Chapter 48: "How to Lose a Fight in 10 Ki Blasts (But Make It Cool)"
In which Ren takes the high ground, Reiji says "no thanks," and physics files for early retirement.
Ren wasn't exactly expecting a fair fight—but Reiji was going above and beyond in the I'm better than you and will let you know it every second department.
If Reiji had wanted to, he probably could have ended the fight already. Ren knew it. Vhalor knew it. The dirt, cracked concrete, and now-bent metal scattered around the battlefield definitely knew it.
But no.
Reiji Zeus Takamura didn't want to simply win.
He wanted to prove a point.
With every clash and every punch, he wasn't just flexing his strength. He was flexing his philosophy.
And frankly, Ren hated philosophy fights.
"You're strong," Ren admitted, panting as he skidded to a stop. His baton was cracked, one of his reinforced boots had a dent, and his jacket was rapidly losing its argument with Reiji's Ki. "But you're wasting energy being dramatic."
"You talk too much," Reiji replied calmly, walking forward as though this were a morning jog. His eyes were half-lidded, almost completely unfazed by Ren's attacks. "This isn't drama. This is discipline. Unlike you, I trained. I earned this strength."
Ren grinned, cracked his neck, and let his spiritual energy surge.
Fwoooosh.
A blue-white cloak of spiritual energy erupted around his body, rippling like living light. The energy thickened around his limbs while several flexible tendrils spread behind him, moving almost like additional arms.
Reiji stopped.
For the first time, genuine interest appeared on his face.
"I'll admit," he said. "That's… unexpected."
Ren didn't answer.
Instead, he slammed his palm against the ground.
The earth cracked as spiritual energy spread outward in branching lines.
POOM.
A dozen spectral hands burst from the ground and clawed toward Reiji.
His eyes sharpened.
Combat Sight.
In an instant, his perception changed. Every movement around him seemed to slow just enough for his trained instincts to read it.
Reiji slipped between the grasping hands, twisting and stepping through the attack as though he already knew where each one would appear.
Ren tracked him, inhaled—
—and fired a beam of concentrated spiritual energy from his mouth.
"HAHHHH!"
Reiji twisted sideways in midair, flipping cleanly over it. The beam tore through the concrete behind him and sent broken fragments spraying across the yard.
Ren launched after him.
At the last moment, he twisted feet-first into Mira Vale's Spiral Lance, his body spinning toward Reiji like a living drill.
Reiji simply jumped over him.
Then his leg came down.
Axe kick.
Straight from above.
Ren grunted, planted both hands against the ground, and kicked upward with both legs.
Their attacks collided.
CRACK!
A shockwave exploded outward.
Both fighters flipped away.
Ren landed in a crouch, spiritual energy boiling around him.
"I'm still here."
Reiji landed lightly enough that his shoes barely touched the dust.
"You're loud. And lucky."
He shifted into a new stance.
Palms raised.
Body relaxed.
Still Sphere.
The space around him suddenly felt wrong.
Controlled.
Closed.
It was as though Reiji had drawn an invisible circle around himself and declared that anything entering it belonged to him.
Ren's instincts screamed at him not to step inside.
Reiji flexed one hand.
Ki gathered around his fist, compressed tighter and tighter until the energy seemed almost needle-thin.
Heaven-Piercing Fist.
Ren stared at it.
"That looks unhealthy."
"You'll feel worse than that."
Reiji charged.
Nearly another minute had passed since Ren reached the Second Ascension.
Fivefold Ascension responded.
The Third Ascension activated.
Eightfold.
And Ren met him head-on.
If this were a movie, the fight would already have several slow-motion scenes, dramatic music, and at least one terrified bystander screaming:
"Those two aren't human!"
And honestly?
That bystander would have a point.
Ren Kisaragi—Ninja, Soul Armament wielder, magic student, and professional bad-decision enthusiast—was currently fighting like a multi-armed spiritual nightmare.
Reiji was treating it like Tuesday.
It started with a feint.
Reiji blurred forward with speed that made sound consider early retirement. His Heaven-Piercing Fist came roaring toward Ren's center like a missile.
But Ren had spent years fighting Ninja.
Speed alone wasn't new.
He watched the rhythm.
The shoulders.
The hips.
The instant before commitment.
Ren didn't dodge.
He redirected.
With a sharp turn of his body, Ren brushed Reiji's arm past him.
Even redirected, the compressed Ki tore through part of his spiritual cloak around the chest like brittle glass.
"Okay," Ren hissed through clenched teeth. "That tickled."
Reiji raised an eyebrow.
"You're still standing? Good. I'd hate to think that was everything you had."
"Funny," Ren muttered.
His cloak rippled.
Because he wasn't done.
THWUMP.
Two spiritual arms shot from behind him.
One caught Reiji by the collar during the recoil.
The other rose above him.
A sphere of compressed, violently rotating mana formed in its palm.
Death Spiral Bomb.
BOOM!
The technique slammed directly into Reiji's chest and blasted him backward.
Ren didn't wait.
"WOLFBREAKER RUSH!"
He launched after him, his right fist blazing with spiritual energy.
Ren's punch struck Reiji's chest and released a violent pulse that rattled the remaining windows around the construction site.
But Reiji wasn't finished.
He twisted in midair, used the recoil to change direction, and came crashing back down with another Heaven-Piercing Fist.
Ren's spiritual tendrils lashed outward and knocked the attack aside.
Even deflected, the fist struck the ground hard enough to split it.
The air boomed.
Ren spun into a roundhouse kick aimed at Reiji's temple, his foot wrapped in wind and spiritual energy.
"Not bad," Reiji muttered.
His Ki surged.
Force exploded outward in every direction, cratering the ground beneath them.
The blast disrupted Ren's attack just enough.
Reiji took the opening.
He dropped low, pivoted, and drove a kick into Ren's chest with a burst of concentrated Ki.
Ren disappeared across the yard.
BOOM!
He crashed through a wall.
The wall lost.
Ren groaned.
Then Reiji was already above him.
His fist hummed with compressed Ki.
"Let's end it."
Ren's eyes widened.
Too fast.
Too strong.
Too dangerous.
So he used everything he had.
Several layers of spiritual shields appeared between them.
The Heaven-Piercing Fist smashed through the first.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Ren raised his left arm.
CLANG!
The white-gold gauntlet of Fivefold Ascension caught the strike.
Vhalor's power roared through it as Ren was driven backward, his boots ripping trenches through the dirt.
Pain exploded through his arm.
Fractured.
Definitely fractured.
The Fourth Ascension was still building.
Not enough time had passed.
Ren looked at his arm.
Then back at Reiji.
His grin remained intact.
"Yeah… totally worth it."
Reiji narrowed his eyes.
"You're persistent."
Ren cracked his neck.
"Thanks. I moisturize with spiritual energy and raw spite."
The sky wasn't ready for what happened next.
Neither was the abandoned construction site.
Chunks of concrete scattered through the air. Dust spiraled upward. The nearby river rippled from the repeated shockwaves tearing across the ground.
Ren took a breath.
Then launched himself upward.
Platforms of condensed spiritual energy appeared beneath his feet.
One.
Two.
Three.
He kicked off each one, changing direction in midair until his movement became almost impossible to follow.
Above.
Below.
Left.
Right.
A fist struck toward Reiji's jaw.
A heel came toward his shoulder.
A spiritual tendril whipped in from behind.
Ren turned the air around Reiji into a three-dimensional battlefield.
Platforms appeared wherever Ren stepped, allowing him to attack from angles that normal footwork simply couldn't produce.
Reiji twisted.
Redirected.
Countered.
His movements were calm and precise despite the chaos.
A punch came from behind.
He leaned forward.
A kick sliced from the right.
He turned left and caught Ren's leg in midair.
"Enough."
Reiji pivoted.
He threw Ren upward.
Then vanished.
A heartbeat later, Reiji appeared above him.
And that was when the pain came.
A high kick wrapped in razor-sharp Ki smashed into Ren's ribs.
Ren gasped.
His spiritual cloak flickered.
Not good.
That wasn't simply a strike.
The Ki had cut through his reinforcement with brutal precision.
Reiji dropped after him.
"Want to know why you lose?"
Ren tried to reform a shield.
Too late.
Reiji's fist began glowing again.
"Heaven-Piercing Fist."
Before it landed, Fivefold Ascension finally answered him again.
The Fourth Ascension activated.
Sixteenfold.
Ren's power surged.
He twisted desperately and raised both arms.
BOOOOM!
The collision flattened what remained of several nearby walls.
Trees shook.
The river jumped.
Ren was still driven downward.
He hit the ground like a meteor.
CRASH!
For several seconds, nothing moved.
Smoke rolled from the crater.
Ren lay inside it, his spiritual cloak gone.
His limbs trembled.
His ribs felt like they had formed a committee dedicated entirely to complaining.
He tried to move.
Pain answered.
The Fifth Ascension still hadn't come.
He had needed another minute.
Reiji had made sure he never got it.
This body… it doesn't heal like mine, Ren realized as he stared upward at the completely unsympathetic blue sky.
Reiji landed beside the crater.
He wasn't even breathing particularly hard.
"Impressive," he admitted, adjusting one glove. "But you're trying to bridge years of training with raw talent and an amplification ability. Martial mastery takes time."
Ren didn't answer.
He was a little busy trying not to throw up.
From the outside, the battlefield looked as though reality itself had briefly lost patience.
The ground was shattered.
Half the construction site was damaged beyond recognition.
Dust hung in the air.
Reiji stood near the crater, his white suit stained with dirt and scorch marks but somehow still irritatingly presentable.
Ren looked like he had spent twelve rounds arguing with gravity and lost every appeal.
One arm hung uselessly.
Several ribs were almost certainly broken.
Even sitting up was becoming more of a theoretical concept than an achievable goal.
But his eyes were still burning.
Reiji frowned.
"You're annoying, you know that?"
Ren wheezed.
"You should see me when I'm well-rested."
And that was the moment Reiji realized something deeply unfortunate.
He respected this idiot.
He really, really hated that.
"You know," Reiji said, folding his arms, "you could have simply joined me. Together, we could stand at the top. Demons, supernatural creatures, martial artists—we could become strong enough that nobody could ever look down on us again."
He extended a hand.
An actual hand.
Like this was a job interview instead of the aftermath of several minutes of attempted homicide.
Ren blinked.
"Are you seriously giving me a friendship speech while my bones are playing funeral music?"
Reiji sighed.
"I'm offering you a place. You have power. Potential. You aren't like most of these people. You understand what it means to fight for survival."
Ren coughed.
A wet, unpleasant cough.
Vhalor remained very quiet about that.
"Yeah…" Ren managed. "But there's a difference between fighting with people…and fighting for yourself while stepping over everyone else."
Reiji's expression hardened.
"I won't follow somebody who doesn't care about his people," Ren continued, his voice hoarse but steady. "You act like you're saving the world, but the world you're building is still one where the strong stand on top of the weak."
He stared directly at Reiji.
"You're becoming the same kind of person you claim you want to fight."
Reiji frowned.
Not with anger.
Something closer to disappointment.
For one second, he almost looked like the boy Haruki had once known.
Almost.
Then he stepped forward.
And punched Ren unconscious.
Clean.
Fast.
Brutal.
Ren's head dropped back against the dirt.
Silence followed.
Reiji turned toward Red Dawn.
Reina.
Shōgo.
Hermes.
Haruki, who could barely stand after his own fight.
Tōma.
Ryōhei.
Kenta.
Hana.
All of them stared back with expressions ranging from horror to barely controlled fury.
"Your leader has fallen," Reiji announced. "From this moment onward, he belongs to Olympus."
Nobody answered.
"And so do all of you."
Reiji pulled out a black glove marked with a crimson II and dropped it beside Ren.
"Tell him his name is Ares now. Number Two beneath Zeus."
Shōgo's face immediately darkened.
"If he wants his freedom," Reiji continued, "and if the rest of you want yours, then earn it."
His eyes swept across Red Dawn.
"Train. Fight. Survive."
Then he turned toward their headquarters.
Ren had taken an abandoned construction site and somehow turned it into a home for Red Dawn.
Reiji raised one fist.
Ki compressed around it.
He punched.
BOOOOM!
The shockwave tore through the structure.
Walls collapsed inward.
Metal screamed.
Dust exploded upward as entire sections of the headquarters came down.
Within seconds, the place was ruined.
Reiji lowered his fist.
Turned.
And walked away.
Athena, Hephaestus, and the rest of Olympus followed him.
They left behind a destroyed headquarters.
A battered Red Dawn.
And one unconscious Ren Kisaragi who had come within one Ascension of reaching his full Thirty-Twofold power.
But close didn't count.
Not in a real fight.