The two pairs of black eyes remained locked on each other.
The masked Kandrian stood beside Yoshimoto's unconscious body, his raised leg slowly lowering after the greatsword had forced him away. Several meters ahead, Kabuto continued walking through the shattered jungle with the same unhurried pace he'd carried throughout the campaign.
Then he reached the weapon.
His armored fingers closed around the hilt lifted it one-handed, simply holding the weapon beside him, wrist steady, the tip hovering above the ruined earth.
Mikan had already seen Merun carry the massive thing around for days, yet seeing him pull it free with one hand still looked ridiculous.
The greatsword was enormous even for him. Its blade was broad enough to hide most of an ordinary man's torso and long enough that several Sekigaharan Apprentices would have needed both hands merely to swing it properly.
The artillerymen on the walls were surprised.
"He's using that with one hand?!"
"That thing has to weigh more than I do."
Mikan almost snorted.
They had no idea, it must weigh like a toothpick for a Martial Senior like Merun.
After a few moments, a deep voice came from behind the Armored helmet "Come, Kandrian."
The moment Merun shifted his feet, The masked Kandrian immediately drove forward.
He crossed the gap rapidly, clearly unwilling to let another unknown opponent dictate the range after what Yoshimoto had done to him. His fist drove toward Kabuto's exposed side, on the armor straps.
But the Kandria's eyes widened as the greatsword moved just as fast.
CLANG!
Mikan blinked.
For something so large, there was almost no wasted movement.
Kabuto didn't need a wind-up or momentum to hack downward like a giant cleaving strike. He simply turned his wrist and allowed the flat of the blade to catch the incoming forearm at an angle, guiding the punch away from his body. The greatsword continued through the motion without stopping, rotating around his hand before its edge swept toward the masked Kandrian's chest.
The Kandrian hurriedly bent backward, causing the edge to miss him by a few centimeters.
Something black drifted through the air between them.
Mikan narrowed her eyes. "Huh? What was that?"
Merun advanced. The greatsword traced another wide arc effortlessly. His arm followed the sword instead, his steps constantly repositioned his body beneath the weapon's momentum. Each swing flowed naturally into the next, turning what should have been an awkward slab of metal into a strangely graceful type of swordsmanship.
More black specks appeared from his blade.
"Petals?" Mikan's brow tightened.
She'd seen swordsmanship that moved like this before... well, not exactly like this.
The weapon kinda ruined the image comparison, but it kind of reminded her of Inyen's style. Though she fought with a katana and her movements were much smaller, cleaner, designed around a blade she could accelerate in an instant. Merun was swinging a greatsword that looked large enough to cut a horse in half.
Does he even know how to use a sword? Isn't that just a prop?
Still, the way the blade seemed to guide attacks away instead of simply stopping them.
It really reminded her of Big Sister Inyen.
Mikan shook her head.
"No way", Big sister Inyen might beat her to a pulp for such an insult.
Several Kinzoku Apprentices farther along the wall had gone quiet as they observed the hulking man facing Yoshimoto's victor.
Their expressions slowly changed as the fight went on.
The Kandrian slipped under another slash and launched a straight punch toward Merun's exposed ribs, but Merun simply rotated the blade, causing the flat side to slide against the man's forearm before carrying the punch harmlessly past him. Merun quickly pivoted with the movement and brought the sword around again.
Black petals followed the edge.
The Kinzoku Apprentice stiffened.
"Wait... No way!"
The woman beside him looked over.
"What?"
He didn't answer.
Below them, the masked Kandrian retreated from another flowing cut as Merun stepped after him as the sword continued in a circle.
A second slash followed from below, forcing the Kandrian to twist his torso away, as Merun used the returning momentum to bring the greatsword across from the opposite side.
The masked man was quickly backflipped several times without a single strike actually touching him.
The black petals thickened around Merun.
One of the Kinzoku Apprentices finally whispered it.
"Blossoming Blade."
Mikan looked at him.
"What?"
The man looked at her in excitement.
"That's the Matriarch's swordsmanship!"
Several Kinzoku nearby turned immediately.
Their reactions were different from the rest of Sekigahara.
The other clans were impressed by the one-handed greatsword, the fine control and precision with such a massive weapon, and the strange black petals.
The Kinzoku looked disturbed. Excited. Confused.
They knew those moves!
Many had spent years stuck as a Martial Apprentice, watching demonstrations, training beneath instructors who themselves had learned fragments of sword techniques descended from the Iaiashin household. Some had watched their Matriarch fight during ceremonies or clan conflicts.
None of them were worthy of learning the Blossoming Blade... but that didn't mean they couldn't know anything about it.
The masked Kandrian struck again, his footwork immaculately in sync with the strike as he weaved in between to land an uppercut. But Instead of blocking, Merun once again let the side of his sword meet the approaching arm and guided it away in one smooth motion. The Kandrian's fist passed harmlessly beside his helmet while Merun's blade continued forward toward his ribs with tremendous force.
But the masked man twisted just enough for the edge to miss as the air flung him away a few paces as black petals drifted between them.
A Kinzoku woman gripped her sword's handle.
"That's Falling Petal!"
Another shook his head.
"It can't be."
Mikan's gaze returned to Merun.
If he truly knows the Matriarch's Martial Style.... it would make sense why it looked familiar.
Inyen's swordsmanship carried traces of the same foundation because she'd been raised beneath the Iaiashin household. She trained under the Matriarch's tutelage after all. But due to her individuality, made her own version of the Blossoming Blade.
But Mikan still couldn't see what the Kinzoku were seeing. She wasn't a swordsman at the end of the day.
How'd he even learn that? When?
The black petals were pretty, though. Even if they were only an illusion.
"Show-off." She smiled faintly.
———
Originally, Merun hadn't planned on doing anything.
He knew this battle.
Or at least, he was supposed to.
The Kandrian assault on Sekigahara's fortress had been one of the many conflicts the MC Rui fought through during the Serevian Dungeon War. Merun remembered enough of it to know the broad outcome, which was precisely why he'd intended to stay out of the way. Rui would fight the premier Grade-10 wind-manipulating Sekigaharan, overcome the terrible matchup after adapting to his Martial Art, and leave him unconscious before moving on.
That was what was supposed to happen.
So when Yoshimoto fell, Merun hadn't moved.
But then Rui raised his leg.
Merun immediately realized something was wrong.
Rui Quarrier was going to kill him!
That hadn't happened in the novel.
Merun didn't know why. Maybe something he'd done had already changed the circumstances surrounding the battle. Maybe Rui had developed differently. Maybe Merun's memory was missing some tiny detail after all these years.
It didn't matter.
The instant Rui went for the killing blow, Merun's plan to remain a spectator went straight into the trash.
He threw the greatsword with a tiny sliver of his strength.
And now here he was.
Merun pulled the massive blade free from the earth with one hand and glanced toward the unconscious Yoshimoto behind Rui.
Saving him didn't exactly weigh heavily on Merun's conscience either.
The guy was actually pretty cool.
From what he saw in the fortress, Yoshimoto had turned out to be surprisingly charming for a noble heir. He'd openly disagreed with the political bullshit keeping the Kinzoku away from the fighting, treated Mikan like a legitimate rival instead of looking down on her, and even intended to investigate the treatment the Kinzoku had from command once the battle ended.
The bastard even managed to make Mikan laugh. That alone earned him points.
Dear Brother Hideyoshi, you've got yourself a worthy rival.
He'd have to tell his brother about Yoshimoto later.
Merun returned his attention to Rui.
Since he'd already interfered, he might as well make the most of it.
His fingers tightened around the greatsword as he remembered the colossal steel tree he'd seen within Master's Martial Embodiment, its branches covered in blood-red cherry blossoms. Understanding that vision had given Merun more than another glimpse into who Itahaya Iaiashin truly was as a Martial Artist.
For a moment, he'd understood her martial arts. Her swordsmanship.
Her treasured Blossoming Blade Style.
Merun hadn't spent years learning those forms beneath her instruction. He hadn't repeated them tens of thousands of times until they became instinct. What he possessed was something stranger: the understanding he'd stolen from that brief moment of clarity, combined with a Saiyan body and mind capable of reproducing what he'd seen with terrifying speed.
He'd already managed to manifest it once, with black petals instead of crimson.
Now Rui Quarrier was standing directly in front of him.
Merun raised the greatsword with one hand.
Well.
There were worse people to practice on.
.
.
.
For the first several exchanges, Merun's greatsword controlled the space almost perfectly. Rui was fast enough to avoid the blade, yet every dodge forced him farther away or pushed him toward the next cut. Even with Merun wielding the massive weapon one-handed, there were surprisingly few openings between the flowing strikes.
That was intentional. Merun was restricting everything he could safely restrict: strength, speed, acceleration, even the amount of pressure escaping from the blade. Everything had been strangled down until his physical output resembled something a Martial Apprentice could reasonably produce.
After all, Merun was an expert in Suppression.
Overwhelming Suppression!
His technique, though? No way.
He wasn't going to intentionally butcher Master's swordsmanship just to sell the disguise. If anything, this was the perfect opportunity to practice it against somebody who could actually challenge the technique itself.
And who could find the flaws in his swordsmanship better than Rui Quarrier?
He was the protagonist of Martial Unity.
Rui was a Martial Artist reincarnated from Earth whose entire Martial Path revolved around adaptation. He studied his opponents while fighting them, gathering information from every movement, every attack and every reaction until he understood their Martial Art well enough to construct a fighting style specifically designed to counter it.
At the heart of that Martial Path was the VOID Algorithm.
Merun had read about it for hundreds of chapters. He'd watched Rui struggle to develop it back on Earth, and once he reincarnated, was able to finally use it, improve it and slowly turn it into one of the most terrifying weapons a Martial Artist could possess.
The longer a fight lasted, the more information Rui gathered. Habits became patterns. Patterns became predictions. Strengths became weaknesses to exploit.
Eventually, fighting Rui stopped feeling like fighting another Martial Artist.
It became like fighting someone who was slowly building the perfect opponent for you while you were still fighting him.
And now Merun was seeing it happen from the other side.
He couldn't have asked for a better training partner for his Blossoming Blade.
Merun was invincible at the Apprentice Realm anyway. Rui couldn't meaningfully threaten his life, which meant he had the luxury of observing the VOID Algorithm himself while allowing Rui enough time and information to work.
So Merun restrained his power and let his technique speak for itself.
Speaking of...
Rui began adapting.
His stance tightened as his hands rose toward his face, elbows drawing closer to his ribs while his shoulders hunched slightly forward. His feet became lighter beneath him, his weight constantly shifting as he bounced in place.
Merun's eyes widened behind his helmet.
Boxing?!
He nearly said it aloud, which would've been fucking stupid.
Merun swung. Rui bent at the knees and weaved beneath the greatsword, his torso drawing a tight curve under the passing blade before he rose on Merun's opposite side at the exact moment the sword passed overhead as black petals bloomed on the tip of his blade.
THUD!
A fist buried itself beneath Merun's ribs.
Merun reversed the greatsword, but Rui's head immediately dipped again. His shoulders rolled beneath the returning edge, his body rising on the other side as another punch struck Merun's abdomen.
BAM!
Every dodge carried Rui directly into another strike. There was almost no separation between offense and defense anymore. The moment Merun's sword passed him, Rui's hips and shoulders were already positioned for the counter. He didn't need to stop, reset, then attack. The defensive movement itself loaded the next punch.
Merun knew exactly what it reminded him of.
Dempsey Roll!?
The footwork wasn't identical, and Rui certainly wasn't blindly repeating the same figure-eight rhythm. The depth and direction of every weave changed according to the path of Merun's greatsword. Sometimes Rui moved his head by centimeters. Other times he dropped so deeply that the enormous blade passed over his entire upper body before he rolled upward into another counter.
But the resemblance was unmistakable.
Of all the things Merun had expected to experience after being reborn on Gaia, A fellow earthling using something reminiscent of old-school boxing against his stolen Blossoming Blade had definitely not been one of them.
He desperately wanted to laugh, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.
Merun swept the greatsword horizontally. Rui weaved beneath it and rose with a left hand buried into the liver, expecting the same effect it did on Yoshimoto, but to his surprise, Merun was unfazed, reversing his sword.
Rui rolled the opposite way, and a right hook hammered his ribs. When Merun brought the blade down vertically, Rui slipped barely outside its path and stepped inside with a short punch beneath the breastplate.
Each strike landed cleanly.
More importantly, they were getting better.
Merun noticed the changes after only a handful of impacts. The first punches had been conventional enough, though ridiculously precise, targeting the liver, ribs, sternum and gaps in his armor. Then Rui's Martial Art began appearing inside the boxing.
The contact angles changed. Some punches no longer met Merun's body squarely, instead sliding slightly across the surface at impact. Others carried a strange vibration that attempted to transmit the force beyond his exterior defenses and into the organs beneath.
Merun recognized that one immediately.
Reverberating Lance.
A punch landed directly over his liver and the vibration penetrated through the armor and flesh. It was actually a really good hit. Against another Apprentice, it would've been fucking horrible.
Against Merun, who had faced vastly stronger Vibration technique fighting Namgung's Hwayeon Namgung, it was nothing.
But he carefully staggered half a step anyway.
Gotta sell it.
Rui followed with another punch to the ribs.
THUD!
Pain flashed across Rui's face instead.
His fist snapped backward.
Merun noticed immediately, his eyes dropping toward the hand as Rui flexed his fingers. The knuckles were already beginning to redden.
Vajra Tyrant Style: Sanchin.
Merun had maintained it beneath the armor from the moment the fight began. Rui was finding his vitals just fine, and Merun wasn't stopping him from landing because properly reacting to everything would require speed and perception far beyond the level he was pretending to possess.
Unfortunately for Rui, successfully bypassing his armor and making a direct strike to Merun's skin was becoming its own problem.
Rui flexed his fingers once, raised his hands again and immediately came forward.
Merun was impressed with his tenacity.
You're seriously going to keep punching me?
Of course he was.
The greatsword swept toward Rui's head. Rui rolled underneath and struck the ribs, his fist recoiling slightly before Merun reversed the blade, using another Falling Petal. Another weave carried Rui to the opposite side, where another punch struck the abdomen and made his fingers twitch again.
Merun couldn't help the thought that followed.
Brother, you're going to break your hands.
His body was at the Martial Senior state, after all.
Apparently, Rui reached the same conclusion.
His next punch changed.
Rather than driving directly into Merun's torso, Rui struck at an angle and allowed the fist to travel partially across the ribs. The force still entered Merun's body, but Rui's knuckles didn't collide with the Sanchin structure as brutally.
Merun's amusement faded into interest.
Another strike came from a different angle. Rui's knuckles found a softer gap between the armor plates, and Reverberating Lance carried the impact inward rather than wasting everything against the exterior.
Even Hwayeon didn't find a way to lessen the pain of Sanchin until she was pushed to the brink.
Though it was still nowhere near enough to hurt Merun, but the recoil against Rui's hand was smaller.
Rui was adapting an offense against him.
A grin spread beneath Merun's helmet.
What about this?
His wrist turned and the greatsword accelerated into another Blossoming Blade sequence. Rui weaved beneath the first cut, only for Merun to alter the trajectory halfway through and send the enormous blade flowing upward.
Rui twisted his shoulder.
SHNK!
A shallow cut opened across it.
Black petals scattered between them as Merun advanced, the greatsword flowing from the rising cut into a series of circular slashes. One path overlapped another, then another, until the space around Rui began shrinking.
Blossoming Blade: Thorn Basket.
This technique was his favorite among his Master's Blossoming Blade style, overwhelming the opponent and suppressing them within the basket.
Calling this a proper Thorn Basket would probably make Master beat him over the head. The sword pressure was pathetic compared to hers, deliberately suppressed until the overlapping fields remained within Apprentice-level output.
The structure, however, was correct.
That mattered to Merun.
Rui stepped left and found a curved line of pressure occupying the space. He changed direction, only for another slash to close the path. He ducked beneath the next one and tried entering Merun's reach, but Merun rotated his wrist and brought the greatsword around again.
Rui twisted.
SHNK!
Another shallow cut opened across his shoulder.
Merun's eyes lit up.
Holy shit, this is fun.
Rui backed away, but his eyes never stopped moving. They tracked the sword, Merun's shoulder, his feet, his wrist, then returned to the blade.
Merun could practically watch the data being collected.
That only made him want to give him more.
He stepped.
Blossoming Blade: Sword Step.
Merun disappeared from Rui's front and reappeared at his flank, carefully throttling the acceleration until the movement remained plausible for a high-grade Apprentice.
Rui still reacted.
The greatsword moved into Blossoming Blade: Bloom, its flat prepared to redirect any desperate counter while the edge carved through the opening.
Rui escaped by centimeters by pushing in as he readied a haymaker.
The greatsword met the incoming arm at an angle rather than stopping it. Merun let the blade glide alongside the strike, guiding Rui's momentum harmlessly past his body before continuing the sword's motion toward Rui's ribs.
Falling Petal.
Rui twisted away as more black petals drifted between them.
Merun almost forgot he was supposed to be undercover.
Okay. One more. Last one.
Merun's posture suddenly collapsed.
His shoulders sagged, his knees buckled, and even the greatsword dipped toward the ground as though the armored giant had finally reached his limit. At the same time, his presence seemed to crumble with him, strength and awareness fading so abruptly that, for a fraction of a second, Merun looked utterly exhausted and barely capable of remaining on his feet.
Rui took the opening immediately, his weight shifted onto one leg as the other snapped upward.
Merun recognized the motion before the kick had even properly begun as things were slow to his eyes.
Stinger!
Rui's leg shot toward his neck, but it wasn't an ordinary kick. His foot was aligned almost like the tip of a spear, with the big toe extended at the very end of the attack. Merun knew that toe had been conditioned specifically for this technique, hardened until Rui could concentrate the force of his entire kick into that tiny point of contact.
Against flesh, it pierced like a spear.
And Rui was aiming directly for the side of his neck.
Holy, you're actually going for the kill?!
The Stinger reached him.
Rui's toe passed through Merun's neck.
His eyes widened as his foot struck nothing but air as the exhausted armored figure he'd targeted was already fading away.
Blossoming Blade: Wilt.
Merun emerged behind him with the greatsword already moving.
The massive blade swept toward Rui's exposed back before he'd even completed the Stinger.
Rui's eyes widened.
At the last possible instant, his body twisted.
SHNK!
The edge tore across him instead of cleaving through his torso, opening another cut as Rui threw himself clear.
Merun stared after him with pride as a huge grin spread beneath Merun's helmet.
As expected! HAHAHA!
Rui spun toward him without the slightest hesitation. His compact boxing stance returned, his shoulders beginning that rhythmic sway as he prepared to enter Merun's range again.
Merun raised the greatsword.
Sword met weave. The weave became a punch. The punch met Sanchin and punished Rui's knuckles, forcing another adjustment before Merun changed the sword's trajectory again.
For several exchanges, Merun stopped thinking about the battlefield entirely.
He was testing Blossoming Blade within Martial Apprentice limits.
Rui was testing him and pushing his own limits.
And both of them were having entirely too much fun.
Then something struck Merun directly in the kidney.
CLANG!
Something struck the back of Merun's armor.
He blinked.
What was...? Oh. Right.
Kane.
He'd almost forgotten about him.
Kane was another High-grade Kandrian Martial Apprentice, and one of Rui's closest friends. Merun remembered him well enough from the novel. Unlike Rui's endlessly adaptive Martial Path, Kane's was built around maneuvering, speed and assassination. He specialized in reaching places his opponents didn't want him to reach and striking before they properly realized he was there.
Which was exactly what he'd apparently been doing to Merun for a while now.
Kane vanished from his immediate awareness again.
Merun's eyes followed him anyway.
Void Step.
That technique was fascinating to experience from this close.
Kane wasn't actually turning invisible. His body remained right there, moving around Merun's flank, but Void Step manipulated the opponent's perception and attention. Merun could feel the technique trying to make his mind dismiss Kane's presence, gently pulling his focus elsewhere whenever his eyes threatened to settle on him.
Against most Martial Apprentices, that tiny manipulation was enough. In the middle of a chaotic battlefield, where dozens of fighters, explosions and killing intent were already competing for attention, Kane could practically disappear.
Unfortunately for him, Merun was currently pretending to be several orders of magnitude weaker than he actually was.
Pretend you didn't see him.
A fist struck the back of his neck.
CLANG!
Merun faked pain and lurched forward, and Rui immediately capitalized with another punch to the ribs. Kane appeared at Merun's flank and struck the kidney before disappearing again, while Rui weaved beneath the returning greatsword and drove a short hook into the liver.
Merun carefully staggered.
Another impact struck the back of his knee and Merun bent it slightly to sell the attack. Rui followed with a punch to the sternum, only for his knuckles to immediately protest when they met Sanchin.
You'll only stop when your fists are broken huh?
Then Rui's next strike came from a slightly different angle and produced less recoil.
Merun's amusement immediately changed.
Never mind. Keep cooking.
Rui and Kane fell into a rhythm with frightening speed.
Rui controlled Merun's attention from the front, weaving around the greatsword and attacking every opening he could make. Kane worked everywhere else, using Void Step to slip around the edges of the fight before appearing just long enough to hammer another vital.
Eyes. Throat. Kidneys. Knees. Spine.
Merun knew where both of them were the entire time.
But Armored-Greatsword-Man-Disguise couldn't know that.
Armored-Greatsword-Man-Disguise was supposed to be a durable defensive Martial Apprentice with impressive swordsmanship.
So Merun let Kane strike him again and again.
All while Rui continued dissecting the openings between his sword techniques.
To anyone watching, Merun was being overwhelmed.
Inside the helmet, he was having the time of his life.
He planted his foot.
Let's try this. This time, it's truly the last technique I'll try.
Blossoming Blade: Garden.
Merun twisted.
The greatsword followed his entire body through a complete circle as overlapping fields of sword pressure expanded around him. Black petals erupted into the air, filling the space between Rui, Kane and himself.
In his mind, everything his blade could reach was his own sanctuary and everything he cared for within was protected by himself.
That was Garden.
Rui immediately retreated just in time as Kane easily disappeared beyond the expanding range.
The earth around Merun split into a deep, circular scar.
It was weak and pathetically small compared to Master's... but perfectly executed as a Martial Apprentice.
Merun settled the greatsword beside himself and stared through the falling black petals.
Rui's pitch black eyes stared back.
Merun could practically feel the bastard thinking.
Come on, Rui! Show me how you adapt to that!
However, it seems their duel was cut short.
BWOOOOOOOOOOO!
Merun's head turned toward the fortress as it's eastern gate was opening.
The horns of reinforcements had sounded.