Chapter 764: Shogun Festival Battle Royale (2)
The instant the signal was given, the arena dissolved into chaos.
Men rushed from every direction, shouting over one another as the first clashes exploded across the sand. Wooden swords cracked against staffs, fists slammed into ribs, and bodies collided in a frenzy so wild that it was almost impossible to tell where one fight ended and another began. Some charged headlong at the nearest person without a thought. Others tried to hold back and watch for an opening, only to get blindsided by someone faster or more desperate. Sand rose into the air beneath stamping feet, turning the lower half of the arena into a blur of motion and dust.
Nathan barely had time to take two measured steps before several fighters set their sights on him.
It was almost predictable.
Among the larger men packed into the arena, he looked like an easy target at first glance. He was slimmer than many of them, younger looking too, and unlike the louder fools nearby, he had not raised his weapon and shouted to the crowd. To men hungry for a quick victory, he must have looked like the simplest one to put down.
One broad man with a shaved head pointed at him and laughed.
“That one first.”
Another grinned as he came in from Nathan’s right. “Sorry, boy.”
A third man was already moving around to cut off his retreat, his face lit with the kind of cheerful cruelty Nathan had seen too many times before.
Nathan said nothing.
The first swing came high and heavy, full of force but empty of thought.
Nathan slipped aside with the ease of someone stepping out of rain.
The wooden blade cut through air where his head had been a moment earlier. Before the man could recover, Nathan snapped his own sword across the side of his wrist. The crack of wood on bone was sharp and ugly. The fighter yelped, his grip broke at once, and his weapon dropped into the sand.
Nathan pivoted.
The second man lunged toward him with a low horizontal swing meant to catch his ribs. Nathan drew back just enough for the strike to miss, then drove his foot into the man’s knee. The blow landed with a dull impact that folded the fighter sideways. Before he hit the ground, Nathan brought the wooden sword around and slammed it into the side of his neck.
The man dropped face first into the sand.
The third was already upon him.
Nathan turned, met the descending strike with his own blade, and the two weapons cracked together. The impact shuddered through the man’s arms, but Nathan did not stop there. He stepped in before the other could retreat and rammed his shoulder into the man’s chest. The force sent him stumbling backward. Nathan followed at once, spun the sword through one tight arc, and smashed it into the side of the man’s jaw hard enough to send him sprawling.
Around him, the battle raged on without pause.
More fighters noticed.
The easy prey they had expected had just put down three men in the space of a breath. That only seemed to provoke some of them further. Nathan saw their eyes change. What had begun as mocking confidence became challenge, irritation, greed. Some wanted to prove themselves. Others simply thought numbers would solve what skill could not.
Two came at him together.
Nathan retreated one step, then another, drawing them forward until they got in each other’s way. One swung too early. Nathan ducked under the strike, let it smash into the shoulder of the man behind him, then turned with a burst of speed and drove his wooden sword into the first attacker’s stomach. The man gagged and bent forward. Nathan seized the back of his neck and hurled him into the second fighter, sending both of them crashing into the sand.
A heavyset brute charged from the side with a roar, lifting a thick wooden club over his head.
Nathan glanced once and moved.
The club hit the ground with enough force to burst sand upward in a spray. By then Nathan was already at the man’s flank. He lashed his foot into the back of the brute’s leg, dropping him to one knee, then brought the wooden blade down across his back with a strike that made the man howl and collapse fully.
Another came in.
Then another.
The arena seemed determined to keep feeding him opponents.
Nathan’s sword became a blur of hard clean motion. He never wasted movement. He did not swing wildly or show off. Every strike had purpose. A crack across the knuckles to disarm. A sharp blow to the ribs to rob breath. A thrust to the stomach. A cut across the temple. When an opening appeared, he took it at once. When a man overextended, Nathan was already gone before the counter could e.
His speed only made the others more confused.
He moved lightly across the sand, feet barely sinking despite the churned ground beneath him. One moment he was directly in front of a man, the next he was at his side, then behind him, his wooden sword whipping around with enough force to send another body tumbling away. He kicked when it was faster than swinging. He struck with the hilt when a full blow was unnecessary. He used falling bodies as obstacles, letting charging fools trip over the men he had already dropped.
All around him the crowd was roaring louder with every exchange.
Nathan barely heard them.
A spear thrust came toward his chest.
He caught the shaft under his sword, twisted, and wrenched it free from the wielder’s hands in one smooth motion. Then he drove the butt end back into the man’s face and sent him reeling. Before the weapon even hit the ground, Nathan was turning again, bringing his sword around in a hard arc that cracked against another fighter’s shoulder and spun him half around.
Someone tried to grab him from behind.
Nathan drove his elbow backward into the man’s ribs, heard the breath explode out of him, then caught him by the arm and flipped him over his hip into the sand. The moment the man landed, Nathan planted a foot against his chest and used the push to launch himself away from a downward strike aimed at his head.
The blade missed him by a hand’s breadth.
Nathan landed lightly, straightened, and struck the attacker across the face so hard that the man went down on his side and did not rise.
For an instant, there was a pocket of space around him.
Not empty, never empty in a fight like this, but enough for him to breathe and take stock.
He had already dropped more men than he cared to count.
Yet there were still fighters everywhere, clashing in scattered knots across the arena. Some had formed brief alliances out of convenience, only to turn on each other the moment a better chance appeared. Others were too caught in their own little duels to notice how quickly the field was changing around them. The battle had no shape anymore. It was just violence rolling across the sand in waves.
Nathan turned his head slightly.
Out of the corner of his eye, he found Shiina.
She was several stretches away, half obscured by the shifting bodies between them, yet Nathan saw enough to make his attention sharpen.
Her movements were nothing like the rest.
Where most of the fighters hacked and lunged with brute force, Shiina moved as though the chaos around her had no claim on her at all. She flowed through it. Her footwork was light, measured, almost graceful, but there was nothing decorative in it. Every step placed her exactly where she needed to be, neither too close nor too far. She slipped past ining strikes by the narrowest margin, her body turning just enough to let a blade or fist pass by while her own sword answered at once.
And the speed of it.
Nathan had already known she was dangerous, but seeing her truly fight was something else.
Her wooden katana flashed in short precise arcs that seemed almost effortless until their effect became clear. One man rushed her with a raised club and she moved half a step, no more. Her sword snapped out and struck his wrist. Before he could even cry out, the blade reversed and clipped his throat. He staggered backward choking, and Shiina was already turning toward the next. Another came from behind her left side. Without looking, she angled her body, let his attack slide past, then cut low across his knee and followed with a strike to the temple that sent him spinning into the sand.
It was not merely fast.
It was exact.
That was what caught Nathan’s eye most of all. She did not waste a single motion. She did not need to batter people down with overwhelming force. Her timing was so clean, her accuracy so sharp, that each movement landed where it would do the most damage with the least effort. Wrists. Throats. Ribs. Knees. Jaw. Temple. She read the body the way a master swordsman read openings in an opponent’s stance.
One man tried to rush her from straight ahead while another circled behind, probably thinking they had her trapped.
Shiina dipped her shoulder, slid inside the first attack, and struck the first man twice so quickly it almost looked like one motion. Then she spun with astonishing control and met the second with a reverse cut that cracked against his fingers. His weapon flew away. Her next strike landed against the side of his neck and dropped him instantly.
Nathan narrowed his eyes.
Yes.
There was no doubt now.
Shiina was a great swordswoman.
Not simply talented. Not merely better than the average fool thrown into this spectacle.
Great.
Even at this distance, even in the middle of a battlefield crowded with lesser fighters, that truth was unmistakable.
A laugh broke from somewhere nearby as another opponent charged Nathan, hoping to catch him distracted.
Nathan turned just as the man swung for his head.
He caught the blow on his wooden sword, shoved it aside, and answered with a kick to the stomach so hard the attacker folded around it. Before the man could recover, Nathan struck him across the back and sent him crashing into two others who had been running past.
More were already looking his way again.
Nathan rolled his shoulders once, loose and calm, wooden sword resting low at his side.
Across the arena, Shiina put down another man with a single ruthless stroke and lifted her gaze.
For the briefest moment, through the chaos and dust and shouting bodies, their eyes met again.
The instant their eyes met across the arena, Shiina smiled.
It was not a playful smile this time, nor the amused expression she had worn since the waiting hall. There was something sharper in it now, something that looked almost like recognition. Not of his name, not of his face, but of his strength. She had seen enough.
Nathan understood at once.
A faint curve touched his own mouth.
Then both of them moved.
It happened so fast that the fighters around them barely had time to register it. One moment Nathan was standing among the churned sand and scattered bodies with his sword lowered at his side. The next, his body flashed forward in a violent burst of speed, his feet cutting across the arena floor with such force that sand kicked up behind him. At the same time, Shiina launched herself from where she stood, slipping past the men around her like a streak of dark blue, her wooden blade already rising in her hand.
The chaos of the battle did not matter.
The men between them did not matter.
Both of them crossed the distance as if everything else in the arena had vanished.
A pair of fighters tried to react too late. One turned toward Nathan only to be brushed aside by the sheer force of his passing. Another reached for Shiina and saw nothing but the blur of her sleeve before she slipped beyond him. In the space of a heartbeat, the two of them had torn straight through the battlefield toward each other.
Then their swords met.
BADOOOM!!
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