Kaigaku's Tactics

"Old man, I don't want that kind of weak, limp swordplay." Rokuya raised his head, his eyes showing an unquestionable stubbornness. "What I want is the power to split a mountain even while moving at lightning speed. If it can't do that, I might as well throw away this Breathing Style that can only run in straight lines!"

"You-! You'll be the death of me!" Jigoro Kuwajima raised his cane to strike again, but at the stubborn look in Rokuya's eyes, his hand paused in midair before he finally lowered it helplessly. "What an arrogant brat with no idea of his own limits. A perfect fusion of speed and strength? Even the Rumble Hashira throughout history struggled to balance both perfectly. If you want to solve this problem, you'll have to change not only your breathing rhythm, but also how the muscles in your upper body exert force."

"I still have two months." Rokuya tightened his grip on the wooden sword, feeling the hollow, ravenous hunger inside him left by activating Demon Form. A vicious gleam flashed in his eyes. "Within two months, I'll make Thunder Breathing my own."

"Big talk!" Jigoro Kuwajima snorted, though a deep anticipation lay hidden in his eyes. "Before that, pay me back for your meals!"

At the mention of "meals," Rokuya's face, which had been as cold as a god's a moment before, instantly fell. His stomach obligingly let out a thunderous rumble.

Grrrrrrumble-

Rokuya rubbed his stomach awkwardly. "Old man, is breakfast ready yet? I'm starving. That state I activated last night burned through so much energy. I feel like I could eat a whole cow right now."

At those words, the muscles in Jigoro Kuwajima's face twitched wildly, and he pounded his cane against the ground with loud bangs. "Eat, eat, eat! You bottomless pit! Do you know you've eaten three months of my food in just one week? You're going to eat through my entire pension! Is that a stomach or a bottomless hole?"

"Don't be so stingy. I'll just kill a few more demons later and pay you back with the money." Mumbling, Rokuya headed toward the kitchen with practiced ease, though his slight lack of direction nearly sent him the wrong way, provoking another round of roars from the old man.

Meanwhile, in the shadows of the nearby woods, a pair of eyes filled with gloom and jealousy stared fixedly at Rokuya's retreating back.

It was Kaigaku.

Kaigaku gripped the wooden sword at his waist, veins bulging on the backs of his hands, his nails nearly digging into his flesh.

"Why..." Kaigaku gritted his teeth, a low, beastlike growl rising from his throat. "Just one week... That country bumpkin whose sword grip reeks of self-taught tricks actually learned the First Form?"

He had trained here under his master for so many years, sweating day after day, year after year. He had mastered Thunder Breathing's Second Form through Sixth Form, yet he had never managed to grasp its most basic and most essential form: the First Form, Thunderclap and Flash.

Although his master had said nothing, he could feel his disappointment in him.

And now, this fellow named Takanashi Rokuno had not only learned the First Form in a week, but even had the gall to complain that Thunder Breathing was too weak! Even though his master scolded him, Kaigaku knew that look in his eyes all too well, as though he were gazing at a treasure. It was a look full of hope that his master had never once shown him!

"Unforgivable... Absolutely unforgivable!"

Kaigaku's face twisted with jealousy, with the rage of someone whose pride had been utterly crushed. He felt that all his years of effort had become a complete joke before this genius.

"Only charging in straight lines? Weaker sword swings?" A cold, sinister smile curled Kaigaku's lips. "Since you're so eager to show off, I'll spend the next two months teaching you exactly what a senior's 'care' means. Want to fix your weaknesses? I'll make those weaknesses fatal!"

In the days that followed, the training grounds on Mount Momoyama entered a period of unprecedented pressure.

Rokuya began a brutal training regimen that bordered on self-abuse. To solve the problem of straight-line charges dispersing his strength, he required himself to sprint through the old forests deep in the mountains every day.

However, things did not go so smoothly.

On the third day of training, while Rokuya was performing high-intensity Thunderclap and Flash charges, the ground beneath his feet suddenly collapsed.

Boom!

A three-meter-deep pit appeared without warning, with sharpened bamboo stakes even planted point-up at the bottom. If he lost his balance and fell while charging at such speed, even Rokuya would be skewered straight through.

"Damn!"

Airborne, Rokuya had nothing to push off and was about to plunge into the pit. But at that critical instant, his freakish reflexes and system-enhanced physique came into play.

"Break!"

Rokuya forcibly twisted his waist in midair, abruptly halting the circulation of Thunder Breathing. Gripping his wooden sword in both hands, he struck hard at a rock on the edge of the pit. Using the recoil, his body shifted an unnatural half meter sideways in the air before he landed heavily on the grass beside the pit.

"Cough, cough..." Rokuya spat the dirt from his mouth, his gaze turning instantly icy.

He walked to the edge of the pit and looked at the artificially sharpened bamboo stakes, which still bore fresh knife marks. This definitely had not formed naturally, nor was it a hunter's trap for wild boars. Its placement was exceptionally devious, right in a blind spot along his charging route.

Someone was plotting against him.

Rokuya turned his head, his gaze piercing the woods, and faintly caught a glimpse of a black hem flashing past.

"Kaigaku, huh..." Rokuya sneered and brushed the dust off himself. He did not go complain to Jigoro Kuwajima. To him, petty tricks like these were just right for a little amusement.

"You like playing games, huh? Then let's see if this junk of yours can stop my sword."

Over the next two months, Mount Momoyama became a battlefield seething with hidden currents.

Kaigaku's tactics grew increasingly sinister and increasingly frequent.

Once, while Rokuya was practicing his swings, the wooden sword in his hands suddenly snapped in midair. The splintered wood nearly cut his eye. Rokuya picked up the broken wood from the ground and discovered that someone had already sawed more than halfway through the joint at the hilt with a thin blade, then concealed it with sawdust and glue.

For an ordinary swordsman, having a weapon break at the instant they exerted their full strength would definitely throw their internal breathing into chaos, perhaps even cause it to spiral out of control. But Rokuya merely stared expressionlessly at the broken sword, then punched the tree trunk beside him, smashing in half a tree so thick it would take three people to encircle it.

Watching from his hiding place, Kaigaku broke out in a cold sweat. That sheer violence left him feeling suffocated.