Chapter Ninety-One: Blackwood's Intentions

The battle between Agito Kanoh and Kuroki Gensai was full of reversals.

The Fang of Metsudo, who had overwhelmed the entire Kengan Association gladiator corps with his astonishing rate of evolution, differed greatly from Kuroki Gensai. Kuroki’s strength was solid, grounded, and unshakable. Agito’s strength lay in his seemingly limitless capacity to grow.

Every fight gave him experience. Every battle became nourishment.

Indeed, for most of the gladiators who had faced him, the despair of realizing they would never again catch up to him was enough to drive them from the world of combat altogether.

That crushing feeling of being able to trade blows at the start, only to be utterly overwhelmed by the end, was probably comparable in intensity to the oppressive pressure of Shirado’s creed: defeat the opponent in the very field where they are strongest.

These two towering, powerfully built men fought on the arena floor with all the wit they could muster and all the ferocity they possessed.

Agito displayed a dazzling array of godlike tactics and techniques with every movement of his hands.

Kuroki Gensai, by contrast, used his terrifying martial skill to suppress Agito in every conceivable way with plain, almost ordinary fundamentals.

It was as though he meant to say, “A pair of iron fists and the basics can break through any art.”

And in the end, just as Motomoto Hisan predicted, that was precisely what happened.

Despite Agito’s phenomenal rate of evolution, the height he reached in this single battle still could not compare to Kuroki Gensai, who had forged himself day after day for decades.

After a surprise attack aimed at the lower body, Agito, already exhausted and off balance, took a crushing blow to the jaw from Kuroki’s heavy fist, not the Devil Lance.

He exited the stage in defeat.

At that moment, the sight of the black bear of a man standing in the arena looked even more monstrous than the Fang of Metsudo, who had ruled the Kengan Association for years.

“Oh? It seems he believes that in a match with Kyo, the body matters more than sheer willpower,” Motomoto Hisan said, hands tucked into his sleeves, raising a brow amid the thunderous cheers from the stands.

“Oh?” Sae asked in confusion.

“I had thought he might use one hand as bait to lure Agito into striking.” The old man held up one hand and gave it a little shake, wearing a sly smile. “A broken bone would be no great matter. At this level, to think a few fractured fingers would cripple a fighter is a joke.”

“In that case, he could have ended the bout quickly, shortened Kyo’s rest, and reduced the cost to his own stamina. A fine bargain.”

“But now, he would rather calculate Agito’s next few moves than risk injury. Aside from the bruising from blocking with his thigh and the outside of his upper arm, he has no more wounds on him.”

“Huh?” Garu said angrily. “Grandpa Motomoto, is that old guy looking down on Kyo?!”

“No, that is not the question here.” Motomoto Hisan seemed to sense something, stroking his chin with interest. “This is a matter of intent.”

“More likely than winning the match, Kuroki Gensai wants to learn something through his own body from this fight.”

~~~~~~

The match between Kuroki Gensai and Agito Kanoh, already worthy of being called a final, gave the audience an unparalleled thrill.

Cheers and roars rose as if they meant to rip the roof from the arena.

And yet that frenzy seemed only like a warm-up.

After the brief intermission, when the two figures stepped back into the ring, the entire venue was swallowed in an instant by a tidal wave of sound.

Even the usually fiery Kaya Katagiri, microphone in hand, was nearly drowned out despite the amplification.

Only when the giant screen had no choice but to cut away from the arena and return to the commentary booth did her voice finally rise above the cacophony.

Dressed in a sexy leather outfit, Kaya Katagiri managed at last to seize the crowd’s attention.

“At last! At last, it’s here!”

Her youthful body swayed with barely contained excitement.

“On this day! The two men who stand atop the thirty-two gladiators! The two who stand at the pinnacle of the entire Kengan Association! Today, they meet!”

The referee took his position.

The two competitors stood at their marks.

They faced one another from afar, and a dreadful aura began to rise from both their bodies.

Shirado Kyo realized that the man before him, a devout ascetic of martial pursuit, possessed not only a blazing fighting spirit unprecedented in the entire Death Match, but also a profound hunger for inquiry.

A man who had climbed to this height in the martial way, who had witnessed countless landscapes and monuments along the path, who had even once received direct instruction from that embodiment of “martiality” himself—what was it he still sought?

“Are you searching for something?” the boy could not help but ask.

But the answer, as always, was brief and cold.

“Words are useless. Only fists matter.”

“I see.”

The remark was abrupt and incomplete, yet Shirado Kyo seemed to understand.

Not only understand it, but also offer a faint apology touched with regret.

“Then I’m sorry. I have no intention of letting it spread.”

The only thing that could possibly catch the interest of a man like Kuroki Gensai, who sought to exhaust the very limits of martial arts, could only be one of the two extraordinary energies within Shirado’s body.

Of the two, the Eastern origins of the dragon-blood inner force gave it a harmonized quality, one that blended naturally into the world and was difficult for outsiders even to perceive.

So his true target was probably the psychic power.

Throughout the match, he had always been absorbing heat in the form of Devouring Spirit, feeding it into the dragon-blood inner force.

But in retrospect, there had been several instances where he had simply released that energy directly, rather than using it as part of a technique.

For a man like Kuroki Gensai, who had nearly reached the end of martial arts, noticing that was entirely reasonable.

And while Shirado Kyo also very much wanted to fight a man like Kuroki after breaking through the limits of the human body—

Just imagining that scene made his blood burn and his muscles tighten.

Still, with Mud Buddha’s prophecy hanging over his head, he absolutely did not want to let loose an energy capable of giving rise to all manner of uncanny things.

“That is why I said words are useless,” Kuroki said, his expression as impassive as expected.

Then, as he took up the shiko stance from karate, the fighting spirit that had already been fierce enough to drive ordinary people to collapse in terror seemed to surge like fire over boiling oil.

“Only fists matter!”

Martial exchange is not conducted with words.

It is done with fists.

If you do not want to speak, then I shall beat you until you do.

“Are both sides ready?”

The referee, perhaps afraid his voice would be drowned out by the noise from outside the ring, hurried to shout at the top of his lungs as the cheers briefly waned.

“A foolish question...”

“Agreed.”

The boy’s clear voice and the middle-aged man’s heavy tone rang out in succession.

Then Shirado Kyo also settled into his own fighting stance.

“Disciple of the Motomoto style, I, Shirado Kyo, come to return the favor to my master.”

“Kuroki Gensai of the Razorknuckle style. Please begin.”

At the very moment when the atmosphere felt as though it might snap like a taut string,

the referee’s hand came down as if to sever that tension in a single stroke.

“Match start!!!!!!”