Chapter 22 Strange Drunken Powers

(AUTHOR'S NOTE: SHIZU AND AZI ARE BOTH DRUNK AND SLURRING)

As Azi and Shizu exited Kajima's house. they took position in a Kajima's weapon testing area which was a large clearing covered in inch deep snow. The pair stood 10 meters away from each other and the sun's position showed that it was the mid afternoon.

Kajima told the two of them to only go one match and then moved to stand to the side to oversee their upcoming bout. He was worried that Shizu might kill Azi due to her drunken state, but knew that she would not risk the plan she had for him. 'This will be interesting, so for now I'll enjoy the show.'

Azi glared at Shizu with a ferocious look on his young face which got Shizu's spirit fired up as she found her wanting to wipe that smug and prideful expression from his face. Additionally, Shizu was not able to get into any good fights with other ordain knights and mostly hunted monsters for her father to support the stability of Kujyuri.

When she saw just how fierce Azi looked during the Kengiri fight and how he presently was, her battle maniac tendencies started to come out as a crazed smile crept onto her luscious red lips.

Shizu's eyes were open wide with an intense focus and a small, wicked grin could be seen forming at the corners of her mouth.

"ARE YOU READY AZI?" Asked Shizu. "I'M NOT HOLDING BACK SO YOU BETTER DO THE SAME."

"HAHAHAHA THIS IS GOING TO BE FUN." Azi laughed and swung the greatsword a bit in a provocative jest.

Off to the side, Kajima started to feel that a future headache was going to land in his lap and decided he should hurry this along.

"Alright, no use of foul moves or killing. Besides that...." Kajima paused to look at Azi and Shizu, then he shouted. "BEGIN!!!"

At the call, Shizu rushed forward with her katana to close the distance. She focused magical energies into her legs to increase the speed of her dash. When she was only a few steps away from Azi, she saw him take a defensive stance with the greatsword.

The greatsword Azi held was 6 feet long, was 6 inches in width, and 2 inches thick. The sheer size of the weapons was a joke, in fact Kajima had only made it in his free time to challenge his smithing skills to craft large weapons.

Never did Kajima think that anyone could wield it but to his surprise Azi was able to wield it with a single hand. He had no idea where Azi got this sudden strength and endeavored to find out. He soon got his answer as a blue glow came from Azi's veins. They started to emanate from his arms and hands in response to him moving the greatsword around to defend himself from Shizu.

In the next moment Shizu swung her katana and was locking her blade against the flat of Azi's greatsword. They were locked for a few moments, but this did not last long as Azi cried out a war cry as he pushed and parried Shizu's katana to the side.

With the blue glow becoming brighter, Azi attacked with his sword in a vertical slash aimed at Shizu's katana.

She attempted to recover her stance to then parry but was unable to act due to the heavy push that Azi delivered which broke her balance. She then saw her katana's blade get sliced into two pieces as Azi's greatsword passed through it like a hot knife through butter.

In a matter of moments Azi's blunted weapon somehow sliced through the katana.

With one piece still in her grip and the other piece now laying on the ground, Shizu and Kajima again gawked at what they had witnessed. They had no idea how Azi was able to do this with a blunt weapon but before they could ask Azi cried out in gleeful cheering.

"HAHAHA I TOLD YOU I COULD TAKE YOU ON. I WIN. HAHAHAHA"

Shizu pouted and retorted in a childish tone as she waved a fist at Azi. "NO FAIR, I DEMAND A REMATCH. THIS TIME LET ME USE MY OWN WEAPON."

"FINE, I'LL TAKE YOU ON AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WANT."

Before the two could do anything rash, Kajima walked up to them. "Wait! I said only one match, we still have work to do today."

"DON'T WORRY KAJIMA!" Shouted Shizu, as she patted her chest in assurance. "I'LL COVER THE COST OF YOUR LOSSES TODAY. SO HOW ABOUT YOU STAY AND BE THE WITNESS TO MY VICTORY."

"NOT IF I WIN." Rebutted Azi.

Shizu glared at Azi and Azi did the same. The pair's drunkenness had allowed both of their competitive spirits to go unchecked as it seemed like imaginary sparks were flying.

Kajima sighed and felt that he would be really behind on a few commissions if he missed today's work, but he knew it would be more trouble to deny them their fight as they might just ignore him to go off and fight somewhere else.

He also knew that Shizu could just use the silver seal to order him to comply, which was highly likely due to her drunken state of mind and somewhat childish underlying nature. Sighing again, he resolved himself and nodded in acceptance.

Retrieving her metal umbrella from the house while the two glared at each other, he tossed it to Shizu. "Alright but you are going to pay me back later for this and it's going to be with interest. The same goes for you Azi."

Their glares still locked on each other, they nodded and then began to position themselves for another fight.

"THIS TIME THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT! PREPARE YOURSELF AZI!"

To Shizu's proclamation, Azi smiled arrogantly as if victory was already assured which served to only fuel Shizu's growing fury.

"BEGIN!"

At Kajima's call, no one moved at first since Shizu took up a defensive stance and waited for Azi to attack. Pondering a bit on if he should go first, Azi decided to be the one to get the exchange going as he wanted to see what he could do on the offense.

With surprising speed, Azi ran forward at a speed a bit slower than Shizu and closed 10 meters distance in a few seconds. In response Shizu opened her metal umbrella to defend herself from Azi who did not strike forward with the greatsword but instead with his fist.

The veins on his fist glowed an even brighter blue color as it impacted Shizu's umbrella. The hit was so hard that a shockwave ran up her arms and the sound of metal creaking was audible. Likening the sound to the screeching of metal, Shizu noticed that the umbrella's metal pieces started to slightly deform from the force of his punch.

Before the umbrella yielded to the strike, Shizu backstepped in an attempt to ensure that her weapon was not destroyed.

The umbrella was custom made to her specifications and it took a large amount of money to maintain and make. The only one that could repair and make such a weapon was Kajima as he was not only trusted but was also talented in making unique weapons that pair well with its user.

Not wanting the weapon to suffer too much damage, Shizu kept to defense but instead of blocking she began evading Azi's amateurish strikes.

Unfamiliar with the weapon in his hand, he swung wildly with great speed as he added a couple punches. He jabbed, slashed, swung, and punched forward in an organized flurry. At times Azi would accidentally hit a tree and it would be jaggedly sliced by his swing.

As the fight continued, Azi soon broke some of the nearby boulders and trees as his attack became frantic and uncontrollable as he was getting impatient. But, his movements were still powerful as they hefted so much force that his leather boots left deep imprints in the ground and when he struck the earth on accident it would become slightly cratered.

As Kajima witnessed the strange power and strength exuded by Azi, he was worried that Shizu would not be able to handle him but noticed that she had a big grin on her face. 'Oh no! I think Azi flipped that switch of her's.'

"WHAT'S THE MATTER AZI? WHY CAN'T YOU HIT ME?"

"SHUT UP YOU PSYCHO."

"OH HOW RUDE!!!"

Responding to Azi's derogatory comment, Shizu punched Azi in the face at full force after evading one of his wild swings that went a bit too wide. He was momentarily pushed back by the force of the punch but recovered quickly and proceeded to charge again at Shizu.

Landing a headbutt on Shizu's stomach which then knocked the wind out of her lungs, this made Shizu groan a bit in discomfort. "UGH, WHAT IS WITH YOU. WHY WON'T YOU GO DOWN."

"HAHAHA NEVER. I PLAN TO WIN."

For the next couple of hours, Kajima watched as the fight now became an absolute slugfest between the two. While Shizu wanted to initially wear Azi out, he seemed to never stop his attacks so she decided to really test who was stronger between the two.

Shizu purposefully stuck at Azi's face to hopefully knock him out, while Azi kept looking wildly swinging his weapon while punching out whenever he could.

Looking up to the sky, Kajima realized that their bout had gone on for so long that the sun had already started to disappear over the horizon.

With the moon on the rise, Kajima saw the two huffing and puffing labored breaths as they stood across from each other.

Azi was like a wild animal as he kept swing his great sword in an uncontrolled manner during the bout. His great strength was evident by the area as it now looked like a war torn battlefield. The ground was cratered, and pieces of rock and tree were spread across the ground.

While Azi had the upper hand in physical strength, his speed and technique were outclassed by Shizu's years of training.

She had honed her skill with the blade since childhood and was a prodigy in the eyes of the citizens of Kujyuri. She won a hard-fought sparring match against her father which was a key moment in her life as she was only 12 at the time.

At that age, Shizu was given command during one of the previous wars and earned enough merit on the battlefield to earn herself the position of Ordained Knight of Kujyuri.

The bodies she had piled up during the war terrified her enemies as the sight of a 12-year-old child with blood-stained clothes as she sat atop a mountain of corpses had ingrained itself into her next batch of subsequent victims.

With years of technique and her natural speed to boot, Shizu easily evaded the attacks from Azi's sword. But what caught her off guard was Azi's trickiness.

During the fight, Azi would fake Shizu out and change up his attack style. Instead of attacking with the greatsword, he would throw out a punch or a kick or a headbutt at random moments. Whatever Azi thought he could use, he used it. At one point, he even packed a snowball to throw at Shizu.

These attempts sometimes took Shizu guard but she was able to retaliate and landed clean hits onto Azi's exposed flanks, but it looked as if it had no effect. Azi would just shrug them off and show no sign of pain. Kajima had noticed this and thought that Azi must have gotten so drunk that his feeling of pain was likely dulled down to an extreme amount.

In reality, Azi had innately learned to dull his senses on instinct from his time in the unknown black void. His memories of his time there were like a bad dream and he didn't really know if what he experienced was real or not.

It was now the start of the night and the pair of fighters were standing apart from each other as they had both back stepped away to take another breath after going for another exchange of blows. Azi had stabbed the greatsword into the ground and was leaning on it for support.

The stars and moon helped to illuminate the area, and Azi could see Shizu across from him.

Shizu stood up straight on her two feet but had a noticeable amount of sweat pouring from her face. They were both bruised up and scratched up by each other's attacks but they both did not take any lasting wounds.

In Shizu's mind, she felt she could end this now as Azi looked as if he was at the limits of his stamina. After a moment of contemplation, she thought.

'Why not.'

And used her trump card.

She withdrew the katana from the handle of the umbrella and wielded both the umbrella in one hand and the katana in the other. This was Shizu's style of dual wielding not two swords, but her unorthodox metal umbrella and standard katana.

This allowed her to make use of the blunt force of her umbrella in concert with the slashing and thrusting attacks of her katana. Azi noticed her change in stance and responded by withdrawing the greatsword from the ground.

He took up a mock sword and shield stance with his left arm raised as if it was a shield and hefted the greatsword to point it towards Shizu. This was an unbalanced stance but Azi compensated as the power of his blue glowing veins appeared to intensify on his legs and arms.

Shizu thought to herself.

'His stance is a defensive one, but he lacks his shield. He must be trying to fake me out again by pretending to go on the defensive. He will likely use the sword to block and parry, so let's see if I can slip in with speed.'

A few moments of silence passed between the two and then a sudden impact rang out.

Shizu dashed with as much speed as she could that left deep imprints in the ground and was now only a couple of paces away from Azi. She began to swing out with the umbrella to attack his side and was expecting her strike to land.

With her focus now on aiming her attack, she failed to notice that Azi had preempted her and backstepped to changed his stance. Both of his hands now gripped the greatsword in a kendo stance as he blocked Shizu's umbrella strike with the flat of his blade.

Her first strike then got parried and Shizu could see that Azi had taken a step back. Not letting him get away so easily, she chased and sent a flurry of attacks with both her katana and umbrella. As the strikes assailed him, all of them were fruitless in their endeavor as Azi deftly evaded and parried Shizu's onslaught.

'He's moving like Shizu.' Is what Kajima thought as he then brought a hand to his chin in contemplation.

"Did he learn it by watching Shizu fight? Or did he practice some martial arts in the past?"

As Kajima pondered aloud, Shizu was taken by surprise by this sudden increase in agility and evasion on Azi's part. Her focus was slightly dulled from her surprise and in a moment of inattentiveness, Shizu had swung with her umbrella carelessly. It missed Azi by a hair's breadth but was too wide which left her open to attacks.

Noticing this, Azi closed in and quickly slashed down at the opening he saw. He intended to hit her in the side so she would get blown away into the snow a couple paces away. Even while drunk, he still held onto his conscious to ensure that his strike would not kill her.

Her focus coming back, Shizu slightly moved her katana to intercept and was successful in making it in time. She was able to block Azi's heavy slash but, like the fight earlier in the day, this caused the katana to break.

With that Kajima declared. "MATCH END. THAT IS ENOUGH FOR TODAY!"

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