Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 17 - Chapter 7.5

Interlude: Blade-Dance

Event Area, Middle, Base of a Mountain

Great Genocide Max—the girl bearing this over-the-top name had originally been a duel ranker from Tenchi, counted among the top thirty martial artists from that land of strife.

She’d since left this prestigious position and moved to Altar to become a duelist there.

The reason for this was the existence of someone who was essentially a direct upgrade of her—King of Asuras, Jubei Kaga.

Max’s Embryo, Ipetam, was a high-rank Guardian—a Sentinel—with countless blades growing out of its back; it had the power to levitate them and direct them at Max’s enemies. Jubei, on the other hand, had a job skill that let her control six levitating weapons.

Both of them commanded floating armaments, but the gap in their overall power was evident to anyone.

Although Max had Jubei beat in quantity of her armaments, Jubei was superior in both quality and technique. Despite that, Max had challenged Jubei for the position of fourth-ranked duelist in Tenchi, in order to gain the right to face the top three.

As Jubei was still ranked fourth, the outcome of her confrontation with Max should be painfully obvious.

To make matters worse, their battle had taken place in public, which had made the gap in power that much more obvious. Max now seemed like the weaker version of Jubei.

She’d left Tenchi because she couldn’t bear being called that.

Max had then moved to the main continent, traveled to Altar, become a duelist again, and then finally met Juliet and her group. After all that, she’d grown as both a fighter and a person. And perhaps this encounter was the chance she’d been given to confirm that.

“...Jubei.”

“Maxie. It has been so long.”

Max had once again crossed paths with the physical manifestation of strife—her direct upgrade.

Max had split from Chelsea and Shion to search for hints, and on the way to take a look at the goal, she’d run into Jubei.

King of Asuras was surrounded by pieces of metal and event plates.

“...Oh? Have your tastes in fashion changed?”

“One more word about the outfit and you’re dead.”

Max wearing frilly dresses was a fairly recent thing. She’d challenged Juliet to a duel for fourth place—and to get her to agree, Max had said that if she lost, she would do anything Juliet wanted. It was clear how that had turned out: Max had become Juliet’s dress-up doll.

Max was used to the way Juliet dressed her by now, but having an old acquaintance comment on it still annoyed her.

“Eh heh heh. We’ll be fighting to the death regardless,” Jubei giggled. “I must say I am surprised to see that you are in this festival as well, Maxie.”

“Don’t call me that... What’s with all the loot, anyway? This your handiwork?”

“No. It appears that someone set traps all over the mountain, and half of what you see was caused by people triggering those. Though...I sliced the other half apart,” Jubei explained with a smile as she showed her old acquaintance her floating weapons and the three curseblades clutched in her prosthetic arms.

That was when Max noticed something.

“...That’s one less arm than I remember,” she said.

“Yes. A certain Superior in an animal costume took it from me.”

“Hm...?” That description made Max think of the bear who’d been selling popcorn in Gideon. But if that was the person Jubei was talking about, the destruction to the island would’ve been far greater.

It also made her think of Bachigo Futae, a Superior from her old home of Tenchi who wore a crochet animal costume. Maybe the costume thing wasn’t so unusual after all.

Regardless, that wasn’t the important thing right now.

“Jubei,” said Max as she looked into the eyes of the asura who had surpassed her in every way.

“Yes?” Jubei replied.

“...Having one less arm ain’t an excuse for losin’.”

“I knooow.”

Max’s gaze and the words they’d exchanged were the signal. The two old enemies fanned out their blades and prepared to face each other.

“Maddened Blade, Sip Their Blood—Ipetam!” Max called.

“GRRAH!” Ipetam answered, releasing over a hundred blades from its back.

“It has been so long since we’ve fought,” Jubei said, widening her smile and causing her weapons to orbit her at high speeds. She was now prepared to deal with anything, no matter how many attacks were launched or from what angle.

“Heh!” Understanding that, Max put on a smile that was joyous, belligerent, and fearful all at the same time.

Their combat style was quite similar, but Max had lost against Jubei every time she had challenged her.

How much had she changed since those defeats? Since Jubei’s SJ had no level cap, had Max only fallen further behind?

The answer to that would yet again become obvious in the next few moments.

As Jubei prepared her six floating weapons and the three curseblades, Max rushed towards her.

Her combat style was simple. She used Ipetam’s floating blades to attack the enemy from every direction in order to overwhelm their capacity for defense and evasion, then used the blades fixed to the sheaths on her legs to launch herself towards them for an attack using Laser Blade—the Swordmaster’s ultimate job skill.

This was a constant barrage that could exceed a hundred strikes per volley. It was an onslaught that few could withstand.

However, Jubei wouldn’t be a duelist from the land of strife if she wasn’t one of those few. Moving by Jubei’s will, her six floating weapons flew to shatter Max’s hundred.

Ipetam’s blades all had a direct trajectory towards the target, so someone like Jubei had no trouble predicting all their paths and cutting them down.

Max had expected this, however.

She’s still not using her arms! she thought.

Jubei was in the habit of primarily fighting with her floating weapons. Strikes made with the blades held in her arms, prosthetic or otherwise, were stronger, but since they broke her stance, they opened her up to attacks that she might not be able to counter. By contrast, she didn’t have to move her body to move the floating weapons, so she always relied on them first while keeping her actual physical arms ready to defend against any attacks that may come her way.

Just five of her floating weapons had brought down over twenty times that number of blades that Max had launched her way, while she herself remained completely unengaged. If Max were to rush her now, the last floating weapon—the counterattacking Dankajin—would strike her down, leaving her open to a quick death by Jubei’s own hands.

That had happened to her many times back when they’d fought in Tenchi, which implied that nothing about Jubei had changed much since then.

And that was why Max’s true advantage—the value of the days she’d spent outside of Tenchi—would be tested now.

“HIIIYAAH!” With Ipetam’s blades in each hand, Max rushed into the range of Jubei’s floating weapons.

Dankajin was instantly unsheathed, launching a high-speed counterattack on Max.

Before it reached her, Max stuck out her left hand and cut it off at the wrist.

“Hgh...!” Though discomfited by the feeling of losing a hand, she made the blade in her now-disembodied extremity fly towards Jubei.

The blade, still held tightly clutched in her severed hand, did exactly that, and a moment later it was struck by a counterattack from Dankajin, now distracted from the rest of Max.

Dankajin was a counter-focused weapon that always hit anyone who entered its range. However, it was automatic, and it always went for the nearest living entity—meaning that a freshly sliced-off hand functioned as a sufficient distraction.

I see she has not forgotten Dankajin’s effective attack range, Jubei thought. The scores of Max’s blades kept five of Jubei’s floating weapons busy, while the last one was distracted by Max’s hand.

Max then closed on Jubei, coming into her melee range.

However, no amount of her high-rank ultimate job skills could match the strikes from Jubei’s curseblades. Max was also inferior to her in raw strength, speed, and the amount of punishment she could take. Having lost a hand, she also now held only a single blade, as opposed to the three in Jubei’s prosthetics.

Max had managed to close distance with Jubei, but that had only made her death more inevitable.

The thing she chose to do in this desperate situation was letting go of her single sword.

“Oh!” Shifting to flying mode, the blade entered the range of Jubei’s curseblades, where it was quickly struck down.

This seemed like a bad move on Max’s part. A surprise attack like this would have no effect on Jubei when she was ready for it.

“RRHAAGH!”

But what if Max layered it with two more such attacks?

Max even let go of the sheathed blades on her legs that she used for propulsion before sending them against Jubei. Again, they were countered by the two remaining curseblades.

Max’s flying blades could reach Jubei even from a close range. Forcing Jubei to use her three curseblades made her lose her footing slightly, but the opening it created was small. Whether Max equipped a new blade from her inventory or had Ipetam manifest a new one, Jubei would be fully ready to counter it by the time it was in her hand.

And that was exactly why Max accelerated towards her unarmed. The girl who commanded a hundred blades moved in to fight with none.

Jubei was caught off guard by this, and the momentum Max had built up allowed her to approach her before she could swing her curseblades.

And so, the two fingers Max had managed to extend towards her foe tore out one of the asura’s eyes.

“Ngh...!” The prosthetics didn’t move fast enough to prevent the attack, while using the Kasanehime she was holding in her own arms wasn’t an option. That weapon built up power without limit, so she had to think carefully about how to employ it when it had accumulated too much of said power. In a situation like this, slightly off-balance from intercepting the blades, using Kasanehime could even lead to her own destruction.

Max was well aware of this, and guessed that destroying half of the blades that made it to her would have made Kasanehime’s power too great for Jubei to use it in this specific situation.

This was a move Max had carefully crafted just to deliver this single attack—this repayment—to Jubei.

It was something that Max would never have been able to do in the past—and right after it, the three curseblades sliced Max to pieces.

“...Heh,” Max chuckled as she fell.

She’d expected this outcome. This happened to anyone who entered the range of this asura—this embodiment of strife. But she wanted to challenge Jubei even if it cost her her life.

She wanted to measure the distance between her and Jubei, as well as weaken the asura for her friends.

I did...what I could... she thought. This would at least increase Chelsea’s and Shion’s chances of winning against Jubei, which was another reason why Max hadn’t hesitated despite the odds.

Though, for all Max knew, they might not end up being the ones to finally face Jubei. It might even be the winged Altarian duelist who’d once defeated her but was now her friend.

Regardless, Max had carved her mark upon this embodiment of strife, and for that alone, she was satisfied.

Max died, and Ipetam’s floating blades vanished.

After that, all that was left were Max’s plates and Jubei. She touched her now-gone left eye and cracked a grin.

“Max is as strong as ever.”

Overjoyed, she said something she’d truly believed for a long time now. That had been her honest impression of Max since her days in Tenchi.

Max had a combat style much like Jubei’s, but was a direct upgrade to hers, controlling many times more weapons. Despite being but one Master, she could completely overwhelm Jubei’s processing power.

So far Jubei had always won against Max thanks to her Superior Job and quality equipment, but she always wondered if her victory would be so assured had they been equal in those regards.

Jubei had always considered Max a rival and had been saddened by her departure from Tenchi. And now, having learned that Max had continued to improve since that day and had even become good enough to take out Jubei’s eye, she was filled with glee.

Even though she now had only one eye to perceive the light, she nevertheless felt as though the sun was shining twice as brightly.

“I am meeting Ray Starling soon, so I should probably bandage it up,” she said before starting to hum a song and walking away from the place where she’d fought Max, certain that this wouldn’t be the last time she would fight her truest rival.