Anyone could see it was over. And yet, the Demon snorted raggedly, letting out a cry that sounded almost like laughter.
Ikaku’s brow furrowed in confusion.
“Ah… Ahh, ha, hahaha… A chance… This is… my chance.”
“What’s so funny? You find this situation amusing?”
“You… kept me alive… to get information… out of me…?”
Retsu Shido, now the Minotaur, should have been mindless. He should have been nothing more than a beast—a rampaging monster that might even turn on its own allies.
But now, in this moment, on the true brink of death, he had somehow regained his sanity.
Searing pain cut through the haze, shocking him back to consciousness. He’d had a sliver of awareness even during his rampage, so he instantly understood that he’d been driven to the very edge.
Well, I’ll be damned… Ikaku Akamuro, you’re something else. I never imagined you’d be this powerful. Imagine being so utterly overwhelmed by someone with no mana… Is this truly the potential of a mortal body and pure technique?
He’s strong. Damn strong. So strong I want to applaud. But it’s because you’re so strong that I’ve finally been cornered.
And because I’m cornered, I can finally control this demonic power with my own mind…
Retsu Shido had an ace in the hole—a trump card of all trump cards, usable only once in his lifetime. He’d always believed he’d never get the chance to use it, since dropping his disguise and revealing his true demonic form meant losing all control.
“The kith… of Homura… are reborn… in flame…”
“What did you say?”
The Minotaur erupted in flames. Explosively.
“TO BURY MY SWORN ENEMY!”
The name of the power bestowed upon Retsu Shido was Final Blaze. A martyr’s brilliance is greatest in their final moments.
Thus, a believer on the verge of death without having fulfilled their duty could burn away their life for one last chance to strike back.
With a great burst of fire, the Minotaur’s severed muscle fibers began to hyper-regenerate. He had little more than ten seconds before his own body burned to ash.
But in that time, the Demon could recover its full power. No—this was the heat of a final, brilliant flash, a power that transcended all limits.
The heat from the dying Demon's explosive flare seared the moisture from Ikaku’s eyes. The pain was like having his eyeballs scraped with a coarse file.
He couldn’t open his eyes. He’d lost his sight.
Ikaku stumbled back two, three steps. In contrast, the blazing Demon regenerated its body in a mere five seconds. Then, it lunged.
Reacting to the killing intent, Ikaku fought back with his eyes still closed. But he failed to fully react to the Demon’s wild swing, and his axe was knocked from his hand.
“GRAAAAAAAAGH! AKAMURO IKAKUUUUU! KEEPING ME ALIVE… WAS YOUR MISTAAAAKE! I’LL DRAG YOU TO HELL WITH MEEEE!”
The burning Minotaur was cloaked in heat of several hundred degrees. A temperature no living flesh could approach.
Fueled by a sense of omnipotence, the Demon reached out with its flaming hands to deliver the final blow.
With both eyes closed, Ikaku’s brow tensed—he parried the grasping hand and drove a single fist into the burning Demon’s throat, not flinching from the heat that could easily burn flesh to the bone.
“Gah?!”
The Demon coughed up a gout of burning blood. It was an impossible, unbelievable counter.
Yet Ikaku’s assault didn’t stop.
Starting with the single fist to the Adam’s apple, he struck the philtrum, the jaw, the solar plexus, the groin in a series of blindingly fast and precise blows.
Eightfold Soulfist Secret Art: Fivefold Core Thrust.
This was more than just a counterattack.
It was an impossible, unbelievable full course.