strength 2

Weaving past the corridor of vacuum slashes, Ikki was closing in. As though judging that bringing Ikki down was beyond mere Shinkuuha, Ouma too charged and swung at Ikki's neck—not with a sword of wind this time, but with a sword of steel.

"Kaaaa!!"

"Tch…!"

He's fast!

Despite wielding a bladed weapon whose weight equaled that of a spear, the sharpness and speed of Ouma's slash with his nodachi by far surpassed Ikki's.

This was not a difference in skill—indeed, both sides were about equal in that regard. The difference lay in Ouma's ability. Manipulating the wind, he had rendered air resistance null and void, giving his white blade the advantage in speed over Ikki's black one. Without Ittou Shura, there was no counter to such speed. Having judged in that moment, Ikki took up a defensive stance—

*Swish*

—and then he felt a chill freeze the blood in his veins as that sound reached his ears.

"Ooooooh!"

Forsaking defense, he threw himself backward to avoid Ouma's strike. The blade struck the sandy soil of the park—and did not stop there, carving a seemingly bottomless chasm in the earth below, etching that fissure-like wound deeply into the ochre-colored ground. Ikki broke into a cold sweat at the sight. Stella too could shake the ground with her strikes, but Ouma's were a cut above her's. After all, shaking was a phenomenon caused by the dispersion of energy—a sign of excessive waste and imperfection in the user's magic control. A true strike of concentrated energy created no such perturbations. Where it went, it silently yet thoroughly blew everything away. That was Ouma's strike, which had cut through the earth like a knife through hot butter.

How much energy would have had he gathered, how much force and mass simulated in order to do something like that? How many hundreds of kilograms? How many thousands? He did not know, but one thing he did. His brother's strike, much like Stella's, was a brutal blow. And not one he could take head-on.

But—

This extraordinary offensive strength, it can only be created by that body.