Fire Dance

Kokonemu looked down at Saki, having completely lost her will to fight. Disappointment filled through the demon seeing her enemy disappear. It wasn’t how she foresaw things going. Saki had become just like another one of the humans that she saw all the time. “You’ve got nothing now. It’d be better to just kill you than continue.”

‘Yes..finally…just end it…’ She didn’t resist the demon reaching down and grabbing her up by the neck. It brought her eye level with the woman for the first time, not that her eyes were really working. All she could see was a void before her.

‘Saki you idiot!’ shouted the Yuki in her head, ‘You have to fight!’

‘Why, I can’t win against her. There’s no chance at winning.’

‘But you haven’t even tried! Even before the battle you convinced yourself that you can’t win, that you were just delaying for as long as you could. Holding out for Yumi to save you.’

‘I’m not waiting for Yumi!’

‘Yes you are! You’ve got it in your head that you can’t win and with Yumi’s increase in power you figured that she’d be able to save you if you just held out long enough!’

It made Saki pause for a moment without an immediate counter. ‘Maybe you’re right. Ever since feeling that power on the mountain before getting to Masa I’ve been scared. It’s the first time in a long time I’ve ever truly felt frightened of someone else. I’ve never known anyone so incomprehensibly stronger like that. How do you fight something like that?! You didn’t feel what I did that day!’ Just remembering it made her body shake again and her stomach churn wanting to throw up. That was the sort of battle that she faced now. It would kill her for certain. There was no doubt or odds of possibly winning, it was one hundred percent guaranteed death.

‘But if you’ve already convinced yourself that you’ll lose, then how can you be certain death is guaranteed? You gave up before the fight began. So you haven’t been using your full power. So you don’t really know what the outcome could be if you haven’t given it your all.’ Saki had nothing to say back. He had sound logic. She really didn’t know if it was the truth. Before the fight began she worried about her ability to hold her own. The memory and feeling never left her. It rattled her deeper than she expected, completely destroying her confidence in her abilities. She never had known such a crushing feeling of helplessness before.

She hadn’t realized the impact it had on her. Naively, she pushed it to the back of her mind thinking that she could just forget about it. Yumi needed training, so she focused on that. Training and practice would make it go away. If she didn’t think about it then it couldn’t harm her. It couldn’t touch her. It couldn’t poison her mind and body. Yet it was already too late for that. The poison had been dangerous, silent and lethal. It soaked in throughout her body without her even realizing it.

Now the snake of that poison coiled around her entire body. She couldn’t move her arms or legs, she could barely even breath with it crushing her chest. It wrapped tighter around her, dragging out the last of her breath from within her.

He was right.

‘I already walked in expecting to die. I wasn’t thinking that maybe I could win. If I tried different tactics I might have a chance. I didn’t give it any consideration. I had no plan or strategy in this battle. I just hoped that I could survive.’ Saki groaned and winced from the pain as the poison no longer hid itself and fully embraced her. Nothing in her body tried to resist allowing it to take over completely. ‘I’m worse than that idiot Seiji. He knew how in over his head he was, but he still went in believing in a chance to win.’

Such thoughts made her a little depressed that she started to compare herself to Seiji. ‘Worse than Seiji?’ Thinking about such thoughts and him learning it made her imagine him laughing. He would get so full of himself just on the idea that Saki admitted that he was better than her. Laughter came from nowhere, laughter from him. She was certain it was him laughing at her. ‘I won’t let him laugh at me! I haven’t fallen that far yet!’

‘Hey, stop using me as the punch line!’ Seiji complained.

‘Shut up Seiji, you’re already dead!’

‘Not yet! Not at this point in time, Saki!’

‘Just let her have this motivation,’ consoled Yuki as he helped push the two of them out of Saki’s subconscious and restore the fourth wall balance to reality.

Saki’s eyes snapped open looking directly at Kokonemu. “I’m not losing in three chapters, when that idiot had four!” Fourth wall, it was supposed to be restored, not broken further. Saki found the strength in her arms once more and grasped back at the demon finally starting to resist the death grip on her neck.

A bit of surprise appeared in the Lord’s face seeing that Saki had life back in her eyes and determination restoring itself before her. In the next moment, Saki grappled with the demon putting her legs around her arm, starting to try to reverse the hold. It was a terrible position to try to attempt a pin, but she had the element of surprise on her side. Saki managed to get movement in her body with the technique forcing them back to break into the demon’s balance. Kokonemu didn’t anticipate Saki coming back with a fight and had dropped her guard on her defense.

It was the only reason Saki succeeded in the reversal to drop them to the ground. She broke free from the choke hold and tried to get a correct pin going with her legs while still holding her arm. However, once the hold broke and they crashed into the earth, the Lord snapped back to reality. The woman began concentrating once more and the pin started to fail with them in a battle of physical strength.

‘I can’t hold it…she’s stronger…’ Rather than damage her body fighting against a failing pin, Saki used the pull on the arm she tried to pin to let herself be thrown off. Saki landed with ease several meters away and back on her feet.

Kokonemu started to pull herself back up while looking over at Saki. The disappointment disappeared from her face with the casual stare back from before. “Would seem you found your fire.”

Chapter 454 – Fire Dance

Saki stood up straight feeling out her arms trying to figure out what she had left. She glanced through a tilted head over to the Demon Lord to answer. “I just realized I had more fight left in me.” The stings in her face hadn’t completely passed, but they weren’t bothering her nearly as much as before. Her body didn’t feel as heavy.

“It’s more than having a little more fight. Your breathing is normal. You stabilized your body.”

Nodding softly with the demon, they were right about her body. She didn’t feel fatigued anymore. Her mind was finally clear. Saki finished the checks and looked back at the demon ready to continue. “Yuki would probably call it finding my resolve. So let’s call it that.” Disappearing from the sight of the demon, she appeared behind her throwing her fist, but the demon caught it.

A burst of wind kicked down pushing back small particles of dirt and dust. Her hand shook a little with the force pushing back against the demon. It wasn’t enough to push her, but there was a small bit of recoil. “This is my resolve!”

Exercising their speed, they dodged around the hills. They made no immediate effort to strike, only dancing about to test each other. Saki pushed her body harder knowing that it had more to give than she had been using before. It wasn’t the limit that she hit before. Yuki or whatever in her head was right about one thing. She hadn’t been giving it her all. Her subconscious held her back out of fear to convince herself that she was right.

That block removed, she could move her body the way it was supposed to move. Saki could keep up with the demon more than she had before. It felt a little more like a chase at the moment. She went after the demon and she disappeared. However, she was catching up to her with each leap that they made. Her body opened up more to possibilities.

Eventually, their dance had to shift into a different pattern. They couldn’t keep repeating the same thing. With the testing of their speed out of the way, Kokonemu ceased the chase and turned around coming for Saki. The first hit knocked her out of her dash sending her into the hill and a column of smoke.

Unlike before, Saki jumped back to her feet with the sting pushed back. ‘I just need to focus. I can almost see a hint of her movement at the start.’ Her eyes had started to adjust to the speed that the demon moved at. It was still disappearing like a blink. She wasn’t sure if she would achieve that point in the fight to see her movement normally. If she could even see the blur she could get an idea of direction and make guesses from that.

The real test of her senses came now with the demon striking back. Kokonemu struck again with the hit connecting again, but it had a slightly different sound to it than before. It was something that she noticed as well. A pause came from the demon, not continuing the attack immediately. ‘She’s changed quite dramatically. It was like the first hit I made. She wasn’t able to block it, but maybe subconsciously tilted just enough to dampen the blow so that the full force didn’t make it through. This woman isn’t a normal human…’

Saki gritted her teeth a little having not been successful still with her reaction time. It didn’t hurt as much with the blow softened. Her reactions could only come too late when she only had to decide how she would take the hit rather than avoiding it. ‘I heard something that time that I didn’t before…’

They didn’t wait long to resume the battle. Dancing around the hills and up into the mountains a little, their fighting started to damage the land. Knocked back through trees, she felled them, unable to recover. Trying to counter put a dent into the grass rather than her target. A caught hand compressed the earth behind her feet. It remained small scale for now.

With each movement, Saki’s sense adapted a little more. Her speed increased with her comfort of the pace. She could finally start feeling the battle in the way that she knew. But she still couldn’t evade or catch a hit. Her body continued to take a pounding because of it. Nothing of hers went through that woman’s defense either. It remained a one sided battle, despite that Saki sensed herself getting closer.

There was something about the battle that her senses were noticing. A sound that softly grew a little bit with passing seconds. She tried to focus on the sound, not sure what it was. The woman moved so flawlessly and gracefully that she didn’t believe it came from her. She made no sound. Yet she heard something every time now that she moved.

Saki listened for it. Her mind worked to filter everything else out. There remained little for her to hear with the environment already removed. It was her only clue to tracking the woman in her movements. ‘Can it be from her? It only comes when she moves, but I didn’t notice it before… Maybe she’s not moving flawlessly like I thought, but it’s just the speed that I can’t track. Could it just be perception?’

The more that she heard the sound it became easier to recognize. It wasn’t just random or foreign as she originally thought it might be. More like a ring or tone, but not like music. A metallic ring echoed around signaling more clearly to her the movement. ‘Something’s ringing? What could it be? Or is it even a ring?’ Saki continued to question the sound.

Knocked through two trees, Saki managed to recoil off and disappear before crashing. She had finally started to get used to the pace the demon set. It seemed strange that she could actually find some comfort in the battle unlike before. Her eyes searched around feeling more certain about the sound.

It was then during her punch being blocked that she finally noticed. The demon had more than just her height that was unusual about her. Saki didn’t know how she didn’t notice it before during the fight or even talking with her. Her hair was long, which wasn’t doing any sort of justice to the description. It was inaccurate and woefully under served its job as an adjective for her.

The Demon Lord Kokonemu’s hair was twice the length of her already ridiculous height. She had more hair than body it seemed in a way. Most of it just hung back behind her in a light blue color that seemed to fit in with her dress. Maybe that was why she didn’t notice it before. The blue balanced well with the colors of her dress that it looked more like a veil or part of her dress rather than her own hair. It dragged behind her and draped around her figure when she stood still. And at the ends and measured lengths were metal clasps that tied her hair into individual bunches.

What she had been hearing as the fight continued was the ringing of the metal clasps either brushing against the ground or knocking together. Everywhere she went they followed signaling her advance, if one could even hear it. Her mind clouded with doubt before hearing nothing. But now she knew the source and what to listen for.

When Kokonemu moved for the counter and disappeared Saki could hear the ringing. Reflexes increased as she focused and prepared herself between the moments of time. Everything in that moment heightened to the extreme. Her body flowed naturally as she dodged out of the way of the fist and grabbed her wrist, flipping her to the ground. “Found you!”