Chapter 108: 108 – Soul-Sword-Single-Strike

A twitch of the eye, a sharp inhalation, a sudden assault of strikes. Makhus could feel and see them coming, but he lacked the inhuman speed bestowed by Fog-breathing. He blocked some, dodged others, backpedaling through the alleyway as he watched for any gap in the Pursuer’s savage assault. With his senses entirely overtaken by sensory overload and his reflexes doing the vast majority of the work while he looked out for an opportunity to break the pattern of reflexive defense, Makhus had brief moments here and there to analyze his opponent’s combat style. This was familiar, it was a combat style he recognized - one of the styles taught by a family he’d once aspired to join, one named after the pseudonym of its enigmatic founder. 

The Black Horse Family.

He’d never been talented or of high enough birth to even have a hope at joining them, and so his spiteful younger self chose to join their rivals, the Sanger Family. Where the Black Horse Family taught myriad methods of overwhelming an opponent and breaking any guard, the Sanger family taught defense and counter-attack specifically geared to counter such assaults.

Makhus hadn’t paid attention in these lessons. His defense was lacking, instead fuelled by the very technique he had come up with on his own for the sole purpose of passing examinations without needing to learn proper form - Sensory Enhancement. Even his personal Arts were a bastardization of the Sanger Family’s teachings.

Where the Sanger Family taught “Soul Sword Arts” and thus caused most of their students to name their techniques as such, Makhus’s younger self had decided he was better than that. Out of youthful defiance of authority, he’d given his techniques a ridiculous name; a name he hadn’t changed so that it would always remind him of all the things he wanted to do and all the things he’d wished to be.

This small infraction had been the very thing that resulted in his expulsion from the Sanger Family, long before he’d been drafted.

Unfortunately for Makhus, there were no gaps in the Pursuer’s assault. When one slash ended, there was only a brief exhalation of Fog and a flash of light as he burned some of the arcane substance to nullify the remaining kinetic energy and transition to another swing instantaneously. Unlike the Pursuer, Makhus couldn’t just take a breath to replenish his reserves, he was running on borrowed time. Fifteen seconds left. Fourteen. Thirteen.

“Come on! Fight back, you filthy fuckin’ Grek-lover!” the Pursuer laughed. That maddening, barking noise served to spark the powder-keg of frustration in his heart, and Makhus made a decision. It didn’t matter if he got hurt, or even killed - he wanted this bastard dead.

Makhus sucked a breath in through his mask, delivering another front kick to the Pursuer’s chest in favor of blocking a strike. The sabre’s razor-honed edge sank into his left shoulder, severing tendons and musculature as it was dragged by its owner’s backstep. Pain shot through his entire being, only to be washed away by an intoxicating burn as the inside of his gas-mask filled with Fog. Somehow, it didn’t obstruct his vision.

As he stepped forward and readied himself to riposte the Pursuer’s next strike, Makhus felt his perception of time slowing. The world came to a near-halt, he could see the individual muscles in the Pursuer’s arm contracting, he could see a dozen ephemeral outlines of potential attack paths that his saber could trace. With every passing moment these dozen paths became half a dozen, and half a dozen became one, the possibilities of the Pursuer's attack narrowing.

Knowing this to be the birth of a technique that would either save his life or be his last, Makhus chose to name it something his hot-blooded younger self would like. With a roar so loud it could be clearly heard even through the gas mask, he exhaled every bit of Fog in his lungs and lashed out with a strike that was faster than even he could see. 

A strike that made his tarnished, chipped War-knife gleam brighter than the most opulent of blades.

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“Soul-Sword-Single-Strike: Evil-cleaving Slash!”

The Pursuer’s blade clattered to the ground, his sword arm severed at the elbow. His head soon followed, sliding off his stump neck as his blood fountained upward.

In the final six seconds of his life, the beheaded Pursuer laughed a voiceless, breathless gurgle, his face frozen in a grin of surprised amusement.

Sheathing his War-knife, Makhus took another breath of Fog and channeled a Purgation Arts technique he had once needed outside assistance to perform, for it burned Fog to fuel itself. It would’ve been what carried him to a career of success and eventual execution of a war criminal, had he learned Fog-breathing during his time in the military.

Now, it was what would save him from exsanguination.

“Purgation Arts: Instant Coagulation,” he murmured into his mask as he dug the fingers of his right hand into his open wound. Pins and needles thrummed through his hand, and he felt the flow of blood staunching. Slowly, ever so slowly, he pulled his fingers free, repeating the technique three more times until his wound was fully sealed.

When he departed the place of his suicidal endeavor, he took nothing and did nothing, leaving no evidence beyond the body of a murdered martial artist that wouldn’t be found until it began to stink. 

The next morning, Sigmund found him unconscious in the bathtub, the water muddied by blood and the tub surrounded by six empty seal-bottles. He was still wearing the gas mask.

Sigmund hoisted his friend out of the ice-cold water, put him in bed, and asked no questions, running the store for most of the day on his own.

---

Zelsys made her way out of the hive and down the main length of the chamber, intent on exploring the other branching path with the hope of recovering some of her other equipment. Well before she could reach the corner however, the floor came alive and an elaborate maze of pillars rose up before her, its hallways only a meter wide and illuminated faintly by nothing more than the vertical glowing lines on the pillars.

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