by Yuu Miyazaki
And as if considering the matter closed, the twins stepped aside to make way.
Hufeng gritted his teeth, but there was nothing he could do if Xinglou, his master, granted permission herself.
Xinglou, however, was not finished. “I wonder if things will go as easily as you think?” she teased as she strode between the twins.
Each twitched an eyebrow.
“Do you mean—that Brothers Song and Luo will best us?”
“No. I’m only saying that it is early yet to presume who your opponents will be.” Seeing their dubious expressions, Xinglou laughed with unbridled amusement. “You can’t know for certain that Song and Luo will advance, can you?”
“Ah, of course not. But still—”
“—even they cannot lose against opponents who have so clearly revealed their weakness.”
“We at least have that much faith in our fellow students.”
They could not have been more conceited about making their point. Still, Hufeng had to concur.
The data on Ayato Amagiri was scarce, but the videos in circulation showed a large gap in his ability when comparing him at full strength with when he was not. Hufeng doubted that Song or Luo could lose to Ayato with his strength shackled, and with him out of the way it would be two on one. There was no reason to expect a loss.
“Hmm. Be that as it may,” Xinglou said, “you two should concentrate on Round Five first. You never know what can happen in battle.”
“We appreciate your concern, master—”
“—but our next opponents are two girls from Queenvale who only made it this far because of their luck in the bracket placement. There is nothing to worry about.”
Hufeng’s face clouded again at seeing the twins so casually brushing aside Xinglou’s advice.
“Oh, look at the time.”
“Please excuse us.”
Hufeng watched them depart with a sigh. “Honestly. Those twins…”
“Ho-ho. You don’t seem to get along with them very well,” chuckled Xinglou.
“Their hearts are full of arrogance, and they do not value modesty. Who could possibly get along with them?” Hufeng muttered, following her.
While it was true that the daoshi of the Water sect tended to sneer at the Wood sect, not all were like the twins. The young woman who headed the Water sect, for instance, was somewhat unorthodox but indeed worthy of respect.
In the end, the only ones with such poor character were the twins.
“But they do have talent,” Xinglou remarked.
“I…cannot dispute that.”
Just as the twins had said, if they were to fight Song and Luo, their victory was all but decided.
Hufeng felt he could take on either one alone. Facing both twins at the same time, though—he might prevail but not easily. When it came to teamwork, no trainees of Xinglou’s could win out against the twins.
“By the way, master,” Hufeng said, “do you think that Song and Luo will lose to that pair from Seidoukan?”
“Heh-heh-heh, who can know?” Xinglou replied. “If Ayato Amagiri and his partner were facing the twins and not Song and Luo in Round Five tomorrow, I do think Seidoukan would lose.”
“Then—even if the Seidoukan team does best Song and Luo tomorrow, they will fall to the twins in Round Six, the quarterfinals?”
At that, Xinglou turned with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, then shook her head. “I think not. If they make it past tomorrow, then we cannot know what might happen. That’s what I am hoping for.”
“Haaah…”
Not quite sure of her point, Hufeng tilted his head in confusion.
For one thing, Xinglou was the student council president. She should not be hoping for students of her own school to lose.
Hufeng wondered for a moment whether he ought to admonish her for that, but as Xinglou’s shoulders shook with laughter, he gave up.
She would never listen to him anyway.
It was the eleventh day of the Phoenix.
“Honestly. I can’t believe word got around this much in just one day.”
When Ayato walked into the now-familiar prep room at the Sirius Dome, what greeted him was an exasperated Julis standing amid a cluster of assorted air-windows.
“Morning, Julis.”
“Morning, Ayato. How does it feel to have your weakness trumpeted to the whole world?”
In lieu of replying, Ayato shrugged and walked around the table to sit down directly across from Julis.
“As you can see, the news reports are still just vague speculation,” she went on. “But the other fighters must have received detailed data from their schools’ intelligence agencies.”
“How much do you think they know?”
All the air-windows displayed articles related to the Festa, and all the headlines were about Ayato. At least, with phrasing like COULD THIS BE A MAJOR WEAKNESS FOR A CHAMPIONSHIP FAVORITE?! and DOES SEIDOUKAN’S NEWEST SUPERSTAR COME WITH A TIME LIMIT?! it appeared the press stopped short of making definitive statements.
The schools’ intelligence agencies were not likely to be so charitable.
“I couldn’t say… But we should probably assume they know about as much as Claudia does.”
Aside from Julis, the only people Ayato had told about the seal on his strength were Saya, Kirin, and Lester.
He had told Claudia when she’d rushed to see him after yesterday’s match, but she had already known, to some extent.
“Sorry. But that’s my job,” she had told him with an apologetic bow. But she would not say anything more on the matter, so there was no way for him to discern how long she’d known, exactly what she knew, or how. But that had given him enough to speculate somewhat.
She probably learned through Shadowstar, the special operations unit. If that was true, then Julis was right—it would not be a surprise if the other schools’ agencies had the same level of information.
Of course, Shadowstar might have had a slight advantage because the subject was a student at the same school.
“It’s probably reasonable to assume that they have a rough idea of how long the time limit is,” Julis said. “They can use our match against Irene Urzaiz as a reference.”
Ayato sighed. “Yeah…that’s true.”
There was nothing he could do about that now.
“The problem is, they seem to know about the aftereffects, too.” Julis enlarged an air-window close to her.
It displayed an article quoting someone in a position of knowledge: I’m also told that once he releases his full strength, he suffers from severe aftereffects that make it difficult to even move around. Word is that he needs to rest for some time until he can fight at full strength again…
“According to Claudia, this rumor originated at Le Wolfe,” Julis added.
“Le Wolfe, huh…?”
Ayato had some idea where the story could have originated.
Le Wolfe’s student council president knew Ayato’s sister. It would hardly be surprising if he also knew about her ability—the imprisoning chains that had sealed Ayato’s strength.
“Damn that Tyrant. If he knew that much, he could have kept it to himself. But going out of his way to leak it like this—he really wanted to make things harder for us,” Julis said with a sigh, then closed the array of air-windows and faced Ayato. “And? How do you feel?”
“Not bad, I guess. Well, it still hurts a lot.” Ayato tried waving his arm.
The aftereffects of breaking the seal did not actually involve any kind of harm to his body. Rather, the issue was his prana overreacting to the reactivation of the seal, which was why it subsided with time.
“I should recover in time for our match. Well, to fight normally, at least.”
“But you won’t be able to use your full strength?”
“No… That would probably be too much.”
With a sideways glance, Ayato checked the clock. It was still early in the morning, and the first match of the day had not yet started. Their match would be
third, so there was still about half a day until then. It should have been possible to recuperate substantially if he rested until the match, but it would be impossible to release his power again so soon.
And no wonder. In yesterday’s match, he had gone significantly beyond not just the baseline limit of three minutes, but the serious danger point of five minutes. So the aftereffects were lasting longer than usual.
“All right. We’ll plan as if you can’t.” Julis exhaled in resignation and opened another air-window. This time, the screen displayed not a news site but two strapping young men.
“Let’s go over it again. Our next opponents are Jie Long’s twentieth- and twenty-third-ranked fighters. We faced a Jie Long team in Round Three, but I think it’s fair to say these two are in a different class. They’re pupils of the Ban’yuu Tenra, after all.”
“That’s Jie Long’s student council president, right? The one who’s only about nine?”
It defied any semblance of common sense, but that young girl was apparently the strongest fighter in all of Jie Long.
There were hardly any videos of her matches. The matches for which videos did exist were over too quickly to be informative—which was enough to show that she was strong, but not to gauge exactly how strong she was.
“I couldn’t tell you much about the Ban’yuu Tenra. Jie Long has a lot of students, so it’s relatively easy for info to leak out of that school. But intel on her seems to be an exception. Pretty much the only thing we know is that in the past, her alias belonged to individuals who accomplished great things for their school.” Julis paused and met Ayato’s gaze. “Well, enough about her. The important thing is that we have to take our next opponents seriously. Though if you could fight at full strength, they probably wouldn’t give us much trouble… They’re not as strong as Irene Urzaiz, at least.”
“I sure hope there aren’t many more like her.”
Ayato recalled yesterday’s match. They had managed to win somehow—but one misstep and the result would have been completely different.
“You do realize these two may still be too much for you in your condition?”
“Ngh…” He flinched, unable to deny this. With his power sealed, Ayato lacked the ability to face a ranked fighter head-on.
“I doubt I would lose to either of them one-on-one,” Julis said, “but facing both at once will pose a problem. And both of them specialize in close-range combat. I think I’ve improved in that area, but not enough for this. Lower-ranked opponents are one thing, but I’ll be in trouble if two fighters of their level get close to me.”
“Do you have a plan?”
Ayato had some confidence in his ability to formulate a plan around his own strengths, but Julis had a much better head for team strategy.
As the wheels turned in her mind, she held up two fingers. “Before we discuss that, I have two questions. I noticed it back when we were training, but—even when you have your powers sealed, your defense is very good. How does that work? Even the first time you fought me, you fended off most of my attacks.”
Julis was referring to their duel on the day he transferred in.
“Oh, yeah. If it’s just dodging and defending, I can handle a lot with nothing more than my experience and ability to predict what my opponent will do,” Ayato said. “But my body can’t keep it up forever, so against someone stronger I think I’d end up running out of energy.”
Even in their duel, if they had kept it up for much longer Julis would have roasted him through and through with her flames.
It was the same when they trained with Lester and Saya. He couldn’t adequately react to Lester’s sheer physical strength.
All this meant that if his basic strength and defensive capacity put him at a major disadvantage, compensating with technique could only get him so far. Only a good strategy would make up for the remaining disparity.
“Hmm…I see,” Julis said. “Now, my second question. Your ability to release your power for just an instant—can you do that now?”
“Well, right now would be pushing it. But I should be well enough by the match to do it once. I think.”
“I see…” Hearing his uncertain reply, Julis looked down, holding her chin as she fell deep in thought.
She stayed like that for several moments.
“All right. Then how about this?” Finally, she raised her head with a conspiratorial smile.
CHAPTER 2
ROUND FIVE
“Aaand here we are! The battle you’ve all been waiting for today, the final match of Round Five! Yesterday in Round Four, this team defeated Le Wolfe Black Institute’s third-ranked fighter, Irene Urzaiz, alias Lamilexia! Here come Seidoukan Academy’s first and fifth—Ayato Amagiri and Julis-Alexia von Riessfeld!”
The now-familiar voice of the announcer greeted Ayato and Julis as they took the stage, followed by what may have been the loudest cheers they had heard so far this entire tournament.
Naturally, these events drew more and more excitement toward the championship’s climax, but the tenor was somewhat different that day. Everyone seemed intent on discovering with their own eyes whether the news stories were true.
“And from the other gate, we have Song and Luo from Jie Long Seventh Institute! These students are from your alma mater, Ms. Tram. What’s your take going into this match?”
“Well, y’know, if that bit of info going around is true, I’d have to say Song and Luo have the upper hand…”
“I bet that’s what the spectators today would like to know, too!”
As the commentators bantered, Ayato channeled prana through his body, inspecting its flow. “…Okay.”
He seemed to have healed up about as much as he’d expected. Now, all they needed was…
“Amagiri.”
Just then, one of their opponents from Jie Long walked across the stage and called to him.
This was Song. Apparently older than Ayato, he had firm, well-defined muscles.
Ayato almost assumed a fighting stance by reflex, but the youth, who wore his hair in a braid, looked him in the eye and spoke in a calm, deliberate pace.
“Regardless of whether the rumors are true, Luo and I intend to face you with everything we have. To be frank, I would have liked to fight you one-on-one at your full strength—but this is the Phoenix, where we fight in pairs. I hope there will be no hard feelings.”
This caught Ayato by surprise. “Huh? Oh, um, not…at all…”
Song turned away and went back to his partner. Luo appeared to be about the same age, which would make him older than Ayato as well. His physique was similar to Song’s, but his short-cropped black hair and battlestaff stood out and, like Song, he had an air of sincerity about him.
His staff was not a Lux, but one of ordinary metal. It was very long, almost seven feet.
“Well. He speaks like a true warrior,” Julis muttered, impressed, from behind Ayato.
“So there are students like them, too. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Their type seems to be common at Gallardworth and Jie Long. But still, it was quite upstanding of him to go out of his way to declare his intentions. Well, in any case, they’ll test you to find out if you really can’t fight at full strength. And most likely, they’ll know right away.”
“Probably…”
When Song had approached earlier, Ayato had sensed his finely honed prana—not something the young man was born with, but purely the fruit of his hard work, an ability refined little by little over the years. And he looked like he had the fighting experience to match. It would be near impossible to deceive such a veteran warrior for long.
“We were right to come with a plan. Now look, Ayato. This is the mark. Remember.” Julis activated the Aspera Spina and used its point to carve a star symbol at her feet.
“Got it.” Ayato mentally reviewed their recent strategy discussion. “And the signal is fireworks, right?”
She replied with a curt nod. “Right. We’ll have five minutes after the wal
l goes up. Make sure you’re ready in time… I know it won’t be easy, but hold out until I finish setting up on my end. I’ll do my best to keep them at bay, but there’s only so much I can do when I’m trying to ready our plan, too. I may be able to keep one of them away from you, though. I’m counting on you.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Ayato said, and activated his blade Lux.
He would have liked to use the Ser Veresta, but when he’d tried it in the prep room, there had been no response at all, so there it remained. Ayato thought he might have earned a bit more respect from the sword in the previous fight. Apparently, his optimism was misplaced.
“Okay, the match is about to begin! Who will it be?! Which pair will take Round Five and advance to the quarterfinals?!”
A moment after the enthusiastic announcement, the school crests on the fighters’ chests announced the start of the match:
“Phoenix Round Five, Match Eight—Begin!”
As expected, Song and Luo immediately split to either side and rushed at Ayato.
“Burst into bloom—Primrose!”
Julis moved to Ayato’s aid, but astoundingly, Song brushed aside the leaping flames with his bare hand. The quick sweep of his fist easily scattered the fiery primrose, like he was batting the petals from a flower.
Such a maneuver was only possible by pouring prana into one’s fist. The extraordinary thing was that Song’s technique was powerful enough to snuff out a blast from Julis.
“Here I come!”
Having effortlessly cleared her attack, Song closed the gap in an instant and let his right fist fly.
Ayato blocked the strike with the flat of his sword, but a ferocious impact coursed through him, less like a blow from a fist and more like a huge metal wrecking ball. His legs trembled, and he clenched his teeth hard.
This was a kind of destructive power impossible to achieve with brawn alone.
Then Song stepped in as if for a body check and threw his elbow at Ayato’s stomach.
“Ngh…!” Ayato endured the attack by concentrating his prana, but he almost fell to his knees. His body froze for a moment as the breath was forced out of his lungs.
