"Blossoming Blade..."
The words spread through the Kinzoku Apprentices almost faster than the black petals drifting across the battlefield.
Several of them had already abandoned their previous positions along the battlement and gathered closer to Mikan, their attention fixed entirely on the enormous armored man below.
The mysterious newcomer was unquestionably a powerful high-grade Martial Apprentice.
That much had become obvious.
He was fighting the same masked Kandrian who had just defeated Lord Yoshimoto Seishin, one of Sekigahara's premier Grade-Ten Martial Apprentices, and he wasn't merely surviving. The armored man was holding his ground while showing phenomenal swordplay.
More importantly to the Kinzoku, they recognized his swordsmanship.
Or at least, they thought they did.
"Lady Mikan."
Mikan kept her eyes on the battle.
"Yeah?"
One of the Kinzoku Apprentices hesitated before speaking. "Forgive me if I'm overstepping, but... who is he?"
Mikan's expression didn't change, expecting that question to come.
The others moved a little closer, clearly pretending they weren't listening while very obviously listening.
"Surely you know something, Lady Mikan," another said carefully. "You've been adopted into the Iaiashin household."
"Ah! But we mean no disrespect," the first quickly added.
Mikan glanced sideways.
They genuinely weren't trying to pry into her family's secrets. If anything, their expressions carried more excitement than suspicion.
In their eyes, some unknown high-grade Martial Apprentice had appeared from nowhere, saved Yoshimoto's life and is using what looked like the treasured swordsmanship of their own Matriarch.
Of course they wanted answers.
She straightened slightly as she looked at the first person who asked.
"You will all know in time."
The surrounding Apprentices immediately went silent.
Mikan adopted the most solemn expression she could manage.
"That's all I'm permitted to say."
That did it.
Nobody asked another question as they each had their own understanding of what that was.
Mikan smiled inwardly in annoyance.
Shit. Do I have to make an Alibi for him?
Thankfully, saying something vague with enough confidence was all it took to make people assume there was some profound clan secret behind it.
The effect on the Kinzoku Martial Apprentices was immediate though.
Whatever confusion remained in their expressions was joined by unmistakable pride. They didn't know who the armored swordsman was, where he'd come from, or why he possessed the Matriarch's swordsmanship.
Lady Mikan knew of him!
Though Lady Mikan wasn't permitted to tell them.
But that was good enough, he was a Kinzoku!
.
.
.
"He's getting surrounded."
"Someone needs to support him!"
"Where are the reserves?"
As the Sekigaharans worried of the Armored man, Mikan remained where she was.
She wasn't worried. Not even one bit.
Everyone else was watching a lone Martial Apprentice being overwhelmed by two elite Kandrians.
Mikan was watching her idiot little brother pretend their punches hurt.
She'd seen Merun fight and beat the most powerful Martial Seniors of the clan!
He could very easily turn those Kandrians into meat-paste stains on the ground. Whatever those Kandrians were doing, Merun was probably more concerned about accidentally exposing himself than taking damage.
That or he had another plan in mind?
Still, the performance was annoyingly convincing.
The masked Kandrian hammered Merun's ribs while the second fighter appeared behind him and struck his neck. Merun staggered forward, caught himself with one foot and barely brought the greatsword around in time.
Several Sekigaharans cursed and wept.
Mikan folded her arms.
Oh, fuck off. You're enjoying this.
Then Merun planted his foot.
The greatsword began to turn as black petals suddenly erupted around him.
Sword pressure expanded in every direction.
The masked Kandrian immediately retreated while the second attacker disappeared from Merun's side. The ground split around the armored swordsman in a wide circular scar as overlapping currents of pressure tore through everything within reach.
For a moment, Merun stood alone at the center. Black petals slowly descending around his armor.
Then one of the older Kinzoku Apprentices whose jaws were dropped, whispered.
"Garden."
BWOOOOOOOOOOO!
A war horn thundered across the fortress.
Every conversation stopped as they looked at one another.
The atmosphere on the battlement changed instantly as an officer's amplified voice roared over the walls.
"ALL REMAINING HIGH-GRADE RESERVES, DEPLOY IMMEDIATELY !"
Mikan's head snapped toward the eastern gate.
"REINFORCEMENT FORCE, SALLY OUT! SUPPORT THE INTERCEPTION UNIT AND RECOVER OUR WOUNDED!"
Martial Apprentices moved before the command had even finished.
The politics that had kept clans separated throughout the operation disappeared beneath the emergency. Martial Artists of various clans rushed toward the deployment routes together.
Mikan was already moving.
"Lady Mikan!"
"I'm coming!"
Nobody tried stopping her this time.
There was no argument about Kinzoku assignments or fortress-defense priorities. Sekigaharan Martial Artists were dying outside their walls and were on the losing end.
Mikan vaulted from the battlement.
She landed below, absorbed the impact through her legs and immediately accelerated toward the opening eastern gate with the others.
Dozens of Martial Apprentices poured through.
Ahead, she saw Merun turn toward them.
Even at this distance, Mikan knew he'd heard the horn long before anyone else.
She expected him to pursue the Kandrians, but he simply stood among the scarred earth and fallen Martial Artists, watching the approaching Sekigaharan reinforcements.
Then, with almost insulting casualness, he lifted the greatsword and sheathed the enormous weapon across his back.
Mikan frowned.
You're done?
Apparently, he was.
Because the Kandrians were done too.
A sharp electronic sound carried from somewhere among them.
BEEP!
The masked Kandrian froze.
Across the battlefield, Kandrian Martial Artists were already disengaging. The assault had achieved what it came to accomplish. Sekigahara's interception force had suffered far more heavily than Kandria's, and now fresh Sekigaharan reinforcements were pouring through the eastern gate.
There was no reason to remain.
The Kandrians withdrew en masse.
The masked man turned with them.
He took several steps... then stopped.
His head slowly turned back toward Merun.
For several seconds, the two simply stared at each other.
His body leaned almost imperceptibly backward, toward the armored man.
But before he could fully turn, someone appeared beside him.
A hand landed on his shoulder.
The masked man looked over as the other martial artist stared at him and jerked his head east.
The message was obvious.
We're leaving!
The masked man looked back one last time as he exhaled through his nose.
Then nodded.
The two disappeared into the jungle.
By the time Mikan reached Merun, the nearest Kandrians were already retreating beyond immediate pursuit.
Sekigaharan Martial Artists spread across the battlefield. Some chased the withdrawing enemy for a short distance before officers called them back, while others immediately began checking the wounded.
Pursuing them any further was foolish.
Mikan went directly toward the armored giant.
Merun turned his helmet toward her as she stopped beside him.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Mikan leaned slightly closer.
"Why the hell are you here, you little brat?!" she whispered.
The armored helmet tilted.
A deep, unfamiliar voice emerged from beneath it.
"I do not know what you are talking about, Lady Mikan."
Mikan's eyebrow twitched as she felt a pang of nervousness.
"Huh?! You're not?! Wait... you fuck, now you're really pissing me off."
"You used Master's Blossoming Blade, you brat!" she hissed. "If you ever get caught doing this, do you have any idea what kind of shit you're going to cause?"
The helmet slowly turned toward her.
Mikan could almost see the stupid, annoying expression underneath it.
Footsteps approached as several of the Kinzoku Apprentices were running toward them.
Mikan immediately straightened.
Her irritation vanished into a professional smile.
By the time they arrived, her expression had become perfectly neutral.
"Great work, my friend," she said formally. "You saved Lord Yoshimoto."
Merun stared at her outstretched hand.
Mikan stared back as he shook it.
...
The Kinzoku slowed as they approached.
For all their excitement on the wall, actually standing in front of the enormous armored man was apparently different. Up close, Merun towered over most of them, and the greatsword across his back looked even more ridiculous.
One Apprentice cleared his throat.
"Sir."
Merun turned toward him.
The man suddenly seemed to regret volunteering.
"You are Kinzoku... right?"
Silence.
Another Apprentice stepped forward to rescue him.
"Your swordsmanship was incredible. Forgive us for asking, but what you used..."
"Was that truly...?"
"Blossoming Blade?"
Merun's deep voice answered without hesitation.
"Yes. It is Blossoming Blade."
The Kinzoku Apprentices stared.
Merun slowly turned his helmet toward Mikan.
Despite the featureless armor, she understood the look perfectly.
Help. Didn't think this through.
Mikan wanted to strangle him.
THEN WHY INTERFERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?!
Instead, she clasped her hands behind her back and adopted the solemn expression she'd used on the wall.
"As I said before, you will all know in time."
The Kinzoku immediately looked toward her.
"Until then, there are matters regarding our household that I am not permitted to discuss."
Nobody argued. In fact, several of them straightened.
One even nodded with grave understanding, as though Mikan had just confirmed the existence of some Iaiashin family secret.
Mikan maintained her expression.
Inside, she was screaming.
MERUUUN! HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO EXPLAIN THIS TO EVERYBODY ELSE?!
————
Farther east, the Kandrian force continued withdrawing through the jungle.
Rui ran beside Kane as the organized retreat carried them farther from Sekigaharan territory. Neither of them spoke for the first few minutes. Around them, the surviving Kandrian Martial Apprentices maintained formation as they moved, carrying their wounded while keeping enough awareness behind them to detect any Sekigaharan pursuit.
Rui glanced backward again.
Kane noticed.
"Disappointed?"
Rui looked at him.
Kane didn't even bother hiding his smirk.
Rui chuckled. "You know me so well."
Of course he was disappointed.
He wanted more.
He thought the wind technique martial artist was powerful... but the armored man made no sense.
Rui's strikes had landed. His targeting had improved throughout the fight, and he'd already begun altering his contact angles to deal with the strange passive defense that punished his hands whenever he struck incorrectly. Reverberating Lance had allowed him to transmit more force beneath the man's exterior defenses, yet even clean blows to vulnerable organs had produced strangely poor results.
His hands had learned more about the man's defenses with every exchange.
They still hadn't learned enough.
Then there was the swordsmanship.
That bothered Rui almost as much as the man's defenses.
He'd fought armed opponents before, of course. Weapons weren't some alien concept to Martial Artists, and he'd encountered plenty of people who incorporated them into combat. But Martial Artists normally just used their bodies as they were a lot more reliable than weapons, and were much more efficient and much more powerful most of the time.
This felt like the exception.
For perhaps the first time, Rui felt as though he'd fought a true swordsman whose weapon was every bit as developed as the rest of his Martial Art.
And what a ridiculous weapon it was.
Rui glanced down at his hands before looking back through the trees.
That greatsword should have been extremely cumbersome. Its sheer size demanded enormous strength merely to accelerate and arrest its momentum, much less change direction halfway through an exchange. Yet the armored man had wielded it with one hand as naturally as Rui moved his own limbs.
There had been no wasted struggle against the weapon's weight.
Every rotation of the wrist flowed into another cut. Defensive movements became attacks, missed attacks became transitions, and even when Rui slipped past the edge, the sword somehow seemed to already be moving toward the next position.
Then there were those strange black petals.
Rui didn't know whether they were an illusion, some visual manifestation of the man's Martial Art, or something else entirely. They appeared whenever the swordsmanship became more elaborate, blooming around the blade as the armored man transitioned between techniques.
Beautiful.
And extremely dangerous.
Rui had only begun creating a model to his swordsmanship before the retreat signal sounded. Each new technique changed the problem enough to demand more data. The deceptive technique where the man's exhausted body had seemingly crumbled away had nearly caught him, and that final circular defense had forced both him and Kane completely outside the swordsman's reach.
Rui wanted another chance at it.
He also couldn't shake another thought.
Are there more Sekigaharans like him?
If there were Martial Artists within the Sekigahara Confederate who combined that level of weapon mastery with such an absurdly powerful body, then Kandria's intelligence on their Martial Art culture was far from complete.
Yet even that wasn't what bothered Rui most.
Something about the fight had felt... restrained.
He couldn't prove it.
The man's swordsmanship had been genuine. Rui was confident of that much. His movements possessed too much precision and consistency to be some improvised performance.
But the physicality behind it didn't quite fit.
Sometimes the greatsword accelerated with frightening speed, only to settle into movements that Rui felt should have been faster. The armored man's enormous body possessed enough strength to wield that weapon one-handed, yet the force behind several of his attacks hadn't matched what Rui expected from that fact.
And his defense...
Rui's eyes narrowed.
That was the greatest inconsistency of all.
The man could endure everything Rui and Kane threw at him, yet somehow his offensive physicality remained within the realm of a high-grade Martial Apprentice.
Maybe Rui was reading too much into it.
Maybe the swordsmanship itself created efficiencies he hadn't accounted for.
Or maybe the armored man had been holding back.
The possibility sent a small sting through Rui's pride.
He didn't like it.
Still...
A faint smile appeared beneath Rui's mask.
Maybe joining this war had been a better decision than he'd thought.
The Serevian Dungeon had drawn Martial Artists from across several nations, each bringing their own Martial Art, techniques and philosophies into the same battlefield. In only a short time, Rui had already encountered opponents unlike anything he'd faced before. The wind specialist's overwhelming wind manipulation had forced him to solve the problem of crossing a battlefield where simply approaching his opponent became difficult.
And now there was this armored swordsman.
A Martial Artist with an absurdly powerful body, an unusually effective passive defense and enough skill to wield a gigantic greatsword as naturally as Rui wielded his own fists. Even the strange black petals accompanying his swordsmanship were something Rui had never encountered before.
They were different problems.
That was exactly what Rui wanted.
Project Water had begun long before Rui Quarrier ever existed.
Back on Earth, when he'd still been John Falken, he'd dreamed of creating a truly formless Martial Art. A system capable of studying any opponent, understanding them, then adapting itself into the perfect answer against whatever stood before it.
Be water.
It had been the dream that consumed his previous life, from his idol, Bruce Lee.
Earth had denied him the body and mind necessary to make that dream real. Gaia had given him another chance, and Project Water had become the foundation of his Martial Path.
But Project Water could never be completed by fighting the same kinds of opponents forever.
Every unfamiliar Martial Art exposed another problem he hadn't solved. Every bizarre technique forced the VOID Algorithm to expand. Every opponent who made him stop and think revealed another weakness in the adaptive system he'd spent two lifetimes building.
The wind user had given him one.
The armored swordsman had given him several.
Rui's smile widened slightly.
If the Serevian Dungeon kept attracting Martial Artists like these, then the danger was worth it.
Every battle brought Project Water a little closer to what John Falken had dreamed it could become.
Something capable of adapting to anything.
Rui glanced backward again.
And he definitely wasn't finished with that swordsman.
He needed more data.
More exchanges would give him that.
Kane caught the glance.
"He's not following us."
"I know."
"You've checked four times."
Rui looked forward.
"I was analyzing."
"Of course you were."
Rui ignored the amusement in his voice.
After another few moments, something occurred to him.
He glanced at Kane.
"Actually, why did you join in?"
Kane looked over. "Hm?"
"Against the armored man."
Rui gestured vaguely behind them. "You usually leave me alone once I'm fighting someone."
There was no accusation in his voice. If anything, Rui sounded curious.
Kane stared at him.
Then his eyebrows rose.
"Wait."
Rui frowned slightly.
"What?"
"You think I joined your fight?"
Rui blinked.
"Didn't you?"
Kane's expression slowly changed.
"No."
Rui waited.
Kane pointed at himself.
"I was fighting him first."
There was a brief silence between them.
"You were?"
Kane's eye twitched.
The genuine surprise in Rui's voice somehow made the question significantly worse.
"Yes, Rui. I was."
Rui stared at him.
Kane began counting with his fingers as they ran.
"Kidney. Spine. Knee. Neck. Ribs. I hit everything worth hitting before you even started fighting him."
Rui glanced backward through the trees.
"He completely ignored me," Kane continued. "I was working on him, then he suddenly threw that giant fucking sword past you, walked over like I wasn't there, saved the wind guy, picked his sword back up and started fighting you."
Rui was silent for a moment.
Then he looked back at Kane.
Kane pointed at him.
"So technically..."
Rui's lips began twitching beneath his mask.
"...you butted into my fight."
Rui laughed.
Kane's expression flattened.
"I'm serious."
That only made it worse.
Rui shook his head as he continued running. "I'm sorry."
"No, you're not."
"I'm a little sorry."
"He treated me like I wasn't there."
Rui laughed again.
Kane shoved him lightly in the shoulder.
"Fuck you."
Rui returned the shove without breaking stride.
The two continued through the jungle.
For a little while, the retreat felt almost normal.
Kane's hand still hurt, though.
He flexed his fingers and felt the dull ache running through his knuckles. That armored bastard had been absurdly tough. Kane had landed cleanly against joints, ribs, the spine and nearly every vulnerable location he could reach, yet striking him had felt like punching solid steel.
That part didn't particularly bother him.
Martial Artists had strange defensive techniques.
Kane had encountered plenty of them, and everything he'd seen suggested that the armored man's Martial Art possessed an unusually powerful passive defense. Rui had run into the same problem after punching the bastard enough times to hurt his own hands.
It was impressive.
Annoying, but explainable.
There was something else Kane hadn't mentioned.
During the fight, he'd used Void Step to circle behind the armored man while Rui occupied him from the front.
Nobody nearby had been paying attention to Kane.
That was the entire point.
Void Step didn't make Kane invisible. It manipulated attention, slipping through the gaps in an opponent's awareness until their perception simply stopped treating him as something important enough to follow. On a battlefield filled with dozens of Martial Artists, explosions and attacks coming from every direction, it was even more effective.
Kane had crossed behind the armored man.
The helmet turned.
Only slightly.
Kane hadn't thought much of it at first.
He changed direction and accelerated around the opposite flank, allowing Void Step to pull him away from the man's attention again.
The helmet followed.
Kane struck him anyway.
The armored man staggered as though the attack had caught him completely unaware, then immediately returned his attention to Rui.
So Kane tried again.
He slipped behind him, changed his approach and attacked from another angle.
Once again, just before Kane entered his supposed blind spot, those black eyes shifted toward him.
The armored man still allowed the attack to land.
That was the part Kane didn't like.
If the man could perceive him, why hadn't he defended himself?
Maybe he possessed an unusually powerful sensory technique. That was hardly impossible. Maybe Void Step interacted poorly with whatever perception technique the man practiced. Kane had encountered unfavorable matchups before.
Even coincidence wasn't completely impossible.
Kane preferred those explanations.
Because the alternative was that the armored man had known exactly where Kane was and had simply decided that defending himself wasn't necessary.
He hadn't told Rui about that.
Not yet.
Kane glanced sideways.
Rui was still thinking about the fight. Kane recognized that distant look immediately. His friend was probably replaying every exchange in his head, analyzing the man's martial style, the man's defenses and whatever other bizarre details had caught his interest.
Kane looked forward again.
For most opponents, there was a moment when Void Step was invincible.
Kane knew the feeling well.
Their gaze wandered away. Their awareness loosened. Their mind stopped looking for him. For those precious moments, Kane effectively ceased to exist within their perception.
That moment had never came.
Even while Rui fought him from the front, even while everyone else on that chaotic battlefield failed to notice Kane moving around him, the armored man's attention had never truly left him.
Behind that helmet, those black eyes had kept following Kane wherever he went.
And somehow, Kane found the fact that the man had pretended otherwise much more unsettling.
Hopefully, they don't bump into the guy during the next mission.