Ten'i Muhou

Kuraudo scowled at Sara who must be standing in the drifting smoke. He was going after her life mercilessly as well, but Sara didn't have any concern for limits. To bring such massive firepower to kill a single person was—

As Kuraudo was cursing her, the black smoke in front of him shifted in the breeze, and he saw….


Muzzles of military machine guns were pointed at him by an army corps of over a hundred skeletons.


"Purple Caricature—Necro Battalion."

"This girl… really is way too much…."

That instant, the hundred or so muzzles fired a storm of lead that couldn't be compared to the density or speed from before. All of it hit Kuraudo, to punch his body into a honeycomb.

"Wha…!?"

Gun barrels in formation. Seeing Kuraudo swallowed by the storm of lead flying from those barrels in unison, Ikki leaped up from his folding chair, sending it crashing to the ground. Was he seeing Kuraudo's gruesome last moments?

—No.

"I-It can't be…."

What spilled from his trembling lips was surprise. The bullets certainly hit. Such a dense barrage would definitely turn a human into not just a honeycomb, but ground meat. That was certain, but Kuraudo was standing calmly inside that storm of lead as if it wasn't affecting him at all.

「Wh-What is this!? Are we really seeing this, or is it a dream…!? Contender Kuraudo should've been devoured by the undead army's fire…! But he's standing! No, not just standing… he's walking! Inside the horizontal rain of lead, he's calmly continuing forward, approaching Contender Sara Bloodlily—!」

At this spectacle, even Sara was shaking with her mouth open. Inconceivable. It was a barrage of lead with no gaps to hide in. Kuraudo had blocked the automatic gunshots from the Thompson, but this was not an amount of bullets that he could deal with. No, Kuraudo wasn't even swinging his sword right now. He was only carrying Orochimaru in his hands. In other words, he was taking hundreds of machine gun shots without defending himself. Then how was he standing? How was he facing this?

The method—was something only Ikki Kurogane in the arena waiting room knew. Kuraudo was indeed not making any attempt to dodge, just as he appeared. His body was exposed to the barrage defenselessly. And yet the bullets were not gouging out his flesh—they were veering aside. The moment any touched Kuraudo's body, it glided past over his clothing, flowed around him without wounding. No—they were being made to do so.

...Kurashiki-kun figured it out somehow while learning swordsmanship. He realized that two-sword style was an excellent fit for his ability. There must have been someone to point it out, and more than anything his previous aggression and sharpness isn't there anymore. What's here now is a swordsman's well-honed spirit. But how… how can it be… the one behind Kurashiki-kun is… you…!?

Ikki knew. A certain genius swordsman's perfect defense of grasping the flow of everything in nature, perceiving their subtleties to ward off each and every attack, derived after half a lifetime of risk—


Ayatsuji Single-Sword Style secret technique—Ten'i Muhou.


…That's right, Ayatsuji-san said that she was going to spend summer vacation with her father while he was in rehabilitation, but he sent her away.

That's right. That's how it was. If he had a student like this, he'd instantly be sentenced to death as a matter of family judgment. To teach somone who had half-killed him, what was the Last Samurai thinking? Ikki couldn't get that far into his head, but even so—

"A-Amazing…."

At Kuraudo's talent, words of admiration spilled from Ikki's mouth. This was something he couldn't imitate. Ikki's Ten'i Muhou would never be able to divert this many bullets. In fact, back at the training camp while fighting the Pierrot's rock puppets, many of them had attacked him at once, and he had taken hard blows he couldn't dodge. Yet Kuraudo was eluding hundreds of attacks completely. This was a feat that his Marginal Counter allowed. Ten'i Muhou and Marginal Counter had great synergy. Ordinary attacks were now probably already unable to even scratch him.

"...Tch. After a missile, now it's a whole brigade. Coming up with this and that, are you Dora●mon or something? This was a trick I finally managed to get so I could use it on that bastard in our match."

While calmly walking within the hail of bullets, Kuraudo spat bitterly. It seemed that he wanted revenge for having been knocked unconscious back then, coughing and pissing blood while undergoing hellish training that was likely potentially fatal, all for a secret technique that he finally mastered at the edge of death and sanity, for something to astonish Ikki with in their fight.

Against that, Sara's soldiers raised the density of their barrage even more. But—all of it flowed around him, and Kuraudo's skin wasn't even lightly torn.

"Useless useless useless! No matter how much lead you send flying straight at me, it's all wasted effort! That kind of thing's not gonna stop me!"

To give a swordsman clad in Ten'i Muhou a fatal strike, one must deliver a cut backed by skill and force. But Sara was a painter. Naturally, she could not use a sword, and so she couldn't stop Kuraudo's advance!