And Then There Were Two

Immediately after Takeda said, “Fight,” Rentarou expanded his legs to dash toward Shin with explosive speed. As he dashed toward Shin, Rentarou expanded his fists as well, making his appendages obviously bigger than the rest of his body.

In response to Rentarou’s initiation, Shin bit down on his left thumb, hard enough for blood to come out. He then lined that blood on his right arm, and as it dissolved into it, the arm began to glow a scarlet hue.

Shin used this arm to block Rentarou’s attack, and Rentarou knew what was coming next: the burst of mana. He expected to see red and go flying backward, so he put up his guard. However, the output was not what he was expecting at all. The arm’s mana was less than before, more concentrated than before, more controlled than before.

“Is that all you got, you damn yokai?” Rentarou shouted these words as he swung at Shin with his expanded right arm.

“You wish!” Shin said that before expelling blasts of red mana from his arm. He aimed at Rentarou’s right arm. Due to its size, Rentarou had no choice but to return it to its normal size; however, he couldn’t do that without sustaining some damage.

“You bastard! If you learned new tricks, then it’s only fair if I show you some of mine!” Rentarou seemed as though he was about to expand another part of his body to attack Shin. But he was forgetting one thing: Yukimura.

She hadn’t taken a step since Takeda called the start of the fight. Instead, she was channeling mana into her sword until Rentarou left himself wide open. And since he finally did, Yukimura pointed her sword at him before saying, “Spear!”

A larger, faster projectile than her previous ice lances pierced the arm that Rentarou was about to attack Shin with. However, its increased strength also meant it took more mana. As Yukimura began to stagger both from her previous exhaustion and from casting the spell, Rentarou looked at her with a mix of anger and surprise.

“Oh? You want to get a taste of some too, right, Yukimura?”

“Don’t you look away!” Shin tried to hit Rentarou with his last blast of mana before needing to use more blood, but Rentarou was too focused on Yukimura. He used his explosive speed to get to Yukimura’s face before Shin or Yukimura could react.

As soon as he was in range, Rentarou hit Yukimura with a barrage of punches. She was able to block a few with her sword, but Rentarou never gave her enough space to cast a spell. Then, when all she was expecting him to throw was a punch, she plunged her sword into the ground.

Did she have a plan in mind? I’m not letting that happen!

Before Yukimura could do whatever she intended to do, Rentarou used his expanded leg and all the muscles inside of it to kick Yukimura up to the level of the colosseum’s ceiling. He could’ve let gravity finish her off, but that would’ve been too lenient, too easy for Rentarou. So he used his legs once more to jump to the same height as her before kicking her down to the ground with immense force. However, even that display of strength still wasn’t enough to fully take out Yukimura.

Even through the pain, she struggled to grab her katana, which stood perfectly vertical in the ground. Then, she started to mumble something. “Kurao—”

Those were the only words she could manage to say before Rentarou punched her into the colosseum’s wall for the last time. She didn’t get up after that, and Shin could only watch this scene unfold.

He may have gotten better at regulating the output of his mana, but the aim was a different story. He didn’t want to fire away at Rentarou and risk hurting Yukimura as well. Shin could only stand there helplessly as Rentarou approached Yukimura’s body.

“That’s all you got? Good.” Rentarou looked as though he was about to kick her, so Shin readied his arm, about to fire mana at Rentarou, but Takeda took to the field first.

“She’s unconscious, Rentarou. Focus on the other fighter. You remember what’s at stake, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Rentarou turned toward Shin with a different look than he had at the start of the fight: desire. “Shin, you ready to end this? Just you and me?”

Unlike Rentarou’s emotions, Shin only felt one thing in his heart: rage. Rage at Rentarou for beating Yukimura and anger at himself for not being able to stop it. “Yeah… I’m more than ready.”