Mikan moved.
The nearest Kinzoku Apprentice blinked as she suddenly sprinted toward the western wall.
"Lady Mikan?!"
She ignored him.
The reinforced staircase leading toward the upper battlements was already crowded with soldiers and artillery crews, so Mikan didn't bother with it. She ran straight toward the wall, jumped onto a stack of supply crates, kicked off the top, caught one of the support beams several meters above the ground, and effortlessly swung herself upward.
"What the—?!"
"Lady Mikan!"
Several Kinzoku Martial Apprentices spun toward her in alarm.
"YOUR LEG IS INJURED!"
"WAIT!"
Mikan planted one foot against the vertical surface as ki surged instinctively through her leg.
BOOM!
She shot upward far harder than she intended, far above the walls.
"Huh?"
Her eyes widened as she fell.
"LADY MIKAN!"
The panicked shouts from below rapidly fell away as she caught the edge of the battlement with both hands, swung herself over it, and landed in a crouch beside an artillery crew.
For a second, everyone stared at her.
Mikan slowly straightened.
"...I'm fine."
Below, the Kinzoku Apprentices were filled with excitement, as it seems she has already recovered and was even capable such maneuvers that they cheered her on.
Mikan ignored them and turned back toward the western gate.
The artillery crew beside her exchanged looks.
"...Carry on," she said.
The artillerymen exchanged looks.
Then wisely returned to loading their cannon.
Mikan hurried toward the edge of the wall.
Below, the western gate stood completely open.
The last members of the interception force were already passing through it.
Mikan's eyes narrowed.
The Kabuto Giant moved with the other Sekigaharan Apprentices as though he belonged there.
Nobody stopped him, nor questioned him... it's like they don't even see him.
Moments later, he disappeared into the jungle with the rest.
Mikan gripped the edge of the wall.
"Merun..."
The armor hid everything... and the man's size wasn't quite right either. He was massive, his muscles bulging, his posture different, his gait heavier, and he carried a greatsword despite Merun having about as much need for a weapon.
But that ki...
She had felt his ki directly when he taught them.
There was no fucking way she was mistaking that.
Merun had warned her before she left.
Be careful if you encounter a Martial Apprentice named Rui Quarrier.
At the time, she hadn't questioned him too much. Merun knew strange things. He always had, and after learning exactly where he'd come from, Mikan had accepted that there were probably going to be even more strange things about her brother that she didn't understand. It was part of being an Alien... or Saiyan, as he called it.
But now he had disguised himself, entered the Severian Plateau, followed her warparty without telling her.
Why?
If he gets caught, all the participating countries might go on an all-out war with Sekigahara!
Mikan's fingers tightened against the wall.
"What the hell are you doing...?"
Far beyond the fortifications, the forest suddenly erupted.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Mikan's head snapped toward the east.
The distant canopy trembled as enormous bursts of force ripped through the jungle. Trees shook. Birds and strange dungeon creatures scattered into the sky while flashes of light appeared between the vegetation.
The two forces had finally met.
Soldiers rushed toward observation posts. Officers raised binoculars and specialized sensory instruments while Martial Apprentices stationed on reserve climbed higher to get a better view.
"Visual confirmation!"
"Interception force has engaged!"
"Range?"
"Just outside our territory!"
"Good."
That was the entire reason Sekigahara had sent sixty-three of its strongest Martial Apprentices outside the fortress.
The Serevian Pact guaranteed their core territory, but guarantees meant little once foreign Martial Artists were already standing on top of your walls. Any battle between more than a hundred high-grade Apprentices would cause tremendous collateral damage, and Sekigahara had spent far too much manpower, wealth, and Ferendil Iron establishing this foothold to let Kandria turn it into a battlefield.
So they would meet them outside to minimize territorial damage... and crush them there.
Mikan narrowed her eyes as the battle became visible through gaps in the jungle.
The first attacks had already been launched before either force entered close range.
Compressed air, thrown weapons, projectiles, shockwaves.
Flashes of stranger techniques she couldn't identify from this distance.
Dozens of attacks crossed the space between the two formations.
BOOM!
They collided almost directly between them, tearing apart trees and dirt high into the air.
Neither side stopped.
Sixty-three Sekigaharan Martial Apprentices charged through the debris.
The Kandrians charged straight back.
BAM!
BOOM!
CLANG!
The two forces smashed together.
Trees snapped beneath missed strikes. Earth cracked. Shockwaves ripped leaves from branches while more than a hundred high-grade Martial Apprentices immediately began separating from the initial collision.
Remaining clustered together was suicide.
At this level, a missed attack could kill someone else's opponent.
Or someone else's ally.
Within moments, what had begun as two organized formations dissolved into dozens of smaller battles spreading across hundreds of meters.
"Third squad, push north!"
"Don't let them through!"
"Keep them outside the border!"
Sekigaharan officers shouted orders from the battlements, though there was only so much command could accomplish once Martial Artists began fighting at close range.
That was expected.
Sekigahara hadn't sent weaklings.
Every one of the sixty-three had earned their place.
Veterans.
Clan elites.
High-grade Martial Apprentices who had survived the Serevian Plateau long enough to reach this fortress while weaker martial artists were gradually filtered out.
For the first few moments, there was no obvious advantage.
A Kandrian was hurled through three trees.
A Sekigaharan crashed into the earth hard enough to create a crater.
Two fighters exchanged blows faster than Mikan could comfortably follow.
Another Sekigaharan released a barrage of blade-like projectiles, only for his Kandrian opponent to twist between them and close the distance.
It was chaos.
But organized chaos.
An even battle.
Mikan felt her blood begin to boil just watching it.
Then—
BOOOOOOM!
Something screamed over the jungle.
Mikan looked up.
A massive projectile crossed the sky, passing completely over the Martial Artists and straight toward the fortress.
"INCOMING!"
"BRACE!"
Mikan's eyes widened.
BOOOOM!
The eastern wall shook beneath her feet.
Ferendil Iron groaned as the projectile detonated against the fortification, throwing smoke, fragments, and sparks into the air.
Several soldiers stumbled but Mikan barely moved.
"What the hell?!"
"Siege bombardment!"
"Enemy artillery confirmed!"
More distant flashes appeared through the jungle.
Behind the Kandrian Martial Apprentices, enormous armored vehicles were emerging into firing positions.
Large, Falcon-class siege tanks.
Thirty of them.
Their cannons rose.
Mikan's eyes widened.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The sky filled with artillery.
"TAKE COVER!"
Shells screamed over the battlefield.
Yet none fell among the Martial Apprentices.
Mikan noticed it almost immediately, as did Sekigaharan command.
"They're targeting the fortifications!"
Of course.
At these distances, neither side's artillery possessed enough precision to distinguish friend from enemy inside a battlefield containing more than a hundred Martial Apprentices moving at absurd speeds.
Firing into the melee would be idiotic.
But the fortress? The fortress wasn't moving. Sekigahara's core base represented an enormous investment of military resources. Walls. Supplies. Cannons. Vehicles. Medical facilities. Non-combat Personnel.
Destroying those assets was worth almost as much as killing Martial Artists.
Maybe more.
"ALL BATTERIES!"
A commander's voice thundered across the wall.
"RETURN FIRE!"
The Sekigaharan cannons answered.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The entire eastern fortification came alive.
Heavy Sekigaharan cannons elevated above the wall and hurled their payloads over the battling Martial Artists, targeting the Kandrian siege tanks beyond them.
The Kandrians answered immediately with a volley of their own.
For several seconds, the sky above the battlefield became its own war.
Shells crossed in opposite directions while beneath them more than a hundred Martial Apprentices tried to best each other.
A Kandrian shell struck the Ferendil Iron wall.
BOOOOM!
A Sekigaharan shell slammed into the earth beside a Falcon-class tank.
KABOOM!
The armored vehicle disappeared inside dirt and smoke.
"Adjust three degrees!"
"Battery four, fire!"
"Reload!"
"INCOMING!"
Mikan grinned despite herself.
"This is insane."
She had seen battles before, but this was of a completely different scale.
This wasn't a lowly clan dispute or a handful of Martial Artists settling grudges.
Four nations had poured resources into the Serevian Dungeon, and Kandria had just brought a small army to Sekigahara's doorstep.
And somewhere inside all of that, Mikan's eyes searched the battlefield until they landed on a specific man.
"Yoshimoto!"
Even among dozens of high-grade Martial Apprentices, he wasn't difficult to find. The man was simply too damn big. His purple dougi flashed between shattered trees as a Kandrian rushed him from the side, using the chaos of the battlefield to close the distance before Yoshimoto could properly turn.
Yoshimoto planted one foot into the dirt and inhaled.
His chest expanded while his shoulders and arms moved together, drawing the surrounding air toward him. What he had demonstrated to her earlier had been a small sphere compressed above his palm. This time, the air across several meters visibly warped.
The Kandrian saw it too.
He accelerated.
Yoshimoto thrust both palms forward.
BOOOOOOM!
The air detonated.
Trees bent violently away from him. Leaves ripped free by the thousands, branches snapped, and a wave of dirt rolled across the jungle floor as the Kandrian disappeared inside the blast.
A heartbeat later, his body came flying out.
He smashed through the crown of a small tree, tore through the branches of another, and finally struck the ground hard enough to bounce.
Mikan's mouth opened.
"...Holy shit."
She looked at Yoshimoto, then briefly at her own hand.
That little wind ball he'd shown her earlier had been bullshit.
This was the real thing.
The Kandrian groaned and forced himself back onto one knee, only to find Yoshimoto already facing him with another distorted mass of air gathering between his palms.
Mikan slowly grinned.
"Okay."
Now she understood why he was "Grade Ten" an Apex!
"Now I really want to fight you."
Yoshimoto's opponent apparently didn't share her enthusiasm. The Kandrian immediately abandoned his direct approach and moved sideways, trying to circle around the enormous Sekigaharan while keeping several trees between them.
Yoshimoto turned with him.
The Kandrian darted right.
Yoshimoto's torso followed.
He suddenly reversed left, using a tree trunk to hide the change in direction before exploding forward.
Yoshimoto fired.
BOOM!
The entire section of jungle in front of him bent under the blast.
The Kandrian tried to escape sideways, but the attack covered too much ground. The edge of the compressed wind caught him before he cleared it and ripped him off his feet again.
"Ha!"
Mikan slapped a hand against the top of the wall.
A nearby artilleryman glanced over.
Her smile immediately disappeared.
"What?"
The man nervously looked back toward his cannon.
"..."
Mikan returned her attention to Yoshimoto.
He wasn't chasing.
At first she wondered why. The Kandrian had been thrown far enough that Yoshimoto could have rushed after him and pressed the advantage, but the answer became obvious when his opponent tried approaching again.
Yoshimoto inhaled.
The Kandrian stopped.
For several seconds, neither moved.
Then the Kandrian backed away.
Mikan's grin returned.
Yoshimoto didn't need to chase anyone.
His opponent needed to reach him.
That was his style!
Yoshimoto's Martial Art turned the distance between them into a weapon. The closer someone tried to get, the less time they had before several tons of compressed atmosphere came crashing into them. Moving around the attack wasn't much better. Its range was enormous, and Yoshimoto could change his aim right up until the instant he released it.
The Kandrian finally retreated into another fight.
Yoshimoto let him go.
There were more important targets everywhere.
He turned, took another breath, and sent a blast across the flank of a Sekigaharan who was being pressed by two Kandrians. One of the attackers noticed in time and escaped. The other was caught across the side and thrown through the jungle, giving the Sekigaharan enough room to recover.
Yoshimoto raised an arm.
"Reform on the left!"
Three nearby Sekigaharans immediately responded.
Mikan watched them close around the opening.
A shell screamed overhead.
BOOOOM!
The Ferendil Iron beneath her boots shook again. Smoke rolled upward from another section of the wall while soldiers dragged an injured loader away from a damaged cannon.
"Replacement crew!"
"Already moving!"
"Battery six is still operational!"
Mikan barely glanced at them as her attention was focused on the battlefield.
Yoshimoto was good.
Really good.
He wasn't simply throwing huge attacks around because he could. His blasts were being aimed through openings between Sekigaharan fighters, forcing Kandrians away from allies without catching his own people in the attack. Whenever an enemy tried to exploit the time he needed to breathe and compress another mass of air, Yoshimoto either shifted position or met them with the absurd physical strength hidden beneath that ridiculous purple dougi.
One Kandrian actually managed to reach him.
Mikan leaned forward.
The man ducked beneath Yoshimoto's arm and drove a fist directly into his ribs.
BAM!
Yoshimoto's torso barely shifted.
The Kandrian's eyes widened as Yoshimoto looked down at him.
"...Oh."
The Kandrian tried to retreat but a huge hand caught his shoulder.
Yoshimoto twisted and hurled him through a tree.
Mikan barked out a laugh.
"Yeah, I definitely want to try him!"
The artilleryman beside her slowly turned his head.
Mikan paused.
"...To fight."
He nodded very carefully.
Another explosion saved him from answering.
This one didn't come from the fortress.
A Sekigaharan Martial Apprentice shot across the battlefield and smashed through a tree hard enough to split the trunk.
Mikan's smile faded.
She searched for whoever had thrown him.
It was a masked Kandrian stood several dozen meters away.
He wasn't particularly large. Compared to Yoshimoto, he looked almost ordinary. His build was leaner, and there was no enormous weapon or obvious technique announcing his presence.
A Shinken Martial Artist attacked him with a roundhouse kick.
The Kandrian simply leaned away, the heel passed his face by inches.
His counter landed before the Sekigaharan's foot had returned to the ground.
BAM!
The man flew backward.
Before he could recover, one of the Kandrian siege tanks fired.
The shell hadn't been aimed at him. It was traveling toward the fortress, but the projectile struck the ground close enough that the explosion caught the airborne Sekigaharan and launched him even farther.
Mikan grimaced as he vanished through the undergrowth.
"...That's unfortunate."
The masked Kandrian had already turned away.
A woman from the Kaze clan intercepted him before he could advance any farther. She came in aggressively, opening with two quick strikes before driving her knee toward his abdomen.
He avoided all three without giving up more ground than necessary.
The woman pressed harder as her fist passed his cheek... but his fists struck her ribs.
She recoiled, tried to reset her guard, and caught another jab across the face. Something flashed from his hand on the third strike. Mikan couldn't see what he'd done from this distance, but the woman's shoulder jerked backward as though something had pierced it.
Her balance broke.
The Kandrian's leg swept beneath hers as she fell.
BAM!
A kick caught her across the head before her back touched the dirt and her body went limp.
Mikan stopped smiling.
The masked man didn't spare his unconscious enemy another glance. He stepped over her and continued deeper into the battlefield, his head already turning toward another Sekigaharan.
Mikan narrowed her eyes.
She had watched enough Martial Artists to know what strength looked like. She'd sparred with her Martial Squire sisters often.
Yoshimoto's strength was obvious. His body and Martial Art imposed themselves on everything around him.
This man was different.
Nothing about him seemed overwhelming.
A Sekigaharan speed specialist crossed the battlefield faster than he did. Several fighters nearby were throwing attacks with more destructive power. Yoshimoto could probably launch him through half the jungle if one of those wind blasts connected cleanly.
Yet every person who engaged the masked Kandrian seemed to lose control of the fight within seconds.
Another Sekigaharan came at him from behind, this time, a man from the Oni clan.
The masked fighter ducked beneath the first strike, caught the man's wrist during the follow-through and stepped across his stance. The Sekigaharan's own momentum carried him forward as the Kandrian twisted and pulled.
THUD!
He landed directly on top of the unconscious woman.
Mikan's brow furrowed.
"What kind of Martial Art is that?"
She couldn't understand.
That irritated her more than she expected.
Most Martial Artists revealed themselves once they fought long enough. A defensive fighter gave ground differently from an offensive one. Grapplers hunted for contact. Speed specialists built their entire offense around positioning. Even more complicated Martial Paths tended to leave something recognizable behind.
The masked Kandrian kept changing.
Against a defensive Shinken martial artist, he had waited and countered.
Against the Kaze woman, he had picked apart her offense with short strikes.
Against the third man, he had barely attacked at all. He had simply used the man's own movement to put him on the ground.
His stance changed with each opponent. So did his timing. Even the distance he preferred seemed temporary.
Mikan had an bad feeling.
The masked Kandrian stepped away from the two fallen Sekigaharans.
His head suddenly turned.
Yoshimoto stood several dozen meters away.
One arm was extended toward him.
The air in front of his palm warped.
WHOOSH!
The masked Kandrian vanished from the spot.
A compressed blast tore through where he'd been standing, ripping a trench through the vegetation behind him.
Yoshimoto lowered his hand.
Across from him, the Kandrian slid to a stop.
For several seconds, the battle continued around them.
Martial Apprentices fought through the trees. Shells crossed overhead. Sekigaharan cannons shook the fortress behind Mikan while distant Falcon tanks answered from the east.
Neither man looked away.
Yoshimoto rolled one massive shoulder, then beckoned with his fingers.
The masked Kandrian's posture shifted.
It was small enough that Mikan almost missed it.
His feet changed position. His center of gravity lowered. The loose readiness he'd shown against the others disappeared as his attention settled entirely on the enormous man in purple.
Mikan's fingers curled around the edge of the wall.
Something about him bothered her.
She looked at the mask again.
Kandrian?
High-grade?
Strong enough to tear through several of Sekigahara's elites without slowing down?
And his Martial Art...
Mikan remembered Merun sitting with her before the expedition.
For once, her little brother hadn't been joking.
"Be careful if you encounter a Martial Apprentice named Rui Quarrier."
Her grip tightened.
She had expected someone terrifying.
Someone whose strength would be obvious the moment she saw him.
Instead, she was looking at a man who seemed almost plain until somebody tried to fight him.
Yoshimoto inhaled deeply as a bead of sweat dropped from his temples.
The air around his arms began to distort.
The masked Kandrian stepped forward as his pitch black eyes seemed to swallow the world around him.
It was almost like staring into an abyss.