Ikki vs Ouma round 1

It was Ouma who made the first move. He lifted his hand, Ryuuzume glowing with pale, baleful fire in the darkness—

"Ha!"

—and swept horizontally at a rapidly closing Ikki. Ten meters separated the two. It was a distance no blade's reach could cross, or would cross. And yet—

"Tch!"

Ikki's body, already held close to the ground in his charge, now went lower still as he dived flush to the ground in a panic. Not a moment too soon—a frigid gale passed over him, scything through the rows of trees behind him in its wake.

A blade of steel might not cross that distance. But a blade of wind was a different matter. This was the Noble Art Shinkuuha[15], a popular offensive technique among wind users that tore through air, creating a small corridor of vacuum. Naturally, Ouma was capable of using it.

"Haa!"

Ouma struck out with Ryuuzume once again, sending another blade of vacuum hurtling toward Ikki. A slash capable of cutting through air. While it lacked the sheer offensive strength of a fire-user's ranged abilities like Stella Vermillion's own long-range technique Dragon Fang, its supersonic speeds and the difficulty of dodging an invisible strike made it a deadly ability in its own right.

But such a pedestrian technique would not be able to tame the Worst One. Ikki continued to advance without losing an iota of speed, juking his way through the gaps between the vacuum blades, dodging them all by a hair's breadth. From his movements it was obvious that he had seen through the supposedly invisible Shinkuuha. But how? The trick lay in that which Ikki had fixed his gaze on. His eyes were not on the unseen blades, but the Ryuuzume Ouma wielded. Though it boasted supersonic speed, Shinkuuha could only go a straight line down the trajectory drawn by its user's Device. Therefore, following it and evading it was simple if one observed Ryuuzume's angles of attack. It was much like dodging bullets, where one could easily evade them by reading the timing of the bolt's movements, and the position of the muzzle. For someone with Ikki's reflexes and motion perception, they simply could not hit.

"Hmph…."

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.

- Volume 5, Chapter 2
[Ouma can launch invisible, supersonic vacuum attacks with his sword but Ikki considers such attacks as "pedestrian" and alongside bullets, something that would never be able to tag him due to his skill and reading]
------------------------------------------------------
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.

"You've changed a lot since we last met all those years ago, Ouma. No, I should say you've changed too much. What's the secret behind that body?"

"Oh?"

Ouma cracked a predatory grin at Ikki's words.

"To think that you would notice my anomaly in our first crossing of blades. Though it is trickery, your wounding of Twin Wings is evidently not just for show… however, there is nothing you can do with that knowledge. This anomaly is pure strength alone, unlike your deceptions."


[Ikki's sixth sense warns him of a super dangerous attack from Ouma as it's coming in and instantly sees through Ouma's changes and secret of strength]
------------------------------------------------------------
"Ittou Shura."

A burst of azure fire wrapped around his body as his sword spirit burst forth, like a rushing wind yet sharp enough to cut flesh. The trees in the park again shook, their leaves falling like raindrops. Having experienced many battles, Ikki's spirit had come to possess a very physical pressure.

[Ittou Shura now has a very physical pressure to it]
-----------------------------------------------------------
The knight in black initiated the decisive attack, his posture low to the ground like a shadow. In response, the Sword Emperor of Wind too made his move, his blade sweeping forth like a hurricane towards that shadow's head.

But when cloaked in Ittou Shura, Ikki was swifter than any wind!

I can do this!

[Ittou Shura confidently faster than Ryuuzume's abilities thus far (casually supersonic)]
------------------------------------------------------
He had no time to be surprised, however. He was the only one who had stopped. Ouma's blade was upon him in a flash.

Shit!

He barely managed to get his guard up before it made contact with his neck.

But he had taken Ouma's earth-splitting physical strength head-on.

"Gaaaah!"

Ikki was blown dozens of meters of away as though hit by a heavy truck, smashing against a stone wall.

"Gah-hak!"

A gout of bloody mist came forth from his mouth—the impact had reached his internal organs, wounding them. The bones in his arms were broken up to the elbows from taking that slash squarely. But, at this moment, both those things were irrelevant to Ikki.

***
He had to avoid it, by any means necessary. He was concerned of course, by the meaning behind the 'gift' of Edelweiss' that Ouma had spoken of. Still, he chased it from his mind for now, ordering his body—still wracked with damage done by the impact—to flee the oncoming threat with all its might.

But he froze up again—just like before. His brain desperately appealed to his body to flee, but his flesh was frozen, unresponsive. Were his bodily functions disabled by the damage? That possibility arose first in his mind. But checking his wounds, he dismissed it—they was severe, yes, but not the point where he would be immobile.

[Ikki has wounds that shattered his arms and gave him internal organ damage but doesn't consider that to be enough to stop him from moving/fighting]
---------------------------------------------------