1.69: Fighting DeathI took the stairs five at a time. Looking more human made me feel more normal.

  I had legs and feet beneath me again, even if I was still a noh-face on the inside. Rui giggled on my shoulders, drumming on my helmet as we practically flew upward.

  At the top, a tightly sealed door blocked the nding. I drew my hand back, marshaled my chi, and shed out.The strike detonated.

  CLINKCRASH

  The door blew apart in a shower of splinters and metal fittings. I vaulted over the remaining steps. A shattered china hutch y wrecked across the entryway, its remains scattered with the door’s debris. My moment of disorientation dissolved as I recognized where we stood… it was Mitsu’s kitchen, gleaming with high-end steel cookware and expensive appliances polished to a smug shine.

  Of course he had a hidden dungeon behind the hutch.

  I gnced at Rui-chan’s face. “It gets dangerous here… Cheer me on.”I lifted her from my shoulders and set her down gently.

  That was the moment Mitsuhiko walked in.

  Rui nodded once and slipped behind me.

  “Ah. You’re free, I see.” His lips curled. “And you look as foolish as ever.” His cold eyes narrowed to slits. “How did you manage to escape? That cell was reinforced with titanium steel.”

  I smiled coldly… not that he could see it behind my helmet… and dropped into a fighting stance.

  He barely had time to register it.

  I unched myself at him with a velocity I hadn’t possessed in any of our previous encounters. Silver light ran along my limbs as my fists blurred into a machinegun rhythm of pinpoint strikes. Mitsuhiko gasped, scrambling to intercept my blows. His speed was the same as before… mockingly fast, infuriatingly precise… but this time I was faster.

  This time, I knew it.

  I pressed him harder, seized an opening, and shot a hand forward. My fingers hooked his colr. With a twist of my center of gravity, I flung him over my shoulder and sent him face-first into his own gleaming pots.

  I dropped low and charged to follow up with a crushing heel drop.

  BAM BAM CLINK CRASH

  His prized cookware exploded outward as I vaulted onto the kitchen isnd beneath the hanging rack of pans. Spinning, rotating faster and faster, I brought my leg down like a silver comet. My heel connected with his torso and drove him into the marble. The thick countertop shattered beneath the impact.

  “Uggggh!”He spat a gout of blood. Terror flickered across his eyes… but only for a heartbeat. His shadow erupted upward, wrapping around him to cushion the worst of the blow. In the same motion, he vanished.

  Every muscle tensed. I nded lightly on a broken sb of wood and marble, then flipped backward on instinct. Upside down mid-flip, my noh-sight caught it… a pit of darkness blooming beneath me.

  Enenra.

  I twisted my center of gravity and extended my arms like a dancer, letting the motion carry me higher. The pit rippled, its baleful eyes gring from the shifting dark. If it was darkness, I would answer with light.

  My hands fshed. I focused my chi, amplified it with sheer consciousness, and fired. A burst of silver energy nced straight into the pit.

  Enenra screamed… shrieking, metallic, ear-splitting.The kitchen vibrated with its cry.

  I nded on the far side of the isnd, retreating several steps. Watching my footing mattered. Missing a single shadow’s location meant death. I couldn’t see it… until the pool of darkness materialized beneath me again, grasping to pull me elsewhere.

  “Go, Susumu!” Rui yelled, dancing for me like a tiny cheerleader powered by pure fury.

  Even a gnce at her filled me with more energy than any cultivation technique ever could.

  I leapt high and spun. Enenra chased me upward, trying to swallow me. Midair, I twisted, kicked off the ceiling, and drew my fist back. Charging directly into Enenra was terrifying… every instinct screamed against it—but I didn’t hesitate.

  When it came to consciousness power, I refused to be beaten.

  My armor bzed like a jade sun.

  I drilled downward, striking Enenra with all the force I could muster. Silver light cshed with roiling darkness. My first punch became a flurry… both of my fists hammering, each blow sinking deeper into its liquid body. It was like striking water, except the water hated me and wanted me dead.

  Blunt force wouldn’t be enough. I needed more reach… spread… light.

  I extended my fingers and poured more spiritual power outward. My palms exploded in silver bsts that sheared through its mass and shoved it backward. Enenra shrank, shrinking faster with every strike.

  And then…A ripple took form behind me.

  It shifted dimensions.

  It reappeared at my back and struck like a tidal wave of smoke and shadow. There was no counter until I hit the floor. I nded hard, braced, and guarded myself as its substance spshed around me like a bursting oil slick.

  “Susumu!!!” Rui screamed. “Caramelldansen! I’m dancing as hard as I can for you!”

  I turned toward her. She had a silly, frantic smile pstered on her face, but her eyes were tight with worry. She was doing the full dance… her hips swaying, her hands flicking above her head like she was casting a buff spell of pure chaos.

  My heart thumped.

  Then Enenra surged up and swallowed the light around me.

  Its darkness smothered everything. Rui’s voice grew faint, muffled through the suffocating mass. Its substance crawled across my armor, digging in deeper… atoms unraveling, fibers starting to come apart. Molecur disintegration.

  So he was getting serious.

  I screamed… not from fear, but fury. This was nothing. Nothing compared to the crushing pressure when my tears filled that entire cell. Nothing compared to being imploded by grief so dense it bent the world. I’d been broken apart before. I’d survived worse.

  And this was NOT going to kill me.

  I roared and detonated a surge of silvery energy. It burst outward like a star going nova. Enenra shredded away from me in a widening ring. My entire being strained to keep myself from coming apart.

  “You can do it!” Rui-chan shouted. “Susumu, fight… AHHHH! HELP!”

  My blood went cold.

  Mitsuhiko had reappeared. Rui dangled in his grip, his fingers digging into her face as though he meant to crush her skull like an overly ripe fruit. Tears prickled behind my noh-face. Rui’s eyes locked onto mine… narrowed and fierce.

  DAMN IT. NO.

  Vision dimming from strain, I saw only fshes, but I didn’t need sight to know Rui was in danger. Mitsuhiko’s physical strength was monstrous… bad enough for any normal girl, catastrophic for someone like her.

  I pulled every drop of consciousness power I could reach.

  “YOU WILL NOT HURT HER!”

  My armor bzed with a silver light so intense it scorched the air. Not enough. Not enough! Something inside me tugged… an instinct, a half-memory from Reiko, or maybe from somewhere else. It was a desperate act.

  I redirected everything.

  FOOM

  A massive burst of spiritual energy ripped forward, carving open Enenra’s mass. The creature lunged to close the gap. I hurled myself through the hole before it sealed, feeling its edges scrape across my armor like burning ice.

  This thing fought exactly as I remembered.And those memories weren’t mine.

  Skirmishes… long, harrowing battles along the Yamanote tunnels. Reiko-chan’s memories. Her pain. Her terror. Her stubborn, beautiful refusal to die.

  She had never beaten Enenra. She could only outrun it.

  I nded in a crouch and sprinted straight toward Rui.

  Mitsuhiko still held her. His hands cupped around her skull, poised to snap her neck with a twitch. Rui met my eyes again… still showing no fear. Only intent. A warning. A pn.

  She wagged a finger subtly at me where Mitsuhiko couldn’t see. Her body stayed limp, her arms hanging at her sides.

  A signal.

  I had only a heartbeat to interpret it.

  A ripple opened behind me… Enenra’s shadow rushing close. I lunged forward on instinct.

  Mitsuhiko lifted one hand, smirking coldly. “Even if you reach us, you won’t make it in time. Don’t insult me by trying. Fool. Don’t you understand what an incredible creation Enenra actually is? It is the incarnation of my own soul.”

  He loved hearing himself speak.He always had.

  “Your soul is nothing,” he sneered. “A foolish noh-face, a nonentity. I, on the other hand, am destined for greatness. Did you ever have—”

  I tuned him out. There was nothing in his monologue I hadn’t heard before.

  His grip tightened on Rui’s head.She lifted a hand… just a little…when I stepped past a fallen pot.Her finger shot downward. Then flicked.

  A cue.A direction.

  Mitsuhiko kept droning, oblivious.

  Rui’s expression softened into a quick, apologetic grimace.“Mitsuhiko-sama, please spare my life,” she said, voice trembling. “You’re right. Susumu isn’t worth anything. If you’ll let me go… I’ll—”

  Mitsuhiko’s eyes narrowed. He flung her to the ground like trash and stomped on her back. Hard.

  Rui gasped, but she still didn’t scream.

  “It seems no one genuinely cares about you at all,” he said.

  Something snapped in me.

  “You underestimate me!!!”

  I roared and unched myself at him… but Enenra snapped around my torso like a vice. The impact smmed me back, pinning my limbs, smothering my strength.

  “Enenra cannot be destroyed,” Mitsuhiko said calmly. “It is death itself. You can’t win against it. Death comes for all mortal beings.”

  His shadow darkened.Enenra constricted.Rui y beneath his heel.

  “Not one of your precious ‘friends’ cares for you. This little one was practically gleeful as she offered you up.”

  Relwing