Chapter 152 - Demon King vs. Swordsman
The crimson Domain and the glacial Sword Citadel of Ice and Snow collided with a thunderous crash. The underground space fractured inch by inch. Geto's left arm had fully transformed, swollen into a massive, dark blue-black demonic claw, its surface bristling with rigid, frost-hardened scales. Enormous pale bone wings tore through the flesh of his back and snapped violently open.
The stench of blood, thick enough to turn the stomach, whipped into a gale that swept across the entire platform. Hundreds of misshapen demon hands rose from the crimson mire, snatching the falling tachi blades from the air and crushing them by force.
Kuroda stared at the monster before him, a creature sutured together with eight Special Grade Cursed Spirits, and the tendons on his sword hand stood out like cables.
"Stuffing Cursed Spirits into your own meridians..." Kuroda's eye twitched. "Madman."
The black tattoos on the right side of Geto's face writhed like living things.
"If I don't go mad, how am I supposed to tear your old bones to pieces?"
Kuroda drew his right foot back half a step, his left thumb pressing against the tsuba.
"But inside my Eight Cold Sword Pavilion, you don't even have the right to crawl."
The Extreme Cold Rule descended. Snowflakes settled on Geto's shoulders. The blood on his skin crystallized into shards of ice in an instant. Bone-piercing cold drove straight through his pores and into his meridians. His joints stiffened, and his blood thickened. Every breath felt like swallowing a fistful of broken glass. Geto said nothing. The bone wings shuddered violently.
He stomped through the solid ice beneath his feet. His hulking, hill-like body hurled itself at Kuroda through a deafening sonic boom, utterly reckless. Even with the Deceleration Rule bearing down on him, the sheer physical force stacked from eight Special Grade Cursed Spirits was still fast enough to leave nothing but a blur. The distance vanished in a blink.
Kuroda's expression didn't change. The right hand settled onto the sword hilt. No opening stance. A blinding white line tore open in the air. The blade light sliced effortlessly through the two massive demon hands blocking its path and ripped open the flesh of Geto's chest. The blood barely had time to spray before it froze into red crystals in midair. Geto didn't even blink.
His right foot slammed into the ground and forced his body to a halt. The demonic claw of his left arm, trailing a pressure that could shatter anything, drove straight for the crown of Kuroda's skull. Kuroda pulled back sharply, dropping into a backward lean. The demonic claw grazed Kuroda's nose and blasted apart the solid ice and concrete beneath, sending rubble flying in every direction.
Kuroda was still in the air when the second blade cleared the scabbard. Inside the Domain, the thousands of tachi embedded in the walls shuddered violently.
CLANG—!
The blades embedded in the walls wheeled in unison and rained down on Geto like a torrential downpour. Geto let out a roar that didn't sound human. The crimson Domain boiled. Countless demon hands erupted skyward and slammed headlong into the storm of blades. Steel and bone and flesh tore at each other in a frenzy. Severed limbs and shattered iron crashed down onto the snow.
This was the purest kind of meat grinder. Inside Geto's body, eight varieties of violent Special Grade Cursed Energy were tearing at each other. Meridians shattered, then were forcibly healed by the regenerative power of the Cursed Spirits. The extreme cold had frozen through his flesh, and every punch he threw now was multiplying the drain on his life force. He had to find the opening.
Geto locked his gaze onto Kuroda's sword hand. In the blur of their high-speed exchange, he caught one fatal detail. No matter how fast the sword-ki came. Before Kuroda's next draw, the blade had to be fully returned to the scabbard. One out, one in — a pause of one-tenth of a second. The boundary between life and death.
Geto drew a deep breath of frozen air. The crimson Domain contracted sharply. Every demon hand guarding his body dispersed at once. Naoya Zenin, sprawled on the ground some distance away, saw it and felt his scalp crawl.
"Are you dropping your defenses to die?!"
Geto ignored him completely. All of his Cursed Energy surged madly into his legs and left arm. He stomped a massive web of cracks into the ice beneath his feet. He abandoned defense entirely and charged head-on into Kuroda's blade through the swirling wind and snow.
"Fool." Kuroda let out a cold laugh.
Cursed Energy erupted from every direction. Over a thousand tachi blades hung suspended in the air, every tip locked dead on Geto.
"Avici Blade Hell: Thousand Shadows in an Instant."
A torrent of blades drove downward like a crashing wave. Geto's limbs and torso were skewered into a pincushion in an instant. The searing pain cut off all sensation. But he forced his way through the blade storm and closed the distance to two meters. Kuroda's eyes went ice-cold. Right hand — draw.
The killing strike drove straight for Geto's throat, the Sure-Hit Rule locking down every possible escape. Geto didn't dodge. The instant the blade light flared, his left demonic claw reached up and grabbed directly onto the edge. The keen blade sliced off three fingers of the demonic claw in an instant. But the moment it bit into the bone—
Geto clamped down with the remaining finger bones and pinned the blade fast inside his palm. Hot blood erupted in a wild spray. The tip of the blade was now a mere half-inch from his throat. Kuroda's pupils contracted sharply as he tried to wrench the blade free for a second strike. It wouldn't move.
"Got you."
Geto spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of viscera and split his face into a savage grin.
SPLAT!
The two bone wings at his back snapped rigid in an instant and became two razor-sharp bone spears. The distance was too close. The blade was locked, leaving Kuroda no way to apply leverage. The bone spears drove through Kuroda's heart at a devastatingly precise angle. Crimson blood splattered across the white snow. Kuroda's body went rigid.
Kuroda lowered his head in disbelief, staring at the bone spears piercing through his chest, then at Geto's demonic claw, three fingers gone, still biting the blade to the last. A life for a life. A fatal opening offered deliberately, to buy one-tenth of a second for the killing blow. Kuroda's mouth moved. Only great gouts of bloody foam came out.
Geto wrenched the bone spears free and stepped back two paces.
"Your blade is fast. I'll give you that."
He watched Kuroda fall, his voice raw and cold.
"But this isn't a kendo match."
Kuroda released the sword hilt. The body hit the snow and dissolved into a plume of black smoke. With the death of the Main Formation Core, the surrounding world of ice and snow shattered like a mirror. The crimson Domain of the Fiendish Horde contracted along with it. The heavy stench of blood filled the underground power distribution hub once more.
The Demon King's features faded rapidly from Geto's body as he returned to human form. His legs buckled. He dropped hard onto the ground. The blade wounds on his body were deep enough to expose bone. Blood pooled quickly beneath him, spreading into a dark hollow in the snow. Not far away, Kusakabe and Naoya shook the ice shards from their clothes and struggled to their feet.
"You..." Kusakabe stared at Geto's wrecked state, genuinely shaken. "You're a complete and utter madman."
Naoya said nothing. The lofty edge in that gaze had dimmed, replaced by something more honest, real wariness. Geto didn't spare either of them a glance. Trembling, he raised his left hand, three fingers missing, and pointed toward the far end of the hall. There, a boundary marker glowing with a faint crimson light stood in silence. The last barrier blocking Toji Fushiguro's entry into the game.
"Go."
Geto swallowed the blood foam in his throat.
"Smash it."
Naoya said nothing. Limped forward, raised a fist, and reduced the boundary marker to dust.
➤ Next: The Seventh Gate — One Punch Destroys the Titan