Chapter 953: To My Beloved Dawn, Part 26

In the Ryuguin Style, footwork used to remain fully prepared to respond to anything is called the "Ebbing Wave Form," while its opposite, footwork used to press the attack all at once in a single rush, is called the "Breaking Wave Form."

There is no need to move like a tsunami, simply move quietly and straight ahead like a gentle wave... and just as no one can stop the sea's undulation, step forward.

"Come on, it's surge in and draw back!"

The Breaking Wave for offense, the Ebbing Wave for defense.

Along with a joke intelligible only to those who had mastered the Ryuguin Style, likening what naturally happened when two swordsmen of the same school faced one another, Kyogoku shot forward in a single burst.

Not a broad swing that left a huge opening, but a compact attack, charging with her blade held at the ready and pressing it into her opponent.

Yozora took a retreating stance in response, yet used the foot drawn back behind her as a brace and met Kyogoku blade-to-blade in a guard lock.

"apparently, MYsElf is someone you kNow well... have we mEt somewhere?"

"No? You and I were merely on the same path... within the same gate. That's all... There!"

"i UNdeRStand? i don't kNow anything!"

From Yozora's perspective, someone was picking a quarrel with her over her self-taught swordsmanship on the basis of some grievance she knew nothing about, but... Kyogoku had no intention of explaining that.

Kyogoku's business was with Yozora's "shadow," and more than anything, Yozora herself was only an opening act before Kyogoku challenged the Unique Monster.

(Besides...)

Something about her simply rubbed Kyogoku the wrong way.

Toward the character called Yozora... separate from the fact that her grandfather's data had been used, she felt another, hazy sort of irritation she could not quite place.

After the guard lock between unyielding offense and unyielding defense continued for around ten seconds, Kyogoku herself sprang backward as though knocking her own body away, opening the distance.

(A contest of raw strength probably isn't the smartest move.)

During the guard lock, Kyogoku had read from the pressure transmitted through her blade that, at the same time Yozora's tone grew more forceful, the strength pressing in from her side had unmistakably increased.

Kyogoku knew that a "Goldunine" was not necessarily as physically weak as her appearance suggested.

Monsters also have levels and stats... and one monster level is not, strictly speaking, the same as one player level.

(I expected brute strength from a close-range swordsman, but... if I trade blows carelessly, she might snap me in half along with my katana.)

As one can tell from her fighting style, Kyogoku's stat allocation places greater emphasis on technique than strength.

In the sense that she has abandoned solid defense, she is close to Sunraku; in the sense that she is a magic swordsman who excels in mobility, she is close to Akitsu Akane.

But Kyogoku's unique strength is, after all, that her build specializes in PvP... or rather, in "fighting enemies two meters tall or shorter."

"then, THis tIme, allow MYsElf to sTep iN...!"

Perhaps judging the motionless Kyogoku to be "at a loss for how to attack," Yozora took the initiative in their third engagement.

The obsidian-like blade gleamed ominously, and a downward slash from a high overhead stance aimed for the crown of Kyogoku's head.

Against a slash containing enough power to completely drain the HP of three Sunrakus, Kyogoku... lightly, as though brushing away a gnat, slashed her katana upward to intercept its descending trajectory just before it reached the space above her head.

"hoh!"

That alone knocked violently aside a blade capable of easily bisecting a human body. At the sheer abnormality of the sight, Yozora let out a cry of astonishment.

Naturally, it was not as though Kyogoku's raw strength had surpassed Yozora's through some fearsome awakening.

Skill "Secret Technique Essentials."

It is a skill Kyogoku discovered after continuing to hone her parry skills, and if Sunraku's Eye of EternityChronostaxia is a skill that twists even the time perceived by its user in order to raise the success rate of parries to the absolute limit, then this is a skill that "reproduces the single greatest instant of Kyogoku's past" from her entire history of combat.

By activating this skill, she can perfectly reproduce a parry she successfully performed without using Secret Technique Essentials.

The greatest feature of this skill is that, as long as Secret Technique Essentials itself was not used, even if other skills were active, their correction effects are included in the "reproduction" along with them.

In other words, even a performance that would ordinarily require five skills can be reproduced using Secret Technique Essentials alone.

In ShanFro, where one must constantly watch skill rotations, the advantage hardly needs stating.

(That said, the recast time is far too long, so using it a second time during this fight will probably be difficult...)

Against a monster, a battle lasting one or two hours... or, depending on the circumstances, an entire night, is not especially rare.

It is mentally exhausting, but full-dive VR is much like dreaming. Compared to reality, the length of time players can continue fighting is considerably greater.

But once it becomes PvP, the story changes.

Unlike monsters, whose vitality is proportional to their physique, human HP remains a fairly limited value unless they focus heavily on raising it.

Take Psyger-0's power as the "Attack Holder," for example.

Even if they take that colossal ultimate technique without defending, some monsters can still endure it through vitality alone.

But if a human takes it without any defensive preparation, even the one who holds the title of "Defense Holder" will have every last point of HP erased and be blown away.

Granted, once the option to "defend" is unlocked, they are the Defense Holder precisely because they can protect both themselves and everything behind them from even the Attack Holder's all-out technique.

No matter how much they continue raising their vitality, the lives of players... of the Human race, have a racial limit.

And Kyogoku knew that Goldunine was also included within that "Human-race category."

But there was one concern.

(Most of the Goldunines I know are noncombat types... or rather, it must be extremely rare for a Goldunine herself to come forward and fight.)

Therefore, just how much HP did the individual before her... Yozora, who was plainly a frontline swordfighter, possess?

One cut would tell her, but she wanted to know in order to make that cut; that was the dilemma.

Then, all at once, Kyogoku came to two realizations.

One realization arose from her thoughts, and the other... from the emotion she had been carrying all this time.

"............hehehe."

To face some inhuman demon and triumph over it through human technique.

Like an action-adventure, like a supernatural action novel... come to think of it, her grandfather's secret hobby had been watching old movies with subjects like that.

Had her grandfather lived a little longer, might he too have played ShanFro?

It was impossible to know now, but Kyogoku was undeniably standing inside the kind of world her grandfather had quietly enjoyed... and suddenly, that thought came to her.

And the other realization.

"I finally figured it out..."

"WHat is it, i suppose i should aSk?"

The sense of déjà vu she had felt toward Yozora all along.

The source from which anger welled up in her heart merely from looking at her.

It was nothing complicated: the feeling had not been welling up because she was "looking" at Yozora, but because she was "listening" to her.

"You resemble my cousinthat person."

".........?"

A distant cousin who had once been responsible for a humiliating defeat Kyogoku suffered.

That distant cousin was a powerful swordswoman, the Sword Saint in this place, and she and Yozora... were somehow alike.

So that's why she pisses me off so damn much... Nodding along to herself, Kyogoku took a fresh grip on her katana.

Tighter, firmer.

"'Cutting you down, pardon me,' I'll say in advance."

Kyogoku firmly resolved to hack her down.

---

Author's Afterword

The resemblance really is a complete coincidence.

There are cases in ShanFro where a particular player's data is reflected in a monster, but Yozora is a named character in Unique Scenario EX, so she was constructed without using any data from "after" the service launched.

However, because the Sword Saint's movements are rooted in the lineage of the Ryuguin Style, and Yozora's data incorporates the pinnacle of that style, the strange coincidence in their manner of speech made her feel overwhelmingly familiar to Kyogoku, both seen and heard.

Just who is she, and how does Kyou-Ultimate lose to her?

I have no idea, but you will all be so kind as to make your way over to read the manga adaptation now... won't you?