The barrier didn’t so much break as give up all at once — one moment a solid dome of shimmering blue, the next a spray of fading light scattering across the battlefield like glass dissolving into mist.
Kirito was through the gap before it had even finished collapsing, main sword already raised, twenty guards pouring in behind him with considerably less grace, boots skidding in the churned dirt as they fanned out to secure the perimeter rather than engage.
He hit the ground running and didn’t stop, closing the distance to Nagumu in a straight line that left no room for misinterpretation.
Around him, the battlefield seemed to hold its breath — even the remaining demons paused mid-strike, sensing something had shifted the moment the barrier’s architect finally had someone worth his attention.
“You’re finished!” His downward slash came fast enough to crack the air itself, aimed to end things in a single stroke.
Nagumu caught it on his clawed forearm without so much as flinching, sparks raining down between them, and he was grinning the entire time — wide, delighted, genuinely thrilled in a way that had nothing performed about it.
“Hahaha! Come on, Sword Master. Show me more.” His eyes sparkled with something that looked disturbingly close to joy.
“I’m actually enjoying this. Do you have any idea how rare that is for me these days?”
They traded blows at a pace that blurred past what most of the watching students could even track — Kirito’s blade a streak of silver, Nagumu weaving between strikes with claws that moved like they had their own independent will, dodging and countering in the same fluid motion.
Every parry sent a fresh shockwave rippling through the already-cratered dirt beneath them, and the guards who’d fanned out to secure the perimeter found themselves backing further away with every exchange, weapons forgotten in their hands.
Steel rang against dark energy again and again, the sound sharp enough to hurt, echoing off the tree line like something trying to escape the clearing entirely.
Then Nagumu’s laugh climbed louder, and his next counter came in harder than anything before it — a single dark-energy slash that caught three of Kirito’s floating summoned blades clean across their middles, sending the severed halves clattering uselessly to the dirt.
“Too slow,” Nagumu said, almost gently, like he was correcting a student rather than fighting one.
“You’ll want those back eventually, I imagine.”
Kirito didn’t hesitate at the insult.
He pivoted low and put everything into a clean horizontal cut, catching Nagumu’s left arm at the wrist before the demon could fully pull back.
The hand hit the ground with a wet, final sound, blood arcing bright across the churned dirt, dark and almost black in the dim light.
Nagumu looked down at the stump where his hand used to be, turned it over once like he was inspecting a curious piece of art rather than his own severed limb, and then looked back up at Kirito with an expression that had somehow gotten wider, not smaller.
“Aaah. Good one.” He said it warmly, almost fondly, like praise between colleagues who respected each other’s craft.
“I like it. You really are the legend they all talk about, aren’t you. It’s refreshing, honestly — most things I fight barely inconvenience me.”
Beneath the delight, something colder ran the calculation without missing a beat — *left-handed openings now, compensate the guard, watch the follow-through, he favors his right shoulder when tired* — filed away in the same breath as the compliment, no interruption between the two at all, no sign the pain had cost him anything beyond a hand he clearly considered replaceable. This chapter was taken from novelping.com without permission.
He lunged before Kirito had fully recovered his stance, demonic speed closing the gap in an instant, and drove his remaining hand into Kirito’s chest in a rapid string of blows — six strikes landing in the space of a single breath, each one punching the air out of him a little more than the last, the sound of each impact more like a hammer against stone than flesh against flesh.
Kirito went flying backward, blood spraying from his mouth, and slammed into the ground hard enough to open a crater beneath him, cracks spidering outward across the earth in every direction, deep enough to swallow a fist, the impact throwing up a cloud of dust and torn grass that took several long seconds to settle.
For a moment he didn’t move.
The clearing held its breath along with him.
Then, slowly, impossibly, he pushed himself back up onto one knee, blood dripping steady from his split lip, breathing ragged — but his eyes, when they lifted back toward Nagumu, hadn’t lost an ounce of their sharpness.
If anything, something in them had sharpened further, the goofiness that usually lived just beneath his surface burned away entirely, leaving only the legend the guards had been sent to fetch in the first place.
Nagumu stood in the middle of the wreckage he’d caused, holding the stump of his severed wrist like it was nothing more than an inconvenience, laughing with genuine, unguarded joy.
“This is fun,” he said, delighted.
“More. Give me more, Sword Master. It’s been so long since anyone made me bleed.”
Around the edges of the destruction, the watching students had gone dead silent — Nagi standing tense and still beside Yuji, sword lowered but not sheathed, weight shifted forward like some part of him was fighting the urge to close the distance and help despite every instinct telling him it would only get him killed.
Mikey’s jaw was tight with restrained urgency, wind gathering faintly at his fingertips even though he hadn’t moved to use it yet.
Kei’s hand hovered near her chest like she was fighting the instinct to step in, ice already half-formed and forgotten in her palm.
Sani’s usual grin was nowhere to be found, replaced by something pale and unfamiliar on his face.
Nicolle’s eyes had gone wide with something closer to horror than fear, both hands pressed flat against her mouth.
Nobody spoke.
Nobody moved.
Whatever this fight actually was, it had made it very clear, in the space of a few seconds, that it belonged to two people entirely, and that stepping into it uninvited would be its own kind of death sentence.
“Should we help him?” Gota whispered, barely audible, staff gripped white-knuckled in both hands.
“With what?” Kakame’s voice came out just as quiet, shadows curling protectively around his own feet. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
“Look at the ground. That’s not a fight anymore. That’s two forces of nature arguing.”
High above the wreckage, if any of them had thought to look, they might have caught the way Nagumu’s human eye flicked briefly toward that cluster of watching first-years between strikes — not out of distraction, but out of the same restless cataloguing he never fully turned off, even mid-battle, even bleeding from a severed hand.
*Later,* he thought, distant beneath the laughter.
*There will be time to finish counting all of you later.*
Kirito forced himself fully upright, sword raised again despite the blood soaking through his coat, jaw set with the particular stubbornness that had earned him his rank in the first place.
His arms trembled faintly with the effort, but the grip on his sword never wavered.
“You talk too much,” he said, voice rough but steady.
“And you hit too hard for someone smiling this little.” Nagumu tilted his head, stump still dripping, entirely unbothered, as though the missing hand were a minor formality rather than an actual wound.
“Smile more, Sword Master. We’re both enjoying this, whether you admit it or not. I can see it in the way you keep coming back for more instead of falling back to regroup with your students.”
“This isn’t enjoyment,” Kirito said.
“This is a job.”
“Is it?” Nagumu’s grin sharpened at the edges.
“Funny. Jobs don’t usually make people’s eyes light up quite like that.”
Kirito didn’t answer that.
He simply moved, closing the distance again, sword catching the moonlight in a silver arc — and Nagumu met him head-on, laughing the whole way through it, the battlefield already cratered and bloodied around them long before either fighter showed any sign of slowing down.
The ground kept cracking beneath their feet, spreading further with every collision, deep fault lines running out toward the watching crowd like the earth itself was trying to put some distance between itself and whatever these two actually were.
Somewhere behind the wall of watching students, Nicolle finally lowered her hands from her mouth, though the horror in her eyes hadn’t faded at all.
“He’s going to lose,” she whispered, to no one in particular.
“Isn’t he.”
Nobody answered her.
Nobody wanted to be the one to say it out loud.
*End of Chapter 23*