by Aaron Oster
Gari’s eyes went wide as Herald Leroy was suddenly before him, his fist coiled back to punch. Gari barely had time to get his Chakra Armorer technique up before the blow struck. His concentration slipped and his Conqueror technique vanished as Gari suddenly found himself buried under five feet of stone and debris, his Armorer technique having shattered under that single attack.
Although Gari’s brain still hadn’t registered what was happening, his body apparently did, as he triggered his Movement technique and exploded out from the pile of rubble. He caught the barest hint of movement, then something smashed into the wall where he’d just been standing.
“Attack! Attack, you idiots!” Gari screamed as Herald Leroy pulled himself from the wall.
Roy looked nothing like he had before, his body seeming to ripple with power. His Belt, which had previously been a solid Red, now contained two stripes of Gold on one of the hanging ends. This should have been impossible. Herald Leroy couldn’t have hidden his strength.
“Bona! What color belt do you see?” Gari yelled as he came to a skidding halt on the opposite side of the open area.
“A 2nd Dan Red-Belt,” Bona called back while summoning the glowing blue stones around him.
Gari felt himself calm down a bit. Bona was a 5th Dan Red-Belt, so if all he saw was a 2nd Dan Belt, then it meant that Herald Leroy wasn’t secretly a Gold or higher in disguise. Still, the fact that he advanced two Dans instantly was worrying, to put it mildly. Additionally, his entire presence had changed.
Gari no longer felt the power of Qi radiating from Roy, but rather, he felt that of Chakra. It seemed that Herald Leroy had had the ability to use Chakra techniques from the start, so why hadn’t he? Was he just testing them, or was he so limited in his abilities that he had to wait to use them?
Gari needed to find out. He needed to see Leroy’s technique in use for him to understand what he was doing.
He grit his teeth as he watched Yenla charge him, her Dragon Scale active and her hands glowing white with the telltale signs of her Physical technique. She might have been injured, but she was still tough as hell. There was no way someone as weak as Herald Leroy would be able to take her down.
Gari’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when Leroy appeared right in front of her, a fist flashing out so fast that he couldn’t even see it move. Yenla’s armor shattered as she was blasted through the far wall, tearing a trench almost ten feet deep before coming to a halt in a smoking pile of rubble.
Gari’s state of shock wasn’t caused by the fact that Leroy had struck so quickly, but because he still appeared to be in the same place as before. Was he somehow in two places at once?
Gari continued watching as Bona charged in, and just like before, Herald Leroy seemed to be standing still, while at the same time appearing right in front of Bona. It was only when Peela struck at him from the side and went straight through him that Gari understood what was happening.
Herald Leroy was moving so quickly that he was leaving a solid-looking afterimage in his wake.
Bona was a good deal faster than Yenla and managed to throw his arms up to block, managing to react despite the surprise. However, much to his shock, Gari watched Herald Leroy strike right through Bona as well.
He was momentarily confused until the realization dawned on him. By then, it was too late. Herald Leroy was on top of Itachi Layla, a knee cracking into the Wind Artist’s ribs before she could so much as blink.
The ring of air that formed as she broke the sound barrier was visible, the loud crack reaching Gari only a second after she smashed into the wall. Just like Yenla, her body tore through a good ten feet of stone before coming to a rest in a pile of rubble.
Herald Leroy wasn’t merely leaving an afterimage. He was leaving multiple afterimages. This meant that either he was so fast that they couldn’t hope to keep up with him or the afterimages were part of the technique. Gari guessed it was the latter, which meant that they weren’t as outmatched as he feared.
Still, the fact that Roy had taken out two of them already was frightening enough. Even more frightening was the fact that the only technique he’d actually used was a Movement technique. Despite the staggering strength he was displaying, Herald Leroy hadn’t used any other techniques, and who knew what else he had in reserve? It was time to stop playing around. There was no way they were going to take him alive. Right now, it was either him or them.
“No more holding back,” Gari screamed, tapping into his Chakra and activating his Full-body technique. “Go for the kill!”
***
Doragon watched with an air of detachment as Roy advanced from Base Red to 2nd Dan. He’d honestly been hoping the overflow would take him all the way to 3rd Dan, but 2nd was respectable enough. Doragon had been holding him back from making the jump, despite Roy having figured out how to make it past Base Red nearly six weeks prior.
To Roy, his Ideal was no longer simply freeing the oppressed, but being powerful enough to do so. Additionally, finding out that his mother wasn’t actually dead had changed his goals on a fundamental level. He needed to be strong in order to revitalize her husk of a body — Doragon had told him as much.
Ideals could change over time, especially if the bearer of said Ideal had their viewpoint on something altered as drastically as Roy. He still wanted equality for those weaker than him, but he had set his sights higher — no more petty revenge to hold him back and only the blazing will to move onward and upward to regain the family he’d lost, no matter who stood in his way.
The others, despite their higher rankings, wouldn’t be able to keep up with him now. Well, all but the Grandmaster, anyway. But Doragon didn’t think the man would pose much of a problem against the likes of Roy. At least, as he was now.
He watched as Roy activated his new Movement technique, the power coiling around him and lending him incredible speed and power. When one moved as fast as Roy was, even regular blows could shatter the reinforced stone of the training grounds, as witnessed by the two Martial Artists who were turned into weapons of mass destruction.
In a blink, Roy had taken two of the fighters out. Though none of the Red-Belts could actually see what had happened to their bodies, Doragon wasn’t so limited. Despite the choking dust, debris, and chaotic Essence dancing in the air, it was easy to both replay the attacks in his mind and see the results.
The first woman’s Armorer technique had managed to block the attack. She was a Red-Belt, after all. However, as soon as Roy had tapped into his Physical technique, she hadn’t stood a chance. He’d only used it for an instant, too quick to be detected, and coupled with his immense physical power, the scaled Chakra had shattered like glass, and the woman’s body had been utterly destroyed.
She was very much dead under that pile of stone, her ribs shattered, her spine broken, and her heart turned into a bloody mess.
The second woman was a bit luckier in that she was still alive, though right now, she was probably wishing she wasn’t. Her ribs had also been shattered, though in her case, she’d managed to throw a barrier between the two of them right before impact, a split-second reaction that had saved her life.
Right now, she was trying to claw her way free, but even if she managed it before Roy caught on, there was no way she’d be able to keep up with him, let alone put up a fight. As far as Doragon was concerned, there was only one fighter among these assassins who could challenge Roy, and that was the Grandmaster.
The others were stronger than him on a pure advancement level, but when Martial Artists were fighting with this kind of power, a couple of Dans wouldn’t make all that much of a difference. Even so, it would be a good training lesson for his sister’s son, one that he sorely needed.
After all, Doragon wouldn’t be around for too much longer and needed to get in all the training he could before he was forced to leave.
47
When Roy had first discovered the basis for his branching Path, he’d been a bit surprised at the turn it had taken. He’d
imagined that it might have something to do with lightning or perhaps something explosion-based, maybe a Path that worked by tying down his opponents while he rained blows down on them until they cracked, or something that increased his mobility. However, his first technique showed him just how very wrong he’d been.
When used, the technique manifested itself as a red-gold light that branched into lines and traced over his body. It was a raised, half-circle of Chakra that started at the backs of his feet, coiling once around his ankles to his calves, again above his knee, then traveled straight up to his waist where they joined together at his spine.
The single line traveled up his spine to his shoulders, where they branched out again to his arms. The twin lines coiled around the shoulders, again above the elbows and once more across his forearms, where they tapered off on the knuckles of his middle fingers.
The light continued up his spine, past the base of his neck, and curved up the back of his head. A pair of branching lines curved around just below the ears, tapering off on his cheeks, while another came out right above his ears, stopping at his temples. The line of light didn’t actually curve over the top of his head, stopping where the second pair of lines branched off to curve around.
When it manifested, a small bead of red-gold appeared in the center of his back, then the light quickly traced a path in both directions. The process only took about a second, and when he’d asked about why it presented itself like this when none of his Movement techniques had had a physical appearance before, Doragon had theorized that his body likely needed the support, due to the speed at which it allowed him to move.
Additionally, Roy discovered that the lines were actually channels, allowing Chakra to flow inside and outside his body, further enhancing the technique's potency. Of course, this meant that it used twice as much Chakra as a normal Movement technique would, but it was almost expected with his capacity.
The afterimages were something he’d discovered as he’d practiced. Rocketing back and forth across the training area and trying to assure that his control of the technique was sound, he’d had to run into the walls many times. It wasn’t just the speed that allowed the solid images to be left, though. He needed to actively infuse them with his Chakra, which — of course — made the technique even more costly.
Still, it was extremely useful, especially in a fight against multiple opponents. The fact that his Chakra was infused in the illusions meant that they couldn’t tell which was the real one at a glance. And, by the time they figured it out, it was too late. It was because of those afterimages that Roy had chosen the technique’s name, the Ripple Step, due to the slight shimmer it left in his wake.
As of right now, he did have a limit as to how many he could leave at once, though he wasn’t going to be blurting that number to the enemy.
Coincidentally, it was that very Movement technique he was now using, as he flashed between the Martial Artist with the massive fists of blue stone and the woman using the spheres of heavy metal. They both struck at him, their attacks sailing clean through the illusions. He stepped down hard, spinning on his heel and rocketing toward the woman, whose body was now clad in a sheet of liquid metal. Off balance from having missed her mark, the woman wasn’t able to block in time, though her Armorer technique did pose a problem. His fist was stopped just short of her face as the metal covering her flexed under the force.
The woman was blasted off her feet, smashing into one of the walls, as the others before had. Roy followed the time, barely avoiding a flurry of quick blows from the Martial Artist who used the blue stone.
Still, Roy continued on toward the woman he’d taken out. The key to a fight like this would be to even the odds as soon as possible. He was strong, but this five-on-one fight still heavily favored the enemy.
He’d only made it about halfway, leaving another afterimage for the man who used the blue stone to attack, when he was intercepted by a pool of shadow that appeared in his path. It solidified into the Grandmaster who’d begun using a Conqueror technique just as he threw a punch.
Roy could see the power of that attack as it sailed on a crash course with his jaw. He stepped hard, spinning to his left and leaving another image of himself in place as he avoided the attack, but the other Martial Artist was fast.
He seemed to turn into a shadow, appearing in Roy’s path once more. A wall of liquid darkness spread between him and the crater where he’d sent the metal-covered woman. Tendrils of darkness snaked out, trying to snare him in their grasp, and Roy was forced to retreat, deftly dodging and slipping between the attacks.
The Grandmaster was right on top of him, blades of darkness appearing in his hands as he slashed downward. Gritting his teeth, Roy dodged back once more, now finding himself on the back foot as the man pressed his attack.
A flash of movement out of the corner of his eye warned Roy about the massive blue fist, though he couldn’t avoid it in time. The fingers curled around him, snagging him just as before. Only this time, they merely held him in place, not driving him back. He barely had time to struggle, before the Grandmaster was there, his blades shearing toward his head.
Roy had really been hoping to keep his techniques hidden. It was why he’d only used his Physical technique for an instant when striking at the woman with the scaled Armorer technique, and why he hadn’t used it again when striking the metal-clad fighter. He hadn’t wanted to risk giving his attacks away.
Now, though, he could see that holding back when Doragon hadn’t told him to was only going to be to his detriment. He was up against fighters with more experience, stronger rankings, and those who knew how to work together.
Digging deep, Roy brought Chakra up from his Core, pushing it into the back of his throat and opening his mouth.
This technique was more what Roy expected of someone on his Path, though it was still quite a bit different than his pure Power Path. This technique gathered Chakra into his vocal cords. The louder he yelled, the more power would be infused into the attack. Geon hadn’t much liked the idea of it being called a ‘yell,’ though. He’d said it sounded more like a roar.
The waves of red-gold light that blasted from his open mouth didn’t have a spectacular range, only about twenty feet. After the twenty-foot mark, they lost a good deal of their power. The volume of the attack assured that he couldn’t go using it from stealth, as it would immediately give away his position, but still, Roy’s Path had never really meant to be one of sneaking and ambushing.
After Geon’s suggestion, naming the technique hadn’t been all that hard. He’d actually taken a bit of inspiration from the crazy man back in one of the destroyed villages. It might have been a bit ostentatious of him, but Demon’s Roar just sounded so good.
In addition to the actual physical damage the attack did, it also attacked the enemy’s channels, tearing at their foundations and disrupting the flow of Essence. On top of all that, the roar — according to Doragon, anyway — should leave nearby enemies temporarily deafened, even those not directly in the attack’s path.
From the Grandmaster’s perspective, all he would have seen was a massive flash of light before his entire body was engulfed in burning, tearing Chakra. This was his only Armorer technique. The armor that had cloaked his body because of the Full-body technique he used was torn apart in an instant as the burning power tried to destroy him from the inside out.
The stone fist holding Roy in place shattered as the waves of power and sound tore it apart. The Grandmaster, blasted out of effective range, tumbled and rolled a few more feet before coming to a halt. His entire body was covered in cuts, blood leaking from both his ears, the corners of his eyes, nose, and mouth as well.
He was still alive, but Roy had to turn and face his fifth attacker, the man who’d been giving him so much trouble.
His body was now clad in rocky blue armor, but Roy didn’t really care about that. He sucked in a big breath of air, braced himself, then punched. A massive red-gold construct of Chakra flowed aroun
d his arm, turning into a fist nearly five feet tall. It wasn’t a human fist, but one covered in long, leaf-shaped scales.
The knuckles were gnarled and the fingers tipped with long, curving claws. As of right now, the fist stopped just an inch below the wrist, fading into nothingness further down. It encased Roy’s own, leaving the area between him and the construct empty. However, it worked just like a normal hand. The fingers moved as his own, as did the wrist.
When he’d first manifested the technique as a Base Red-Belt, the hand had stopped before the wrist, which likely meant that it would keep growing as he advanced. The name for this technique was apt as well, as it smashed into the stone-covered man with far more force than Roy would have been able to muster on his own. The Demon’s Hammer would crush all in its path, no matter how durable the person or item was.
He could call on a weaker version of this technique as well, summoning it beneath the surface of his skin, which was how he’d managed to keep it hidden earlier. But when facing a fighter who was three Dans higher than him, Roy wasn’t going to be taking any chances.
His fist connected, the force of the attack sending wide cracks across the armor. The man staggered back, his own attack fading as he tried desperately to defend himself. Roy followed closely, throwing another attack, as a second Demon’s Hammer cloaked his left arm.
The hammer came down again and again, staggering the man and sending cracks spreading across his armor. He tried to strike back, but Roy used his speed to his advantage, dodging between the sailing waves of glowing blue stone and leaving afterimages to further throw the man off.
The exchange only lasted about ten seconds, but at their speed, over three dozen attacks were exchanged. Roy worked just a bit harder to crack the man's armor, then pounded him into a bloody mess against the side of the training grounds. Only once his fists were more red than gold, did Roy stop his assault, turning to face his remaining enemies.
