"Seventy percent."
Shinobu Kocho answered quickly, her voice as steady as if she were reciting a drug formula.
Yaha looked down at her. His crimson, dead-fish eyes held neither hesitation nor warmth. He simply stared at her. For two seconds.
"The other thirty percent is on me."
His left arm loosened. Shinobu Kocho landed on both feet, flipped her Nichirin Blade into a forward grip, and was already looking past Yaha's shoulder, locking onto the area on Flesh Mountain's back where the new tissue was densest.
Yaha turned around. He raised the blade in his left hand, its tip pointing forward.
He walked toward Flesh Mountain.
His pace was unhurried, almost leisurely. The hundreds of incomplete human faces on Flesh Mountain's surface turned toward him at once, their hollow eye sockets like puppet heads pulled by the same string. Six fleshy arms slammed down from different heights, carrying enough weight to crush the ground.
Cursed Technique Eight.
No sound. No light. Along the blade's horizontal path, every fleshy arm shattered into neat cubes in the same instant, their cut surfaces carbonized, ash spreading through the air.
Flesh Mountain paused for half a second. Then twelve new arms squeezed out of various points on its body. Thicker, more tightly packed, covering a wider range of angles.
All of them came at Yaha.
He did not even change his stride. The blade turned, sweeping out a second Cleave. Before the carbonized cubes could hit the ground, the third strike was already out.
Five consecutive slashes. Five waves of fleshy arms shattered into ash. Every slash came at a different angle, its cutting plane also shearing away the new flesh buds on Flesh Mountain's flanks-the route Shinobu Kocho was about to take.
"What's taking so long?" His voice drifted through the flying ash,