"So, how does this work?" Mana looked at her extended hands, trying to see if anything changed after the Game of Souls initiated but seeing no visual difference.
"From the beginning of the game until the end, neither of us can die. The game ends when one of us admits having lost." Ayushi shrugged. "In that case, it will be up to the other to distribute the newly acquired chakra and souls however they see fit."
Mana found her gaze faltering, slipping to behind her once in a while. As if someone could have helped her now… Not only was the Game of Souls protected from the influence of the outside world by a staunch barrier, but also it was being played in a whole different dimension. Given how Ayushi was somewhat hesitant to take on the Hokage and other high-level ninja by himself, it only made sense that the limits of the Guru's barrier would stretch that far, at the very least.
As far as the Juhiru dimension factor went, the jury was still out on that. Just how would this alien dimension summoned in the middle of the village affect things, if other people could enter and leave, supposed they do manage to bust through the barrier. The only thing clear as day was that Mana was by herself. Attempting to stretch the game out would have been naïve and foolish.
"So we just keep beating each other forever? Sounds like you did not quite think this through. I was not the one that created this totem but it seems to me that it was supposed to be used in harmony, people sacrificing their lives and souls for something grander than themselves, something only possible by this totem." Mana looked up at the oversized chunk of rock.
Who knew, given enough chakra, a strong enough soul, maybe this thing had no defined limits. Given how the very concept of the rules it imposed appear to break any preconceived notion of how this world worked, it certainly seemed that anything was possible as long as the person was willing to sacrifice being able of witnessing their deed coming to pass themselves.
"Have you ever died, Mana? Been close to death, at least?" Ayushi wondered.
"A couple of times." Mana shrugged. Even she could feel the defensiveness oozing from that reply.
"Right now… You're not the girl I once met in Konoha. Every time you get hurt, every time you come close to death, it changes you. Fundamentally. Dying people that seemed rotten inside become capable of extreme altruism and people that acted decent their entire lives begin crying out their most perverse desires they were yet to experience. Death is the ultimate equalizer, it sets things right, even if we wish to abolish it, we must acknowledge that. Right now, before you experience it even once, you think you will never cave but… Think about how the last time nearly dying made you feel. Until this game ends, this will be your new way of life."
Something interesting popped into Mana's mind. The magician looked up and examined the totem but then dismissed it almost immediately. She wondered if the totem's ability may have been abused as some sort of immortality machine. After all, if one began the Game of Souls without the intention of ever ending it, in opposition to another player, both players experienced the complete inability to die. Likely the totem had some sort of range limit to prevent just that sort of thing. Its purpose seemed to be much more of the educational type, rather than something to grant solitary gain.
"Your hand is shaking already," Ayushi said. Damn it. Mana had not even noticed it.
That's right. All of this felt insane. Something hot, ever-expanding bubbled and boiled like a lava lamp inside the kunoichi's chest while it crept up and down her throat, shutting off her breathing before randomly restoring it again. Mana used to not be afraid of dying, never afraid of failing. She had always resigned that if she was ever to die, to get beaten, that would have been it. As if that failure would have somehow freed her but… Now she was afraid, truly, unconditionally.
"Give up, Mana. You must have known I am stronger than you. If we were to do this, your willpower will be the first one to break." Ayushi encouraged the magician to make it easier. It came off from his voice – he did not want his vision of world peace to come out from something as primitive and violent as this immortality blood-fest.
These totems… If only Mana knew about them sooner, if only she knew how limit-breaking their abilities were. Maybe she'd have managed to find one of her own to assist her right now but… Somewhere deep down Mana realized that there was a tough chance of that ever happening. Guru Ayushi himself took entire years to uncover the Merchant of Souls and he knew exactly what he was looking for and where.
Mana took a wild leap up, currents of Wind Release chakra formed whirlwinds underneath her feet, lifting her up even higher before the current began washing at her back, forcing the magician down with speeds approaching terminal velocity but built up in a single flick of a moment. A flurry of wild kicks overwhelmed Ayushi but the man did not even attempt to block the attacks. Bones fractured into dust underneath Mana's feet but the dust reformed into solid shapes about as quickly as they busted up.
A rising uppercut, strong enough to cut the young woman in half from the bottom up left a hole inside her gut. The wind currents scattered the destroyed, illusionary shape of the magician across the battlefield. This just about confirmed it – Ayushi was done messing around and helping Mana relieve her vengeful instincts. He was in it for the world peace and when this much was at stake no man gave anything less than their best.
"My hands…" Mana uttered after her shape reformed a pair of leaps away from Ayushi, still frozen in his uppercut stance "They're not shaking out of fear, they're shaking out of excitement."
"Excitement? Never took you for a bloodthirsty type. Lying was never your strong suit Mana, stop embarrassing yourself." Ayushi smiled. His smirk was short-lived as the Guru realized the weight of what he himself had just confirmed – he knew that Mana was a poor liar and something made him believe every word she said. Had she lied even by an inch – he'd have known it immediately.
A flock of steel cards buzzed at Ayushi's direction from Mana's location. Where the first attack was borrowed from the rabbit taijutsu style, this pattern of movements was entirely stolen from Meiko's collection. A gentle step back, a handful of projectiles to keep the opponent at bay, each one carefully aimed, or were supposed to be. Unlike with the Rabbit Fu style of taijutsu, Mana was never as good at Meiko's long-range throwing style as the original user, meaning she had to compensate with the sheer number of the projectiles.
"This feels downright terrifying but at the same time… Amazing!" Mana grinned. "To think that something this remarkable still exists in this world. The world where I thought I had seen everything."
Explosive cards, cards with Lightning Release chakra sealed, cards with bursting shockwaves of compressed Wind Release chakra all let out at once. While Ayushi did not suffer any meaningful damage, he was kept at bay and even chose to keep his respectful distance until Mana ran out of tools. That was a legitimate danger – Ayushi could have quite literally taken every kunai in existence and kept walking on. He had every second of the remaining human history to spare. If Mana was to win the Game of Souls, she needed to start thinking about the long-term plan.
Ayushi stomped the ground with might only he could muster up. Shapeless, meaty blobs rose from the depths with the rotten, pale limbs attached to them still. The rising horror show took the brunt of Mana's proceeding attack while Ayushi smacked the rising blob with the back of his hand hard enough to pull it off the ground. The blob stretched out and detached from its earthly coils, spreading pus and pestilence in its flight. It was like Juhiru itself bled from its removal.
The man rose above, following the fleshy stump in its flight to the hazy skies. It was an improvised way to take it to the air while using it as improvised cover from Mana's blizzard of cards.
A crunchy soundwave spread out in a ring shape from behind the fleshy blob, Mana braced for impact for the speed in which Ayushi sent the thing crashing down surpassed anything she could have pulled from the hat given how engaged she was to keep the Guru at bay.
Pain. Everything went black but the pain did not let go of the magician. She was allowed neither death nor the luxury of passing out so with a hazy head she rose from underground. Something sizzled on her body, something that felt hot but the magician's chakra kicked in, augmenting her body to withstand the acidic effects of the Juhiru's secretion.
Ayushi's hand lit up bright blue, given how Mana was the girlfriend of a medical ninja for years, she'd have been a damned fool and deserved every inch of the beating she would have gotten if she did not recognize the Chakra Enhanced Strength technique of the medical ninja. It was similar to the chakra augmentation that focused on strength that most ninja used but, given how medical ninjutsu required flawless chakra control and concentration, the results of their signature enhancements were far greater and carried none of the drawbacks of mere chakra augmentation.
Instead of attacking Mana head-on, the Guru punched the air, sending a focused shockwave in Mana's general direction, surrounded by sonic booms and carrying enough power to cause a devastating blowback on the other side to where the legendary ninja launched his projectile.
The speed was out of this world. Mana braced for impact and it blew her back off her feet regardless. The strength would not have killed her even if she was not granted immortality by the Merchant but… Guru was right before, she felt every tiniest inch of the beating she was taking and every ounce of the pressure. If the Guru keeps toying with her, timing his attacks perfectly, attacking swiftly enough to prevent her defenses and pressuring the magician enough to prevent her from coming up with an effective plan… She may as well have called it quits.
"What's the matter?" Guru wondered. "Your illusions before made me believe it would be trickier to hit you."
Obviously, Mana would not waste successive uses of her Flower Petal Sanctuary on something she knew she could take. Sometimes it was better to get blown on her butt and smack her head against some twitching, lifeless limb that stuck out of the ground like a bush rather than lose that much chakra. Flower Petal Sanctuary demanded more and more chakra the more it was used in a brief period of time, something told Mana this encounter would not be one of the brief variety. She was best to make her petal uses count.
"Maybe I don't see any use in dodging lame attacks like that?" Mana taunted the man before doing the unexpected and using her Mystical Wings to elevate her body to full-out flight while she flipped over in mid-air for a spinning heel drop. Ayushi locked his arms around her heel before swinging her around and lobbing the kunoichi into the air.
Once again he punished the magician with a barrage of aerial shockwaves that she had no real chance of dodging in mid-air. A loud pop and a cloud of smoke alerted Ayushi that the magician chose to substitute with the arm of the blob he so recently pulled out from underground and lobbed at her rather than suffering ceaseless torture trapped in mid-air and constantly under siege by his shockwaves.
Something didn't feel right. He put on his Chakra Enhanced Strength which undoubtedly drained his chakra resources the longer he let it linger. Initially, it would not seem like much but, after a longer while, even a legendary ninja would feel some strain. On top of that, he only used that for long-range attacks, never to punch Mana with his enhanced strength directly. The magician found that odd. It was not that his shockwave attacks were not painful or effective just…
No. She knew exactly what Ayushi was doing because she wanted him to attack her physically. Her martial arts style was perfectly designed to counter exactly Ayushi's type of a fighter – slow but powerful. A slugger like him would have never landed a single blow, no matter how strong and fast he was. The only successes he may have seen would have come from when Mana switched to counterattacks on him and fell for a counter-counter attack.
All this strategizing about counters for counters… Taijutsu was craftier and trickier game than most gave it credit for. No wonder most taijutsu users were such thick logs, their specialty kept their brain power occupied to the fullest.
"I must admit, Mana-san, I had thought that you'd realize the pointlessness of dragging this out and submitted already," Ayushi said.
"What can I say, don't give me three years to prepare if you don't want me to give my best try." Mana dismissed the man's attempts at making her submit and surrender her soul.
If Ayushi would not engage her in close-range, Mana would just have to force him. She had to stick up close to him, make him block her attacks, give him no other chance but to swing those fists of his. With another aerial dash, the pinned down to the wall kunoichi soared above Ayushi and placed her hands downward. She rarely got the chance to use her Magical Twist Jutsu, a technique she had created as a child that was essentially just a strong, pressing gust of wind emitted under her from her palms.
As a child she thought she'd be involved in all sorts of aerial fights, given how she could float somewhat using the weak version of her current Mystical Wings Jutsu, given how it was one of her starting dozen of techniques she had mustered up right before graduating the Academy, Mana mastered it before the finals of the Chuunin Exams so that she could use it to its fullest extent without needing to speak its name or use any hand seals for it.
Ayushi braced for the rushing force. He did not look all too overwhelmed by it, apart from his bent knees to keep better balance and struggle against the air pressure that tried its lacking finest to press the legendary ninja to the ground and lay him flat. Utilizing the pressure she had put on her opponent, Mana landed behind Ayushi and set free a blinding barrage of kicks. Strengthening one's lower body came naturally when studying under the Ninja Rabbits. The fluffy badasses were nature's masters of kicks, leaps, dashes, and dropkicks.
Even the mighty and stout Ayushi was overwhelmed. This may have been the first time that Mana saw the man flinch in a short while and she intended to utilize that brief shine of success through the gloomy clouds. The magician switched her dominant leg and turned to the other side to blind her enemy with kicks. Even she felt impressed with the speed and might of her lower body attacks. Each kick she made drew might and balance from the ground beneath her while the attacking leg pushed at the enemy, transferring that strength as it traveled through Mana's body and mingled with her chakra that enhanced it a thousandfold.
Ayushi's defending hands lowered, both of them hung in an awkward angle suggesting them being broken, the man's jaw soon joined that pitiful state while the man's face swelled from excess blood building up in the testament to the beating he received. Mana may have overdone it a bit, she wanted for her opponent to attack her physically but at the moment he was in no condition to use those broken arms at all and even if his eyes could follow the blurry barrage of kicks coming at him before, given their busted state, he must have seen just stars and birds now.
For her coup de grâce, Mana pulled a decorated red card from her sleeve and almost shoved it into the face of her opponent. A devastating explosion covered Juhiru before sending it to a pause of grave silence. Mana slid from the blast zone, covering herself up with a block, the right sleeve of her magician's uniform rolled back and incinerated, exposing the dirty and tad burnt arm underneath, the left one was halfway detached from the blazer but functional.
Just for the sake of being sure, Mana decided not to rely on her sleeves anymore, given how her uniform had various gadgets and tools to help her flick cards out and switch between different decks, those tools may not have survived the blast intact.
Ayushi walked out from the blast unscathed. Well… He may have been scathed in the beginning but his wounds just covered back up in a blink. There was little to no dip in the man's chakra as well. Mana couldn't believe it, she had always considered Ayushi godly or demonic, depending on one's perspective, regenerative abilities to be entirely the result of some medical ninjutsu. Given how his chakra has barely taken a dip after so many consecutive regenerations – it may just have been genetic.
"You have grown into such a fine kunoichi, Mana. I am proud. If that was why you did not wish to surrender before – to show me the strength you have acquired and the growth you've gone through, rest assured, that is acknowledged." Ayushi cracked his neck and his knuckles to shake off the decades-old rust on his combat abilities that he meant to drop. "However, do not become deluded and think that you can simply beat me into submitting. I may be the one person in this world more devoted to your ninja way than you are. To think that way is to show disrespect to my own skills and growth."
The glow around his arms was now gone. Ayushi had turned off his Chakra Enhanced Strength without giving it a proper shot. The man must have considered Mana's evasive skills from up close to be more dangerous than to even give this manner of attack at least one go.
If this round one was won by Mana, by a hair's length, why did it feel like she was being pushed back and her back felt like it was being drilled into the figurative wall behind her? If Ayushi truly meant to not just start trying but get serious, Mana was going to get pinned down soon and she needed a plan of overcoming his regeneration. Even if she did, the Merchant's slower and less reliable regeneration would prevent him from taking lethal damage anyway…
Even in her wildest dreams throughout these past three years, the magician didn't consider being in such a pinch against Ayushi.