The entire courtyard fell into a deathly silence.
The other guards' minds went utterly blank, struck dumb by a scene they simply could not comprehend.
No actual clash had been seen—only a single low shout, and then, all nine elite guards had collapsed at once, as though cut down by an invisible blade?
What… what was this?!
"A… a monster…"
Someone, in a voice brimming with terror, choked out the words.
But Swordmaster Tomie gave them no time to make sense of the situation. She was still advancing, walking up to one of the fallen guards. Her right hand loosened, and the bokken dropped to the ground; with a flick of her toe, the real blade lying on the floor sprang into the air, crossing paths with the falling bokken, and was caught firmly in her right hand.
Then, a smile spread across Swordmaster Tomie's face.
A cold smile, laced with the stench of blood.
Swordmaster Tomie kept moving forward, but the very instant this step landed, an intent to kill—heavy as a mountain—erupted outward with her at its center.
The lights seemed to dim, and a thin mist of blood seemed to fill the courtyard. The guards could even hear the shrill whistle of a blade tearing through air, the dull thud of flesh being sliced open.
And yet, that woman had clearly not even drawn her blade.
The captain of the guards drew a deep breath, forcing himself to stay calm, and roared hoarsely: "Don't just stand there! Don't hesitate! Don't be afraid! Don't forget who we are and what our duty is! Stop her! All of you, at once!"
At his command, the well-trained guards, though gripped by dread, still moved as ordered.
For they understood that if they truly let the woman before them cut her way inside, or if any harm came to Lord Takaichi, the consequences for them would be far worse than dying here!
Probing had lost all meaning. All fifteen guards launched their attack, forming an even tighter formation.
The shield-bearing guards stepped forward first, forming a wall with their riot shields and charging at Swordmaster Tomie in great strides, bearing down on her ferociously. The guards with riot forks stood between the shield-bearers, thrusting their forks out through the gaps in the shields, denying Swordmaster Tomie any chance to close in, while the blade-wielding guards circled around from the flanks, attempting to strike her from behind.
Swordmaster Tomie's steps still did not stop.
Faced with the shield wall and the sharp blades, she merely raised her right hand, her gaze sweeping over the guards pressing in from the front—and then, the tachi swept down.
"Slash."
A crisp ringing of steel echoed in everyone's ears, followed by a cold, cutting kiai.
The guards' vision warped all at once. Before their eyes, Swordmaster Tomie's figure vanished.
No—not vanished, but moving too fast for the naked eye to catch. All they could see was a silvery flash of the blade weaving into a bright silver net, descending straight down over their heads!
In that instant, an icy sensation touched their necks, immediately followed by the horrific, splitting agony of shattered cervical vertebrae.
The Sword Force assailed all the guards at the same moment. They each felt the illusion of their heads separating from their bodies at once. The advance of the shield wall crumbled in a heartbeat; screams, howls of pain, and the clatter of dropped weapons blended together, and the formation that should have been flawless and airtight fell into utter chaos.
In the very instant this chaos was born, Swordmaster Tomie drew a hard breath, then slowly exhaled.
Her chest swelled slightly, her sympathetic nervous system already forced to its peak, adrenaline pouring out wildly, the oxygen content of her blood surging sharply.
The Crimson Lotus Breathing technique was driven to a perilously extreme degree. The world seemed to slow half a beat in her eyes, her heartbeat pounding in her ears like war drums.
And yet her movements were simplicity taken to the utmost.
Her left foot stepped forward half a pace, her waist twisted, and the tachi in her hand became a blurred grey line, cutting into the openings the guards had exposed through the Consciousness Slash.
The true flash of the blade lit up only now.
Fast, precise, merciless.
The blade's edge swept precisely across the utterly undefended throat of one guard, kicking up a spray of warm blood mist.
The corpse had not yet fallen when she was already spinning, the blade's flash smoothly wiping across the side of a second guard's neck. Her steps did not stop—like a god of death gliding among frozen puppets, every faint tremor of her blade carried away a life.
Slitting throats, piercing hearts, severing necks… not a single wasted motion. Each strike was a lethal one, so efficient it chilled one to the core.
The guards touched by her blade did not even get the chance to wake from their phantom pain before they sank forever into darkness.
In just two or three short seconds, nearly ten men had already fallen dead beneath Swordmaster Tomie's blade.
"Fire! Fire! Forget everything else! Shoot her dead!"
The captain of the guards, who had kept everyone in front of him while directing from the rear, was now on the verge of his eyes splitting with rage.
He finally understood—this was not something they could ever stop head-on!
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
From the pillars and shadows further back, four gunmen who had been holding back at last squeezed their triggers.
The bullets tore through the air, firing from different angles at that black figure weaving through the crowd.
However, before the shots even rang out, Swordmaster Tomie had already sensed the gazes laden with killing intent.
Though she did not fear gunfire, she had no wish to bleed either. In the instant the shots sounded, her footwork shifted, her figure sliding sideways like a phantom. One bullet grazed past beneath her ribs, piercing only her coat.
Her left shoulder dipped slightly as a bullet scraped past it, striking the chest of a guard behind her who was clutching his neck and convulsing—blood bloomed outward.
At the same time, her right foot stamped down hard against the ground, her body surging forward with the momentum, hurling herself boldly toward the gunmen. She reached out and seized a guard whose neck was still spurting blood, shoving him forward as a shield so that the bullets of several gunmen struck that corpse instead.
Swordmaster Tomie's figure raced back and forth through the courtyard's light and shadow, using the guards' bodies as fleeting cover, closing in swiftly on the distant gunmen along a zigzag path.
Her speed and powers of anticipation, empowered by the Crimson Lotus Breathing technique, far surpassed those of ordinary people. Every pause and every burst of movement fell precisely into the gaps between the gunmen's aiming and firing.
As the distance closed, a blade's ring saturated with killing intent sounded. The gunman leveling his weapon lost his focus for a moment—and he would never have the chance to regain it. A shadow swept over him from the side, and the cold edge of the blade reflected a face of despair.
The flash of the blade fell, and the gunfire came to a complete halt.
In no more than three minutes, the courtyard was already strewn with corpses everywhere. Aside from Swordmaster Tomie, not a single other person remained standing.
She flicked the beads of blood from her blade, her breathing slightly ragged, yet her gaze remained cold and sharp as a blade. Carrying the still-dripping tachi, she strode over the wreckage and corpses that littered the ground, walking straight toward the brightly lit entrance hall of the main house.
At the same moment, inside the surveillance room, the personnel on duty went pale with shock. They watched with their own eyes as the security system's elite men, faced with a woman who looked so frail and slight, were slaughtered to the last in such a short span of time—every one of them was utterly horrified.
The maid had likewise witnessed such an unbelievable scene. A flicker of horror crossed her eyes, for she truly could not fathom just how Swordmaster Tomie had managed it.
Even after watching the entire process, she still had not grasped just how those guards had died beneath Tomie's blade.
Yet, incomprehension aside, and horror aside, the maid did not panic.
____
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