Replacement Exam

Hokuren’s eyes narrowed to examine the two tokens the figure dropped. He could confirm that they were indeed Guri and Kokonemu. They were large heads being in their demonic form. Guri had a reddish glow to him with his head being the size of a human and Kokonemu easily being three or four times that of a human. The challenger dragging them had impressive physical strength.

Needing to know what was happening, Yumi forced her body against its will to stand once more. ‘I can’t believe a single hit did so much to put me out of the fight…damn it…’ Her hand held her stomach as though that was going to be enough to stop the pain or internal bleeding. Every movement felt like hell walking through with rods rammed through her stomach and each barbed twisted up on her organs. She shouldn’t have been moving, but not even her flight wanted to work for her. It had sapped away her strength.

Out on the ridge of the crater, Yumi got a better view of what was happening. The new challenger that arrived currently masked themselves within the heavy clouds of dust in the air from Yumi’s fight with Hokuren. She couldn’t get a clear view of the person, but everything about it told her that it was only one person. “…Masa…” Which made it even more important for Yumi to see what she would do.

Yumi staggered forward trying to find a place where she could observe the battle. ‘If there is anyone that has a chance now, it’s her…’ She had only seen her fight once and it was nothing like she had seen before. A simplicity and grace, there was no flaunting of her power. It was pure strength and skill. She made any sort of tactic seem pointless.

Investment into the battle heightened for her as she tried to imagine how she would defeat the demon. ‘What’s your true strength?’

Chapter 464 – Replacement Exam

The Demon Lord tried to work on the puzzle that was their interloper that would stop his fight, though Yumi was clearly no longer in any shape for continuing. He hadn’t finished the fight as should happen in the conclusion. But the new warrior presented an interesting offer. Two of his Lords died, assumed to be by their hand, though not clear enough. They were a brave soul at least coming straight in to face him. And that had him curious.

Hokuren breathed out slowly trying to pull in his power. The figure however disagreed with this action. “I wouldn’t advise you to do that if you wish to survive my first strike.” Out of the clouds came the sound of a blade being pulled from its scabbard. Hints of the sun reflecting from the polished blade broke through revealing the lethal intent of the warrior.

“A bold claim, but I’m not one to deny a warrior’s request.” Since the warrior revealed their weapon of choice to be a sword, Hokuren responded in kind. He pulled a simple sword out of the air and materialized quickly for his use. “When you’re ready, warrior.”

Wind blew over the ruined land, now only a wasteland of charred earth and rock. The clouds slowly began to peel away, but the warrior, likely Masa, remained cloaked. Measured stares exchanged between them trying to gauge the opponent for the first strike.

Yumi swallowed coarsely with her body stinging in pain. She couldn’t afford to miss how the battle turned out. She only wished that they would stop delaying, fearing her body would give out before they started.

The challenger made the first move, finally drawing back their sword before spring forward, wound tight. Even for Yumi it was hard to keep track of the movements, but she could finally put to rest any doubt that she had about the identity of them. It was Masa, the same swordswoman that she met before that saved them.

As expected, Hokuren saw her coming and went up to block her katana. Her blade paused for only a moment on the demon’s blade before she pushed right through it. It cleaved cleanly through the metal without trouble sending the chunk flying off while Masa finished the swing and turned to slash upward.

Blood sprayed over the earth to Yumi's surprise. With the way that Masa swung it looked like it would have been Hokuren injured and caught off guard by Masa’s deadly first strike. Yet it was actually Masa with a wound on her right shoulder. The upward slash had been to deflect an attack from Hokuren that came out from nowhere materialized. In the instance of their blade’s clashing he had a change of heart in his fighting.

With every time that he fought against Yumi, she thought that he was being honorable and not resorting to cheap tricks to fight her, even if she was often disadvantaged with his power. It never seemed like he just wanted to kill her for the sake of it. Part of it felt like to her that he wanted more out of her, he wanted the fight he felt he was promised by her potential. At least that was how she read it.

Yet, facing Masa in the instant, he ceased to be the same warrior that she battled. Something with what he felt when their blades met changed him. He only seemed to be looking at killing her. Perhaps her disrespectful entrance or arrogance got under his skin. Yumi could only guess the reasons why he suddenly changed the way he fought.

Masa barely seemed to be acknowledging the pain from her shoulder and continued to press the attack against Hokuren without regard. Their movements started to blur for Yumi as they increased their fighting. The pressure of Hokuren’s demonic energy began to spread across the whole region with villages more than fifty kilometers away feeling some effect from his energy. Anyone other than Yumi would have blacked out immediately from the proximity and any normal human would have started rotting from the miasma created by the aura of demonic energy. In her injured state, she felt the weight of it, but her body managed to resist, it wasn’t going to be something that would last.

So far with the pattern that she saw, Masa didn’t have any sort of ability beyond her swordsmanship. It was only the physical prowess that she possessed to keep her going toe to toe with the demon. She couldn’t even fly, keeping their fight very grounded. But even with the simple sword fight, the effects of the battle continue to alter the landscape that Yumi helped shape.

Yumi had to back away from the fight as it started to get too intense for her to stay even at the relatively short distance she had of a kilometer. Her body racked with pain at each pounding of their blades that cracked the earth. It became more difficult for her to breathe and her legs wanted to give up despite her ignoring their protest.

Even with the simple and straightforward sword fight, their power only rose further. ‘Damn it, how much power does that demon have?! Can only stand still with everything he’s giving off and this isn’t his limit yet!’ It amazed her that Masa could move so effortlessly through it all. Nothing slowed her down in the fight.

Despite the heavy power being thrown about, their fight barely even moved about. Everything around them had been destroyed into a deep cavernous maw of spiked rocks and ragged cliffs. Their excess power carved up the land unevenly. Only an isolated pillar that they stood up remained around them. Their battle was a five meter circle, their whole world was that space. It somehow hadn’t collapsed yet from their power.

Their movements became too much for Yumi to follow anymore. Only when they slowed down or paused from their clashing could she even see what happened. It was hard to tell an advantage in their fight. Masa clearly had the skill with a sword that surpassed anything that Hokuren could offer, but his sheer power made up a difference in whatever he might have lacked keeping it from being an one-sided fight.

It was the longest that she had seen Masa fight and she couldn’t even observe most of it. Her hope of learning more about how and why she fights disappeared. Only remaining awake to see a victor was all that she could do.

Masa and Hokuren’s battle seemed like it could have gone on the whole day at the rate at which they were fighting. However, she saw a heavy spray of blood arc through the air. The fighting paused with the clean hit made. Yumi could see that it was Masa once more, Hokuren managed to get a direct hit to her forearm. It wasn’t her dominant left arm, but still it slowed her down. For someone that relied on skill and peak condition of their body, she quickly started to lose to the demon.

Another slash drew blood throwing Masa out of the ring and into the crag below. “Masa!” Yumi shouted in futility knowing that she wouldn’t respond to her, a stranger. Yumi looked back up to Hokuren who stood as the victor again. ‘Can no one defeat him?! He’s just too strong!’ Regret of not having enough time to train popped up in her mind. She just needed more time to get stronger to fight him. But she had no time anymore.

Hokuren had defeated them both. He stood unrivaled now with no one else left to challenge him. The Demon Lord walked over the platform and floated slowly down to the wrecked earth near to Yumi. With the two women defeated, he reduced his power not wanting to kill them with such a cheap means as death by strangulation of pressure.

Yumi stared up at him, her legs wanting to give in, but she refused to bend in any way to him. ‘If Yuki was here he could beat him…but that won’t happen…’ This was a battle that she picked. Yuki left it to her and she couldn’t rely on him to fight her battles. It was her loss, she could only accept the defeat and death that would come from it with grace.

Pointing his sword at Yumi, he stared down at her for a moment and then put it into the earth. “Before we were interrupted, I wanted to thank you for the best fight that I had in more years than I wish to count. I had planned to kill you at the end, but you’ve proven a far more interesting warrior than I anticipated from the humans. You and the swordswoman show me great interest.”

‘What is he doing?’ Yumi narrowed her eyes as best as she could manage to control any part of her body in her shape. All of the compounded damage that she took from her fight felt like it had started to arrive with her dropping adrenaline. Confusion half filled her face in her failing attempt to express things.

The Demon Lord looked out over the destroyed land. At the end of it, they had completely destroyed a whole chunk of the main mountain range that ran through Japan. The west side of the island, normally completely occluded, could be seen. It was a strange vision of devastation. “I can sense that the other Lords have fallen. It would seem that I’m the last. They found their battlefield while I still seek one.”

His hand lifted up the sword letting it disappear into the air. Then he placed his hand into the air outstretched to his side with a circle of black and purple forming. Yumi braced herself for whatever attack that he must have been preparing for her, still convinced that he wouldn’t just leave her alive. The disc that formed vertically grew until it was larger than the Demon Lord.

Yumi winced a little with the stinging of her body predicting further pain for her coming from whatever it was that he was summoning. His hand went through the disc making it clear that it was a portal of some sort. But his hand didn’t leave it, in fact he walked closer to it.

In a rare sign of emotion from the collected demon, he looked with a bit of sadness to Yumi. “I’m not the last of my kind in your land, but I am the last wall before you. I awoke hoping to find my battlefield. Today is not the day, but I’ll keep searching for it. For now, get stronger so that we might fight again in the future. In time, you might be my battlefield.” He started to walk into the portal.

“Wait! Where are you going?” she managed in a moment of forced clarity that pushed back any of her pain.

“To look on other worlds.”

“But you’re trapped here on Earth.”

“Your people only sealed our path to our home, not sealed us to Earth. We aren’t a war faring race anymore, so we weren’t about to start a war on another world. I go alone as only Hokuren, one who seeks my battlefield.” The former Demon Lord stepped through the portal with it closing behind him leaving Yumi and Masa at a loss of words for their defeat, yet no death.

Yumi wasn’t certain if she felt it was a victory even with them technically winning in the end. All she could say for certain as she fell over was that the war was over. Her battle with the demons had ended. The reason for why she was here eluded her thoughts for the time. That wasn’t her focus right now.