I'll ask you…" Sighing, I whispered with difficulty to Fubuki, who was carrying me. "Did she have to exert herself even a little to beat him?"
Even though this time my words seemed fairly clear to me and nothing like mumbling, the strange look Fubuki gave me made me doubt that the esper had understood. But before I could repeat my question, the girl put her hand on my forehead, and I felt her power flow through my body, plunging me into sleep.
Hey! What the hell?! Wait, I only just woke up!…
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