“It’s about time for our duel, don’t you think? Hyking to Hyking!”
“...”
Lawkey forced his body to stand on shaky feet and held his sword forward with a tight grip.
“Look at this kid, isn’t he something?”
“He fought that giant wolf alone, the boy must be mad…”
“If he was able to kill all these monsters by himself at that age, he must be a Hyking after all.”
“Well, Hyking or not, we were sent here in part to kill him.”
The ones he had recognized as adventurers of a guild carefully surrounded him as they voiced their thoughts out loud.
“As you heard, you’ll be dying here today.” Kojiro said, finally drawing his longer katana, a Nodachi, out of its sheath, “Sorry about that.”
“Heh, that’s fine. If I die, I die.” Lawkey paused for a second, “After all, death is just another part of life.”
“...”
Hearing that, Kojiro came to an immediate halt, but after realizing it himself, he quickly resumed moving his sword in front of him.
“You don’t have the right to say that.” He said with a contained glare, “Don’t utter those words again.”
“Ah, that’s right. Sasaki was your mother…” Lawkey said, then raised his head to meet his opponent’s glare head on, “Maybe it’s my responsibility to stop you here in her stead too.”
“I’ve heard enough, get him!”
On his command, the adventurers rushed forward, each using their own specialty weapon or activating their respective Sign.
Lawkey immediately jumped up to dodge a bear claw from one of the transformed adventurers, but he quickly found himself stuck in midair in some kind of semi-transparent bubble.
It was a blue-ish translucent sphere that restricted all his movement.
“?!”
He fought back to move his limbs, but to no avail. He saw the long eared adventurer holding his arms up in front of him with all his might, sweating profusely all the while.
“Dammit! I can’t waste time…”
And as the boy feared, one of the adventurers who hadn’t moved from her place, held what seemed like a staff with a runestone on the top of it. Before he could guess what it could do, a beam of light shot out of the runestone, heading straight for the bubble.
From his peripheral vision, he saw more adventurers coming his way too. He quickly gritted his teeth and pushed his muscles beyond their limits to move his hand.
In comparison to that oversized parrot, this is nothing! He thought, remembering the last time he was forced still, with all his movements restricted.
Just as the beam of light broke through the blue-ish translucent sphere, Lawkey managed to move his arm at the last second to parry it out of the way with the reflection of his blade.
Having fallen to the ground because of what happened, the long eared adventurer didn’t see the stray beam of light coming his way and was immediately hit through the stomach. The new gaping hole it made put him out of commission almost immediately as he fell lifeless face first, causing the blue-ish sphere to disappear along with him.
One down, but…
Lawkey didn’t have time to rejoice, the others had made it to him before his feet could touch the ground again.
“!!”
He quickly blocked an arrow coming from his side, then kicked someone in the face while he was still mid-fall. However, he couldn’t react in time to avoid the werebear.
He could only brace himself for the punch that soon connected and sent him crashing into a wall.
“Hnggh!”
As the sweat and blood flew out of his mouth, he felt his throat choke on air from the sharp pain in his back and stomach.
“Haaah…. Haaaaah...”
He fought for every breath, but he was quickly denied that too.
The Umbra wolves and bats came rushing at him now too.
What?! You again?!
He dug his foot in the ground and clenched the handle of his sword tightly.
Come on… Just a bit more… Please!
He had very rapidly exhausted his power, his Sign, stretching the very limits of what his body could do with it. It shouldn’t be usable for at least a few days.
And yet, as if responding to his plea, shadows erupted with the swing of his sword once more.
One Shadow Sword Style - Second Stance!
Evening Autumn Moonbow!
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
He glimpsed the arc of shadows heading towards the monsters, but had no time to see the results. He felt the glares coming at him from all sides, and with them, a ball of fire at least the size of two men. The woman with the staff had already replaced the runestone on her weapon and sent another attack at him.
His body could barely stand, but even so… He had to move forward.
He clenched his teeth and dug his foot in the ground in front of the coming fireball, his eyes glowing emerald all the while.
One Shadow Sword Style - Eighth Stance!
Morning Phantom Dance!
Time seemed to stop as he performed the steps of the eighth Stance to pass and reposition himself behind the fireball, but the screams of his muscles and nerves slowed him down. He felt his right shoulder turn numb from the intense heat invading it.
The moment he finished performing the eighth Stance and positioned himself behind the fireball, he saw the werebear rushing at him again at full speed.
Not wasting time, he continued his movement from the eighth Stance, into the second Stance again, his best option to keep his enemies at a distance.
Having swung his sword and sending the wave of shadows at the werebear, he suddenly heard the fireball hit the rocky cliff side behind him and explode.
BOOM!!!
He ignored it to cut another arrow coming his way, but he quickly realized his mistake as he saw his own shadow expand beyond limits due to the rising light source behind him.
“?!”
And from that giant shadow, two blood-red eyes emerged.
“Kojiro!!”
“Miss me already?”
The two swung their blades at each other, cutting through the air at a speed the others around them couldn’t follow.
One Shadow Sword Style - First Stance!
Endless Night!
CLASH!!
The clash of their blades forced everyone else around to dig their feet into the ground. The Umbra Bats that were still alive and flying got thrown off balance and crashed down.
The shockwave even moved Orthrus’ two giant halves away from the battleground.
“What happened to the one on one duel, huh?”
“What? You haven’t realized it yet?”
Suddenly, the muscles on the previously thin Kojiro bulged and grew three times their size as he pushed back against his opponent.
Lawkey felt his ribs crack the more he stood in place, but his feet began to slowly screech back over the ground from the growing pressure pushing against him.
Kojiro’s eyes glowed even more as a smile formed on his face.
And then, from the shadow between the two of them, an Umbra Wolf came out suddenly, clawing a good part of Lawkey’s chest.
As blood gushed out of the wound like a fountain, the boy felt his nerves give out.
Not wasting the opportunity, Kojiro immediately put more oomph into his swing and decided to put an end to the clash. Flexing his overgrown muscles, he pushed Lawkey and his sword out of balance with as much force as he could gather.
“Hahaha! Look at you!”
“Hnghh!”
Lawkey flew back and tumbled through the ground a couple of times before his body came to a halt.
“I never said this would be a one on one, I said Hyking to Hyking!” Kojiro shouted, “I’m using both my Signs! The Shadow Manipulation Sign from my mother, and the Royal Blood Manipulation Sign from my father! With a single bite, I can make these idiots all follow me! Even most vampires can’t do that!”
“...”
Lawkey tried to get back up, but quickly fell back down on his back.
“Hey! Don’t get cocky, kid! We let you do that because you insisted it was your condition to invade the clan!”
“Just because your father knew our leaders, don’t think we’re just going to do everything you say!”
The werebear and the woman with the staff both voiced their complaints, but Kojiro ignored them.
“Is that really all you got? Just one barely functioning Sign? What do Sensei and Jun even see in you?”
“...”
“You came into the clan, made your way into their home, stole their attention, HER attention! You, who is this weak!”
Hearing that, Lawkey tightened the grip on his sword.
He knew what Kojiro was saying was true.
He was welcomed by them suddenly, they took care of him, fed him, trained him, guided him… Even stayed by his side when he had his nightmares.
Why did they do that? They didn’t owe him anything.
He was the cause of their injuries.
The cause of their pain and troubles.
It was the same with Jay and Sasaki too, and the rest of the Phantom Rogues.
They had no obligation to take them in, children of war, children devoid of emotion, and yet they did.
It was the same with the tri-colored Obsidian Butterfly too.
He never met {her} before, much less done anything to deserve {her} risking her precious energy to save and guide him.
So, why?
Why were all of them so invested in helping him, caring for him?
He couldn’t know the answer to that.
Only one thing was for certain, as much as they cared for him…
Deep down, he cared for them twofold.
And he would gladly give his life if it meant protecting them.
Even if it meant breaking his promises…
But Kojiro was right.
He was still too weak for that…
“Weak? Are you really calling that kid weak? Compared to him, I might as well have still been sucking on my mother’s teat at his age.” The werebear slowly began to transform back into human form, “Look around you, he fought a horde of monsters all alone, and still managed to put up a good fight against all of us.”
“Shut up! I could’ve easily done that! Who do you think tamed all those monsters?!”
“Well, you ARE an actual Hyking. Just standing next to you makes my fur stand on edge.”
“I hate to say it, but he’s right. The boy is mad, who in their right mind would charge at this party alone.”
“Tsk, a bunch of weaklings…” Kojiro clicked his tongue, “You don’t know anything. This isn’t enough for people like us-”
THUD!
“?!”
Everyone turned in shock to face the noise that interrupted their conversation.
“Mad, huh?” The boy barely standing uttered, “Everyone keeps calling me that.”
He blinked his eyes a couple of times as he raised his head, for a second barely glimpsing a purple-ish black and green butterfly flying in front of him. However, when he opened his eyes to clearly see it, it wasn’t there.
“Heh, fine. If that’s what you’re all going to call me…” He chuckled, flashing his glowing emerald eyes, “Then that’s what I’ll call it.”
“?!”
Kojiro and the rest of them could not believe their eyes as shadows erupted from the young injured boy’s body once more, with a velocity and output far above what he was releasing before.
In front of them stood a kid that seemed more like an untamed beast.
Perhaps, that had been his true nature all along.
“What is going on?! How can he do that?”
“Is he actually a Hyking?!”
There they go, that question again.
Hyking this, Hyking that.
It wasn’t anything special, the boy had felt it back when he landed his last hit against Orthrus.
He was grasping the next stage of his power, the first upgrade to his Sign.
With the Obsidian Butterfly’s help, he had already been familiar with this sensation from back when they merged together to fight the Undying Elder.
Munisai had explained it to him in one of their Sword Purifying Ceremony sessions.
“It’s about time already.” Lawkey stood in place, the shadows erupting from his body rose towering over everyone else, “Let’s upgrade both my Sign and my swordsmanship…”
“What are you all doing?! Get him!!”
Kojiro bellowed as everyone around him, along with the surviving monsters, rushed forward at the boy.
Lawkey simply moved his broken body to take a stance. He forced his arms to cross in front of his face, holding Eclipsed Dawn with his right hand far behind his left shoulder.
“Let’s see… Okay, I got it!”
“?!”
Lips and Jaws parted at the sight as all the overflowing shadows completely disappeared in an instant.
And then Lawkey swung his sword around him, tracing almost a full circle.
One Shadow Sword Style - Self-Made Tenth Stance!
…
Black Flowing Madness!
In another split second, the Shadow Valley experienced another major tremor it hadn’t felt in a few months.
“W-what is that?!” The archer at the back trembled in place at the sight towering over her.
A vortex of vicious uncontained shadows flowed all around Lawkey to create a giant tornado of madness.
“Hey! Take us out of here, quickly!”
“I… I can’t!”
“Give it up! At this rate, we’ll all die! The boy’s out of his mind!”
“No… I literally can’t! The shadows won’t obey me!”
“What?!”
Sweat dripped down Kojiro’s face as everyone around him tried to hold on for dear life, dropping to one knee.
“What’s wrong?”
“?!”
Kojiro looked up to see a glint of emerald through the growing waves of chaotic shadows circling around his enemy.
And then, after just a mere moment, he saw it very clearly, a glowing purple emblem with a slight emerald hue around its outline.
It was hovering in front of Lawkey’s forehead.
“Didn’t you want to kill me?”
“...”
“Get up.”
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image [https://i.imgur.com/KQmIY8F.png]