After a few intense opening salvos, Middray and Mujika stood at a distance from each other, observing. They were both looking for an opening, hoping to avoid any careless errors. Then Mujika spoke up.
“Impressive. May I ask your name?”
“Middray. Will you give me yours? The name of someone fierce enough to entertain me is well worth remembering.”
Though they were enemies, they were willing to acknowledge each other’s talents. Mujika felt a lot more humanlike after Reconstruct Life was invoked on him. His skills had a robotic feel before; now they were sharper, more innovative. The shift wasn’t lost on Middray, who had a higher opinion of Mujika than ever—he wouldn’t have exposed his full Dragon Body form otherwise.
But this was war, and these were two enemies. They might respect each other, but the ultimate aim was to kill their opponent.
So Middray shot out his left fist in a fluid motion, smiling all the while. Then, pulling back with even more speed, he used the recoil to unleash a spinning kick. It was a kind of feint, and for Middray, it didn’t end there—that first fist strike allowed him to compress the air inside his fist, then shoot it out later. This air was also infused with fighting spirit, so the resulting force was greater than even your typical magic bullet.
Mujika had his sword ready once he saw the fist coming, allowing him to deflect the projectile of compressed air. But immediately after that, Middray’s kick cleanly entered the gap from lifting his sword high.
“Nggh!”
The force penetrated Mujika’s armor, running through his entire body and affecting all his physical functions. That kick, too, was filled with Middray’s fighting spirit. He was a master of Battlewill.
Just as the Dragon Fist school had sprouted up in the other world Velgrynd had visited, there was a similarly unique school introduced here in the key world. Its core movements resembled premodern koryu judo, but its focus was on working one’s fighting spirit into martial art attacks. It was a wild, uninhibited style, as befitted its founder Milim, and while it didn’t have a name yet, it could be called Ryuma-ken, or “Dragon-Demon Fist.” There was none of the hun-po inheritance ritual seen in Dragon Fist; it was up to each practitioner to acquire the school’s accumulated knowledge and experience themselves.
In a key world, an individual’s lifespan might vary wildly and be greatly extended based on the lifestyle they pursued. Simply training and managing one’s physical condition through Battlewill could multiply one’s lifespan several times over…and someone like Middray, with a pedigree that hearkened back to his ancestors, could make it past a thousand years. Middray himself, in fact, was over two thousand years old, and he had spent all that time training—the main secret behind his strength.
The force behind Middray’s kick made Mujika take a step back. He looked down at the spot where he was hit…and his eyes opened wide. His shell armor, which couldn’t be scratched by any normal attack, sported a healthy dent and had a few pieces missing. Low-level insector soldiers had no sense of fear; they launched repeated suicide attacks against any foe they were ordered to strike. However, the rarity of higher-ranked insectors allowed them to instinctively grasp the difference in power between them and their opponents. An Insect Master could make these predictions with great accuracy as well. However, this ability could only gauge an adversary’s core ability; it couldn’t surmise what their foes’ skills were capable of. It also required the insector to actually fight the person they wanted to evaluate, of course.
Thanks to the blow he’d just received, Mujika was on high alert. Piriod had helped him grow stronger, but he could calmly conclude he might lose if this fight went on too long. The only course of action, then, was to show his respect for his opponent and demonstrate only his best techniques, powered by all his strength at once.
“Have a taste of this—Consuming Fang.”
Mujika’s weapon, strictly speaking, was not a sword but a pure blade forged from alionium. As he evolved, it, too, grew sharper and sharper. He also put his magical force into this God-class blade, making it powerful enough to cut through all matter.
This was what Middray faced—but he didn’t move. Instead, with a mighty “hnnngh!” he raised his left arm and caught Mujika’s blade.
Yes, caught it.
A dull, unpleasant thud echoed, almost deafening in volume. It was the melody played by the collision of two equally tough and powerful forces.
“No…!” Mujika gasped.
“Why the surprise? With the right attitude, it’s easy to make a weapon out of your own body.”
It wasn’t that easy. Mujika was right to be surprised. But Middray was constantly training against Milim, the most unfair of opponents. What was normal to Middray was extremely abnormal to others, although he never caught on to this. To him, anyone was capable of it if they tried hard enough.
Of course, this wasn’t done by sheer willpower alone. The dragon scales covering him were one reason, but it also stemmed from a certain skill. Middray was controlling his own fighting spirit, using it to literally harden his body. He could anticipate when an attack was coming, focusing his attention on the body part being targeted. Then he’d gather all his fighting force around that part, despite the blow to the rest of his defense. That gave his left arm enough defensive strength to withstand the power of God-class weapons, but using sheer willpower to achieve that was beyond reckless.
Only Middray could pull off something like that. His true nature was close to a dragon god, a title Gabil would likely obtain someday. The strength of his body, imbued with divinity throughout, gave him the kind of willpower that would compete with God-class strikes.
Those skills, of course, weren’t limited to defense.
“Now it’s my turn.”
With a grin, Middray lowered himself, his left hand still on the blade. It was like a shiko-dachi stance from karate—legs out wide and bent like a sumo wrestler. The vast amount of energy generated in his left arm flowed to his right fist. As it did, he took in the energy coursing through the terrain beneath him through his feet, tapping into the force of the planet itself and making it his own in his body.
This was Planet Unity, a Ryuma-ken move. It exacted an unimaginably harsh toll on the body, but Middray’s willpower was able to wrangle and tame it. Anything else that happened in the future didn’t matter to him. Winning was all that mattered.
“Nngh?!”
Mujika sensed the danger. But it was already too late.
“Dragonic Blast!!” Middray shouted.
This was the moment Middray had waited for—his most powerful secret move, easily surpassing even Dragonic Cannon. At first glance, it looked like a simple thrust of his arm, just like the one that had shredded the Insect Master Sarill’s body. Its power, however, was beyond any law of nature or any definition of common sense in this world. Mujika certainly couldn’t comprehend it. Only after a large hole was opened in his shell armor did he understand just how unusual a fighter Middray was.
Simply being on my guard wasn’t enough…? Mujika wondered. Perhaps old age has slowed me…
It was, indeed, too late for Mujika. These were his final thoughts—but strangely, he was comfortable with this defeat. He had lived and died satisfied with himself—not as an Insect Master, but as a warrior.
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