Facing Shinobu Kocho's frenzied, stormlike attacks, which abandoned all defense, Doma showed not the slightest trace of seriousness. Instead, his face took on an even more morbid expression of delight and enjoyment.
"Yes! That's it!"
"Your anger, your hatred, your determination to kill me at any cost! How wonderful! I'm so deeply moved!"
Like a spectator enjoying a masterful play, he voiced false, sickly praise while waving the Golden Iron Fans in his hands, parrying with elegance and composure.
Every thrust Shinobu Kocho made was as fast as lightning, coming from tricky, bizarre angles that completely surpassed the limits of human motion perception.
Any other Upper Rank, even Akaza, would probably have struggled to escape unscathed from attacks so dense and fast, each strike laced with deadly poison. They would inevitably have been thrown into disarray.
But Doma handled them with ease, so effortlessly that he almost seemed at leisure.
His pair of Golden Iron Fans seemed capable of foreseeing the future, always appearing in the path of Shinobu Kocho's blade tip at precisely the right angle, with the most economical movement.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Metallic collisions as dense as raindrops echoed wildly through the great hall, merging into a piercing cacophony.
With every collision, Shinobu Kocho felt a tearing pain in the web of her hand, but she paid it no heed. She simply drove her strength even more furiously, pushing her speed to its limit.
She knew that her strength alone could never sever an Upper Rank Demon's neck.
From the very beginning, she had only one goal-to inject Doma with the special wisteria poison coating her blade, potent enough to paralyze a lesser demon in an instant!
As long as she could inject it, even the slightest trace, as long as it could delay his