Chapter 60 - Mr. Fool 3

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Hello, reader. I have to apologize. The following chapter is quite a mess. Today has been a stressful day, so my mood is off. Anyways. I'll fix this after I write the ne xt chapter.

Thank you.

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(Continued from previous chapter)

"I'LL WASH THEM WITH WATER AND SOAP OF COURSE!" Mr. Fool laughs at Atsushi's question as if his answer is obvious.

"I'LL WASH THEM FOR DAYS, AND DAYS, AND DAYS, AND DAYS…" He then starts chanting and dancing.

"But there are also good men inside, right?" Atsushi asks.

Mr. Fool suddenly stops dancing and wears a thoughtful expression.

"THERE ARE…" He nods.

But soon after, "BUT THERE ARE MORE BAD MEN!" He points at the building once again.

"Well. Why don't I talk to them? I'll tell them to take a shower more often. So, for now, why don't you come with me?" Atsushi asks.

"NO!" Mr. Fool harrumphs.

"No?" Atsushi is taken aback and frowns. His clansmen reported that as long as one does not express malice to Mr. Fool or others, Mr. Fool is easy to talk to.

"Why?" He asks.

"BECAUSE I HAVE TO MAKE SURE! BAD MEN SAY THEY CLEAN, BUT THEY NEVER DO. THEY PROMISE, BUT THEY ALWAYS LIE. THEY ALWAYS TRICK ME. THEY ALWAYS TRICK PEOPLE." Mr. Fool unlike the cheerful tone he has been using, speaks with a more serious tone, his childish tone somehow manages to sounds cold, expressing suppressed anger.

"IF THEY CAN'T CLEAN THEMSELVES, THEN I'LL BURN THEM LIKE TRASH." He adds.

*vooommm*

Atsushi's eyes widen and chills climb up his spine. He is sure, despite only feeling it for a split second, that a suffocating amount of bloodlust just slipped out of Mr. Fool.

He curses inside in regret, wishing that everyone took Mr. Fool much more seriously the moment he appeared.

The man in front of him, ignoring the childish nature aside, is a man who definitely bathed in battle and blood.

The chilling murderous aura he just felt from Mr. Fool, is something he only felt from his grandfather's generation; a generation that fought in the great war and after it, survived the humanity's chaotic warring period amongst each other.

Remembering the murderous aura his grandfather once expressed, he tries to wrap his mind around how a man like Mr. Fool can have such bloodlust at this day and age when wars are nothing but passages in history books.

He himself, a clan head, and has lived for more than seven decades, experienced no wars no matter how much he would have wished as a young man to fight in one.

"J-just who are you, Mr. Fool?" His question slips out of his lips without thought as he tightens his hold on his naginata.

"MOTHER SAID I SHOULDN'T ANSWER HARD QUESTIONS." Mr. Fool smoothly refuses to answer.

"When were you born, Mr. Fool?" Atsushi's curiosity however is at an all-time high. He feels that Mr. Fool's identity is too special and not only because of Mr. Fool's attire.

"ON A SPECIAL DAY! WHEN THE GREEN LEAVES TURNED YELLOW, AND WHEN THE SUN BECAME A RING OF FIRE IN THE SKY!" Mr. Fool proudly says.

"…An eclipse during the autumn…" Atsushi mumbles to himself and tries to remember when he saw it.

"Atsushi-sama. He was probably born in the autumn of 1987. Making him age 33." He then hears a report from his earpiece. 

He sighs. He cannot believe that someone so young fights like someone beyond his years.

"If you want to entertain the thought that he is even older than you, then it is possible that he was born during the autumn of 1941, making him almost 80." His clansman adds.

Atsushi almost scoffs at the report, but remembering Mr. Fool's bloodlust, he nervously entertains the thought.

"Then how many times did you see the sun become a ring in the sky, Mr. Fool?"  He then asks.

"TWICE!" Mr. Fool brags.

"Twice? I've seen more then." Atsushi nods, at least thankful that he is not facing an old monster.

"OH… YOU'RE JUST OLD SO YOU'VE SEEN MORE!" Mr. Fool wears a disappointed face.

Atsushi brushes aside the slight on his age, and instead thinks of how to deal with the situation from now on.

Primarily, he wants to resolve the situation without a fight to avoid potential collateral damages that will especially affect the National Diet Building just below them.

And if Mr. Fool is not putting up an act, Atsushi feels like he can calm the situation down.

"Mr. Fool, why don't you come back to my home as our esteemed guest?" He invites.

"GUEST? ME?" Mr. Fool tilts his head.

"Yes. We can provide you a good bed and delicious food." Atsushi offers.

"HAH! LIAR!" Mr. Fool, simply points his finger at Atsushi in an accusatory tone.

"I'VE HEARD THAT LIE MANY TIMES BEFORE! AND THOSE LIES ARE TOLD BY BAD MEN! BAD MEN LIKE THOSE DOWN THERE." He adds as he points at the National Diet Building once again.

"No. I am truly having my people preparing a room and a feast for you." Atsushi says, not stating what kind of feast and what kind of room he is preparing to contain Mr. Fool.

"AHA!" As if a light bulb lights up in Mr. Fool's head, he exclaims in realization.

"YOU ARE LYING. JUST LIKE BAD MEN. I'LL MAKE YOU PAY FOR TRYING TO TRICK ME!"

Mr. Fool, with that insufficient warning, immediately dashes towards Atsushi.

Atsushi, who has been preparing to fight since he arrived at the scene, manages to react by summoning a hundred naginatas, and throws them at Mr. Fool for interception.

Mr. Fool, as if incorporeal, appears to have simply phased through the wave of fiery and sharp naginatas, and continues his charge.

After successfully closing in to Atsushi, he throws a wide middle kick to Atsushi's midsection.

Atsushi, then blocks the kick with the pole of his naginata.

He underestimated Mr. Fool's power however and *CLANG* the pole of his naginata snaps, and Mr. Fool's kick continues on to land on his midsection.

Atsushi is thankful that he is wearing his armor, or else, he would have been rocked. And he knows that being rocked for even a second is deadly after seeing Mr. Fool's physical capabilities and almost mystical evasive skills.

Using the force from Mr. Fool's kick, Atsushi propels himself backwards to a safe distance and replaces his broken naginata with a new one.

While doing so, he immediately cancels the naginatas he threw that missed Mr. Fool, summons 120 of them back again, and points them towards Mr. Fool as he tries to come up with a battle plan.

He decides to be more careful than his usual fights. After all, he has seen how Hiroki, a junior clansman who has a similar superioris power to his, was defeated.

Mr. Fool being able to figure out Hiroki's limits in under a minute, to Atsushi, is a huge testament of Mr. Fool's battle sense and something that he should be extra wary of.

Even though he has currently a limit of 540 naginatas and a 72-meter radius, unlike Hiroki who has a current limit of 360 spears and a 30-meter radius, he decides to use not even half of his maximum range.

He figures that with Mr. Fool, or anyone else clever enough, will be able to see his limits just as easy as the clown saw Hiroki's, if he does not fight carefully.

With those things in mind, Atsushi furrows his brows in concentration.

The 120 naginatas around him all start spinning. Unlike Hiroki who can only use the rotating spears technique to repel attacks, Atsushi's version of it with his naginatas, can be used as a powerful attack.

Atushi figures that Mr. Fool is a master of evading stabbing attacks after seeing Hiroki's fight, so he wants to try if hacking and slashing attacks will work better.

He sends his naginatas, spinning in different angles, one after another to Mr. Fool's general direction.

The next moment, he is not surprised that Mr. Fool managed to duck or jump over them with ease.

Instead, as soon as his spinning naginatas crossed 30 meters from him, he cancels them, making them fade out.

He then retreats once again seeing Mr. Fool charge after dodging.

And as he retreats, he once again throws spinning naginatas at Mr. Fool, and cancelling them out again once they are 30 meters away from him.

His ease at measuring distance and cancelling his naginatas are now almost second nature to him due to his years of doing so.

Unlike Hiroki who already exposed his range to many people, Atsushi made it sure that his range is a secret not even to his closest allies. And he made sure of that by doing what he is doing now, not using the maximum extent of his abilities.

After more cycles of him attacking while retreating and Mr. Fool dodging while pursuing, Atsushi realizes that Mr. Fool has gotten more comfortable in defending.

What makes him almost speechless and frustrated however is that Mr. Fool has incredible body awareness he has never seen before in anyone.

It is as if Mr. Fool's limbs, torso, and head, have a mind of their own, allowing them to as if move independently, dodging his naginata by hairs breadth.

Atsushi decides to regroup.

He cancels all the naginatas he sent out, and summons 120 of them again to surround this body.

This time, he arranges his naginatas in a way that it makes him look like he is inside a fiery sea urchin, with his naginatas acting as its spikes.

The naginatas also spin in place, not like before which they look like deadly propellers, but in a way that mimic how drills spin.

This time, Mr. Fool stops in place in mid-air, looking stuck for the first time since the fight began, wearing a serious and pondering expression.

Atsushi also sighs in relief.

Suddenly, Mr. Fool dashes down towards the building.

Atsushi's stomach sinks, thinking that Mr. Fool is giving up on their fight and instead turned his attention to the members of the congress.

The next moment however, to Atsushi's relief and confusion, Mr. Fool simply rips out one of the three-meter-long flag poles on top of the building, removes the random flag hanging on it, before swinging it around, as if testing its weight.

Atsushi swallows his saliva at Mr. Fool's actions.

Mr. Fool's simple swings of the flagpole might be simple to other people, but he saw how unfaltering and crisp those swings were. This makes him suspect that Mr. Fool is also a skillful spear or staff user.

As if to prove his observations right, Mr. Fool goes back up mid-air, stands in place, and assumes a doublehanded spearman's stance.

Atsushi wants to test Mr. Fool, and he throws a random speeding naginata.

Mr. Fool simply swats the naginata away by hitting the flat of the blade of it with his flagpole, with ease.

Mr. Fool's simple display is enough for Atsushi to know that Mr. Fool is more than just a skilled spearman.

He also notices that the flag pole on Mr. Fool's hand, despite its supposed inferiority in quality to the metal his naginatas are made of, is not bent after intercepting his attack.

Before he can continue to once again assess the extent of Mr. Fool's abilities, Mr. Fool suddenly jumps to the side, then to the other side, then upwards, then downwards.

"Here it is…" Atsushi swallows nervously.

This is the only thing he has seen in Mr. Fool's fight earlier with Hiroki, that he has no idea how to deal with. Mr. Fool's unpredictable zigzagging in the air.

He knows that he is not much stronger than Hiroki physically, so he gets nervous.

To add reassurance to his safety, he then summons more naginatas to surround him, making his already dangerous layer of 120 spinning naginatas, double in number, becoming more compact.

After that, he bites his teeth as he summons more naginatas, making the total number of his naginatas present, three hundred sixty; the most naginatas he has used in a long time. With 240 naginatas for defense, and 120 naginatas for offense, he goes into action to disrupt Mr.. Fool's eye-quaking acrobatics in the air.