Splintered wood and pulverized debris rained down over the wreckage where Toka had landed. Coughing softly, Toka slowly pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, wiping a smear of blood away from his nose with the back of his hand.
"I get it now..." he thought, his mind flashing back to the moment his first attack had connected earlier. He hacked out a dry cough, his eyes sharpening. "That...explains everything..."
A short distance away, Pico tilted his head, watching him mutter to himself. "Hmm? What are you chattering about over there?" With an exaggerated two-handed shrug, he taunted, "Are you just gonna stand there all day, or don't you want to save your friend anymore? Does my ability tremble you with so much fear?" he asked softly, a mocking edge to his voice.
Toka slowly rose to his full height. His voice started low, barely a whisper. "I get it now..."
Pico blinked. "Huh?"
Toka’s tone suddenly spiked, sharp and confident as he locked his gaze directly onto his opponent. "Your body..."
Pico’s expression tightened.
"With a body like that, no wonder you've got this much confidence," Toka smirked, a knowing glint in his eye. "You push your seikon density to a virtual point, allowing you to morph and phase your physical mass flawlessly. With a technique like that... it totally explains why you got so cocky."
Pico’s eyes narrowed into dangerous, icy slits. His voice dropped to a dead-serious register. "What did you say?"
"Don't get me wrong, I won't go so far as to call you names," Toka replied, he smiled at him, their eyes locked at each other. "I'm only stating my assessment."
Pico’s nostrils flared with sudden, sharp annoyance. "Alright, that's enough, kid." He dropped low, coiling his muscles and positioning his body like a spring ready to snap. "I think it's time I put an end to this little play."
Toka’s smirk never wavered as he slid back into his fighting stance, his seikon flow flaring to life.
"I was thinking the same thing, too."
Pico planted his foot hard against the stone floor.
"He's coming," Toka thought, bracing himself.
In a fraction of a second, Pico launched off the ground, the displaced air whistling in his wake. He darted up into the towering, tree-trunk-thick root stems, bounding and leaping from different angles across the dark cavern ceiling.
Toka’s eyes darted rapidly from left to right, tracking his erratic trajectory. *He's probing for an opening...* Toka thought, gritting his teeth as he scanned the shadows. "If I try to use Matsukaze Shihai on him directly, he'll just phase right through it again."
Toka let out a sharp hiss under his breath. "With an ability like that, he's going to be one hell of a handful... I have no choice. I'll have to use that technique."
Suddenly, the massive root stems hanging from the cavern ceiling began to groan and snap overhead. Toka whipped his head upward just as huge chunks of wood rained down. Pico, launching himself from corner to corner above, was shattering the massive root stems and hurling them downward like missiles.
Dust and wood splinters choked the air as Toka scrambled, diving and rolling across the floor to dodge the falling debris. Whenever a thick stem came too close, he threw a punch with his seikon-enhanced fist, shattering the wood into pieces.
Amidst the falling chaos, a sudden, heavy shadow lunged straight at him. It was Pico, closing the distance in a flying tackle.
Instinctively, Toka crossed his hands in front of his face, bracing to block. But the punch never landed. Instead, Pico’s hands shot forward at point-blank range, wrapping around Toka's crossed wrists like steel bands, locking them together in an unyielding grip.
Before Toka could react, Pico heaved upward with monstrous strength, yanking Toka clean off the ground.
"AAAAARGH!" Toka screamed, a raw cry tearing from his throat.
Pico began spinning in a furious circle, using centrifugal force to hurl Toka through the air like a ragdoll. Toka’s body violently smashed through several surrounding root stems, the wood splintering against his shoulders and ribs.
With a vicious twist, Pico released his grip, hurling Toka straight toward a jagged cluster of protruding rocks along the cave wall.
CRASH.
Toka hit the stone hard and dropped to the floor. His seikon flow had flared just in time to cushion the worst of the impact, but his battered body still ached with blinding agony from the sheer concussive force.
He forced himself upward, staggering to his feet. But before he could even raise his guard, a blur of motion appeared right in front of him. Pico was already there, driving a lightning-fast punch straight into Toka's face.
The heavy blow sent Toka snapping backward, but reacting with pure combat instinct, Toka’s hands shot out as the fist connected, clamping onto Pico's arm. Refusing to go down without a fight, Toka twisted his weight and drove his own fist straight into Pico's face as a counter-strike.
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SPLAT.
The moment Toka's knuckles landed against Pico's cheek, the flesh bizarrely softened like wet rubber, stretching backward before violently snapping forward to absorb the momentum.
Toka's eyes widened in sheer frustration.
Before he could pull back, Pico ruthlessly exploited the opening, driving a devastating blow straight into Toka's lower abdomen.
A spray of spit burst from Toka’s mouth as his breath completely left his lungs. As a frantic surge of seikon rushed through his veins in a desperate attempt to stabilize, Pico whipped his body upward, unleashing a ferocious flying uppercut.
BANG.
The brutal upward strike caught Toka square on the chin, rocketing him backward with terrifying speed. He slammed straight through the cracked stone wall of the cavern, shattering the barrier entirely and tumbling out through the wreckage onto a wider, open stretch of ground on the other side.
Trembling from the searing agony radiating through his limbs, Toka slowly dragged himself up from the stone floor. His entire body screamed in protest, every breath tasting faintly of copper and dust.
A few paces away, Pico strolled forward, his expression shifting into something colder and darker. "You know..." he murmured, his tone dripping with a deep, menacing dread as he closed the distance. "I was really enjoying the little interaction we had... but I really hate it when someone makes fun of our body."
"Our body...?" Toka thought, the cryptic phrasing echoing in his aching mind.
Clutching his throbbing knees, Toka stared down at his battered legs, fighting the agonizing weight of his own fatigue. Realizing he couldn't take another direct assault in his current state, he gritted his teeth, forced his boots against the stone, and began slowly dragging himself backward into the shadows of the cave.
Pico blinked, a look of surprised amusement crossing his face. "Oh? You're running away?" He chuckled mockingly. "Come on now... I thought after all that big talk, you were actually going to do something."
Toka offered no reply, keeping his head down as he limped deeper into the labyrinth of towering root stems and dark stone corridors.
Seeing him vanish into the gloom, Pico’s smile vanished. His face hardened into a sharp, predatory mask.
"All right, then," Pico whispered. "If that's how you want to play... I'm game."
......
Jagged rocks crowded the narrow pathway, protruding from the walls and hanging overhead like crooked teeth as Pico walked deeper into the cave's gloom. The towering root stems had vanished entirely, replaced by the cold, barren stone of the very passageway Toka and his companion had traversed before stumbling into the danger zone.
Pico raised a hand to his mouth, cupping it as he mockingly called out into the echoing dark.
"Oh, Tokisora boy... where are you...?"
He walked a few more paces before coming to a sudden stop, letting out a sharp hiss of frustration. "I know he's up to something..."
He whipped his head back over his shoulder, eyeing the shadows suspiciously. "Maybe a surprise attack from behind...?"
Turning his head back forward, he shrugged dismissively. "Anyhow... it doesn't really matter. As long as I can sense his seikon energy, even if it's just a few meters away, any little trick or attack he tries to pull is completely fruitless."
With a confident smirk, he continued his steady march into the dark.
Just few meters above, half-concealed in the shadows of the jagged stone wall, Toka crouched in silence.
He bit his lip hard, fighting back the wave of nausea and pain as he desperately tried to regulate his ragged breathing. "Come on, damn it... of all the times in the world..."
Closing his eyes, he realized he had only one shot left. "It’s now or never. But I’ll need complete concentration..."
With trembling hands, he brought his fingers together into a precise seal. He touched his thumbs together, curled his index fingers inward, and joined his hands to form a small, distinct heart shape. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a long, deep, stabilizing breath.
Slowly, the air around him began to stir, a gentle wind swirling as a bright line of gradient red and green seikon energy materialized across his forehead like a glowing marking. From there, the energy crawled downward, slowly spreading across his skin.
As the density of his aura peaked, the glowing currents suddenly shifted direction, rushing upward toward his chest until a blinding, briming white light flared behind his ribs. Every ounce of energy in his body surged and pulsed directly into his heart, the surrounding wind vaulting into a fierce gale.
Then, with a sudden, disciplined control, Toka forced the immense density of his seikon to heavily suppress inward, compressing directly into his heart until the visible aura faded into a near-invisible shimmer.
His eyes slowly flicked open, glowing with absolute calm as he whispered a single, resonant phrase into the stillness:
"Shizukeki Kō..."
“Tranquil Light.”