Kirito’s face changed the moment he’d circled the barrier’s edge for the third time without finding a single weakness in it.
Sweat had soaked through the collar of his coat, and his sword arm ached from the dozens of fruitless strikes he’d already thrown at the shimmering wall, each one absorbed like it had never happened at all.
The goofiness drained out of him all at once, like a mask finally set down — no more scattered energy, no more restless motion, just a stillness that felt heavier than anything he’d shown since the throne room.
The guard captain, watching from a few paces off, felt something in his own chest tighten at the shift, an instinct older than rank telling him to get out of the way.
“I’ve had enough.” His voice came low, flat, entirely certain.
“Step back. All of you. I’m using my attack.”
The twenty guards didn’t hesitate, peeling away from the barrier’s edge and putting a healthy distance between themselves and their Sword Master, weapons lowered, clearly having learned somewhere along the way that whatever came next wasn’t something to stand close to.
Kirito planted his feet, eyes fixed on the shimmering blue wall, sword held loose and ready at his side.
Behind his calm, something furious sat coiled and waiting — the particular fury of someone who’d trained an entire year’s worth of first-years personally, who’d promised the King they’d come back stronger, and who now had to watch that promise nearly get broken through a wall he couldn’t touch.
“I call for you,” he said, voice climbing, carrying an authority that had nothing to do with volume.
“My swords.”
Ten blades tore into existence around him without warning, spinning in a slow, deliberate orbit, each one glowing with a light that made the barrier’s own glow look dim by comparison.
“Ten,” he said, watching them settle into formation.
“Make it twenty.”
The ten multiplied instantly, doubling in a single blink, twenty SS-rank blades now circling him in perfect, silent synchrony, humming faintly with power that pressed against the air itself.
“Attack,” Kirito said, and swept his arm forward.
“My enemy.”
The swords shot forward as one, spinning at a speed that turned them into little more than streaks of light, and slammed into the barrier with a force that shook the ground beneath every watching guard’s feet.
The blue wall didn’t just crack — it shattered, splitting apart in jagged sheets of light that dissolved into nothing before they’d even finished falling, the sound of its collapse somewhere between breaking glass and a struck bell, ringing out over the whole jungle.
The swords didn’t slow down.
On his branch, Nagumu’s eyes went wide, the first genuine crack in his composure since the fight had started.
“Huh?” He sat forward, grin faltering entirely.
“What just—”
He didn’t get to finish the thought.
The twenty swords moved like something alive, weaving between demons with an intelligence that had nothing mechanical about it — finding gaps in guards, finding blind spots, finding the exact angle each creature least expected.
One after another, the remaining A+ demons fell, blades passing clean through with surgical precision, each strike met by a scream that dissolved into curling black smoke before it had even fully left the creature’s throat.
One demon tried to flee toward the tree line the instant it registered what was happening; a single blade curved through the air behind it like it had been waiting for exactly that decision, catching it mid-stride.
Another tried to shield itself with a wall of raw dark energy, and the sword simply passed through the barrier like it wasn’t there at all, having apparently decided the barrier didn’t count as an obstacle worth respecting.
Six demons.
Perhaps four seconds, start to finish.
Then silence — the sudden, ringing kind that follows an explosion of sound, loud enough in its absence to feel like its own kind of noise.
Smoke drifted where six creatures had been standing, already thinning into nothing on the night breeze, leaving behind only scorched earth and the faint metallic scent of dark energy dispersing.
Nagumu dropped down from his branch, landing lightly despite the missing hand still trailing dark blood behind him, his usual smug ease nowhere to be found now.
He stood alone in the middle of the clearing where his six demons had been standing moments before, nothing left of them but drifting smoke and scorched earth.
For just a moment, something flickered behind his human eye — not fear, exactly, but the particular recalculation of someone who’d badly misjudged how quickly this evening’s entertainment might turn against him.
Kirito stepped through the shattered remains of the barrier, sword raised, voice dropping into something low and deadly.
“Na… gu… mu.”
Each syllable landed like its own separate threat.
“You’re dead,” Kirito said.
“Ooh. Really.” His eyes flicked once, briefly, toward the smoke where his demons had been, something calculating running fast behind the forced grin.
“Big talk, Sword Master, for someone who arrived a little late to the party.”
“I’m not late.” Kirito’s grip tightened on his remaining sword, the nineteen others still circling him in slow, patient formation, waiting.
“I’m right on time. And I’m only going to say this once — whatever you came here for, you’re not leaving with it.”
“We’ll see about that.” Nagumu’s grin widened again, forced back into place through sheer will alone, dark energy already gathering thick around his remaining hand in answer.
Around the edges of the clearing, the watching students had gone very still, disbelief and relief tangled together on nearly every face.
Nagi stood beside Yuji, both of them breathing hard from their own fight, watching the twenty swords settle into orbit around Kirito with something close to awe.
His own sixty-second limit felt suddenly small next to what he’d just watched — twenty separate weapons, each one thinking and moving on its own, wiping out threats that had nearly overwhelmed an entire clearing full of trained first-years.
“That’s…” Gota’s voice came out barely above a whisper, staff lowered, forgotten entirely in his hand.
“That’s insane. He just wiped out six A+ demons in seconds. We were struggling against one.”
“Guess that’s why they call him a legend,” Kakame murmured, shadows finally easing back to rest at his sides, some of the tension draining visibly from his shoulders.
Nicolle let out a breath she seemed to have been holding since the barrier first went up, some of the color returning to her face, hands finally unclenching from where they’d been pressed white-knuckled against her own arms.
Mikey, Kei, and Sani stood a short distance off, watching the standoff with the particular tension of people who understood, better than most of the first-years around them, exactly how dangerous this next moment still was — that a wiped-out army of demons meant nothing if the man who’d sent them still stood untouched at the center of it all.
Kirito surged forward without warning, a wordless scream tearing out of him as he closed the last of the distance between himself and Nagumu, sword raised high, all nineteen remaining blades falling into formation behind him like a wave gathering to break.
Nagumu braced himself, dark energy flaring bright around his remaining hand, whatever calm calculation had been running behind his eyes finally giving way, for just a moment, to something closer to genuine urgency.
His grin didn’t fully vanish, but something underneath it had sharpened into focus, the theatrics of a few minutes ago set aside for whatever came next.
The broken shards of the barrier still drifted through the air between them, catching the moonlight as they fell, tiny fragments of blue light scattering like slow-motion snow across a battlefield already scarred with craters and blood.
The entire clearing held its breath, watching the Sword Master and the half-demon collide in what everyone present understood, without needing to be told, was about to become something far more serious than anything that had come before it — a fight between two beings who had both, in their own way, stopped holding anything back.
*End of Chapter 22*