Chapter 109: Two steps forward… one step back (part 1).

In the depths of a dark forest, several sparks of light could be perceived.

Not only that but the sound of metal clashing was also plaguing the forest, every second.

As soon as the sound of metal clashing was heard, the sound would immediately intensify, as a cacophony created by 2 blades clashing against one another seemed to be never ending.

Several sparks of light and crescent moon-shaped arcs of light, and tree branches being sliced apart soon destroyed everything in that area.

Creating a gigantic cloud of smoke.

However, from the smoke soon came a single shadow, followed by another.

They seemed to be heading down the same direction, however as the light of the moonlight reflect on their body, it became clear that those shadows were no shadows at all.

But two individuals moving at extremely high speeds.

One of those said individuals, was a man clad in black dashing at full speed and the other was a woman in a dark and green outfit, trying to catch up to him; in hot pursuit.

It became clear that there was no escape for the man, who was none other than Homura in his adolescent form.

He was running away because he was the one being cornered.

So he wanted to put some distance between him and his foe.

However, he was incapable to shake her off by running alone.

So with a swing of his blade, he cut down a tree.

Bisecting near its root in a single strike as it then immediately began to fall down.

A feat that he could only dream of, in real life but in this simulation he was simply that strong. 

Nonetheless, the feat he exhibited seem to have been for nothing.

The distance between them was too short for it to work.

The woman was only a couple of feet away from Homura.

Before the tree managed to hit the ground she was long gone.

But crushing her under a tall tree trunk wasn't Homura's plan.

He simply wanted to delay her for a moment, even if it was for a nanosecond.

They were in a virtual setting.

Their stats had been equalized, so they both were capable of the same feats, but that also meant that they had the same speed of movement.

Running in a straight line at fast speeds wasn't gonna change anything. The terrain was borderline infinite, new areas would be created as they ran.

So in theory they could run forever without ever catching up to each other, but by cutting the large tree Homura confirmed that a small distance, a minuscule distance, had been added in between them.

The gap between them could easily widen if he kept making the terrain harsher to traverse.

Seeing this, Homura swung his sword wildly; no different from a madman.

He proceeded to cut everything in front of him to delay the woman chasing after him.

Tree branches, rocks, tree trunks… anything that could be cut in his path was cut down; in a single powerful strike.

His blade cut everything as if it were a hot knife cutting through butter.

It didn't take him much effort so it as good as anything else.

Especially if it could be used to plague her field of vision.

Since she could not see from her left side of her patch due to the eye patch that she wore.

But instead of feeling distressed, she was slicing through everything in her path and avoiding anything that she could with minimal effort and swift movements.

It almost felt as if it was some type of martial art dance that she was performing in order to move so swiftly, there were no wasted movements in every muscle twitch her body performed.

Homura having activated his sharingan could only admire, how well someone like her was able to control her body to such a degree.

It was almost inhuman how mesmerizing her movements were.

A literal work of art.

Not that Homura cared about none of that, he was busy with several things on his mind.

He was trying to copy her movements but since she was a woman and himself a man, not each of her moves would fit him since they have different builds, especially when compared to his body size.

As a child or an adult.

-?!!!

But that train of thought was easily interrupted by his foe.

As Homura looked towards her, the swordswoman, deflected one of the stone pebbles in the air and sent it towards himself.

Seeing this Homura avoided it by moving his head slightly, the sharingan could easily grant him the visual acuity to avoid something like that and at that speed.

However, as the pebble left his field of vision, several other types of projectiles soon came flying toward his direction.

Realizing that he had been tricked, Homura, had no choice but to perform a backward high jump with a single leg to get out of the way, and land on top of a tall tree branch nearby.

He immediately jumped on the next tree branch nearby as he had seen her scaling the tree that he landed on and clearly intended to catch up to him, but instead of leaving empty-handed; he made sure to slice in half the tree he landed on and did the same for tree branch he was now ready to jump off.

So in the split of an instant 2 sharp sword strikes from his blade managed to fell down a huge tree, before he land on another tree branch belonging to a different tree nearby.

However, something incredible happened before he had the chance to cut down the the tree he landed on to move to the next.

The tree he had cut down prior, was split in half further,  and then was split in half once again into four perfectly equal sections.

-*gasp*

A shocked Homura couldn't help but let a single gasp as he realized what had just occurred.

It wasn't that cut the tree into  4 perfectly for equal sections in the span of an instant.

Useless to say that it was the one-eyed woman.

All he saw was four flashes of light and then the tree happened to split itself up,  and with so much force that it felt as if it had been split by some divine force, especially since the leaves began flying all over due to the power of her sword swings.

Homura had no time to be awestruck as the wind pressure affected him to and he stabbed his blade on the branch beneath his feet to not be blown away.

Nonetheless, it was an astonishing display of power and technique; but far from the end.

As she then used and scaled the left side of one the split section of the tree and jumped with so much force that it almost felt as if she were flying, and only to land on the tree trunk that Homura had just cut to then use it to propel herself towards himself.

Homura's sharingan was able to catch every single one of her movements because he was captivated by her actions and barely avoided her attack by jumping back on another tree branch a few meters over behind him.

Although he was nonetheless left with a nasty wound on his face that almost took his left eye as well.

However since this entire world and everything within it was all fabricated he felt no pain.

So he grabbed his blade with both hands and prepared to cross swords once again.

Running was useless.

Homura only ran away because he wanted to form a strategy since nothing he did in the past worked.

Running away was also deemed worthless, it was obvious that trying to shake her off his tracks was impossible, rather, it was outright dangerous.

Her attack just now was her way to tell him that there was no use running anymore.

That much was clear.

Just remembering her movements in the past, it certainly convinced him that it was indeed the truth.

It was incredible how she would avoid everything in her path while using everything she could to get an advantage.

She was certainly more adapt at fighting than him.

She caught on to Homura's trick and now was using everything she could use as a literal stepping stone to propel herself toward Homura.

If she were a real person, her strength and wit would be far more terrifying.

He wouldn't dare face her without a plan, and some type of advantage that allowed him to kill her in a single strike, however, the match was set that they had everything to be equalized.

Besides their height and clothes, everything about them was equal.

Everything, except for skill.

But Homura did it because he wanted to use his sharingan to copy her fighting skills, without any other thing getting in his way.

The sharingan seemed to be able to activate in this space as well as if he was inside a genjutsu, it was a stroke of good luck.

One he needed to capitalize above all else.

Since the information and techniques he learned became more easily for him to remember but also practice in the real world.

However, there was a demerit.

His chakra was also getting drained.

Perhaps at an even faster rate than it would when he uses the sharingan in the real world.

Nonetheless, a day inside his subconscious mind was only a few minutes in the real world, so it was worth the trade.

But it also meant having fewer fights.

He only fought the foe in front of him a bit under a hundred times.

Usually, he could fight foes for about thousands of times and do other things between each session.

Sadly, not this time but he could always try again in a few days to avoid stressing his brain and mind too much.

-(She's strong…and I only have a few minutes left)- thought Homura as he looked at the counter next to his right eye showing him how much time he had left before he would wake up.

Looking at his opponent one more time, Homura, calmed his mind.

-(Yagyu Jubei…one of the strongest swordsmen to have ever been born in J*pan…she does live up to that reputation, but seeing that she is a reimagination; she might even surpass the real deal…If we thought at our correct parameters I would have died in less than a second.)

The name of the woman in front of him was none other than Yagyu Jubei.

A master of the art of the blade, myths had elevated him beyond normal humans.

As Homura said, she was not the real Yagyu Jubei but just some recreation from a show he watched once in his previous life.

When he chose her as his opponent he didn't think much about who she was; she was simply the next opponent on his list he had to face.

But she ended their fight so easily that he had understood, how strong she truly was.

He chose opponents that were more or less just normal humans, and had no outrageous powers that could destroy everything in a single sword strike.

However, she was definitely portrayed as beyond human by the game's system.

But when compared to some of the monsters within this simulation, she was indeed "human".

Regardless, Homura believed that it was worth the challenge.

Even if took years, for him to truly master her form he was willing to know every single one of her techniques and replicate it.

Thanks to the sharingan and the system, he was ready to do it.

And since it is safe to fight her inside of his mind as many times as he wanted he had to take the opportunity.

Her fighting style was so different from the shinobi he knew.

She definitely was different from the way Might Guy and other shinobi he has seen training.

She prioritizes counterattacking and avoiding strikes, rather than attacking and parrying.

Those are traits much more difficult to pull, only a master in their fighting style would take on such a risk, but her agility and swift movements made something incredibly difficult almost seem easy.

It was simply extraordinary.

But Homura at this point wanted to kill her more than he wanted to learn from her.

His emotions were intensified by his sharingan, and his previous cold and analytic mindset became colder as he wanted to see how far he could corner her.

So as all the leaves around them inevitably fell to the ground both shinobi darted toward each other as they jumped off their platforms.

Their clash, caused sparks to appear as they kept grinding against one another, neither able to shake the other off due to having equal strength.

Inevitably both started falling to the ground beneath them but instead of panicking, they kept clashing their blades in a uniform way.

This was because of Homura's sharingan and C's input, he was able to replicate his foe's movements almost instantly but he himself also suffered due to not having to match his opponent half of the time.

So they kept clashing and clashing.

Ever so often tiny injuries appeared on both of their bodies.

By the time they landed, Homura's right shoulder had been impaled by Jyubei's sword while she avoided his by a hair's breadth. Although, he managed to draw her blood slightly.

He was unable to stab her in the shoulder but caused a small injury on her arm.

However, it was clear who had won their quick exchange.

- (I can't lose! Not yet!)

Homura shook off Jyubei's blade away as he took some distance, she did the same as well both opponents resumed changing their form.

Homura's whose right arm no longer could hold a sword released his right hand from the handle and held his sword with a single hand.

He bent his knees and arched his back, flipped, and then held his sword to the side.

Making sure the edge of his blade faced his opponent.

A posture often used by ninjas since it prioritizes speed over defending.

At the end of the day, he was a ninja, not a swordsman.

And Homura was lucky that he was ambidextrous, otherwise, he would never attempt such a fighting style in real life or even in this virtual space.

It didn't fit his way of fighting, but he was a ninja so using one-handed weapons was just basic for him at this point.

He was more used to fighting speedy battles than drawn-out fights when he had to face someone with a short-range weapon.

Jyubei, also took held her sword with a single hand and took a similar but different posture from Homura's.

Since Homura had let go of trying to defend, since they had similar speeds, she would have more trouble avoiding him.

Countering him, and dealing one swift strike was the obvious choice over defending.

It was no problem for her because this version of Yagyu Jubei was as much a swordswoman as she was a kunoichi.

So, although she didn't utter a single word during their fight, her face never lost the cold but confident glare that she displayed.

Something, that was getting on Homura's nerves since the beginning of the fight.

So his glare intensified showing that he was ready to strike, as he step forward.

From Homura's form it was clear that it would all be decided by a single strike.

Jyubei had no other choice than to follow his example or dismiss it altogether.

But she chose to reciprocate Homura's intention and agree to it by doing the same thing.

He didn't know what kind of character she was nor did he care, he simply wanted to win so as long as she was going to face him he didn't care.

Regardless of her intentions of seeing Homura as a fellow warrior or mocking him, the fight had been set that one blow would end it all.

-….(Jyubei)

-….

Both Homura and Jyubei stared at each other for a full minute without moving an inch, but then as if both parties decided to move at the same exact moment they dashed towards each other and swung their swords.

A bright light and the sound of metal clashing were heard.

Both ninjas were a few feet apart from each other, but soon enough one of them had their left drop to the ground.

Chapter end.