The Mizuno weren't foolish enough to simply run up the walls, risking being caught by some earth technique from the Sumada.
No, they went about it much simpler and more diversely.
Some formed water whips in their hands, using them to latch onto the battlements and pull themselves up, propelling straight into the air.
Others utilized water blasts to push themselves sharply upward, akin to filling bottles with a fizzy mixture and then attaching wings to the resulting containers.
The third group got creative, creating intricate water structures that allowed not just themselves but also the swiftly following samurais or other warriors to climb up.
And the last approach, quite logically, was most successful, as those flying through the air had the least chance to dodge a counterattack from the Sumada.
Sure, they could form water shields or strike preemptively. But if they failed, the stone techniques of the earth warmasters would tear them to pieces.
Unlike them, those who created water structures could, if necessary, step aside and maneuver in space.
It took only a couple of seconds for the first Mizuno to reach the top of the wall, where they were immediately met with everything the defenders had so carefully prepared.
Since the width of the wall was quite significant but still limited, the warmasters had to restrain themselves in using area techniques.
Prana-charged blades clashed in a clinch; water spears met their earth counterparts. All the techniques warmasters had learned to use without words, relying purely on control, were now being deployed.
The speed of the battle was beyond extraordinary. Anyone who happened to come out of prana acceleration would be torn to pieces in seconds.
Whenever ashigaru found themselves among the warmasters by accident, their fate was not enviable. Often, they didn't even realize what had killed them. The worst part was that the Sumada, if they saw a good opportunity to strike, didn't think too much about ordinary people standing between them and their target.
Three Mizuno suddenly appeared in front of Stas. Leviathan sent a message that two of them were advanced warmasters, and one was ordinary. The unfortunate part of the news was that the ball of snakes that had erupted from his hand only managed to kill the ordinary one.
His twitching body flew down to the other assailants, a snake clinging to his neck.
But the advanced warmasters skillfully sliced through the snakes with strange water discs. Considering the suspicious blades that had grown from their katanas, close combat was far from desirable.
"Kaede!" Stas commanded.
And the yokai did not disappoint. The hours they spent practicing coordinated actions were not in vain.
The advanced warmasters clutched their heads and wailed in unison in horror. Of course, they almost immediately recovered from the concentrated spiritual energy attack on their consciousness, but the fists infused with a prana-absorbing technique went through their energy barriers, then through their armor, and finally exploded their chests.
And if the first body was flung aside, the dying second one Stas had caught by the leg, and then, with all his might, he began to beat the ashigaru who, with their eyes wide with terror, started climbing over the wall.
Since the warmaster had not yet died, his body's durability was much higher than the ashigaru's spears or wooden armor.
Considering Stas's strength, such blows wreaked true devastation around him. The shocking method so stunned the attackers that the front ranks even stopped.
Danger!
Stas barely managed to change the direction of the warmaster's corpse and throw it at the sword of a samurai who had appeared from the side.
Swish!
Two halves of the Mizuno flew apart, and Stas had to quickly strike with his spear to slow down the frenzied Higatsudo warrior.
Since the samurai unit had attacked a little further along the wall, this samurai had already cut down quite a few by this time.
His expensive, blood-stained armor hinted at his skill or wealth, which, in any case, was a problem. His formidable mask bristled with black mustaches.
'How I hate close combat!'
Tensing up, Stas rushed forward, extending his hand as if in a desperate spear thrust. The samurai, smirking under the mask, contemptuously stepped aside, delivering a horizontal sword strike at the same time.
But right before his bulging eyes, the opponent partially dove into the stone wall on the run. The sword swinging over his head only grazed a few strands of hair, but Stas's purple fist embedded itself directly into the breastplate.
And... bounced back. The glowing glyphs sparkled. Smoke billowed from under the samurai's armor, but the defense managed to withstand the deadly blow.
Only an impression of knuckle prints remained on the breastplate.
"Son of a dog!" cursed the samurai, beginning to literally slice the air and forcing Stas to throw himself from side to side and perform feats of acrobatics, as glowing green slashes flew off those swings.
With every second of the ongoing fight, it was becoming increasingly clear that Stas had the misfortune of encountering some blade master.
Especially when the latter, for some reason, sheathed his sword and froze for a moment in a strange stance, enveloped in a wave of prana.
Much later, Stas realized what had alarmed him. Back on Earth, he had vaguely heard of some Japanese strikes used when the blade is in its sheath.
That's why he did two things at once: grew a purple-glowing wall and tried to dive headfirst into the stone.
Neither of his actions was successfully completed, but together, they managed to save his life.
The frozen samurai blinked and seemed to teleport to Stas, so great was his speed. At that moment, the daimyo's warrior could hardly see Stas because of the speed. Rather, his body itself performed the necessary sequence at a pace inaccessible to human consciousness.
The samurai didn't even notice the wall rising before him, bursting through it with his body and sword, but it involuntarily "corrected" his flight, shifting him slightly higher than needed.
Stas himself, descending into the stone, swerved slightly to the right, causing the sword swing to miss, only chopping off a corner of the left shoulder pad.
But those fighting further behind were less fortunate.
With a crash, a massive wall section slid down a completely smooth cut. And also down went all those who fought on it as the stone crushed those gathered at the base of the wall.
The two fighters froze, carefully examining each other.
"My name is Kano Ryudaiyo, a recognized blade master," the samurai suddenly addressed Stas, bowing slightly. "I have never seen a person who managed to dodge my heavens-severing strike."
"Shiro the Serpent," grumbled Stas. Thanks to the abundance of situations where he could have been beheaded, he was in a rather foul mood. The preposterous name of the samurai's technique didn't improve the situation.
"It's an honor to fight a warrior like you," continued Kano, unfazed by the carnage around him.
A samurai running towards him with a twisted face was killed with a single finger thrust into his eye. Kano simply dodged his sword, almost without effort.
Stas raised an eyebrow, all while an earth snake emerged from his lowered palm to kill some ordinary Mizuno trying to sneak up on him from behind.
The samurai clicked his tongue respectfully, appreciating the "show-off." To kill without looking – truly, this was worthy of a haiku!
"Let us cross blades and see who among us is the superior master!" Kano adopted yet another cunning stance, flourishing his katana in a complex arc.
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Stas, for his part, had a strong urge to point out that he, in fact, wielded a spear, but he chose to say something entirely different.
"Stone Tomb! Push!" The ground around Ryudaiyo came to life, rising around him with walls closing at the top.
However, a couple of broad, powerful cuts easily made holes in them, which put Kano on alert.
He saw the Serpent's power, so such a sloppy technique seemed strange to him.
And he was right, for the walls were only meant to hold him in place.
When the blade master realized this and tried to leave the dangerous area, it was too late.
Stas knew that, given his opponent's speed, the only magical strikes that could catch him were the most primitive and fast techniques.
That's why he chose to push the ground on which Ryudaiyo stood, sending him straight up into the sky toward the farthest wall.
And since the samurai was not an Avasaki, he had no way to change his flight direction drastically.
Stas did not delude himself into thinking that this would kill Kano. A prana user of that power could not be hurt by such means.
"Look for suitable opponents elsewhere," Stas smirked contently. He had no desire to fight a blade master in close combat, so he simply hurled him far away.
Hopefully, he'll throw a tantrum, chop someone up, then calm down and choose not to return.
Stas turned around and quickly surveyed the battlefield.
He was concerned about how his subordinates were faring.
First, he noticed Kaede. After extensive training with Minoru, the yokai could rightfully be considered her strongest follower.
The lamia had taken her training seriously, so the Kuchisake-onna's skills included several directions of combat.
For example, Stas saw a pair of Higatsudo samurai furiously clashing swords with each other, seeing an enemy in the place of their comrade.
This did not prevent Kaede from simultaneously driving a dozen nearby ashigaru mad with a confusion technique and fighting one of the Mizuno.
Moreover, the enemy was far from weak. It was a proficient advanced rank, so he surrounded the space around him with a dense network of deadly water techniques.
But to his misfortune, Kaede had relearned, as years ago, to become intangible.
The seemingly inevitable strike simply passed through her body without leaving any damage.
However, Kaede's clawed swipe also passed through the Mizuno's leg, not affecting it at all.
Intangibility worked both ways.
This infuriated the warmaster, but he skillfully controlled the situation, constantly attacking the yokai and not allowing her to stay in ghostly form for long.
Only the warmaster should have spent more time training against illusions in his time.
One of the samurai perished, as did the unlucky ashigaru, allowing Kaede to free up some of her power and entangle the Mizuno's mind even more.
Therefore, when Kaede blinked and appeared behind him, the warmaster continued to attack her former position, which was his undoing.
The terrifying fingers, with a single movement, tore the warmaster's spine at the neck, then, approaching the wound, Kaede inhaled something ephemeral with pleasure.
The spiritual energy released at the moment of death was quite a treat for the yokai.
Assured that Kaede could take care of herself, Stas started looking for Mari and, to his annoyance, quickly found her.
It was hard not to notice the impenetrably black cloud from which a supple female figure would emerge and then dive back into.
'And I did tell her not to show off with Rinako's techniques. I'm sure someone will report her clan about the suspicious owner of shadow techniques. When they realize that no one from their clan participated in the battle, that's when the real "fun" will start.'
But Stas wasn't too angry. He understood perfectly well that in this battle there were too many situations in which, to survive, you had to use all your knowledge to the last.
And while a pair of Mizuno continuously attacked the cloud, trying to find the hidden Mari, she, using the dense rain and darkness from the clouds, appeared almost out of thin air, sticking a tanto somewhere in the kidney area of one of the attackers.
Stas nodded in approval. He noticed that the tanto was smeared with one of the deadly compounds.
The second Mizuno tried to catch the agile attacker but met an unpleasant surprise - the dart that Leviathan drove into his back.
The stone spike, released from Mari's hold, ended his anguish.
Mei and Eiji fought nearby, and overall, they showed an excellent level, as if to say they hadn't wasted their time either.
However, where Mei tried to be cautious, creating extensive stone labyrinths, Eiji, on the contrary, pressed on, using the large volumes of prana he inherited from birth.
It's worth noting what the fortress had turned into.
Because Sumada specialized in earth, and the nearest surface for their control was the wall itself, it had long since turned into something unsightly.
In some places, it undulated, in others, it swelled with a giant hump, and the numerous spikes or sharp chips could be found everywhere.
And this is even without mentioning the destruction caused by water techniques. Water successfully fought against stone, eating away whole sections and turning the wall into something resembling porous cheese.
And despite Stas's efforts to be as careful as possible, putting his survival above the need to kill enemies, he was still wounded, and more than once.
Thus, the moment when the samurai mined their section of the wall and then blew it up almost became Stas's last.
The stones that hit him left so many fractures that Ordyntsev only managed to activate the Insensate Demon technique on sheer will, then, hidden under Leviathan's protection, absorbed natural energy to heal most of the injuries with ether.
Eventually, he had to cancel the demon technique and, clenching his teeth on the mask, hold back a scream.
But even though he had healed himself and his prana reserves were full, the mental fatigue did not go away, and neither did the pain echoing throughout his battered body.
After that explosion, an ugly breach appeared in the wall line, through which new enemy forces poured in.
A few minutes later, similar explosions were heard several more times, but already in other areas.
The problem was that unlike Rashta, Higatsudo and Mizuno could afford, thanks to their numbers, to withdraw wounded and tired troops, replacing them with fresh ones.
The interval between these two events was small, but it still allowed to feel the difference between the "waves."
And as soon as the "second round" began, an already lousy situation got even worse.
As it turned out, they had held on so far only because the enemy didn't want to lose soldiers for nothing, so they were cautious. But now, when, thanks to numerous breaches in the wall line, the Gaibatsu barrier was working very poorly, a real game began.
Of course, where the walls looked better, glowing glyphs still appeared, but in places of breaches, they just flickered restlessly, unable to materialize in reality.
But let's return to the battle.
Full of vigor, the troops of warmasters and samurai struck like a gauntleted fist to the jaw of a tired fighter. That is, they knocked out half the teeth at once and put the enemy on the brink of life and death.
To survive, the few still capable of resistance were forced to organize into groups, giving up their positions step by step.
And it was worth understanding that their prana reserves were far from infinite. The only one who could still afford energy-intensive techniques was Ordyntsev himself.
Thanks to him, they were still alive and not buried under waves of water rushing towards them.
Rocks glowing with purple fire broke into pieces, but new ones took their place, only to suffer the same fate.
The surviving Rashta samurai and Sumada warmasters on this wall section huddled around the earthling and occasionally fired weak techniques using the remnants of prana.
Every so often, one would fall, exhausted, and not always could these unfortunate be pulled deeper into the ranks.
The situation was terrible, but life always knows how to "pleasantly surprise," becoming even more nightmarish.
In the heat of battle, one could involuntarily forget about the supremes of Mizuno, but they had not forgotten about the fortress at all.
Since the barrier had given out, nothing could hold back the techniques of the supremes.
Monstrous waves, a water drill on a thin spinning axis, the thinnest water thread, but compressed with tremendous force, capable of cutting almost anything.
No longer restrained by the need to work together, the supremes put into use their best and most dangerous techniques. The supremes of Sumada tried to counteract, but they physically couldn't block everyone.
The only thing that saved the Rashta warriors was the presence of the Higatsudo among them; otherwise, the Mizuno techniques would have already erased them from the face of the earth.
Nevertheless, in a couple of places, the barrier was penetrated and, taking advantage of the fact that the Higatsudo warriors skillfully moved aside, the Mizuno supremes organized a "flush," smearing all the advanced warmasters and samurai in the impact zone along the second line of walls and the hill.
The dead ashigaru weren't even worth counting.
It was then that the blessed signal to retreat sounded. The glyphs above the first line of walls blinked and disappeared, only to reappear already at the second line. Yes, they had less power and burned fainter, but they were still going to protect people from the fury of the merciless element.
Injured, exhausted, and drained, the Rashta troops, pelted with dozens of techniques in the back, retreated to the last line of defense.
And although the length of the second wall was much smaller, due to losses, they still couldn't properly cover it with fighters.
Those who survived chewed on prana-restoring pills, meanwhile watching with a deathly indifference as the Higatsudo reorganized for the final assault. There was no energy left for emotions. One could even spot the Mizuno supremes behind the troops.
Ordyntsev surveyed their own thinned ranks and sighed heavily, collapsing onto the considerately offered Leviathan's coils.
Mari settled next to him, right on the stone. Kaede, unlike the surrounding people, felt quite energetic, but she, too, looked anxiously toward the approaching finale.
Stas irritably grabbed at the armor plate that was uncomfortably pressing into his chest and, tearing it off, threw it away. The armor on him looked too damaged to be worth repairing.
Ordyntsev couldn't help but envy the samurai. Lately, he had become thoroughly convinced that they truly didn't skimp on rune masters.
Taking a deep breath, Stanislav exhaled sharply, pulling himself together.
Yes, they were almost crushed, and the enemies would soon be coming to kill them. But, cursed be he if he wouldn't do everything possible to survive.
He hadn't endured in such a vile world for over five years to perish here and now.
Ordyntsev resolutely stood up from Leviathan and stepped toward the ramparts. Mari and Kaede habitually stood behind him. Exchanging glances, Mei and Eiji followed them. It was hard not to notice the Serpent's abnormal prana reserves, so they wanted to be near him in the upcoming battle.
Watching this unexpected movement, the other survivors began to stir. Many of them had seen the purple light on the rocks that had been growing throughout the battle. Some had heard about someone who, at the end of the war with Sansa, managed to kill even a supreme warmaster. There were also rumors of a certain dragon slayer.
And tying these facts together, the people felt a timid hope emerging in them. If someone capable of killing supreme warmasters stood among them, and he had enormous prana reserves, then their cause wasn't entirely lost.
Samurai, warmasters, and miraculously surviving ashigaru - all of them were getting up from the ground to take their places.
Many of the commanders had been killed. Therefore, chaos reigned in the ranks, but now, at least some of them had someone who could tell them what to do.
Each of them stole glances at the unnaturally pale man with the frightening serpentine eyes and the demonic mask.
If the Higatsudo thought they had already won and it was all over, then the Sumada and the samurai of Rashta were preparing to demonstrate just how mistaken they were.
End of Book Five.