Ryoku Genshi took off with an expulsion of air from his prosthetic foot and the gear equipped to his still functional leg. This allowed him to build up speed that surpassed even the top speed he had while the athlete was still alive. Because Fusion Ball was a highly physical sport, played by bulky men wearing heavy full-body gear, it utilized tackling, shoving, and other methods of competing with pure force, similar to Union Ball.
Ichijiki Muramasa stepped aside, avoiding the brunt of Ryoku Genshi's force while securing a tight grip around his wrist. Genshi's heart sank to his heels as he realized that Muramasa could have forcefully removed his prosthetic puppet arm or broken it while Genshi still had it attached. Another pump of air from his feet forced Genshi into a mid-air front flip as he used wrestling basics to escape the wrist lock and pointed his flesh and blood arm point blank at his opponent's face.
An airwave flinched Ichijiki Muramasa with a painful concussive shock and forced his grip over Genshi's prosthetic arm to waver. Sensing opportunity, Genshi kicked with his right leg, sending a beaming jet of condensed air that blasted the samurai skidding aside. This provided Genshi with an opening to step in and deliver an air-boosted uppercut that sent a tunneling whirlwind pillar howling into the air, dragging Ichijiki Muramasa with it.
Taking off into the air with the air of blowing air from his feet, Genshi positioned himself directly in front of his floating opponent and delivered a stiff beatdown without overly relying on the pumps of air in his prosthetic arm and leg. In mid-air, Ichijiki Muramasa's ancient samurai hand-to-hand fighting style appeared to lack the sting and balance that it required to function, as the Shogun's right-hand man took a considerable amount of punishment before driving a palm strike into Genshi's chest and disengaging from an unfavorable exchange with a back flip and landing on his feet.
"This is better," Damisan noted. "He's dividing the pressure between his arm and leg. He might just last until the end of the match this way."
"It's a big-risk gambit that you're pulling here," Asuka sighed. "Putting all our chips on a guy who needs your gear to fight effectively. What if the next round of matches takes place immediately after?"
"It likely won't," Shige-H shut down the notion. "It's been just two matches, and the arena is already suffering from it. If this continues, they'll need to rebuild from scratch again by the end of the day."
Ryoku Genshi didn't utter a word to his opponent after the pair landed close to the western edge of the arena, with Ichijiki Muramasa's heels being just around fifty meters away from the edge. His opponent had moved the battle at least a few times as much in the last few attacks, showcasing how a Fusion Ball player could use their physical dominance to apply pressure and control the playing field. While his equipment had changed drastically, Genshi's methods have changed very little.
"Hmph…" Ichijiki Muramasa exclaimed, slowly drawing his sword from his hilt and pointing it in front of him in a one-handed sword-wielding stance, similar to fencing.
"What's the matter? I thought you were going to refrain from thrusting "your very soul" into the heart of filth. Have I earned your respect or are you just a hypocrite?" Genshi taunted his opponent with a smirk as, while he couldn't see his opponent drawing his sword clearly, he heard the noise that instinctively made hearts freeze up. The shriek of metal dragging across the sheath and being unchained from the scabbard and the desert wind dancing on its surface.
"The samurai possess methods of cutting the enemy without the need to sully their blades. The Land of Iron art of swordcraft is the most refined in the world, producing the highest grade swords available, made by the finest masters, passing down their skills for generations and living for the lone purpose of crafting the next masterpiece blade," Ichijiki pointed out while tilting his blade for a thrusting position with an inversely turned sword-wielding arm.
"Pierce…" Ichijiki muttered, thrusting his sword forward as if attempting to impale his opponent, despite the distance between them being a dozen times longer than the length of his sword's blade. Genshi blanked out, bracing for an invisible impact out of instinct. A terrifying, ripping sound filled the air as, grunting in pain, the Fusion Ball player collapsed on his back, shaking and staring at his prosthetic arm and noting a hole inside its center as if his opponent's sword had truly stabbed through it despite Ichijiki Muramasa not having moved an inch.
Humbled in front of the spectators and being brought down a peg after a series of battlefield successes, Ryoku Genshi rolled backward and scrambled back on his feet while losing control of his breathing. He just couldn't help it. The progression of this battle has been utterly reversed, with his opponent merely drawing his sword, and it didn't take a veteran swordsman to see that even now Ichijiki was holding back most of his skill and power.
"Samurai use an energy known as "Kenki". It is probably the same thing that ninja call "chakra", given how both we and ninja use it for similar means–to coat our blades and become extensions to them. Touching a filthy chonin like you using my kenki is disgraceful in its own right, however, it beats cutting you with my sword. Besides, perhaps the need to come into contact with your blood is entirely unnecessary. If my kenki can destroy or remove your puppet limbs, I can beat you down using my martial arts again," Ichijiki Muramasa explained, with a cold and polite smile on his face as he prepared to cut his opponent down.
The shift of the control of the battle had left Ryoku Genshi so stricken that he jumped to seize the opportunity to claim the initiative and strike first. Roaring as he put his prosthetic limb through the most stress it's been in this far and inflating it like a balloon, Ryoku Genshi blasted the airwave directly beneath his feet, drilling a hole underground with it, almost like stabbing at the Earth's own heart with his attack. This bought him a few seconds of Ichijiki Muramasa's confused look before the swordsman prepared to strike with a ranged kenki attack again.
Before he could, however, the ground rumbled, and then it ruptured. Directly in front of where Ichijiki Muramasa was standing and blasting at the bottom of the samurai's chin. Excited by the direct connection of the attack, Ryoku Genshi pumped with his prosthetic arm. Whatever damage the earlier thrust had dealt to it must have missed the vital parts necessary to store, swell up, and release the air inside it. More importantly, his surprise underground attack hit its mark dead-on, shooting the samurai into the air with a wicked blow to his chin.
Ichijiki's hand twitched once as the samurai flipped back in mid-air, utterly revitalized and appearing to have taken no damage whatsoever. While Genshi didn't let the fact that his opponent wasn't out completely after taking such a violent blow to the chin obliterate his fighting spirit, the revelation of just what minor damage he dealt left vicious tears in his raised sails.
"This is bad!" Damisan gasped with wide and trembling eyes. "That fool abused his trick far too much!"
"Yeah, it's not the best idea to use the same trick against an experienced samurai twice in a row, and your protégé has been using it non-stop. It's only natural that the enemy figured out a way to beat it," Shige-H nodded.
"The runt must have damaged his arm, that's to say, your arm, more than he did the enemy," Asuka sneered in vicious mockery of her teammate's protégé.
"What incredible showing of skill from the samurai Ichijiki Muramasa!" the announcer decided to clue the audience of spectators in on what had happened. "It is said that true veteran samurai who know the chaos of war can analyze and completely understand a move as well as figure out a way to beat it in just one show, which is why it's ill-advised to use a move multiple times against an experienced samurai! Ichijiki Muramasa has just showcased this ability by relaxing his body just before the impact, which allowed his body to ride Ryoku Genshi's gale like a kite as opposed to taking the blow and resisting against it!"
"Only an idiot would fall victim to the same technique repeatedly," Ichijiki Muramasa exclaimed while vaulting backward and landing right on the arena's edge with his heels dangling over. Regardless of the predicament, the samurai displayed impeccable balance in maintaining his concentration and not teetering one bit, despite only clinging to the arena with his toes. "A significant part of taking damage from blows is because of the body's own resistance. By relaxing your body completely, you can offer no resistance to the oncoming attacks and take no damage from punches or kicks, flowing along like a leaf in the wind. It just so happens that the specific aerial shockwave produced by your equipment is especially susceptible to such defense, because of its attributes. It is essentially wind, and the wind carries leaves along and strokes the blades of grass quite nicely when they don't resist it."
Genshi clenched his fist, putting his prosthetic arm up and looking down at it from above. He noted the scratches and grazes that he put the arm so gracefully offered to him as his last hope by a kindred spirit, as well as the grievous hole in the center through which one could peek. Were things truly this hopeless? His gear was at the brink of breakage, his techniques all figured out and his opponent resolved to use their sword at last–something that proved to be an insurmountable level of power for Genshi to compete against.
No! Genshi collapsed on all fours, snarling like an animal. Memories flashed through his mind of his days working on the farm. The first time he was cleaning the barn and didn't make sure that all the animals were out in the pasture. He ended up face-to-face with a young bull. Usually, that same bull acted friendly toward Genshi, ate hay out of his hands, and enjoyed scratches under the ear. However, something that Genshi didn't know back then was that even the mildest and most friendly of animals became deadly when they felt cornered, and back then the bull had only the barn wall and Genshi from both sides.
Mother's screams from when Genshi flew out of the barn still rang in Genshi's ears. When she would later recount that story countless times to his father and the other farmers, she wouldn't stop emphasizing how she thought that her little Genshi was dead after she saw him fly out of the barn with the raging bull erupting in a full-on stampede after him. Not only did Genshi survive, albeit having to shake off the shock of being attacked by his longtime friend and petting companion, he wrestled the bull to the ground at six years of age, gobsmacking his appalled mother.
That was the day Ryoku Genshi learned how dangerous cornered animals were. He would not make the same mistake, even when he wanted to play-wrestle any of the cattle into submission. He learned how to deal with cornered animals, which helped him a great deal when he had to maintain calm and composure and seal the deal when making plays playing Fusion Ball, and cornering his opponents. This time was different. Despite it being his opponent who had their feet against the edge of the arena, it was Genshi who felt cornered and had no way out.
He gave in to that animal instinct, releasing rumbling airwaves from all four limbs while collapsing on the ground. This caused the arena to tremble in rampart tremors and for the ground to collapse into the rippling artificial lake outside. Where Ichijiki Muramasa plunged into the lake, overcome by the calamitous quake that felt like it played dice with the very tectonic plates of the planet deep down and tickled the very heart of the planet itself, Genshi maintained hover above ground while continuously blowing huge amounts of air from his feet.
Even if his prosthetic arm crashed and began blowing empty puffs after a few seconds and the gear coating his flesh and blood leg inflated and blew up from the continuous build-up of air, causing Ryoku Genshi to awkwardly dangle over the lake for a few more seconds before plunging into it as well, he had won the match he had no right of winning. He beat the odds and proved his worth not only to the elitist samurai who constantly underestimated him, but, as it felt like to Genshi, the unfair caste system itself.
"An out-of-this-world, unexpected early conclusion to the second match!" the announcer bawled out. "Contestant Ryoku Genshi managed to clutch out a victory against an opponent who was beginning to build up an indomitable advantage against him by destroying half the arena ground and rupturing the other half! Because the samurai Ichijiki Muramasa was dangling over the edge already, pushed to the brink of elimination by the offensive physical pressure of the Fusion Ball player, this desperation move scored Ryoku Genshi a cheap, ring-out victory!"
"Hmph," Ichijiki Muramasa sheathed his sword after pulling himself out of the water on the other side of the arena, pulling himself up on a platform that led into the backstage area of the arena, and slicking his hair back. "You fought like a true ninja, chonin," he observed to Ryoku Genshi, who looked hesitant at first to pull himself out of the water on the same side and risk facing his opponent's post-match wrath. Fortunately for him, Ichijiki Muramasa was more honorable than to execute his opponent with his full power post-match for giving him this humbling defeat. "This gear you've borrowed, it's used by a ninja puppeteer. Not to mention, that last-ditch effort to collapse the arena… Perhaps you truly did choose the wrong profession after all?"
"It is said that no ninja can defeat a samurai in a fair one-on-one match, a comparison of skill, speed, and strength," Ryoku Genshi replied. "The only reason I won is because I'm no ninja. I pushed you to the edge with my Fusion Ball formation tactics. If you were nearer to the center, you'd have scrambled and kept yourself inside the arena's bounds and I'd have only eliminated myself. You weren't beaten by a ninja, but by the chonin you despise so much! A professional athlete!"
"Perhaps so," Ichijiki Muramasa closed his eyes in an uncomfortable admission of defeat. "After all, when playing a game of simulated battle, is it not the man who plays games for a living who has the advantage? It seems that the fabled strength of the samurai is only what it's cracked up to be in the field of battle, not a playing field."
"You seem strangely cool with being beaten, won't your master be mad at you for losing this patch of land?" Ryoku Genshi wondered, taken aback by how unbothered by everything his opponent seemed, even in defeat.
"He might, I might have been expected to offer the Iron Shogun appeasement under normal circumstances, maybe my second eye, maybe seppuku to retain my honor… However, after we've dealt with the problem that was Sachiko Tanogen and her cartoonish antics, I imagine that the Iron Shogun will be pleased regardless of the outcome of this tournament," Ichijiki Muramasa predicted. "Farewell, chonin. Let us hope that we won't have to meet in the field of battle in the future."
"Don't worry, this arena will no longer be a place of violence and bloodshed! It will one day house the World Sports Games in the future, a place for entertainment and admiration of the human body and spirit!" Ryoku Genshi proclaimed, making a vow by extending his fist that didn't seem to close right all the way after the punishment Genshi put the prosthetic limb through in the last match.
"In that case, we may never meet after all," Ichijiki Muramasa waved it off by leaving his opponent hanging, turning around, and walking away. "A samurai's place is a battlefield, his art is swordsmanship. Swordsmanship is the art of murder and bloodshed. You wouldn't catch a samurai wasting time with sports."
Ryoku Genshi pressed his knuckles to his waist, leaning his head to the side like a curious puppy as he tried to decipher his opponent as he was walking off deeper into the backstage area, swarmed by healers, just like Ryoku Genshi was about to be when the bunch in boats finally reached him from the other pole of the arena. What he said sounded a tad hurtful, like he was belittling Ryoku Genshi and his way of life, just like he did when the two were clashing in the arena. However… Something was different now. There was no malice or hate in Ichijiki Muramasa's voice. It's as if he was truly indifferent now. As opposed to actively seeking to destroy everything about the Fusion Ball athlete.
"Ladies and gentlemen, don't go anywhere, because the third match: Captain Li Shan, the Pike of the Southern Seas, VS Bogemu Uneyotsu, the enigmatic board game magician, will start right now!" the announcer declared something that left the audience in a bit of a shock as half of the arena had been decimated and sunken to the bottom of the artificial lake outside of the bounds whereas what remained of the arena had deep ridges that would have impeded a perfectly balanced match.
"Asuka," Shige-H noted what the announcer had just said.
"Yeah, I hear you. This magician guy might be the key to forcing Mana's impotent spirit back to her body from that Soul Gem. Let's just hope that pirate won't rough him up too badly, huh?" Asuka replied with her trademark snark.
