Chapter 78 - Fumio Sparring

"I think we should stop?" Fumio stops swinging at Blade Tornado and asks.

"Yeah… I think we should." Blade Tornado sighs in relief as he collapses to one knee in exhaustion.

"Fuck. You're ruthless. I thought you'd stop once I can no longer maintain my blades." He complains.

"Well, you're lucky it's not my teacher who's here. Heh." Fumio thinks he is not as bad as Blade Tornado thinks.

During the spar, once he noticed Blade Tornado's gradual improvement in dealing with the sword, he wanted to see more. When Blade Tornado started to get tired and his movements slowed, Fumio adjusts his speed and strength accordingly.

'I think this is what boss feels when training us?' he chuckles internally, thinking about his rare but fruitful spars with Red.

"Yeah? Well I'm lucky then. I almost asked Old Phantom for lessons." Blade Tornado chuckles in relief.

"But… man how did you get so strong in just two months?" He asks about what has been bothering him the entire spar.

"I just regained my strength. It took me two months to rub off the rust." Fumio already predicted Blade Tornado's question and he has prepared an excuse.

"Ah. That's right. You're old." Blade Tornado can only pick on the age of Fumio's disguise as a minor revenge.

"Heh. Yeah. You should have seen me in my prime." Fumio rides on Blade Tornado's teasing to supplement his act.

"Still. Despite your age, you seem to have more gas in you than us. How are you not winded? You were swinging non stop for an hour." Fire Colossus, who has been quietly spectating the spar, chimes in.

Blade Tornado is surprised, just noticing that Fumio is not even breathing heavily.

"I had nothing to do but train. I'm in top shape for the first time in years." Fumio shrugs.

This gets a nod from the two.

"Right. Fire-san. Care for a spar?" Fumio asks suddenly.

He is curious how he will fare against a low tier B-Class Superioris, or maybe the other way around.

"You sure?" Fire Colossus wants to spar, but is concerned that Fumio is more tired than he looks.

"Yeah. I have plenty of gas left in the tank." Fumio assures.

"Then. Let me warmup." Fire Colossus tries not to look excited.

After all, he noticed that Fumio's fighting style is too clean. Something that he rarely sees in his opponents in the arena. He wants to try fighting who he assumes is a disciplined martial artist.

"Alright. I'll get out of the way." Blade Tornado, having recovered enough, walks to the edge of the room gladly, anticipating to see what else Fumio can do. 

A few minutes later, Fumio and Fire Colossus are now in the middle of the room, ready to jump at each other any moment.

*Fwahhh*

Fire Colossus takes the initiative. He covers his hands with huge fire gauntlets, assumes a peek-a-boo boxing stance and charges forward while weaving his body.

Fumio, this time, is not using his sword, and wants to make things more challenging for himself. He assumes a loose karate stance, slightly swaying from side to side, his weight not resting on one leg for more than a second, for a more agile fighting approach.

*Fufufufufufu*

Fire Colossus immediately throws a series of very quick jabs to establish range and gauge Fumio's reaction. Fumio simply retreats his steps, treading the edges of Fire Colossus's range. He is not intimidated by the hot ember gauntlet as he already expected Fire Colossus' approach.

Fumio also knows that even though Fire Colossus is a B-Class Superioris, the man's physical strength is not much higher than Blade Tornado's who is a high tier C Class. As soon as Fire Colossus pauses his jabs, Fumio takes a quick step and *whack* lands a low kick on Fire Colossus's thigh.

Fire Colossus is taken aback by the strength of the kick, but he endures it as he throws a strong right straight to Fumio's body. Fumio quickly meets the punch with an elbow, successfully blocking Fire Colossus's punch.

*Fwahhh* He is hit however by the hot blaze that came from Fire Colossus's gauntlet exploding.

"Tsss.." While he already expected it, he still closes his eyes to protect them from the fire.

He then quickly retreats to regroup.

While he knows he can be hit once or twice by the fire blast, he does not want to be hit consecutively by it. He has, after all, seen how the opponents of Fire Colossus suffer after being consecutively hit by the fire ability.

Fire Colossus meanwhile, catches Fumio's reaction, takes it as a chance for an opening, and pursues to maintain his attacking range.

"Tsk." Fumio realizes that even though he is physically stronger and faster than his opponent, he still feels his height and reach disadvantage. After all, he is only 170 cm tall while Fire Colossus is 190cm, with long limbs.

"Screw it." He curses inside and finally infuses a bit of his  spiritual energy to his skin, making them tougher temporarily. Then, he also infuses some to his feet as he executes a Hasegawa footwork that Red modified for him.

Blade Tornado's eyes widen as Fumio suddenly blurs out of his vision to his right. He did not expect that Fumio could get any more agile and fast. Before he can turn his head, *Thwack*, He is hit once again, but this time by a mid kick to his stomach.

He feels his organs get rocked, and he immediately takes a few steps back while keeping an eye on Fumio.

While watching Fumio earlier, and assuming that Fumio learned how to fight from "Old Phantom", he wants to minimize any openings as much as possible.

After all, with his three matches with Old Phantom, he learned that if he leaves even the tiniest of openings in his defense, Old Phantom can easily exploit it.

To his relief, Fumio pauses.

Fumio, meanwhile, is feeling proud. With just a bit of spiritual energy spent, he closed his disadvantage. While he already knows his strength, making a B-Class Superiori, one of the only ten thousand in Japan, retreat, is still a flattering sight to him.

Fire Colossus, remembering the speed Fumio just displayed, decides to get more serious. He then materializes his giant fire boots, covering his feet and legs up to the knees. The thickness of his boots also adds a few more centimeters to his already tall height. his height by even a few more centimeters.

Blade Tornado, watching this, is surprised. 'It's only been two exchanges… and he's already using his second level…'

Fumio meanwhile, after getting over a short-lived caution, is torn between infusing more spiritual energy to his body, or using his sword without the help of spiritual energy.

Ultimately, *shink*, he decides to draw his practice sword, and withdraws his spiritual energy from his feet, only leaving it on his skin for protection.

He figures that using spiritual energy in his movement and attacks is overkill compared to using just his sword.

The next moment, Fire Colossus and Blade Tornado are surprised at Fumio's next actions.

Fumio tosses his drawn practice katana aside, and assumes a one handed kenjutsu stance with just the scabbard. He is comfortable with using just the scabbard as it is just as long as a tanto, and can go all out with his swordsmanship without inflicting deadly damage to his opponent.

Fire Colossus would have felt insulted if it was not for Fumio's serious expression, and with the scabbard's metal tip giving him a small sense of danger.

With the two fighters ready once again, they charged toward each other.

*fufufufuffu*

Fire Colossus starts his assault once again and throws a barrage of jabs using his two hands. Fumio meanwhile is doing his best dodging.

While trying to gauge anything he can exploit, *Fwahhh* *fwahhh*, he cannot dodge everything and is forced to block the fire gauntlets with his sword, forcing them to explode consecutively, sending scorching hot air his way.

Thankfully, the spiritual energy he is infusing to his skin is enough to protect him from minor burns. Unless there is prolonged exposure of his skin to fire, he is not worried. 

As Fire Colossus reloads his hands with fire gauntlets, Fumio's mind sparks with an idea.

*Fdufufu*

Fire Colossus once again continues his barrage of punches.

Fumio watches closely and as Fire Colossus's left hand is retreating and right hand approaching, Fumio thrusts his scabbard to the retreating left hand while dodging the incoming right hand.

*Fwahhh*

Fire Colossus's left gauntlet explodes. With Fire Colossus's vision partially blocked for a split second, Fumio thrusts his scabbard to the fire gauntlet of Fire Colossus's outstretched right arm, making it also explode.

His rhythm broken, Fire Colossus is stunned for a split second. As soon as he recovers, he also feels his fire boots get popped by Fumio, and he loses his balance.

Feeling goosebumps, he quickly kicks his feet to the ground, propelling himself to the side as he does a shoulder roll on the ground, successfully distancing himself.

He then quickly faces Fumio's direction while covering his limbs with his ability once again.

Seeing Fumio not proceeding to attack, he tries his best to think of what had just happened.

Fumio meanwhile, is pleased that his idea worked. After watching Red and Fire Colossus's fights, he realized which weakness Red exploited to draw a convincing lucky win. That is Fire Colossus's vision being obstructed by his own ability.

Fumio does not have Red's reflexes to easily exploit the weakness, so he had to lengthen the process by waiting for one of Fire Colossus's fire gauntlet to be nearest Fire Colossus's face before popping it, covering almost the entirety of Blade Tornado's vision for a split second.

This allowed Fumio to pop the rest of the fiery things covering Fire Colossus's limbs. After making Fire Colossus lose balance, Fumio could have finished the spar, but he wants to try again if he can do it smoother.

"Let's go." Fumio taunts Fire Colossus…

A few minutes later, Fire Colossus feels his fire cuirass explode in his body, and as the fire clears, he sees Fumio's outstretched hand in front of him and he feels the hot tip of Fumio's scabbard pressed on his neck.

"Y-you win." He can only admit defeat.

He has always used his ability to both burn, and blind his opponents temporarily, but he did not expect that he too is vulnerable from it to some extent. His own fire obstructing his own vision, something that he only saw as negligible at best, and inconvenient at worst, has become a serious weakness he has to face.

After learning of it through his matches with Red, he thought that only Red can exploit it, but now that even Fumio, Red's student, also can, he is now seriously thinking how to deal with it, or at least hide it better from others.

While he can face being overpowered by superiori leagues above him, his pride will not  take it if weaker superiori can defeat him using his newfound weakness. 

*clap**clap**clap*

Blade Tornado starts clapping, breaking Fumio and Fire Colossus apart.

"Good spar." Fumio offers a fist bump to Fire Colossus.

"Yeah." Fire Colossus returns the gesture.

"How are your legs and thighs?" Fumio asks.

"Ah… damn." Fire Colossus, reminded of someting, suddenly feels dull pain littering his lower limbs. They suffered from Fumio's strikes whenever Fire Colossus attempted to send kicks to Fumio.

"Do they have a dry ice bath here?" He asks as they walk to join Blade Tornado.

"They do." Fumio nods.

"You can put it on my tab." He offers, feeling bad.

He figures that Fire Colossus did not expect to come here to spar and get injured. 

"Alright. Thanks." Fire Colossus accepts it easily.

"Shit. You got beat." Blade Tornado immediately breaks Fire Colossus's balls.

"No shit." Fire Colossus scoffs as he plops down to the ground, his back against the wall, to rest.

"Heh." Blade Tornado does not tease further and turns to Fumio.

"Fukashi-san. Why not fight in the arena? Damn. With your skills, you can probably fight the top five of the Champion's Row." He suggests. 

"You really think so?" Fumio tries not to look flattered.

"Yeah, man. You beat Mr. Top 9 here, with just your scabbard. If you used a real sword? Ssss.. man." Blade Tornado tries to imagine Fumio fighting in the underground arena.

Fumio is tempted, but in the end, he still does not want to fight in a place that makes money on death battles.

"Not for me." He smirks at Blade Tornado.

Blade Tornado looks at Fumio strangely as if saying 'what a pity' with just his eyes.

"Leave the guy alone." Fire Colossus chuckles.

"Fine…" Blade Tornado shrugs.

"You're too strong for me to spar with." He changes the subject.

"How about your junior? What was his name?" He asks.

"Oh. Kotaru?" Fumio remembers the name Kotone used during her spar with Blade Tornado.

"Yeah! That wimpy kid. Maybe he needs a sparring partner. I'm available." Blade Tornado offers.

"Heh... Yeah. He's probably as strong as you now, but he doesn't have much fighting experience." Fumio chuckles.

"I see....

" Wait. What did you just say?!"