The line that called death split the space apart.
A slash that could cleave through anything was blocked by an immortal barrier.
Metal shrieked like it was tearing at the ears, ringing out again and again to decorate the instant.
"As expected, this isn’t going to be easy. If I force my way through, it’s not impossible, but..."
Kirishima thought as he precisely caught Johannes’s swift movements and blocked the incoming slashes.
His body hadn’t been harmed, as though the blade had failed to surpass the limits of a tool, but the same was true on this side.
He was clearly more accustomed than most fighters to dealing with weapons.
Kirishima, who reinforced his entire body with [Hardening], was basically wearing armor, making him, in a sense, the natural enemy of swords and blades.
But Johannes was no master for nothing. The moment he realized Kirishima’s body was that hard, he immediately changed tactics and abandoned speed-based attacks.
He didn’t even bother using the back edge of his two-handed sword.
Instead, he swung out powerful slashes with superhuman strength, in a manner closer to handling a true two-hander.
"You really aren’t ordinary. So what’s so lacking that you’re running around with those guys?"
Kirishima asked as he deflected another downward strike that looked ready to split the ground itself.
His opponent, his white hair fluttering, answered calmly.
"As I said, I have my own circumstances. If you beat me, I’ll tell you. By then, this will have lost all meaning anyway."
"Is that so? Then I’ll have to win."
Kirishima felt the distance opening up in an instant and changed tactics.
Among superhumans, he was especially balanced and fast on his feet, circling around in a wide arc.
Fists that pierced through the instant shot out again and again through his footwork, and shockwaves of power that could dent steel burst forth like a torrential downpour.
Johannes did not panic.
With a calm swing, his sword split apart the air pressure rushing in with the wind.
Even after the slashes repeated more than dozens of times in the blink of an eye and finally cut down every attack, his expression remained serene.
But the words that left his mouth were filled with a clear tremor that did not match his face.
"Truly... amazing. You said you’re fifteen? What absurd talent. Honestly, I’m a little envious. If I had talent like yours, would my life have been different? Or perhaps if my Quirk had activated for something other than holding a sword..."
His voice was calm, but there was a deep bitterness in it.
Kirishima stopped moving, still on guard, and asked, "Someone like you doesn’t need to envy another person’s Quirk, do you? I may not be that old, but I’ve met and fought my share of strong people. With skill like yours, where no opponent can easily be found, there’s almost nothing you couldn’t do."
"No, no. You’re still young too. What you said is wrong in two ways. First, no matter how strong you are, there are plenty of things you still can’t do. I’m sure you didn’t mean it ignorantly... but it wasn’t a very fitting thing to say. Second, I was not a strong person. I only reached this level less than ten years ago."
He planted the silver-white sword into the ground and spoke.
A bitter voice filled the wrecked space, flowing through the broken light like a stain.
"I certainly loved swords, and I loved swordsmanship, but that was precisely why I could never become first-rate. You’re a boy from a faraway country, so you may not know, but the people of my homeland do not know me well either. And yet I worked as a Hero for more than forty years. Still, I doubt there are many who know my Hero name."
Kirishima narrowed his eyes at that.
How could the public not know someone that strong?
Of course, he hadn’t reached this level for all that long, but that didn’t mean he must have been extremely weak before that.
In the end, the ones who are good at martial arts are the ones who keep getting better.
No, martial arts were exactly the kind of thing where the truly exceptional only got stronger.
Unlike other fields, where you get multiple chances, in martial arts the weak die off and disappear, while only the strong survive and keep on being strong.
So it was strange that someone who had survived combat all the way to that age would remain unremembered.
As if to answer his question, Johannes continued.
"It seems that in other places it has already all but vanished, so there is no one left even to speak of it, but where I came from, this is how they described swordsmanship: too strong to subdue, too public to kill."
Johannes gave a bitter smile as he spoke of the words that had been lodged in his chest for his entire life and tormented him.
He had realized his Quirk late and trained his way into becoming a Hero, but there was not much he could do.
The sword was the problem.
A blade sharpened to a blue edge cut through the human body far too easily.
That would be true even for ordinary people, and for him, a superhuman whose power ranked among the highest, the sword he wielded needed no explanation.
No matter that the target was a Villain, there was no way his actions of casually severing arms and legs would be tolerated.
But going underground was a problem too.
Because of the nature of the sword’s companion, Johannes’s ability only activated on objects he recognized as swords.
It didn’t react at all to small daggers or kitchen knives, and it didn’t react to other bladed weapons like spears or axes either.
He had even heard of blunt weapons without an edge, but that was useless too.
It only responded to true swords, so he could not operate in the shadows.
In modern times, carrying a sword around was far too conspicuous, and sword wounds were just as obvious.
"In the end, I was an in-between Hero. I spent my whole life swinging a sword with that kind of caution, afraid that a Villain might be hurt more than necessary. That was the chain that bound my hands. Maybe that’s why. The strong swordsman you see before you only became complete after retiring from being a Hero. Once I broke free of every chain that suppressed me and swung my sword freely, I understood. I had walked the wrong path my entire life."
Johannes looked like he might collapse and scatter at any moment.
But Kirishima did not let his guard down.
No matter the appearance, a master was a master.
Johannes looked at Kirishima, who kept his nerves taut, and smiled faintly.
"Fortunately, you’re still young and already moving in the right direction. So I didn’t want to use this. Honestly, I dislike it too, since it was given to me by someone who barely seemed human. But there’s no helping it."
Johannes reached toward the shadows from before.
A long, narrow bag flew to him.
He drew a sword from it.
Seeing the crimson blade, Kirishima muttered under his breath, "Iterus..."
"You recognize it. Or should I say, of course you do? You’re not so stupid that you wouldn’t recognize the same material as your own body."
Kirishima was dumbfounded and, without realizing it, wondered if Yaoyorozu had somehow created Iterus with her Quirk and sold it off.
As anyone could tell from the controller on her head, which cost a ridiculous thirty million yen despite its tiny size and mass, Iterus was expensive.
And that was only thirty million because it was an alloy.
If it had been pure Iterus, three hundred million yen would not have been strange at all.
But the sword Johannes had taken out now looked like pure Iterus, as unbelievable as that was.
A sword made by using the entire mass of an Iterus that was horrendously difficult to make and even harder to process.
In older times, it would have been called a divine sword or a demonic sword.
And now that thing was trying to cut Kirishima down.
"Hah. Looks like you’ve made a lot of money."
"No. As for this sword, to be honest, I’m a little ashamed of it. If I explain any more, I’ll be breaking the promise I just made, so I won’t tell you, but I didn’t buy it with my own money, and it’s not exactly a respectable object either. Still, when a warrior faces a sworn enemy, can he afford to pick and choose between what he likes and what he doesn’t? If it’s strong and sharp, you use it."
"That’s a glorious thing to say, but I’m not glad to hear it."
"Heh. A lie. Stop speaking with your mouth curled up like that."
At Kirishima’s words, Johannes lightly chided him.
Kirishima, who had been smiling without realizing it, only then noticed that he was enjoying the situation.
He did not deny it.
"I suppose it’s because facing a warrior is such a difficult thing. Especially in an age where martial arts have died."
As soon as he finished speaking, Kirishima kicked off the ground.
Again, a sword strike came flying in, perfectly matched to his speed, but it did not land.
His body came to a sudden stop as if ignoring the laws of motion, and the red blade swept past his face.
At that moment, Kirishima launched a second charge into the empty space.
The attack began from the distance he had closed in a single step.
As a jab shot out like lightning toward Johannes’s head, the old man lowered his gaze.
This one missed.
Exactly the distance Kirishima had entered, Johannes retreated backward.
At the same time, the sword that had passed to the left came back along the same path as if defying time.
Metal shrieked, and sparks flew from Kirishima’s arm as he blocked the side attack.
"You blocked that?"
The sword that had been knocked away by Kirishima’s right arm flew back in the opposite direction like a swallow.
He lowered his center of gravity and tried to catch the back-edge slash from the left.
But the sword, not carrying much force, swung back again and drew another arc to the right.
While the sword flew in at a speed invisible to the eye and the hand that moved at an equally invisible speed knocked it away, neither man’s lower body was resting either.
With perfect balance maintained, Kirishima pressed closer, while Johannes fought to keep the distance, and both men’s legs ravaged the ground in a violent exchange.
Flooring shattered and unknown plants were swept away, yet neither man wavered.
The perfect offense and defense continued as if it would last forever.
Watching Kirishima close in while trailing a red glow, Johannes moved his hands busily and admired him even as he fought.
'Fifteen years old, and Japan has a monster on its hands. All Might was a monster too, but...'
He still did not know whether Kirishima’s words were true or false.
But he thought there was no reason for Kirishima to lie to him about it.
When he thought about what he himself had been doing at that age, he could only sigh.
It wasn’t that he was jealous.
He didn’t think it was because he was old.
The idea that humanity grows in proportion to age is nothing but a fantasy.
If there was one thing he had learned from watching countless people grow old alongside him, it was that being an asshole did not make you human just because you got older, and not being human did not mean you would become one with age either.
Some people simply become what they are meant to become, and some never do.
He had only learned this after holding a sword for so long and walking forward one step at a time like a turtle.
Just because you are in the lead now does not mean you will still be in the lead when you die, and turning back does not necessarily mean you are slow.
After a difficult, winding path, he had only reached this level after his hair had turned white, but as a swordsman, he had no great complaints about his life.
It would be a lie to say he had no regrets, but he had at last seen the light, even if late, and that was enough. Dwelling on the past was unlike him.
"Oof. My old knees are bad enough as it is, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t go after them."
He shifted his gaze upward and said this while neatly avoiding Kirishima’s foot as it reached for his knee.
Kirishima did not answer, but Johannes could tell it was not because he lacked room to breathe.
For now, neither he nor Kirishima was fighting with the resolve to be drenched in blood.
That did not make it a friendly sparring match, either.
If anything, it was a somewhat more practical bout.
Johannes hardened his resolve as he looked at Kirishima, who seemed like a little demon.
As much as he wanted to, he did not want to take the life of this admirable young man.
An age where martial arts have died, an age where Quirks, those supernatural powers, trample and suffocate all of history’s old ways.
People who still polished the old arts naturally felt a sense of kinship and comradeship.
But Johannes had not come here as a swordsman.
He had stepped forward with a sword in hand as the grandfather of an angelic child who was far too young to die.
Because this was the only thing an incompetent grandfather could do, he had joined this dirty business even while denying the self he had spent his whole life becoming by cutting down Villains’ limbs.
No matter what disgrace he had to bear, even if this became a shackle that dragged the rest of his life into the mud, he had to do it.
He leaped back and lowered his sword.
Kirishima did not pursue this time either.
"You really are incredible. Maybe you’re the strongest of the future. But I have my own circumstances too. I can’t afford to go down here. So be careful. Please don’t die."
"I have no intention of killing you, so you don’t need to worry. Of course, I have no intention of dying either. I have far too much to do."
At Kirishima’s oddly offbeat reply, Johannes gave a bitter smile and took a middle guard.
It was a stance suited to defense, but not for defense alone.
Hiding his fangs within the most ordinary and flexible posture, he moved first this time.
The moment the floor beneath his back foot cracked, he was already within sword range of Kirishima.
Kirishima’s arm, which had faithfully blocked every sword strike like a shield until now, reacted to his movement and moved.
He did not resist the motion that pushed the blade outward in a circle.
The sword, smoothly turning away, rose upward according to his will and took on the shape of a bull’s horn aimed at Kirishima.
At the same time, the pushed-out blade finally broke through the barrier and touched Kirishima’s forehead as he closed the distance at maximum speed.
The two eternities collided with sparks.
"Yeah. I thought it would be like this."
Unfortunately, Johannes’s sword could not pierce Kirishima’s [Hardening].
In that split second, in the moment where everything seemed to stop, he looked at Kirishima’s blazing eyes even with the blade pressed to his forehead and spoke without the slightest panic.
When sword meets armor, the armor almost always wins.
That was why he had prepared a second horn.
Johannes’s right hand, which had been behind him, smashed the pommel of the frozen sword.
The halted advance began again.
With the sound of metal tearing, blood sprayed out.
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