Jirobu Sansa irritably surveyed the forest surrounding the clearing. Although the prana in his body was as powerful as ever, his body itself had begun to gradually fail him.
Sixty-eight years, far too old even for a warrior as mighty as he. Regrettably, he couldn't abandon his clan during such a trying time.
Things were far from going as originally planned.
The Sansa and Kiatto clans were supposed to give the Sumada a good battering, while the Avasaki were to pile on them from the other side.
Jirobu wasn't particularly concerned that they would likely initiate a World War. The elder believed it was better to jump into that abyss on his own terms rather than being dragged in with his clan.
But everything went wrong almost immediately.
The Avasaki had to turn their attention to the Hizoru, the great clan of fire bordering them on the other side. Friction arose between their allies and the Hizoru's, and the Avasaki left the Sansa to fight the great clan alone.
Just this made Jirobu want to rip their eyes out, make a soup from them, and force-feed it to them.
As if that weren't enough, the only successful operation to capture the younger son of the current head of the Sumada clan had failed spectacularly, ending in incredible confusion and losses.
The daimyo of Hyugo rained endless accusations upon them, and if not for the difficult war, he would have already ordered his samurai to attack them.
When the Avasaki finally resolved their issues and turned their attention to the Sansa and Kiatto, it was already too late. Both clans, as well as their country, lay in ruins. The head of the Sansa had been killed, along with his heir, forcing Jirobu to reluctantly take on the role.
He was too old, but there were simply no better candidates. The remnants of the clan were torn by quarreling, and the Kiatto, sensing the tightening trap, raged like wild beasts, hardly willing to listen to anyone.
Only through strength and authority did Jirobu manage to organize the Kiatto into something serious, but there wasn't much hope left for them.
The Kiatto were in even more chaotic disarray than the Sansa. Every strong commander or elder made a disgraceful squabble for power.
Many from the Sansa and Kiatto preferred to flee like cowards, saving their own lives.
Nonetheless, despite his age, the old man was still strong. A supreme warmaster, whose reserves of prana allowed him to wreak a real apocalypse on the battlefield. In this respect, his physical condition was not so important, as the prana was still just as mighty.
The Avasaki's aid through allied clans and money helped hire mercenaries, renegade warmasters, and hold back the Sumada advance. But try as they might, they couldn't completely stop them.
Jirobu understood all too well that in the eyes of the Avasaki, he and his people were expendable; their only purpose was to deplete the Sumada's resources in senseless slaughter, weakening them for the future great war.
Now, he had to finally spit out the remnants of his pride and beg for mercy and salvation from the very people who had betrayed them.
Despite all the help they had provided, officially, the Sansa and Kiatto were on their own. The Avasaki had never declared them their allies.
And at the moment, they were even dragging their feet with the rescue of the remnants of the losing clans, pretending not to understand what the Sansa wanted from them.
But Jirobu understood very well.
The Avasaki wanted the Sansa and Kiatto to become not just one of the allied clans but to completely lose their freedom, becoming several subordinate families.
Effectively, servants!
And it didn't take long to realize that they were being divided and stripped of even a ghost of hope for freedom.
That's why the meeting was set outside the camp, as the official representative of the Avasaki still did not want to show his face publically.
And Jirobu had to bow his head and accept any, even the most humiliating, demands.
For this meeting, he was forced to come with only one escort. It had to be a person he could fully trust and who wouldn't talk about what happened here.
The choice fell on Zuko, one of the few surviving supreme warmasters of the Sansa. The lad was a decent fighter, and luck was on his side. Otherwise, he wouldn't have lived to this moment. He was promoted to supreme during the war, and although he lost to experienced warmasters, he was not bad for his thirty years.
Four figures appeared ahead, lazily walking through the slightly fallen leaves. It was autumn at the moment. As the contrast between seasons in this world was minimal, trees did not completely shed their leaves. The difference was felt in the amount of precipitation. There was much more in winter and autumn.
Jirobu squinted. The first of the approaching was familiar to him. Midoichi Avasaki – the arrogant envoy of the great air clan. In his eyes, the Sansa were nothing but servants from their very first meeting.
'And now I have to admit it openly,' thought the old man bitterly, 'What a pity I have lived to see this time.'
The envoy's clothing and armor had several shades of blue and light blue. Thus, the Avasaki showed their closeness to air and sky. Notably, allied clans and subordinate families were allowed to wear much less of these colors. And if permission was granted, the brightness of the colors was significantly toned down.
Midoichi himself, besides being a supreme warmaster, was also a cousin of the head of the Avasaki clan.
Aside from the envoy was another supreme warmaster. There were not so many of them in the world, so their names and merits were somehow on everyone's lips.
Fuji Soru – a prime example of how, with strength and luck, one can rise to the very top even in this world. A member of the Soru clan, subordinate to the Avasaki. Thanks to his exceptional affinity with the wind, he first rose to serve the patron clan directly and then became a bodyguard to the highest ranks of the Avasaki.
The dangerously looking man with long, black hair and a steel forehead plate carefully surveyed the surroundings.
The two other fighters did not interest Jirobu at all. Ordinary advanced warmasters, serving as messengers and even ordinary porters.
Where the supreme speaks, the advanced can only be silent.
"Pleased to meet you, Midoichi-san," Jirobu bowed slightly in greeting to the envoy and mentally grimaced, noting that the Avasaki didn't even pretend to bow in return. Moreover, he winced at "san." In the envoy's eyes, the Sansa should have already been addressing him as "sama."
The current head of the Sansa wanted to beat that expression into his throat, but he restrained himself again.
"You asked for a meeting," said the Avasaki with dignity. "We have already provided you with all possible help. What's the urgency? What else do you want to ask us for? Forgive me, but we do not plan to fight the Sumada yet."
'As if you don't know, you arrogant scoundrel. You want me to say it personally and directly. Be damned.'
"I want to ask you to save my clan," the words fell heavily down like granite slabs. Jirobu humbly lowered his head, allowing his baldness to be seen.
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"That's a very serious request. If we intervene, it will force us to act against the Sumada. And as you know, at the moment, we are fighting the fiery Hizoru," Midoichi sneered. "But lucky for you, I am ready to discuss the terms with you. Of course, you understand that there can be no talk of an alliance treaty now?"
"I... I understand," Jirobu was almost physically pained, but he saw no other way to save his clan. "I am ready to listen."
"Excellent," the envoy, not even hiding it, rubbed his hands in anticipation. "Then the first items will be..." he suddenly fell silent and turned his head towards the forest. "Are these approaching people yours?"
"No," Jirobu's eyes narrowed. "They are not my people!"
Explosion!
Stas and company perfectly understood that since few would come to the meeting, each of the present would be extremely strong.
According to estimates, they expected to face between two to six warmasters. In the latter case, the attackers had almost no chance not just for victory, but even for a mere escape.
Luckily, there were only four supreme opponents. But even so, that was a lot. Two could be taken by Jishin's guards, but that left two more.
Therefore, according to the plan, they needed to solve this problem by evening the odds.
Defensive techniques flared up, slicing through the air. Those gathered here did not need words to control their prana.
Around Midoichi Avasaki and Fuji Soru, air whirlwinds swirled, forming convex walls of shields. Jirobu, as a Sansa, leaned towards poison, but besides this element, he also managed water quite well.
Fifty percent poison and fifty water, a thorny wall of greenish primordial element surrounded the old man, leaving embrasures for him to watch the battlefield.
But all the preparations of the supreme turned out to be pointless, as not a single attack flew at them.
The strike of two supreme warmasters and the fastest advanced ones that followed hit precisely the guardian of Jirobu Sansa.
Zuko reacted instantly. Acid surrounded him, starting to harden into a watery shell, but the problem was that there were too many opponents, and they were not ordinary people.
A sharp stone cylinder, flying at a crazy speed, broke through the protective barrier and got stuck, half-entering the obstacle, only to explode violently a second later, sending sharp and incredibly durable plates cutting everything in their path in all directions.
As it turned out, the cylinder consisted of thousands of small plates, held together only by the will of the supreme warmaster. It was somewhat reminiscent of canister tank shells, of course, with local specificity.
But even in such circumstances, another water technique materialized a couple of centimeters from Zuko. Rapidly vibrating intertwining droplets stopped the deadly plates, breaking them into pieces.
Sansa was already planning to restore his defense, but at the same moment, before his first defensive technique was mended, the second warmaster slipped inside.
Ryo and Naoki were a duo of supreme warmasters, fused by war and death, who knew how to react to each other's actions with minimal delay.
It was a terrifying killing machine. Practically a creature with two heads and eight limbs capable of fighting as a single whole with astonishing unity.
The plates of Ryo's "sniper" technique had not yet completely fallen when Naoki, through the closing hole in the acid, flowed in.
"Stone God Crushing Technique!" It was a complex technique of supreme warmasters who mastered the stone element, suited for mid-to-close combat.
The words, filled with prana to the brim, almost stretched in space, so quickly they were said.
And the next second, stone-covered hands slammed into the trembling water droplets surrounding Zuko.
If someone had managed to slow down time by a couple of hundred times, they could observe how thin spikes began to grow from the stone base on Naoki's fists, which, upon reaching a length of a couple of centimeters, immediately gave two offshoots to the right and left sides. And on each new "offshoot," two more spikes grew again.
And since the speed of this fractal growth was unimaginably high, and the spikes unimaginably strong, all that people could see was an explosion of black boiling and twisting stone mass, which engulfed the gasping Zuko and continued its movement towards the nearby standing head of the Sansa.
Only Jirobu did not intend to die with his guardian.
No one understood what he had done, but the crawling fractals began to grow inside themselves, immediately destroying the resulting structures. A wild crack and screech swept through the forest, and streams of dust poured down.
'So, Zuko's luck is over,' Jirobu thought grimly, driving prana through his channels and reluctantly feeling that his muscles didn't respond as well as before to the power flowing through his body.
When the stone technique crumbled, only small pieces of armor and entire streams of blood with finely ground flesh remained from Zuko.
But the onslaught showed no signs of waning. The only chance for success for the attackers was in speed, and they were not going to waste it.
Dozens of advanced warmasters, who finally caught up with the supreme, burst out of the forest and immediately unleashed on the Avasaki a stream of their best techniques, forcing the latter to defend again.
But that's what they were supreme for, to do two actions at once. In their hands, air techniques began to form that would sow confusion and terror among the ranks of advanced warmasters, but at that very moment, they had to dissipate them to take the hit of Naoki and Ryo.
Each of the Sumada took on one enemy, engaging him in combat.
A fierce battle ensued between the supreme, where no one wanted to back down a step.
The remaining advanced warmasters, now idle, constantly moved, providing external support, attacking at those moments when the Avasaki paused even for a second, depriving them of respite.
"So that's how it is," Jirobu said in a heavy tone, sizing up the four warmasters standing in front of him.
Their attempt at a sudden attack on the leader of the Sansa failed, so Stas and the others slowly approached the calmly standing supreme warmaster. Around him, poison gently swayed, but no attacking techniques flew out. And such strange behavior of the old man made them quite nervous, forcing them to look for a trap in every clump of earth.
Jishin, Stas Ordyntsev, Kensei, and Shin – each of them leisurely circled around Jirobu. Nearby was the close combat between the supreme warmasters, but none of the four made any sudden movements, intending to choose the best position.
Shin was dressed in gray armor, Stas in green, Jishin in brown, and Kensei in red. The only thing they all had in common was the mark of Sumada on their backs and chests.
At that time, Kaede was among the advanced warmasters attacking the Avasaki. Nonetheless, this was only a cover. She patiently waited for the moment when Jirobu would expose himself to help Shiro.
The gazes of Stas and Jirobu met, and although Ordyntsev was in a mask, recognition appeared on the old man's face. Or perhaps it was because the head of the Sansa had previously heard of a certain Shiro and only now drew parallels.
The earthling's gaze burned with a cold flame. Stas hadn't forgotten the humiliations and the chances to die that the Sansa had generously doled out at their first meeting.
Dying from a lack of oxygen is an unpleasant death, one that Ordyntsev intended to return with interest. And there also remained a debt to Gokku Sansa, Jirobu's son.
Only Stas was very troubled by his opponent's passive behavior. He remembered the elder as a sharp, tough, and quite straightforward person. Just standing and doing nothing was not in his character.
Jirobu himself took a deep breath, feeling a strange lightness. He did not feel the anger and rage that, in theory, should have been filling him.
The old man had not just fought his whole conscious life; he lived war itself. His father took then still little seven-year-old Jiro to the battlefield to show him the horrors of war. At eight, he killed his first man, and at thirteen, he took the life of another ordinary warmaster like himself.
Years went by, and they, the generation of the last world war, began to disappear. They were replaced by fighters who were not brought up so strictly.
For him, watching how lads nowadays go on missions for the first time at sixteen was strange, but he did nothing, though sometimes he allowed himself to grumble a little.
The old man thought a lot about this. It seemed to him that the spirit of those great, fierce Sansa was gradually leaving their descendants. But he consoled himself with the thought that it was just a different time now.
However, here they are, on the verge of not just destruction but enslavement. Could the Sansa of the past have come to such an end?
What would they say about their descendants?
Jirobu knew the answer very well. The Sansa of the past would have preferred death to such a shameful existence. Although the Sansa were never a great clan, even the latter reckoned with their presence.
So wouldn't it be better to die nobly in the last battle, letting the star of the Sansa flash brightly for the last time, rather than slowly and sadly smolder until the darkness finally descended?
What's the use of begging the strong of this world for a chance at such a life? He was against surrendering, but he was persuaded, and, looking into the eyes of his pleading relatives, Jirobu went against everything he believed in and knew.
He managed to convince himself for a while that he was doing the right thing. To suppress that bitter taste of rot on his tongue.
But the appearance of the Sumada destroyed this illusion again. Looking at the fighters of the great clan, the old man saw those who rightfully bore the name of warmasters.
This world belongs to the strong, so why does he stubbornly not let die what is already dead?
For the tears of children or the pleas of women? But Jirobu was never particularly touched by that.
'I'm getting old if I let my clanmates muddle my head. The heart of the leader of warmasters should know no mercy.'
That's why Jirobu felt almost no hatred. For a moment, his consciousness opened up to the whole irony of the situation in which the life of one random healer played such a decisive role in the fate of a couple of great clans, many ordinary ones, and even touched such people as the family of the daimyo of Hyugo.
'If your destiny is so strong,' Jirobu looked straight into the serpentine eyes of his opponent, 'Then, indeed, you are to decide what will happen next. If you survive and win, then you will finish what you started, and my clan will perish. If you die? Then your destiny will end here, and my clan will live.'
Jirobu's gaze regained firmness, and the old man gripped his axe even tighter, preparing for the fight. A bloodthirst struck around, tearing leaves from the surrounding trees.
The old wolf was challenging the young wolves surrounding him.
Stas and the others paused for a moment, then simultaneously lunged forward, raising their weapons and forming their best techniques.
The fight for the right of the Sansa to exist and the outcome of the war began.
End of the fourth book.