Chapter Ninety-Two: Wounded

At the instant the referee dropped his arm—

With a sharp whizz, Kuroki Gensai, like a black bear rearing to its full height, launched the first attack: a driving straight punch.

Years of diligent training in the spear-hand had left even a simple straight punch sounding as though a blade were slicing through the air.

Across the mere few steps between them, the powerful drive of his legs sent Kuroki Gensai surging forward almost instantaneously.

Before the fist had even arrived, the gale it raised was already tossing Baido Rei’s hair back from his face.

The boy’s brows knit slightly.

This was the first time since entering the death tournament that Kuroki Gensai had struck first. It was, by all accounts, an abnormal move.

But the fist, nearly as large as a human head, rushed at him with such force that there was no time to think further.

With a soft hiss, the answer came.

What would a Jeet Kune Do practitioner do against an enemy’s opening assault?

Fluid and swift, the signature sidestep drove a kick toward the armpit beneath Kuroki’s raised punching arm.

Their reach was nearly the same, so the kick would undoubtedly land before the straight punch.

Add the force of his own kick to Kuroki’s forward momentum, and if that densely packed, fragile armpit took such a blow, not only would the arm be useless for days, but a broken rib would be entirely plausible.

More than that, as his leg lifted, his foot kicked up a spray of fine sand, scattering it across Kuroki Gensai’s heavily haired head and face.

In this fleeting exchange of offense and defense, Kuroki’s fist had rushed in like a cannonball.

Yet the instant the kick was about to make contact, it drew a smooth arc, changing from a straight punch into a downward elbow strike.

The raised fist blocked the flying sand at just the right moment, and the elbow, sharp as a spear in its explosive force, was aiming to smash directly into the bend of Baido’s knee.

Just as the elbow bone was about to shatter the knee, the boy’s kicking leg, once taut with muscle, suddenly softened.

Like water.

Water Heaven Form: Water Swallow.

The chaotic yet flowing combination that Ouma had used with his legs after having both arms crushed in the previous round was now being reproduced on the final stage.

Bang, bang, bang!

Baido Rei’s lower leg swept through a series of eerie, razor-sharp arcs.

The kicks unleashed by Water Swallow piled upon one another, almost drowning Kuroki Gensai’s entire upper body.

Sweat on his body burst into mist under the repeated collisions of flesh.

On Kuroki Gensai’s frame, they traced out a pattern of small shockwave marks.

"No way... you’re kidding, right?"

Naoya Okubo stared blankly at the scene unfolding in the arena.

It was one thing for that flesh monster, Baido Rei, to be throwing blindingly fast kicks with the same casual ease that Gaolang used for his flicking jabs.

After all, everyone already knew how terrifying that body of his was from the earlier matches.

But that Kuroki Gensai...

"He blocked all of them?"

The rising heel, the palm heel, the open hand...

Every one of those frenzied, terrifyingly fast kicks had been stopped without a single miss.

Though he was the one being pressed by the strikes, he stood there like an unreachable cliff face.

It was nothing less than a wall of iron, hopeless to overcome.

This utterly defied Naoya Okubo’s martial philosophy, forged through his climb to the summit of mixed martial arts.

Striking contains chance.

Grappling, that is, submission and clinch work, is different. If you practice technique diligently and condition your body, you will be stronger than those who slack off.

When two people are entwined like serpents, your effort is repaid in perfect proportion.

But striking is not like that.

Even a layman who knows nothing, swinging wild haymakers, can by sheer accident land a hit on a professional boxer.

That was why, in Okubo’s own training schedule, he had always kept grappling at a far higher ratio.

As long as striking reached the point where it would not become a weakness, that was enough.

But this scene before him...

"All I can say is that even for a monster like Baido, experience in martial arts and the accumulation of time cannot be cheated."

Kaneda Suekichi frowned as he spoke.

"And Kuroki’s abnormal habit of seizing the initiative at the start..."

A sharp whistling cut through the arena.

And with it came blood splashed across the ring.

The pupils of every spectator contracted at once.

"Hey, you’ve got to be kidding me."

"The monster got injured?"

There, on the arena floor, the boy’s lower leg, which had been a whirling blur a moment ago, was now pierced by the spear-like strike of the Four-Fingered Demon Spear.

Not only had Kuroki Gensai blocked that sky-darkening storm of high-speed kicks, he had even, while defending, calmly completed the charge of the Demon Spear.

And in the end, with Baido Rei unable to evade and unable to use Indestructible, the knife-hand pierced the boy’s calf as easily as a hot blade through butter.

With the hand-edge still lodged in the flesh, Kuroki Gensai ignored the slick sensation of blood and turned the blade hand into a claw.

He drove his fingers directly into the wound.

At the same time, he raised the forearm of his other hand and, using the opposite direction of force, pressed down on the boy’s knee joint.

He meant to cripple the entire leg.

Yet in the face of this, Baido Rei did not so much as furrow his brow.

As though the one having the flesh of his calf ravaged by terrifying crushing strength were not him at all.

More than that, just as Kuroki’s forearm was about to break his knee, the boy forcibly twisted the direction of his lower leg.

"Hm?"

For the first time, the ordinarily stern expression on Kuroki Gensai’s face seemed to ripple as he perceived Baido’s intent.

Diamond Form: Indestructible.

Even though the limb trained in the style of the Beast Arm Flow was trapped by hardened muscle technique, in the midst of the twisting lower leg it still tore countless nerves and ligaments apart within the flesh.

And through that agony that nearly shaved away flesh and blood alike, the boy’s eyes remained calm beyond measure; not a trace of distortion touched his continuous, flowing motion.

The redirected lower leg, in concert with the knee joint, trapped the arm Kuroki Gensai meant to crush him with, while Kuroki’s other hand remained fixed by Indestructible in the muscles as the Demon Spear.

At that moment, Baido Rei drove power through his waist, and the other foot braced against the ground flew up!

His body went horizontal in midair, and that long leg came crashing down on Kuroki Gensai’s face like a swinging battle axe.

Boom!

The black-bear man, a body of nearly one hundred kilograms, was blasted more than ten meters away by the wave of flesh striking flesh!

His massive frame even skipped twice across the fine sand of the arena before kicking up a cloud of dust and slamming into the wall.

Plop.

Baido Rei landed lightly as he came down from the air.

The boy lifted his brow and raised his injured lower leg to his chest, examining it with evident interest.

"To obtain what you want, you’d go this far?"

The gruesome wound, horrific to behold, seemed to be slowly drawing closed under the tightening of his muscles.

"How frightening, Mister Kuroki."

"For martial arts sparring, this is merely the norm."

With the soft sound of feet stepping through sand, a hulking figure emerged from within the dust, carrying with it a steadiness that would drive ordinary opponents to despair.

The karate uniform, which had once reached the wrists, now gave off faint curls of blue smoke at the shoulder, and a large section of fabric had simply vanished as though burned away.

It seemed that he had forcibly raised his shoulder to the level of his face and endured the kick head-on.

"Without the slightest modesty, I can say this: my strength is one without shortcomings and without weakness."

With a ripping sound, he tore away the tattered sleeve of his gi.

"So, boy. If you want to win, then show me everything you have, without holding back."

"Let me see what you’ve been hiding."

Kuroki Gensai took his stance once more.