The massive, jagged boulder hurled toward us, accompanied by a blistering, crescent-shaped wave of orange flames that swept across the raked gravel to cut off our escape.
I braced myself for the searing heat, my heart hammering violently against my ribs, but Ayashi didn't even take a single step backward. Instead he smiled.
"You're going to have to try something better than that," he lazily chuckled.
With an untrackable, fluid flick of his wrist, a highly pressurized torrent of water erupted from his materialized sword. A deafening crack echoed through the narrow street as the flying rock was cleanly cleaved in two, the heavy halves crashing harmlessly into the wooden facades.
Simultaneously, the roaring wall of fire was violently snuffed out in a massive, blinding hiss of thick white steam..
Ging's jaw was practically resting on the gravel, his eyes impossibly wide behind his fogged lenses.
Even Tsume was frozen dead in his tracks, his aristocratic arrogance utterly shattered by the sheer impossibility of the strike. I couldn't breathe. My mind was short-circuiting, struggling to process the terrifying speed of our scruffy Sensei.
But when I glanced over at Saki, the panicked, calculated alarm in her glowing red eyes had completely vanished. Instead, a subtle, knowing smirk tugged at the corner of her lips. She wasn't bracing for a fight anymore; she was waiting for a slaughter.
She already knew exactly how this was going to end.
Before the thick steam could even begin to clear from the alleyway, a new sensation crashed over me.
It hit me like a physical, immovable wall, completely and instantly dwarfing the toxic, suffocating pressure the three Yamata Clan members had been projecting.
This wasn't just raw, unchained power. It had to be Sensei's true Boru.
It didn't burn, and it didn't choke. It felt like being suddenly dragged down to the very bottom of the darkest ocean.
It was an overwhelming, crushing weight of absolute, terrifying perfection.
The humid air grew freezing cold, becoming so heavy and dense with pure spiritual energy that it physically forced me down to one knee.
My lungs burned, struggling to pull oxygen from the sudden, suffocating atmosphere.
The thick, blinding steam hissed and finally began to dissipate, rolling away on the humid breeze to reveal Ayashi.
He hadn't moved a single inch. His posture was chillingly calm, completely and utterly unfazed by the lethal elemental strikes that had just threatened to incinerate us.
He casually lowered his glowing, water-forged blade, resting it against his shoulder. "You guys are even weaker than I assumed," Ayashi drawled, his voice cutting through the ringing silence of the alley. "But I suppose that's exactly what I should expect from a bunch of low-life, pipe-smoking junkies."
Before the Yamata Clan leader could even register the insult, Ayashi vanished.
It wasn't just fast; it was an instantaneous, physics-breaking displacement. In less than a millisecond, a concussive boom of displaced air shattered the nearby paper lanterns, and a violent, thick wake of kicked-up gravel and dust exploded perfectly in the spot where Ayashi had just been standing.
He reappeared entirely across the alleyway, standing directly in front of the earth-wielding subordinate on the right. His blade was already thrusting forward, aimed dead at the man's stomach.
The clan member's eyes blew wide open in sheer, unadulterated terror.
Reacting purely on desperate survival instinct, he screamed,
"Titan Frame!"
His skin violently darkened, instantly hardening into a thick, impenetrable armor of jagged, reinforced stone.
But it didn't matter. It didn't even slow the blade down.
Ayashi's strike was backed by such an absurd, incomprehensible level of accelerated force that the moment his sword made contact, the stone armor shattered like fragile glass.
The raw kinetic impact erupted outward. The clan member was launched backward like a cannonball, violently tearing straight through the wooden walls of the surrounding townhouses.
He became a blur of sheer velocity, rocketing completely out of the village limits before violently cratering into the side of a distant, towering mountain.
The devastating impact triggered a localized earthquake, sending a massive, deafening shockwave violently ripping across the entirety of Runivia Island.
The ground violently heaved beneath us. The ancient, weathered wooden machiya townhouses groaned under the sudden tectonic stress, their clay-tile roofs sliding off and shattering into the streets as several older structures entirely collapsed into jagged piles of timber and suffocating dust.
I hit the ground hard, my knees and palms scraping painfully against the violently trembling gravel.
Beside me, Ging let out a terrified yelp as he was thrown flat onto his back, completely unable to find his footing. Saki and Tsume were forced down, their hands pressed flat against the shaking earth as the localized earthquake tore through the sector.
Standing perfectly balanced in the center of the destruction, Ayashi casually scratched the back of his neck with his free hand.
"Oops," he muttered, wincing slightly as the facade of a nearby shop caved in. "Might have overcooked the kinetic output on that one."
As the violent rumbling finally subsided, a thick, choking cloud of dust settled over the alleyway. The ringing in my ears began to fade, replaced by a much worse sound—a desperate, muffled scream.
I forced my head up, my eyes stinging from the debris. Through the dense haze, pinned beneath the splintered, heavy wooden support beams of a collapsed townhouse, I saw them.
A mother was desperately shielding two young children with her body, screaming for help as the remaining roof threatened to crush them completely.
"Sensei!" I yelled, my voice tearing through the dusty air. I pointed a shaking finger toward the wreckage, struggling to force myself off the ground. "Over there! I see them—a family is trapped!"
The squad's heads snapped toward the ruins. Ayashi noticed them instantly, his casual, lackadaisical demeanor evaporating in a heartbeat. He didn't hesitate; he pivoted and broke into a dead sprint toward the collapsed building, ready to heave the massive rubble away.
But then, a violent, roaring vortex of pale wind erupted from the blind spot in the dust.
"You're not running from this fight!"
The Yamata Clan leader—his eyes entirely hollowed out by swirling air currents—speed-blitzed across the alleyway.
He moved impossibly fast, riding a volatile slipstream of pressurized wind that completely shattered the sound barrier.
Before Ayashi could even raise his water-forged blade to parry, the leader crashed into his blindside with the localized force of a freight train.
The devastating impact swept Ayashi off his feet, sending them both violently tumbling and crashing across the jagged debris of the street.
When the dust finally parted a second later, my blood ran completely cold.
The tattooed leader was mounted squarely on top of Ayashi, using his heavy frame and the twisting wind currents to pin our Sensei's arms to the broken earth. And resting flush against Ayashi's vulnerable throat, humming with volatile, razor-sharp currents of wind ready to slice through flesh and bone, was the leader's cold steel katana.
The tattooed leader let out a manic, breathless laugh, his hollow eyes swirling with violent currents. "Vacuum Shear."
Instantly, the ambient wind violently warped and collapsed inward. A semi-translucent, violently swirling dome of highly pressurized air snapped into existence around the two of them. It formed an impenetrable, roaring barrier, aggressively violently tearing apart any loose gravel or debris that dared to touch its surface.
Trapped inside the enclosed vacuum, the oxygen was immediately purged. Through the distorted, swirling air, I could see our Sensei desperately struggling to breathe.
The extreme pressure difference was crushing him; a thin, terrifying line of foamy blood began to bubble from the corner of his mouth as he gasped for air that simply wasn't there.
"Sensei!" I screamed, my voice barely audible over the roaring wind barrier.
Ging was completely paralyzed, his breathing erratic and shallow. His fogged glasses slipped down his nose as his entire body shook uncontrollably. Even Saki's normally flawless composure had completely shattered; the analytical deadpan was gone, her red eyes burning with a fierce, genuine alarm.
"W-we have to help him!" Ging yelled over the chaotic roar of the wind, looking frantically between me, Tsume, and Saki.
Tsume physically recoiled, taking a step away from the barrier. His pale eye was wide with pure, unfiltered terror, showing absolutely no signs of his earlier arrogance.
My heart pounded against my ribs. I stared at the vacuum dome, remembering the exact words Sensei had spoken to me back at the Grand Hall.
I remembered why he had chosen me for this squad in the first place. He knew that even against impossible odds, even when facing absolute defeat, I would still choose to step forward and protect others.
That was exactly what I was going to do now.
I drew my steel training sword, the heavy blade gleaming in the lantern light. "We will," I told Ging, my voice steadying. I looked over at Saki.
She didn't hesitate. She drew her own blade and gave a sharp, definitive nod in agreement.
Tsume looked at us like we had lost our minds. "Are you serious?! Do you morons actually want to die!?" he shrieked, his voice cracking. "There's nothing we can do to save him, he's a goner!"
Before any of us could argue back, the alleyway illuminated in a blinding, searing orange flash.
A blistering wave of concentrated fire came roaring directly toward us from the left. We dove out of the way just as the flames incinerated the cobblestone where we had been standing seconds prior.
The second Yamata Clan member had recovered from the earthquake. He stepped out from the thick, hissing vapor, his katana wreathed in volatile, crackling fire.
He stood arrogantly over our scattered squad, the intense heat radiating off his blade making his light hair sway in the updraft.
He looked down at us, a wicked, bloodthirsty grin splitting his face.
"Let's have some fun, kids," he chuckled maniacally, in a raspy bloodthirsty voice.