Question's Gap

Yumi braced up against the ground with her foot. “It won’t be that easy!” Every time that she did image training against Masa she only had guess work to go on. The battle against Hokuren wasn’t something that she had been able to keep focused on with the state of her body. But this was nothing like what she brought against the Demon Lord. Likely, this was her passive strength that she used to kill everyone that she had since that day. This woman never needed any more than this to deal with them. They were so far below her that it would have been comparing humans to ants.

Their blades spoke for them in the silence between them. Masa wanted Yumi to clear out of the way and she remained stubbornly blocking the path. The woman was no closer to remembering Yumi. It would appear that despite seeming familiar, that their battle with Hokuren wasn’t memorable enough for her to be retained within her mind.

Admittedly, things were different then. She was weaker compared to now. So in Masa’s eyes she might not have been worth keeping in her mind. Though she still knew little about how the woman operated. It was just as likely that she didn’t bother keeping anyone in her mind as she seemed to only focus on fighting and killing. And even that didn’t have a clear sort of purpose that could be seen.

Seeing that the first strike wasn’t going to do anything to harm Yumi, Masa pulled back, launching into a new strike. It didn’t have the same sort of power as the first one. She was more serious about removing Yumi from her path.

Overhead, the displacement of air from the gathered strength told Yumi everything that she needed to know. White aura surrounded her immediately with her power rising to match Masa. Reading the situation well, her blade parried away Masa with minimal effort on Yumi’s part. The ground cracked and split rattling apart nearly at the knocked away power. “Yuki, do it!”

Masa immediately tilted her head back to where Yumi shouted and disappeared to kill Yuki, but Yumi intercepted her before she could make it more than five meters. “You don’t need to be worrying about him. Focus on me.”

“Too much of a coward to fight alone?”

“Oh we will be fighting alone. I promise you that. I’m just making sure we won’t be interrupted or worry about the effects of our fight.” A semi-transparent barrier rose up into the sky completely surrounding the area. It matched the same one that Yuki used for her training, though on a much larger scale than before. “This way we can fight without holding back!”

Chapter 470 – Question’s Gap

“Can you see them?” Yuki asked, just checking what he already guessed.

“No, they’re moving too fast for me.”

He sat down on the metal platform that was the entrance to the arena made for Yumi’s battle with Masa. A bit of an annoyance came through as he found the ground to be more uncomfortable than he wanted. His body raised up a little as a square floor pillow came up to give him something to set on, next to him on his right another appeared. “Then let’s sit down and listen to the most intensely asked question in history.”

Manekamaru took up Yuki’s offer. Unlike Yuki, he could feel some of the tremors that came from the battle between the two women. “You’re confident that your barrier will hold.”

“Naturally, I made it invincible.”

“That sounds like arrogance. She’s battled in your barrier before, but not at her full power.”

“Normally, I’d agree with you that if anyone other than me made that claim that they would be arrogant and would be shown how wrong they are. But I made the rules, even they can’t break them.”

“You have a very strange power.”

“I think you mean unfair and yes I’m aware. This’d be a very different story to read if I was the villain.”

Masa stared up at the barrier and took a swing at it releasing a pressurized arc of air that crashed upon the ceiling of the dome making not even a hint of weakness to her attack. “What sort of ward is this?”

“It’s no power that you’re familiar with, it comes from a foreign land beyond what you know. Like I said before, it’ll allow us to fight without risking the environment.”

The swordswoman met gazes with Yumi once more with her confidence drawing her attention. She had proven herself to not be a simple braggart with an overstuffed opinion of herself, though Masa still doubted any sort of claims she implied with her declaration. “It won’t come to that, you have nothing to worry about.”

“You still haven’t figured it out.”

“I have little concern for others.”

“It would seem that way.” Yumi bore her sword at Masa ready to continue their battle. If Masa couldn’t remember her, she would fight her until she did. Maybe if she did, they could stop the pointless fight and get to the heart of matter. Until then, she would satisfy the woman’s need for violence.

Disappearing, Masa increased once more her strength, still convinced that Yumi wasn’t a worthy challenger to face her. Despite any sort of illusions that she might have had about Yumi, they continued to only meet evenly without a clear victor. ‘She’s just toying with me. She’s intentionally matching her strength with mine so that we come out in a tie.’

With three strikes, Masa started to see Yumi’s game. It irritated her to see someone boldly standing before her as though she wasn’t worth the time to respect. Yumi reminded her of many of the others that saw nothing but a name that could be made out of killing her, yet it was very clear that she wasn’t like the others. Obviously, they lacked any power to actually make that sort of dream a reality, where Yumi clearly had power. Yet that was also not her goal.

Trying again, she found her sword blocked once more. ‘It’s like she’s telling me to take her seriously. That I’m the one that’s being arrogant in assuming that she’s an easy kill.’ Given that Yumi was the first one that she had run across since the Demon Lords to survive this long, Masa thought she might actually have a point to be acknowledged. Though some stubbornness still resided within Masa, keeping back her power.

She found Yumi’s attitude and disrespect of her bothersome. There had yet to be anyone that was her equal. The gap swung on in two directions. And this woman that stood before her wanting to fight to ask her a question would fall on the same side everyone else did on the pendulum over the gap.

Failure of a fifth strike, Masa took a different approach with Yumi in their fight. She ended the attempt to create a lethal blow to kill her instantly. Turning her blade down, she entered it back into her sheath as she changed her attack stance.

Yumi paused with Masa preparing for the change in tactics. ‘It’s a different style than what she’s used so far. I’m not really good with any sort of style.’ All that she could do was react and use her reflexes to manage against whatever Masa had to deliver.

The attack didn’t come immediately like Yumi thought it might have. ‘Figured I would have pissed her off enough to break with the methodical, but she’s strong. A reason why she’s the strongest woman in Japan…’ Each moment that they waited to continue their attack the more tension increased for Yumi. She really had no idea what would be the next strike by Masa. Everything so far had been something that she could predict. It was things her image training prepared her for when the day finally came to cross blades.

This style of fighting, whatever it was, she had never used against the demons when she saw her battle. She had a simple and straightforward method that served with her overwhelming power. Against all of her opponents other than Hokuren it had worked for her. She wished that she could remember her battle with Hokuren better. It would have been the time that she was forced to fight her at her fullest using everything that she had against someone.

“Looks like Masa is getting more serious,” commented Manekamaru, the only one of the two able to see into the arena at the distance that they were. Yuki created a battlefield for Yumi that was more than five kilometers in diameter. His sight wasn’t going to make out anything but dots if he was lucky.

“What she doing?”

“She’s switched to a different sword style. I don’t know the name, but I’ve seen it before used by humans. It favors speed over power to overwhelm targets with blinding movement that cannot be reacted to.”

“Meaning that you won’t be able to see it.”

“No.”

“You’re not a very useful commentator.”

“I know.”

“We’re a lousy peanut gallery.” The demon agreed in silence with Yuki’s banter. They had little to do as Yumi settled things with Masa. Given that their abilities allowed them to fight at superhuman speeds, he counted on it being over in a relatively short time.

Yumi ran possible scenarios of what Masa could be preparing for through her head. It was still a mystery for her without much of an idea. But she could only try to anticipate what it was that she planned to do. They remained significantly below anything compared to their battle with Hokuren. So she knew that Masa had far to go before she actually was serious with their fight.

The gap in their current abilities to the peak gave her some comfort. She knew that she would be able to rise to meet her. All that Masa had ever shown was physical abilities with her katana. Even the air slash that she made was just strength and speed, nothing to do with energy, power or abilities. The woman was an amazing achievement of pure raw strength.

Masa represented the possibility of the human body. In a way, this was the goal that Seiji chased. That alone made Masa impressive. But it only created questions rather than answers. Even in their brief exchange, Yumi found no new answers. She needed to be more direct with Masa. There had to be more time. Perhaps even the battle itself would reveal things to her that she had longed to know.

But Yumi couldn’t focus on her thoughts and strategy with part of her mind anymore. She could see the slight change in her body and muscles. Trained as Masa was in battle, she still slipped up on her projection. It might have been because of Yumi’s taunting that got her off balance. But it gave her the signal that Masa was ready to continue their fight. Despite that, the woman held close to her all of her other secrets. There was nothing further that she could glean from her body posture. She still didn’t know when she would attack, even though she knew it would be soon. ‘I just have to keep watching…until she gets serious…’

Instants before the attack came, her shoulder moved along with her waist. Everything aligned into the perfect stance to attack. Masa dramatically increased the speed of her swing with the new posture. The draw from her sheath was invisible with only the hilt seeming to be present as the blade disappeared.

Moving faster than Yumi’s eyes could track she lost the sword within the moments between. Her reaction sped up to match with Masa. Rising up to her level, she could see four different blades in the air coming at her as though the woman somehow managed to grow new limbs and swords. ‘She’s able to explosively increase her speed this fast?!’ Yumi didn’t know if she could block it in time.