Savai was breathing heavily as drops of blood dripped down his arm onto the surface that was covered in Eight's red blood. His body disintegrated into ash within a few seconds and disappeared.
"You keep surviving no matter what I throw at you, grandmaster! Hahaha!
Honestly, it would be annoying if I weren't enjoying myself this much."
Eight was standing some distance away from him.
"That makes the second death. How many do you have left now?"
"You're quick to catch on!
I got six more in me."
"Six… That won't be a problem.
So tell me ******, how many had to die for your so-called immortality?"
Eight stopped laughing. His face was visually dissatisfied with the question.
In a serious tone he asked, "What difference does that make?
In the end, the deaths just become numbers and nothing more.
But if you really want to know, eight. Eight deaths for eight lives."
"Eight, huh! I thought many more would've died for such an unnatural ability to exist.
So what happened to turn you into such a person?"
Eight's look turned annoyed.
"What are you trying to do? Don't tell me you're trying to sympathise with me.
And what would you even achieve with that? Try to find humanity in me? Try to turn me into a better person? So I can live a normal life?"
"Quite the opposite actually. Even if I were to ignore your wrongdoings, I can not allow you to live anymore. It's something of a selfish decision of mine."
Eight smiled and his face filled with joy.
"Hahaha! That's more my style. None of that boring stuff about sympathy or redemption.
Real fun is fighting with all your might till one of us drops dead."
"Then I'll do just that!"
Savai dashed towards Eight. Aura started flowing around arms and legs, covering his hands and feet with small particles of ice.
Eight flicked his fingers. The V-shaped blades of aura appeared to Savai's right.
In a split second he jumped high in the air over the blades.
"Clap!"
The iron hands appeared while he was mid air. The transparent chain shot down and thrust inside the surface. Savai pulled it, landed on the surface and dashed forward.
"If that's what you want then…"
The screeching sound followed as eight aimed his fist at the incoming Savai.
"Aura Shield!"
A cylindrical wall of ice appeared around Savai.
"SHATTER!"
Eight's punch connected with the wall and the blow sent the ice flying towards Savai. He leaned back and dodged the force of blow. He formed a fist and the screeching sound followed.
Eight saw the punch coming towards his face and leaned his body back to dodge.
Savai retracted his punch, dashed behind eight and jumped over him from the right hand side.
Eight rotated his body counter-clockwise to face Savai and moved his palms to clap.
Savai landed on the ground and yanked his right fist forward aggressively.
"Clap!" Iron hands didn't appear.
Behind Savai, the blue chain appeared, revealing it to be still stuck in the surface behind Eight.
The chain had wrapped around his neck and the pull from Savai had lunged the edges inside his neck and ripped it in instantaneously.
Eight's body turned to ash.
"That's three, Grandmaster! At this rate you might end up actually killing me," said a voice from some distance away.
As Savai's head turned back. An eerie sound of blazingly accelerating objects followed a gentle sound of flick. The pure aura blades rammed through and broke the ground, covering it with a cloud of dust.
Eight smiled a bit but his body moved to the right on its own. He raised his arm up ready to flick, a screeching sound rang in his right ear and before he could move into a defensive position…
"Thud!!"
It hit his right arm, the impact exploded the arm clean off.
Eight smirked.
"More!"
Savai was visibly angry, the hit had injured his fist. The blood was dripping down as his breathing got even heavier.
The screeching noise emerged from his right.
Smoky aura flowed around his right fist covering it in freezing particles that stopped the bleeding and turned his hand slightly pale and frozen.
Savai leaned back, as his body bent downwards his right arm swung back.
The punch missed Savai.
He moved his arm forward and thrust his right hand palm straight ahead hitting Eight's abdomen, leaving behind a snow-like handprint.
Eight smirked.
"He comes another one!"
His right fist, healed, was charging straight for Savai's head. The screeching sound followed.
"Thud!!!"
"SHATTER!"
The ice wall appeared again. The blow annihilated the wall. As eight adjusted his footing, he was nothing but broken pieces of ice and white surface.
Where'd he go?
Eight shaked his head around to find Savai.
"Clap!"
Savai's hands were pressed together as he was standing some distance behind Eight.
Slowly, the hands opened revealing blue coloured aura that looked like multiple stands of threads connected together.
The hands grabbed both ends, and with full strength of arms, Savai pulled.
"Shinny!" uttered Eight subconsciously, as the light reflected from the blue rope.
It was sudden but it looked as though time had slowed down. From the spot of the handprint, two blue coloured rotating circular-shaped disks made of ice appeared. The inner circle was smooth while the outer edges were a sharp continuous zigzag pattern.
The disks rotated in opposite directions and the movement of rotation widened the gap inside the disks. Grown enormous within a moment, the rotating disks gashed Eight's abdomen splitting his body into two pieces.
His body turned into ash, revealing him standing behind it.
"Ruthless! That's the only way to describe your style, Grandmaster!"
"You're no fairy-tale either!" said Savai, who was barely standing.
His left arm, covered in dark spots formed by frozen wounds that didn't completely healed and right hand almost frozen, had turned pale. His accelerated breathing was exhaling cloud of visible mist.
"Looks like you need to catch your breath!"
"Huff.. Huff.."
Eight looked up, ran his fingers through his hair.
"Isn't this just the best feeling in the world, Grandmaster?
Just two people giving it their all out. Doing their best to elevate such a magnificent yet rare fight."
Savai stood in silence.
"This moment, these moves and the outcome. None of it will ever repeat again in the future.
We're the most alive in this moment. Isn't this just the greatest feeling?"
"That.. may be.. the case from your perspective.. but I'm having a hard time."
Eight's eyes were staring at Savai but he did not attack. He slowly started walking in a circle, Savai moved the opposite while keeping his focus on him.
This is strange. This feeling…
"Have you ever thought of immortality, grandmaster?" asked Eight.
The way he keeps evolving mid-battle…
"Ha ha! I'm a selfish person, ******. These few years that thought has crossed my mind far too many times. Huff.. Huff.."
He's being honest. No matter when he's fighting or just exchanging casual words. He's…
"I'm curious. If you could be immortal but your life as you know it, would become unchallenging to the point of nothing but stale boredom, would you choose it?"
"Immortality is not something that you can choose for yourself.
I'd say it's quite the opposite. Immortality chooses you.
My master is someone who was chosen by it. But he worked his entire life to achieve it."
His master? Didn't he already…
Savai's breathing slowed down. He looked down with gloomy eyes at his palm thinking of something closed it with a sigh of relief. He said, "As fate would have it, he chose me to be the carrier of his immortality. Someone like me…
Sometimes I question myself, but in the end, I'm nothing but happier to carry his memories."
What is he talking about? I'm sure his master died around 50 years ago.
"What do you mean…"
"You see ******, my master was a solitary person. He never got married or had a family.
He spent his entire life at Mt. Izahan and I was the only person to have known him for so long.
All his life. His lived experience. His memory. I, as the closest witness to those moments, carry his existence with me."
Both came to a stop. Savai raised his fist forward and said, "I was chosen the moment he took me as a disciple, to be the one who immortalises his existence.
You see, immortal isn't someone who can come back from the dead. Immortal is someone who lives forever, even after death and it can only be achieved through the people who chose to carry his memory.
Till the day they die."
The words of Savai had hit Eight like a gust of wind. While he was standing still, his mind was running rampant with feelings that he hadn't felt in a long time.
There's no doubt about it. His words hit as hard as his attacks. This feeling…
This feeling inside me. Had I forgotten it or did I never felt it to begin with.
This feeling.
It is.. Envy.
"Ha ha ha! You have a way about what you chose to say, grandmaster. So you're saying that someone can be immortal without defeating death…"
Pure dark aura started to flow down Eight's arms towards his hands. He quickly raised both his arms up in the air.
"Clap!"
His hands formed a gesture, while his thumbs and first two fingers were raised straight, his last two fingers were bent down. His hands were covered with aura shaped like flames. His face was glowing bright with excitement.
"I'll accept your definition…
If you can prove it true—
—Kyomu Arts, Final Form: Blood Moon"
A suppressed sound of fast moving wind followed a loud shuttle noise. The white room was gone entirely, in its place was endless void of nothing but darkness. Savai, who was barely standing straight, now was falling down at a rapid speed with no surface in sight…