Jiraiya called a halt to their spar before either of them won, but Akaseki wore a smug expression—he knew he had won.
Before, Akaseki could only win in a contest of pure Taijutsu, with no Ninjutsu allowed and Ranwu too wary to use "Strength of a Hundred."
Now, even with Ranwu allowed to use a little "Strength of a Hundred" and any support Ninjutsu short of large-scale techniques, Akaseki was still confident he would win if they kept going...
The way Ranwu bared her teeth at Akaseki made it clear she knew it too.
That was hardly surprising. Lately, although Akaseki had kept up his Immersion sessions and copied Ninjutsu, he had devoted more time to Taijutsu. He had even sought out Might Duy as a top-tier Taijutsu sparring partner.
By contrast, Ranwu had recently devoted more of her energy to learning Medical Ninjutsu.
But...
So what?
Could she really swallow her pride and challenge Akaseki to a Medical Ninjutsu contest?
"Hey... what are you..." Akaseki was still feeling smug when Ranwu walked straight up to him and reached toward his face.
If her hand hadn't been moving so slowly, Akaseki would almost have thought she meant to slap him.
"Getting some practice in while I'm at it!" Ranwu said darkly.
There was indeed a tiny cut on Akaseki's face. When Ranwu's whip shattered the rocks inside, a small fragment had struck him—Akaseki's perceptiveness clearly wasn't good enough yet to account for things like that.
Still, it barely qualified as a wound. It was just a scratch...
"You don't have to, do you?" Akaseki said, looking at Ranwu in front of him with some embarrassment.
Ranwu ignored him and simply watched the wound gradually fade beneath her green healing chakra...
"You'd better hurry. Any longer and it'll heal on its