Chapter 44

The yokai in front of me is none other than a Yuki-Onna.

One of the five different kinds of S-Rank Yokai there are.

To be quite honest, this is not a situation I want to be in. However, now that I actually am in this situation, I need to act accordingly.

My sword drawn, I quickly take a step forward and swing my sword. I want to act as quickly as possible to catch the Yokai off-guard. In a battle facing a S-Rank Yokai, I need to give it everything I’ve got. Otherwise I will succumb.

However, just a few moments before my blade meets the flesh of the hostile Yokai, it suddenly gets frozen whole. I am - to be quite frank - not prepared at all for this. My sword, now less a classical katana and more like some sort of icy hammer due to it being frozen whole, crashes down. The Yuki-Onna easily sways backwards and evades the swing. I shake my head, kind of flabbergasted by the events that take place right now.

The Yuki-Onna opens her cloak. Instead of revealing something like a naked body though, there is a strong, cold and chilly wind directly floating at me. I jump to the side, however the wind does hit parts of my body. They start feeling extremely cold and when I try moving them again, I feel them becoming clunky and way slower than before. And mind you, I have only been hit for a split second and a small part of the wind. This might genuinely be one of the worst situations I have ever been in. If I get hit by all of the wind at once I might fully freeze.

I look at the Yokai. What now? If I rush at her, then she might fully freeze me… Adding onto why rushing her isn’t good: The blade on my trusted cube is literally turned into ice. If I can’t somehow find a way to smelt it, I can forget attacking altogether.

The Yokai opens her clothes yet again and another wave of frosty wind is directly shooting at me. I jump to the side yet again, leaving my sword behind for the moment. Despite not carrying a weapon and approaching the enemy being an overall stupid move… I directly approach the enemy. The short pause she took between attacking me was most certainly not a voluntary break: She could simply not attack me right after. I will use this short break to attack her.

I am right in front of her when she has to close her clothes yet again. I am now pretty sure that I have understood the mechanism behind her attacks: She opens her clothes to let out the frosty winds she produces while having closed her clothes. Thus, she now needs to produce them again.

My fist directly flies at her. I may not slice open her skin or destroy her head or anything of the like, but I will most certainly hurt the yokai.

A second before hitting the Yokai she directly looks at me. Her eyes seem to glow blue. At that very moment, my hand starts freezing. I see: Just like my sword did freeze, now my hand is freezing. So, additionally to the frosty wind she is controlling, she can freeze things very close to her… I have to make a decision now.

I do not pull away my fist. If I were to pull away now, even if it does not freeze fully, it will most certainly be unusable for the remaining battle. Thus, I will just lose my hand if it means I can slay this foe… or, well, hurt it at least a little bit.

My punch hits the Yuki-Onna and actually sends her flying across the room. It seems as though it did not hurt her nearly as much as you would think, since she… you know… was thrown across the room. I look down at my hand: Indeed. It was locked into a whole ice cube. I sigh and look at the villain, there in front of me. Maybe if I kill her this will be reversed?

I walk over and pick up the icy sword. I grin a bit and run towards her again. The sword is pretty heavy now. I used the ice block I have attached to my hand now to hold it more easily.

I run directly at the yokai. She opens her clothes yet again, making the winds stream out. I get a small nosebleed and grin widely. Is this the effect of Phanes? Did watching them fight suddenly make me into a genius regarding battles? Because it certainly does feel like it: As she wants to overwhelm me with her winds, my sword is already flying straight at her. Normally such a thing is unthinkable. After all, I cannot hold the sword properly under normal circumstances, at least not if my goal is to throw it. Those normal circumstances are not met at all though: The enemy has frozen both the sword and my hand, making me rest the sword easily atop my hand and making it be an easy tool to throw. In the same way, since it is frozen, I do not need to properly aim the blade’s tip. Every part of it will work just fine.

Once she opens her clothes, my sword directly hits her. She gets overwhelmed and hurt just a little bit. However, the sword itself was never truly the weapon. The weapon has always been myself.

I jump out of the blind spot produced by the sword. And I hit her right in the face, once more. This time I hit her with the already frozen hand. Since it is already frozen, I do not need to worry about it. Precisely because it is frozen this hard, I can use it to easily hurt the yokai. Especially the edges of the cube around my hand hurt the yokai pretty badly.

The yokai sinks to the ground. As I stand atop it, I do not give her a single second to refill her wind and use it on me: I punch her over and over again with the frozen hand I have. My hand, frozen inside of it, starts to hurt like hell. But the only person who is to blame is myself, obviously. I breathe heavily until, soon enough, the Yuki-Onna stops moving altogether.