Water Magician-Chapter 652 : Ryo vs Marie II

Chapter 0652 Ryo vs Marie II

Translator: Jay_Forestieri

Editor: Tseirp

“Ugh...”

Ryo immediately formed an ice membrane to stop the bleeding.

But the damage was greater than he had imagined.

His right arm had been neatly severed between the wrist and the elbow.

Still, that was an inevitable sacrifice.

“I meant to cut off your head, but you put your arm in and changed Kotetsu’s cutting trajectory... that arm must hurt, right?”

“It hurts a lot.”

Marie said with a grimace, and Ryo answered with his face contorted in pain.

Of course, it hurt—his arm had been severed.

Depending on circumstances, he could even die from shock!

“Ryo, you swing a Japanese sword too, so you know. You can’t wield it with one hand.”

“Yes, I know.”

Ryo had thought about it before.

He couldn’t swing properly with one hand.

That realization came after the Akuma Leonore had cut off one of his arms.

At that time, the arm was cut and he cleaved the opponent’s neck at the same moment and won... but this time was different.

Although overwhelmingly disadvantaged, the fight continued.

“Surrender.”

“Surrender?”

Marie proposed surrender and Ryo frowned.

“What happens if I surrender?”

“Well... I’ll ask the leader to spare your life.”

Marie said that, but her expression was grave.

Which meant...

“What are the odds that the request will be granted?”

“...Ninety percent against it.”

“That’s no good.”

Yes—there is no Geneva Convention here banning the mistreatment of prisoners.

Even if he surrendered, it was more likely he’d be killed.

Made an example of.

“But if you resist, I will kill you one hundred percent.”

“I’ll resist and bet on that remaining one percent!”

“There isn’t even one percent left!”

Somehow, the banter of joke and retort flowed.

“You’ve got nerves to joke in this situation.”

“I train daily with a powerful retort partner. This kind of thing doesn’t feel like a crisis.”

Ryo said that and looked toward his retort partner, Abel, who was watching from the window.

Marie followed his gaze and looked at Abel.

“This world is beyond me.”

“Taking the world by storm with manzai* isn’t easy.” (TLN: Comic duo)

“Is that so... so you intend to conquer the world with manzai?”

“Yes, of course!”

Ryo’s seemingly pointless conversation was, naturally,

a way to buy time.

What time for?

(I’ve mostly assembled the form!)

He then chanted:

“<Ice Create: Right Arm>”

At that instant, an ice right arm sprouted for Ryo.

“...Huh?”

Marie was understandably surprised by the unexpected development.

Ryo tested it lightly by clenching and unclenching his fist.

(It’s impossible to move each finger individually. With magic, I can only alternate the palm between open and closed states. Even though I reused technology from the ice golem, it’s a hurried makeshift...)

He was quite dissatisfied with it, but it was better than nothing.

Ryo’s fundamentals were kendo.

With Murasame, he gripped firmly with the left hand and guided motion with the right.

Even with only the left hand, he could swing the sword... though speed would be lacking, and he couldn’t produce attacks that bypassed an opponent’s defenses.

Still, even if far from perfect, having this ice arm should make a big difference.

“You actually grew an arm of ice. And the hand moves properly.”

“Of course. It’s not an exaggeration to say I cultivated some alchemy for this very purpose.”

For some reason, Ryo said this confidently.

“When did you reincarnate into this world, Ryo?”

“Huh? Well... about twenty years ago?”

“Oh, you’re young!”

“Young? Um... Marie, you look young too.”

“I’ve probably been around for about four thousand years.”

“...Excuse me?”

Ryo emitted a bewildered, high-pitched sound.

“Basically, phantomkins don’t disappear.”

“Don’t disappear?”

“Even without a body, they drift in the world like a soul and eventually inhabit another body.”

“That’s incarnation?”

“Exactly. So you can have lots of experiences. I think it’s interesting.”

“This world has far too many long-lived races.”

Ryo said with a slight shake of his head.

“Well then. Let’s try out that arm you grew.”

“No, a draw would be fine with me...”

“I’ve taken no damage.”

“Right.”

Marie sheathed Kotetsu again.

She bent her knees, lowered her hips, and the air around her changed.

Ryo assumed his usual seigan stance.

He turned on <Active Sonar> and closed his eyes.

Slash.

Again, Ryo’s right arm was cut off.

This time it was the ice one.

“I knew you were rushing in, but I couldn’t react fast enough.”

Ryo’s face twisted with frustration.

He immediately regenerated the arm.

“If I cut faster than you can react, you won’t be able to respond.”

Marie said with a faint smile, but when she saw Ryo regenerate his arm, she frowned.

“That’s endless, isn’t it?”

“It’s the fruit of efforts I’ve lived through.”

Ryo shrugged in reply.

In truth, his arm had been cut off many times now...

“So that means I have to cut off the head.”

“No, there’s always a way to settle things amicably.”

“You said settle amicably, but that won’t work.”

“That’s not the kind of settlement I meant...”

Even though they both originated from Japan, the two were perhaps talking past each other.

How difficult it is to reach a resolution that satisfies everyone.

“You just want to be the funny man, don’t you?”

A swordsman’s retort murmured from beyond the window, but the two did not hear it.

Then.

Suddenly— Ryo’s charge initiated the third round.

He judged that it would be hard to defend against another battoujutsu*. (TLN: Blade drawing technique)

Naturally, Marie understood that too.

“So you decided you can’t just defend.”

“Attack is the best defense.”

Ryo put on bravado at Marie’s words.

He knew that seizing the initiative by attacking wouldn’t necessarily overturn the disadvantage.

But he also understood that if he kept just defending, he’d be worn down.

In the past, he had sometimes managed to turn the tables with ironclad defense against stronger, faster opponents.

But even those opponents were not so different from Ryo technically.

This opponent was different.

As a phantomkin, her strength and speed exceeded those of the human Ryo.

And her swordsmanship skills were superior to his.

An undeniably high level of skill.

Higher than Ryo’s.

How to beat such an opponent was wholly unclear.

If he couldn’t envision surviving on ironclad defense, then entering defense would mean slow attrition.

That was all he knew.

So he tried attacking...

“So you’re good at defense too.”

“Of course.”

Marie was not a swordsman only specialized in offense.

Her defensive technique surpassed Ryo’s as well...

Ryo kept attacking.

If he kept pressing, she wouldn’t get the chance to create distance.

If he kept attacking, he might avoid taking the battoujutsu strike.

If he kept attacking...

“You can’t win with that backward mindset.”

Marie dodged Ryo’s diagonal strike with body work and thrust from low left to upper diagonal.

Ryo had no choice but to jump backward to create distance.

He could only retreat to evade that thrust.

“It feels like the flow of this fight is like dancing on Marie’s palm.”

“Interesting expression.”

Ryo said in frustration, and Marie gave a faint smile in response.

Yes—experience made the difference glaring.

Knowing how an opponent will move in response to a given attack... that’s accumulated only through combat experience... prediction.

Ryo thought the biggest gap between him and Abel was in combat experience.

Prediction.

When the outcome is uncertain, and the fight becomes one of brute force, it’s nearly impossible to defeat an opponent skilled at anticipating moves.

(I know. I know, but...)

Ryo murmured inwardly.

He knew what to do to avoid it too.

(I know. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.)

Yet now Ryo steeled himself.

You cannot predict what will come.

You cannot know what will happen.

How to avoid that?

Simple.

Force the fight into a pattern where a certain move will certainly come... and then aim at that ‘certain’ move.

A move that always comes in Marie’s swordplay.

A move that always comes after she repositions.

And that move is the strongest technique.

(I have to aim for the battoujutsu.)

He had intercepted it once.

But that was when he still had his real right arm.

Now the right arm was a temporary ice arm.

It inevitably reacted more slowly than a living arm.

With such a right arm, he had to intercept battoujutsu.

That made him hesitate; he even tried initiating attacks himself...

(The die has been cast.)

As if responding to Ryo’s decision, Marie sheathed Kotetsu.

She bent her knees, lowered her hips, and the air changed.

Ryo raised Murasame above his head in an unusually high stance.

(<Dynamic Steam Mine II: Active>)

He kept <Active Sonar> on and, as before, closed his eyes.

The sword flashes crossed.

Marie’s godspeed step-in, her ultra-fast draw.

Ryo stepped forward to meet it.

The timing shifted.

Ryo stepped forward and turned his body to the right.

He moved into the position where Marie’s draw would strike from the front.

Battoujutsu draws and releases the sword with only the right arm.

Its sword speed becomes considerable...

Toward that Kotetsu, Ryo brought down Murasame with both hands.

Kotetsu was blown away.

Yes—Ryo’s aim was the weapon.

If he could blast away her weapon, the opponent couldn’t attack.

Under normal circumstances.

“I am also a magician.”

After a faint light of mutual annihilation, Marie’s voice came from directly behind—a sound that would make anyone nervous.

“<Ice Coffin>”

He had no time to check behind him.

But he knew she would attack with magic.

So he had to raise his defense even if it meant encasing himself in ice.

However, that meant abandoning movement.

Remaining immobilized.

“<Freya Sphere>”

A wall of flame with a ten-meter radius around Ryo formed.

From that wall, it contracted toward the center, shrinking toward Ryo’s ice coffin.

“Now layer it! <Fusion Plasma>”

Plasma at millions of degrees instantly evaporated everything.

Everything vanished.

The sphere of flame dissipated.

There was nothing inside.

Not even the ice coffin...

Marie breathed with her shoulders heaving.

The moment Kotetsu was blown away, she had deployed the four special flight rings attached to her limbs at full power and maneuvered through the air.

When she wrapped around behind Ryo, wind-attribute magic from the flight rings touched the water-vapor mines—but only lights of mutual annihilation sparkled incessantly.

She blocked his escape path with <Freya Sphere> and evaporated it with <Fusion Plasma>.

The successive use of such heavy magic is strenuous even for a phantomkin said to possess inexhaustible magic power.

She must have consumed most of her internal mana temporarily...

“That’s a win, so it’s fine.”

At that instant, Marie’s head was cleaved off.

An ice blade also plunged into her chest and stopped precisely a little before the heart.

“I win. Marie, surrender.”

Ryo said quietly.

“...I admit defeat.”

The severed head said.

In the next moment, Ryo pulled Murasame out of Marie’s body and dropped to his knees.

A swordsman leapt through the window.

“Ryo!”

“Abel... I won.”

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