Faced with Sabito's challenge, Kanzaki Kumo was, of course, happy to oblige to the very end.
He had said he would have Sabito carried into the infirmary. How could he do that without beating him flat?
Seeing the three opposite him take their stances, Kanzaki Kumo wasted no time and charged straight in with his sword.
In an instant, the four were locked in battle, dust rising everywhere. Even the girls watching upstairs struggled to make out Kanzaki Kumo's figure, catching only the brief pauses when their blades collided.
Having learned their lesson from the earlier exchange, Sabito and the other two abandoned head-on clashes with Kanzaki Kumo. Instead, they surrounded him in a triangle, hoping their relentless attacks would force an opening.
Against this approach, the one Kanzaki Kumo found most troublesome was neither Sabito, who was attacking fiercely with pent-up determination, nor Sanemi, whose offensive never let up, but Obanai, who struck from the trickiest angle every time.
Kanzaki Kumo could still handle Sanemi and Sabito's alternating attacks with ease, but when both attacked at once, he had to put in more effort.
And whenever that happened, Obanai's attack would arrive too, sealing off what little room Kanzaki Kumo had to dodge and forcing him to devote even more effort to dealing with it.
Not only that, whenever Kanzaki Kumo seized a gap between Sabito and Sanemi's attacks and tried to escape their encirclement, Obanai would spring out from the shadows to catch him off guard, stalling him for an instant before Sabito and Sanemi closed in on him again.
In terms of sheer attack power, Obanai was actually the least threatening, but his precise timing gave Kanzaki Kumo the most trouble.
The three naturally could not break through Kanzaki Kumo's defenses in the short term, but Kanzaki