Being unburdened by armor, Lord Mifune took off, vanishing from sight with a swishing sound and expelling a puny gust in all directions. The plain robe that Mifune wore offered no protection against the blade. Most swordsmen under these conditions would've stiffened, they would've fought safely and defensively. Lord Mifune's recklessness didn't falter one bit. He charged forward with a sheathed sword, trusting in his skill with the blade and the swiftness of the draw.
"Furinkazan Style: Rapid Plunder!" Mifune chanted out, flexing the muscle of the drawing arm and thrusting his dominant leg out. His weight shifted perfectly, transferring insurmountable amounts of force that only added to the unruly speed that built indomitable force in the blade that was about to be drawn. Compared to Mifune's blitz, light froze and created a blank canvas for the ink of Mifune's will to splash the image of a violent ogre about to commit murder.
"Katate-Zuki!" Mentare exclaimed in response, though she only moved with a subtle yet nimble shuffle of steps. Mifune was no slouch in terms of technical swordsmanship. He passed the school of the sword, studying under weathered masters of warfare. His opponent had just declared that she would thrust her sword, yet all she did was lower the tip of the shinai. Thrusting techniques and drawing slashes weren't inherently bound by an advantage-disadvantage dynamic. It all depended on the user, the technique, the angle, and the execution. Then why was Mentare lagging with her execution so much?
Mifune's blade expanded to a blurred, expansive line. Force itself vibrated around the edges of the central beam that the drawn sword became. As far as Mifune was concerned, his opponent was waiting for his lead and waited to respond once she saw his slash. That was signing a death sentence. Drawing techniques were speed itself. That was their single elementary advantage, so there was simply no way for her to perceive the angle of Mifune's slash, then adjust her thrust accordingly. She had to make a call. This clash was a fifty-fifty gamble and his opponent was folding. Lord Mifune didn't partake in gambling that much, but as far as he knew, that meant he was the winner.
The beam stopped at a perfectly static angle. A deafening clamor popped Mifune's eardrums, forcing blood to squirt out his ears and for his stare to blank out while his teeth ground against one another enough to crack and chip chunks of it out from the horrid noise. All of his force… Broken. Stopped. What stopped it? Mifune felt frozen in time, standing stuck partway with his opponent approaching. Why won't his sword move? It was the air again! Just like before, when Mentare slashed, the air created a devastating slam shockwave following the movement of her shinai. Now, when she thrust, it created a pushing dreadnought of sovereign force that swatted everything in its path away like fallen leaves.
Then came the shinai. If it had touched Mifune, his bones would have crumbled to dust. That much, Lord Mifune knew for certain. With his sword frozen in place and his body suffering from the backlash of his blocked swing, he had few options on how to avoid getting trounced by this artist of the wooden sword. Stressing his ribs and waist muscles to the point of tearing and burning up, Mifune turned his body to catch the draft of the advancing shockwave and ride its washing force, pushing him back and away from certain defeat.
The draft picked and swept Lord Mifune aside, forcing the veteran samurai to thrust his feet down and embed them into the ground, only to impede his elegant glide and skid away with strong resistance all the way to the edge of the arena. By riding the push of the shockwave, Mifune avoided the tip of the shinai from crushing him.
"Interesting, Lord Mifune," Mentare smiled with a tranquil expression. Not a hint of strain in her whole body from movements that packed a devastating wallop. They were elementary basic motions of swordsmanship, revised millions upon billions of times until she perfected them to where one could neither have added nor taken anything. "I could not for the world recognize that evasive technique. It appears that your way of the sword has one advantage over mine if just that one."
"Indeed. You believe your way to be the artistic one, but it is a warrior who is the true artist. At least in this one aspect. They freestyle, they forsake strict forms and act freely, doing whatever they have to and relying on their instincts, not crammed and polished knowledge of strict movements they must make to survive. If you performed a move, you did not practice for years, it would lack that overwhelming force and dominant perfection in its execution. Your martial art traps you, whereas I am free to pursue victory by any means necessary," Lord Mifune pointed out, straightening his back. At the same time, he slipped the bloody and dirty kimono off his shoulders and expose a scarred and sinewy body underneath. With one hand, Mifune expelled a blue flame of raw kenki from his coated blade.
"Do-Tsuki!" Mentare chanted, soaring across the space between the two and surprising Mifune with this sudden burst of ferocity.
"Furinkazan Style: Immovable Mountain!" Lord Mifune chanted, crossing his arms and working with the wrist alone to deflect the thrust. Mifune's physical toughness and unique to his technique, kenki management allowed him to withstand the crushing shockwave that accompanied each of Mentare's flawless attacks while his swing let him deflect her thrust.
"Men-Uchi!" Mentare called out, without skipping a beat, combining her techniques into one as she used her previous thrust not to attack but to close distance. Without dropping his Furinkazan Style technique, Lord Mifune lifted his hands up and crossed his arms like butterfly wings, locking around the wrists of the swordswoman and trapping her in a wrestling match against him.
She was his now!
With a crude spin and yank, Lord Mifune flung his opponent to the very edge of the arena, repositioning her with a shift of position behind him while he grabbed his katana with both hands and slashed diagonally upward to make the kendo practitioner block and fly out of bounds or take the hit and deal with grievous facial injuries. Mentare responded with a flawless deflection. This stunned Mifune, he hadn't even considered the woman to be so skilled at deflection that she'd chosen it instead of simply positioning a block. Still, she was trapped by the edge and her style didn't really floor Mifune with its footwork. Raising the sword over his head with both hands, Mifune drove it down like a hammer.
There it was, the block!
An azure ring of shimmering light expanded from the joined blades as the steel sang upon meeting and connecting. Lord Mifune loved that sound more than anything in the world, and every time he heard it, it reminded him he was alive. While he hated the brutality and waste of life that was war, the fact that a battlefield was a harmony of singing blades never failed to make Mifune the happiest person in the world. If just for a few hours while the blades danced.
Why did she not move?
"We don't block in kendo. We defend ourselves with superior positioning and deflection," Mentare cast a confident smile at the veteran soldier.
What a pea-brained woman, why did she make that observation when she was engaged with him in a clash right after blocking his strike? Still, this left the question of how she blocked it without getting swept away by the rampant force of his slash… Unless… It was Mifune who was rigid and foolish! She didn't block. She just told him that kendo practitioners didn't block!
"Furinkazan Style: Fire Raid!" Mifune barked out, channeling so much kenki in his sword that it gleamed with a golden shine and lit ablaze with lemon flame. The blade went down in a blink, causing a pulse and a persisting burn of the golden sear. Mentare's eyes blanked out as her padded kendo suit split open from the right shoulder to the left hip.
A powerful shockwave, a signature companion of the kendo practitioner's shinai swings, sent Mifune flying backward like a shotgun blast. Because of his investment into an all-out offense in his attempt to ring the woman out, he had no way of making a graceful landing. Instead, the samurai lord flattened on his back and had to scramble back to his feet with the aid of his scabbard.
"This shock explains it. You don't block, you swing. In other words, when you cannot deflect, you meet my attack with a slash of your own, canceling each other out and nullifying the forces of our blows. I should've expected a woman of your level of polish to be able to perfectly match my swing when it suits her, then blow it out of the water when you want me off your back," Lord Mifune rose to his feet and leaned down, bringing his left elbow out front while he lowered his sword with one-hand grip with the right.
"No points are scored by blocking or by striking your opponent's sword. It speaks volumes on how much trouble your improvised physical brawling swordsmanship is causing that I must rely on zero-point tactics just to stay in the game," Mentare commended her opponent while straightening her back like a plank and holding her shinai with both hands out front. Dominant right foot forward.
"Furinkazan Style: Rapid Wind!" Lord Mifune chanted out, throwing his entire body in a horizontal spin. Spinning like a drill, the veteran swordsman drew his blade, creating a highly unpredictable and incredibly difficult-to-dodge obstacle. Because of his horizontal dive while drawing the sword, he wasn't just covering one angle with a drawing slash but multiple. It may have been uncharacteristic of his opponent, but Mentare dived after Mifune, crossing him and finishing her dive with an evasive roll as the two traded positions.
"That was a massive risk," Lord Mifune straightened his back, sheathed his sword, and glanced back at his opponent, who twirled around on her dominant leg and resumed her middle kendo stance while keeping a close and cold look on her opponent. "You've tucked your weapon away completely."
"My kendo was too rigid to respond to such an otherworldly technique. Not to mention my position was less than favorable. Now I have you at a disadvantage, Lord Mifune," Mentare replied with a confident smirk. The passionate flame burning in the eyes of the young woman made Mifune feel content and softened his ironclad heart.
Mifune drew his sword and adopted a high stance, raising his sword above his head while methodically stepping forward, one step at a time. He was a wicked fox. With the high overhead stance and his raw slashing power, he would've cut through any approach and smashed through any attack with his counter. Meanwhile, with each step, he drew farther and farther away from the edge, diminishing the disadvantage one step at a time. Attacking him was a trap, though his opponent was young and willing to take chances. She too mirrored Mifune movements though with much wider steps, still maintaining a middle stance.
"Furinkazan Style: Fire Raid!" Mifune chanted, bringing his sword down.
Mentare fell for the trap, swinging to strike Mifune's blade. She answered the blade, meeting it like before, but the golden flame of kenki coating Mifune's sword also met Mentare's shockwave. Unlike before, her horizontal swings were nowhere as powerful and polished as her vertical ones. She fought with strict techniques, emphasizing their perfection, emphasizing form, and stance. She was rigid and therefore her sword and her spirit broke. Even shattered by the ripping shockwave of Mentare's strike, the flames created a ring of a thousand golden petals of golden flame and connected around Mentare's body, stunning the woman and enveloping her in kenki flame as it burnt and flung the woman away.
"Your kendo is remarkable, however, you cannot ignore its rigidity. You do not employ vertical striking techniques, so your polish of vertical swings is lukewarm at best. My speed and flexibility are superior to yours, allowing me to dictate the pace. As long as I force you to answer with vertical strikes, you are fighting a losing battle," Lord Mifune pointed out, standing straight with his exposed sword in his right hand. This was no stance, had it been a kendo stance, it'd have been the most horrendous abomination against kendo imaginable. This was a war stance, plain and simple. "You possess immense talent with a sword and, because you're a woman, I have no issue with you practicing kendo as opposed to serving a lord in war, representing Iron Country interests. That being said, I'd advise you to surrender and improve, rather than risk death or maiming which are both inevitable if we continue our battle."
"Kiriotoshi!" Mentare chanted out with a solemn expression.
"Kiriotoshi?" Lord Mifune repeated, raising an eyebrow. "That is no kendo technique. That is a battlefield technique, a desperate and gritty method of fighting. Not to mention… Few swordsmen know and use this technique. Only one house in Iron Country used it and they only taught it to the shogun, his immediate family, and his inner circle of lords."
"Striking your blade to nullify its weight and killing potential is a predecessor to Kiriotoshi. Kiriotoshi is that, elevated to a majestic degree. A sword-killing fighting style," Mentare declared.
"I see… If you indeed possess the knowledge of Kiriotoshi, and if you possess the strength and skill to employ it against me, you may achieve victory just yet," Lord Mifune stated bluntly. "However, I will call your bluff, young lady. Come and show me your Kiriotoshi!"
Challenging Mentare who resolved to battlefield techniques, shifting to a high kendo stance–jodan, Mentare dashed toward Lord Mifune who mirrored her high stance, eager to prove his opponent to have been bluffing, force her to adopt an unfavorable horizontal slash and once again lose this trade.
"Furinkazan Style: Fire Raid!" Lord Mifune called out with unrivaled conviction and belief in his blade. His impressive kiai represented a peerless channeling of kenki that made Mifune's blade appear like a helm-splitter, long enough to split the heavens themselves and as wide as a castle. Even if Mentare's horizontal strike shattered that kenki concentration if it were to converge at her body, it might have utterly obliterated Mentare. Kenki this intense slashed like a sword and being cut by a converging blizzard of lemon kenki petals like those would've caused death by a billion cuts.
Mentare hammered her shinai down, catching its rear with a strike while employing elegant footwork to shift her weight to the right side, killing Mifune's sword. That was but one element of victory in kendo, however, with a rising stroke, Mentare smacked Mifune in the chin, forming a devastating shockwave that threw the veteran swordsman up in the air. Seeing Kiriotoshi come alive on the battlefield killed not only Lord Mifune's sword, but his spirit too. Grabbing the tip of her shinai, and timing her charge to connect with her falling opponent, Mentare dashed forward and slammed her shinai into Mifune's chest, sending him flying out of bounds and smacking into the protective wall before flopping on the grassland outside.
"Mentare Kotedo scores a win for the martial artists against the samurai!" the announcer pumped his fist before punching the air a couple of times with contagious passion. "In this battle of martial arts VS art of war, martial arts appear to have won! Just 116 combatants left fighting, we're 100 short of determining our Top 16!"
A wave of cheers resonated through the crowd while Mentare bowed to her fallen opponent. As healers rushed to Lord Mifune's aid, the beaten swordsman gasped and returned to life. A vicious indentation decorated his ribcage, with streaks of red spreading to both sides of it. Mifune's breathing wheezed and hissed, and he had to cough up in pain after several breaths. Even if there were no bounds, he'd have been beaten.
"You've adopted the art of war. Kiriotoshi is not a kendo technique," Lord Mifune looked to his successor in the tournament with pride. "Perhaps just the same way you will reclaim your legacy as the daughter of the Iron Country one day?"
"Kiriotoshi hails from One-Sword-Style, a predecessor of what kendo shaped up to be. Even if it would hardly warrant scoring and many practitioners might scoff at it, but I do not dismiss my roots or the roots of kendo. Contrary to what you proposed, Lord Mifune, I do not accept the art of war nor practicing swordsmanship for murder, intimidation, and warfare. That does not mean that I do not respect or acknowledge a fine swordsman when I see one, even if they are a warrior first. Well met, Lord Mifune," Mentare bowed with a right-angle bow before turning away and returning to the fray of the battlefield.
A resounding hammering spread throughout the north-western area of the arena. A vibrating pulse caused ring-shaped tremors to even out in all directions and, despite the destructive force of the cause of this noise and clamor, the arena's ground didn't break. It was a lone Sky Warrior clad in a skintight black bodysuit and colorful feathers of vibrant colors around her chest, her biceps, and forearms and wearing a spiky hairdo of violet spiked feathers with a lone, wavy blue feather standing above the rest in the center.
"What exactly is the meaning of this?" Bishiyari, the strongest of the Salvari warriors inquired, approaching the woman whose entire lower body had been stuffed into baggy and shaggy trousers and who wore modified bone boots with three hollow bone blades sticking out from the tip of the foot. "I thought Sky Warriors stuck to the skies, just what was it that clipped your wings?"
"Cassowary females broadcast loud vibratory sounds, inviting males to courtship rituals. Not quite what I'm looking for, but I found that stomping my foot at the ground works just fine with scoring me a challenge," the curious-looking Sky Warrior proclaimed, soaring through the air with a spinning roundhouse coming straight at the Supreme Being of Ultimate Goodness himself.
"Cassowary? That is a flightless bird, isn't it?" Bishiyari caught the incoming foot and gently shoved it to aid his opponent in backflipping into place.
"Yeah, it's a hell of a fighting bird too!" the rowdy Sky Warrior stomped her foot down, causing rampant tremors that shifted the very tectonic plates underground. Despite the quaking, Bishiyari kept his balance on one bare foot while the other bent in front of him to assist him in his exalted posing.
While hesitant to engage a Sky Warrior incapable of achieving flight at first, the fighting spirit of the Sky Country amazon seemed to have inspired Bishiyari to test her skill further.