Chapter 255: Pride
"Well done, Sui-Feng-taichou...you've bested me fair and square..." conceded Yamato, spreading her arms and falling onto her back with a contented smile despite the dozens of puncture wounds covering her body. She hadn't been eliminated outright, but after exhausting the last vestiges of her Conqueror's Haki, she no longer had the strength to stay upright, much less continue the battle.
'For all the good it does me...' groaned Sui-Feng internally, holding her severely mangled and bleeding left arm after getting caught by just one of Yamato's attacks. She had landed dozens of her own, including several point-blank Hado, but the horned woman's durability was beyond reason. At times, it was like her entire body was comprised of metal...
"I believe this is where I step in..." remarked Kiba, dropping down from where he had been seated atop a partially destroyed wall. Like Sui-Feng, he had been able to overwhelm his opponent due to the difference in their speeds, but since it wouldn't have been very chivalrous to interfere in the two women's clash of wills, he observed from the side.
"You...what happened to that incompetent fool I call a subordinate...?" asked Sui-Feng, forcing herself to stand as tall as her diminutive frame allowed as she glared daggers at Kiba.
"If you're asking if I cut him down, you can rest assured," hummed Kiba, offering his most gentlemanly smile as he materialized a black and white longsword in his right hand and revealed, "He announced his surrender at sword-point and was safely ejected from the battlefield. I swear it on my honor as a Knight."
"It's not as though I was concerned..." countered Sui-Feng, raising her right hand across her body and making a slicing gesture before her form flickered, becoming semitransparent.
Feeling a sensation of static spreading across the right side of his body, Kiba turned just in time to barely deflect Sui-Feng's attack—aimed at his right shoulder.
"I see you were holding back during our previous exchange..." remarked Kiba, straining his senses to their limit as he backstepped, his own body flickering as he stepped back, reappearing several meters from where he had started.
"I'm not in the mood for banter..." asserted Sui-Feng, her eyes narrowing as she produced three, five, and finally nine afterimages known as Speed Clones, sustained using her Reiatsu. She couldn't maintain them for more than a few seconds, but with her near-perfect control over her Reitsu, she could mask her presence to make discerning which of them was the real her nearly impossible.
"Then I should get serious as well..." responded Kiba, his smile becoming marginally more prominent, hinting that he was up to something. Sui-Feng noticed this, but she also knew that a moment's hesitation could spell her end, leading her to fully commit as she and her clones assailed Kiba from all sides in what she perceived as slow motion.
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