Hello, Vinzelles here. Welcome back to A Path to Freedom.
It's been a little more than a week once again, whoops. No excuses this time, I was just being lazy.
I've also been stuck on a certain point of Arc 3. In fact, it's been three weeks since the last time I wrote down something, FeelsBadMan. Luckily I have plenty of chapters yet to be released so this shouldn't be an issue in the long run (we're talking 10-ish chapters after this one).
There is also the fact that I'm having... other mundane concerns, let's say. I play Fire Emblem Heroes, and one of my favourite characters has been announced, and will be released in two days as Nintendo usually does. Weather is shit lately in North Italy: shitty enough that the sky doesn't know how to behave. I have to upload stuff on my YT channel. Stuff like that. Very mundane.
But that's neither here nor there. Today, we have a training session! And I hope it doesn't suck, because again, this is a first for me.
I got a review, so let me answer it real quick. Thank you, PoseidonisPlayz. It's not a weird review at all, it IS a place where a reader can express his or her thoughts about a story after all, and I'm also glad that we share the same opinion on the matter.
Alright, now that that's done, I'll see you at the bottom. Enjoy.
Arc 2 Chapter 8 - True Strength
"Huh? Everyone is here, what's the occasion?"
The next day, Orochi had been brought to a vast and uninhabited grassy hill via magic circle by Raynare. Nina wanted to avoid the eyes of unrelated people for obvious reasons, but still needed Orochi to fight in an open space as preparation for the Rating Game with Riser.
Orochi had woken up very late in the morning that day and didn't remember anything about his outburst. Nina and Raynare told him that he had collapsed from exhaustion and couldn't wake up no matter how hard they tried, so he had to skip school that morning. It was a lie, but they had no choice: adding burden to Orochi now was going to be detrimental to the training, so they decided to tell him the truth after the match.
As requested by Nina, Anya and her peerage were also brought along, while Agnes was temporarily left to the care of the Technology Department.
"I need to see how good you are at crowd control. You and Raynare-san are going to face 16 people on your own and they will definitely fight you in groups. And since you went and made that stupid bet about Raynare-san and Riser Phenex's Queen piece, there's a good chance that you will fight apart from each other for most of the Game. So... everyone here, aside from me and Asia who still has to develop offensive abilities, will attack you at once. Once we're done Asia-chan will take care of you four, so don't hold back, okay?"
"...That would be a three-against-one scenario then..." muttered Orochi. He would have to face Raynare, Anya and Unryuu, the latter of which he still held a grudge against.
"...I'm not looking forward to this." said Raynare, bothered by that entire situation. "I don't know how I'm supposed to match up with Heaven's Gate, but I guess I'll have to commit to what I decided, even if this human has made inconvenient bets behind my back..."
"From my point of view, you have the slight advantage when compared to me though." argued Anya. "You saw him fight seriously, while I didn't."
"That's right. And I'm even worse off than you two." added Unryuu. "I haven't felt his blows yet. ...Well, putting our usual meaningless squabbles aside I mean."
"Well, no point in wasting any more time. Since you all gave me the time of day, I should show my gratitude." declared Orochi.
He decided to suddenly discard his jacket and remove his shirt. His remaining clothing was a black undershirt, black jeans binded by a belt, and black shoes. Nina, seeing Orochi getting ready to fight, had already distanced herself.
"Aaaaalright, since everyone's here I should treat this as a special occasion. I will fight at full strength so don't hold back, yeah?"
"That's how you show gratitude?!" Three people protested his actions in unison.
"By the way, Nishijima, before I get going I should ask. Are you really going to fight?"
"Of course I am, why would I be here otherwise-"
"Then I'll start with you."
"...Eh?"
Too late. He had already started running towards her. Twenty meters were covered in little more than a second: he jumped forward and divekicked her in the face.
Unryuu barely had the time to cross her arms in front of her but such a flimsy defense was of course not enough to withstand the blow: she was dragged several meters back with Orochi before he lost his momentum.
"Gh! No warning at all?!"
"Don't be ridiculous, there is no such thing as a warning in a war. And I did warn you actually so stop whining and fight, you traitor!"
"You're still mad about that?"
He jumped back and landed five meters in front of her. "We haven't solved that particular problem yet. So yeah, still angry." Despite what he said about being mad, his expression displayed anything but.
"You're using that as an excuse though! Look at that stupid smile on your face!"
"Maybe, but it gives me a reason to beat you up without regrets!"
He prepared to charge again, but before he could start running he sensed movement from behind. The Wind Brand seemed to be doing its work properly even against multiple supernatural creatures: with it he could sense the brusque movements the wind would make whenever someone tried to run at him, and he was even able to tell the kind of movement a currently unseen opponent would perform. So he ducked, as a blood red spear pierced through the air above him.
"Straight for the head, huh?"
He made a sweep behind him, but it was such an obvious reaction that Anya didn't need her ability to tell her that she should have jumped.
"You said to not hold back, didn't you?" A second spear dived to the now-crouching Orochi, but he pulled back his leg and sprang towards Anya. He grabbed the spear and pulled it above him, intending to drive his feet in her face once he reached an acceptable height.
"Nice try, but you haven't seen enough of me to predict this!" declared Anya suddenly.
Several runes appeared on the base of the lance Orochi had grabbed. Before he could ponder what their purpose was, they immediately disappeared, before reappearing on his body.
"?!"
He didn't have the time to think of what to do. A foot planted itself in his face, and he tumbled back as Anya distanced herself from him with the force she produced from it.
*BOOM!*
The runes exploded, and lifted a cloud of black smoke around Orochi.
"Don't worry, Orochi-kun. It's pretty much fire magic, which means that you'll be able to build resistance to Riser's attacks, or at least some of them."
" *cough* Yeah, it was a good idea on your part..."
The smoke dissipated, and Orochi was currently bended on one knee. He looked at her with a wild grin, despite the slight burns on his person.
"By the way, no need to use wind magic with those Runes of yours. I've got that covered."
"?"
She didn't know about the Brand, so she was understandably confused.
He was suddenly kicked in the face.
"GAAAAAAAAHHHH!" He flew several meters back before crashing into the tall grass. He stood up immediately and looked at the perpetrator.
Unryuu stood close to where he was kneeling a moment before, with a leg raised and outstretched in his direction. Said leg was covered by a layer of some kind of rock, brilliantly shining under the sun.
"This is my Adamantite Armor. I won't lose to Orochi-kun as long as this defensive layer protects me."
"..."
Orochi had felt a lot of pain from that blow. Whatever the material of that leg was, his body couldn't withstand it.
'Well, Heaven's Gate will eventually neutralize that ability too, but still...'
He stood up while putting a hand to his temple: sure enough, he had started bleeding.
"...I see. A straight fight with someone that can take my blows well and retaliate properly will be dangerous for me. I should do something about it."
"You should, but the question is, can you?"
"Heh. Just watch me. If you can, that is."
"?"
He disappeared.
"! What the-"
A split second after, her world moved brusquely to the right.
"Gespenst." (1)
He somehow moved right behind her without her noticing and made a sweep kick to her left side, and she was knocked aside as a result. Unryuu was barely able to recover in mid-air, and landed on her feet before feeling a fist slamming onto her forehead and sending her to the ground.
Orochi straightened up and clicked his tongue. "Tch, that armor is annoying. Anyone else would have passed out."
Sure enough, Unryuu was still conscious; in fact, she didn't take much damage either, it was mostly her pride that was wounded.
"H-How?!"
"Hm, wouldn't you like to know?" was the sarcastic response.
On the grass under him, a huge rune appeared. Unryuu noticed it and picked herself up before running away.
"...Hah, you think I'll fall for that again?! Gespenst!"
He disappeared once more. However, Anya was prepared: she had activated her Wisdom of the Haunted Ground, and was able to foresee what Orochi was about to do. She spun around and made a thrust with her spear in a seemingly empty space at seven o'clock.
That empty space was suddenly occupied, and Orochi had to stop an approaching harmful object from piercing his body, by grabbing its base with his hands.
"...It happened again." he said. "This isn't the first time that you adapt your actions to match mine. Just what are you doing exactly, Anya?"
"Figure it out on your own. I did the same with that technique you just displayed so it's only fair."
"! You figured it out so quickly, even though it's a technique I developed just now... Quite impressive."
"HUH?! What do you mean, 'just now'?!" Anya simply could not believe that statement. "What kind of mad genius are you to just create something so strong this quickly because 'you need to do something'? I already knew this, but you are absolutely ridiculous!"
*STAB*
Someone's heel planted itself in the boy's left temple. He was suddenly dragged forcefully to the ground, as he felt something like a sharp nail piercing the side of his head that wasn't kicked by Unryuu.
A simple physical blow from something that wasn't covered in Adamantite would be nothing to Orochi though, so why was he in pain?
He looked to his left as he laid on the ground and saw Raynare with a triumphant smile. He then moved his hand towards the source of his current pain. Apparently, a long transparent nail had been planted into his temple.
'Just where did this thing come from?!' "Khhh!" Orochi released a grunt of pain as he removed the offending "object" from where it had taken residence. Immediately after, of course, blood started pouring out of the hole, dripping from his chin and staining the grass.
"How do you like that, Kamakura?" said Raynare with amusement in her voice. "This little idea came to me the day you Inverted. As I tried to stop you from rampaging, the spear I had created was fragmented and unstable due to your influence. This morning I had unexpectedly a lot of free time, so I experimented a bit and found a way to replicate these Fragments and have them emerge from any part of my body as concentrated solid light at any given moment. Can you dodge a weapon that you can't see, I wonder?"
She had put it like that, but the truth was that she didn't feel like going to school that morning. Orochi didn't know any better because he was out cold until a few hours before so it was fine to lie a little about it. Of course there was no particular reason why she had skipped school that day. None at all.
Orochi found himself surrounded by the three supernatural creatures that were playing the part of his opponents.
"Um, Nina-sensei, aren't they g-going too far right now?!" Asia, who had been watching the fight with unease up to that point.
"Not at all, Asia. A normal approach will never work against Heaven's Gate, so they have to hit him with everything they have and hope he doesn't have resistance against their blows. He's impossible to harm otherwise, and his usage of the Abnormality will never improve like that. ...in fact, I think this training session will end soon. Observe."
"?"
The older woman knew that it was only a matter of time. Only a few seconds before Orochi decided that he was sick of playing around, and knocked them all out.
She was sure of this due to the information she had dug up the night before, while Orochi was recovering, from the medical archives she had requested urgently from Ajuka.
The boy's father, Soichiro Kamakura, and all of his ancestors for that matter, were truly a work of art for humanity. They had always possessed peculiar bodies that were made for the sole purpose of gathering knowledge. This was of course related mostly to just their brains in the past, but Soichiro had taken it a step further and learned how to assume complete control over both brain and musculature, as a way of enhancing his memory capacity in order to memorize his opponents' moves, and also as a way to shape his muscles into a desirable form in order to replicate them and even refine them sometimes.
Not only was this peculiar condition genetic, it seemed to be able to constantly evolve through generations without loss of information in the individuals' RNA. Nina was 99% sure that this condition was inherited by Orochi among other things, and that it was at the peak of its strength within the boy.
'...He gets stronger every time he fights. His entire body learns, not only brain and muscles. It finally makes sense! I thought it was part of the Gate's abilities at first but it's really just a genetic condition. All his talk about "experience" suddenly doesn't look so farfetched if it allows him to go this far..." She still remembered Raynare's reaction as she showed her the data that was sent by Ajuka.
With what had happened the night before, she had to reveal Orochi's roots to the Satan despite him pleading to her to not do that, since it couldn't be helped. Fortunately the Satan decided that it was unfair to judge the boy harshly, given his personal situation, which Nina made absolutely sure to describe properly so that her boss could understand. As such, he decided to pretend to not know anything, and allowed for Nina's observation to continue undisturbed.
She would even have apologized for it if Orochi had remembered anything about it.
At any rate, the point of the matter was that Orochi Kamakura, the "container" of the Abnormality Heaven's Gate, was able to reshape himself at will if he wanted to. Or at least that was what Nina had speculated.
Heaven's Gate may have been invisible to the human eye, but it still occupied space. It couldn't be touched, but it could still be moved if what Orochi said to her was true (this little fact was unknown to Ajuka who, sure enough, jumped around in excitement in his office for half a minute before regaining composure when she told him). A container that was deformed in any way was surely going to deform its contents as well, assuming they were malleable enough, which meant that Heaven's Gate would either evolve alongside Orochi's body at its same rate, or Invert at a moment's notice. That was going to be the main focus for his three-days training: learning how to control that Abnormality and to tap into that power without Inverting.
And as Raynare and the Devil duo charged Orochi at the same time, the boy went ahead and demonstrated that he had already found a way to use the Gate.
"Abprall."
(1): "Phantom" in German. This move will be explained properly in a few chapters, during the RG. Same goes for Abprall.
Welcome to the bottom.
It's immediately obvious that I didn't provide a translation for Abprall. It's intentional, since I plan to explain this particular technique much further down the arc, right after the RG probably. Just know that even in this primitive form, it is disgustingly powerful, and you probably won't see it that often after Arc 2. You can go ahead and translate the word on your own, and after that you can try guessing what it does, right? I would love to hear your thoughts in your reviews, readers.
The Adamantite Armor (I keep writing Adamantine and having to fix it, it never stops please help XD) is original. It's fairly generic because come on, not everything should be unique. Not even Twilight Healing is unique. Rare? Sure, but not unique. Just a little something I found out reading the wiki for Arc 1, something I swear I don't remember reading in the LN.
The Fragments are also a little something I cooked up to make Raynare stand out from normal Fallen Angels. They're pretty much unstable segments of a light spear, in which a more pure form of light can be easily concentrated due to their small size. I wonder what would happen if those little things were to overload... u.u
Finally, a little more is revealed about why Orochi is so ridiculous. As I mentioned before, Soichiro is inspired from Rugal Bernstein of KOF, along with the concept of "knowledge collection". Of course, Rugal is not much of a scholar, so you can think of this as a little expansion of mine on this concept. Hopefully it works well in the future.
That's all for today. Reviews are welcome as usual. Next time, a little time skip and the battle begins.
Thank you for reading, see you soon. Ciao!