The Golden Gravekeeper - 128 Chapter 128

“Bankai.”

My Blood Dragon Sword glowed brightly as crimson mana billowed about me. All around us, the blood throughout the battlefield flowed toward my blade in torrents, violent swirls of blood that were as several meters thick and as long as tornadoes. The blade itself had turned crimson, absorbing the blood that flowed through its length and pulsed ominously.

And then all the blood exploded outward to engulf us in a shadowy abyss.

“Zetsumetsu Ketsuryuu (Total Annihilation Blood Dragon).”

“W…what the fuck is this?!” Suzuki screamed before he vanished in a shower of blood. A golden burst of energy blossomed as he repelled the blood, forming a protective sphere around him. However, hundreds of tons of blood crushed down on him like an ocean, trapping and immobilizing him underneath tremendous pressure.

I didn’t answer, instead choosing to obliterate his barrier. Suzuki vanished under the crushing surge of blood, his body vanishing in a sea of red.

“Gaaaah!”

With a yell, Suzuki vaporized the blood with superheated lightning, which was slowly turning into plasma. His eyes glowing ferociously, he spun his spear about and blasted the blood back. Panting, he leaned on his spear and glared at me.

“Did you say…Bankai?”

“Yup.”

Suzuki shook his head, smiling wryly. “So you’re ripping off Bleach now, huh? Are you an idiot? That manga series ended years ago. You’re out of date!”

“Does it matter?” I shrugged. “I just copy whatever sounds and looks cool.”

“Hah! Indeed it doesn’t matter. You’ll end up dead either way!”

Laughing, Suzuki rose to his feet and sprang at me. Sparks scattered as our weapons collided, and we ferociously exchanged a few dozen blows. Blood and lightning clashed, the former vaporizing and the latter fizzling out as intense spells saturated the air.

Suzuki thrust his spear at my face, but I slightly tilted my head to the left to avoid it before countering with a slash. Suzuki parried my riposte before twisting his spear back, but I ducked under the returning weapon. He smashed a knee into my midriff, but I countered with an elbow, blocking the blow before attempting to eviscerate him with a return slash of my sword. Suzuki managed to block with the shaft of his lightning-clad spear before unleashing a web of electricity to stun me. In retaliation, I crushed him under several tendrils of blood.

“Aaaah!”

Smoke hissed into the air as droplets of blood got past Suzuki’s lightning and landed on his skin. He staggered back and flicked the blood away, cursing. His skin was blackened and melting away where the blood had come into contact.

“…that’s some nasty stuff.”

“Wait till you actually get the proper dosage.”

Then I struck him not with my sword but with a torrent of blood.

“Gaaaah!”

Suzuki staggered and rolled away, his body fuming from where his arm and shoulder had been doused by the blood. He glanced at his wound and his eyes widened in horror when he saw that the skin had been eaten away, leaving shiny bone.

“This…this blood is acid?!”

“It does have corrosive effects, yes,” I admitted as I stepped through the sea of blood, flicking my Blood Dragon Sword casually. “My Bankai is a double-edged sword. Not just literally. If I weren’t wearing my Redwood jacket, even I would have succumbed to this corrosive sea of blood.”

Only my Regenerative powers would have kept me alive, but I wasn’t such a glutton for punishment that I would willingly bear the pain.

“Ku ku ku…ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

Instead of falling into despair, Suzuki Shirou burst out laughing. He was delighted by the turn of events. The lightning wreathing both his body and his spear intensified and he lunged at me, his spear hurtling forward in a lethal strike.

“Good! This is the best! The best! Come on, keep fighting! Don’t stop! Let us fight to our hearts’ content in the ultimate deathmatch!”

I deftly deflected his thrust with my sword and then kicked him, but he skillfully spun his body around to evade my foot and then twisted in midair to reply with a kick of his own. I was forced to block his foot with my forearm, and then we separated in a shower of sparks as our weapons clashed viciously. Blood and lightning sizzled and fizzled all around us, spraying droplets of corrosive red fluid everywhere in the battlefield.

Not done yet, I raised my left hand and called forth a barrage of corrosive blood spears, unleashing the rain of projectiles on Suzuki. The crazed battle maniac guffawed eagerly as he met the attack with a titanic blast of lightning, disintegrating my spell in a single burst of golden mana. Then he charged at me again after loosing a huge bolt of lightning.

I merely raised my left hand and knocked the lightning bolt away before parrying his spear with the sword in my right hand. Grabbing the hilt with both hands, I focused on steadying my defense, even as Suzuki closed in with a grin.

“More! More! I knew you wouldn’t let me down!”

With a chuckle, he slashed at me, but I managed to meet him blow by blow. Steeling my resolve, I firmly stood my ground and repelled every single attack he threw at me. Suzuki intensified his assault, his thrusts and slashes growing faster as time went past.

This guy…

“Ha ha ha ha! Take this! Thousand Divine Lightning Spears!”

Throwing up a hand, Suzuki summoned his thousand thunder spears and hurled them at me. With just a thought, I flicked my left hand and conjured an equal number of blood spears from the red sea that swirled around us. The projectiles met in midair, colliding in tremendous explosions that rocked the heavens with ethereal fireworks.

“It’s not over yet!”

Suzuki had withdrew to put as much distance between us as possible. Stretching his arm back, he threw his spear at me. Golden mana whirled around the spear as it streaked through the space between us, disappearing into a blur.

“God-slaying Strike!”

I smiled. Suzuki Shirou wasn’t the only one with the God-slaying Strike technique. Pulling my right arm back, I tossed my Blood Dragon Sword, which sped toward Suzuki’s spear like a bullet. Or to be more precise, a ballistic missile designed to shoot down other missiles.

The two treasure weapons collided and exploded with apocalyptic fury, erasing the landscape between us and leaving a massive, smoldering crater that stretched a hundred meters in diameter. Steam rose from the red-hot molten earth, obscuring our vision.

Since the techniques were identical – after all, I stole it from Suzuki by drinking his blood – their power were equal. God-slaying Strike grew in power according to how many people had died on the battlefield, so both our techniques increased at the same rate and power because we were in the same battlefield.

On the other hand, if I didn’t use God-slaying Strike, I would have been pulverized to nothing.

“Heh…ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

Suzuki roared in delightful laughter. I grimly steeled myself and gathered whatever blood I had left to form a corrosive tsunami. Despite the catastrophic destruction, we were still encased within the dark abyss of blood that I had constructed earlier.

However, Suzuki didn’t seem to care. He was snickering to himself, looking very pleased with the outcome.

“Yeah…it has to be like this! Otherwise it’s not worth fighting you! Of course you would devise a way to counter my God-slaying Strike! You truly are the best opponent ever!”

“Thanks for that,” I acknowledged. Unlike Suzuki, I wasn’t that enthusiastic about fighting a worthy opponent. I was not a battle maniac who lusted for battle. Rather, I was just a guy who wanted revenge on the bullies who abused me in the past. I didn’t care what sort of methods or measures I had to resort to.

I was going to kill them as quickly and thoroughly as possible. I didn’t even care if they didn’t suffer. I wasn’t going to give them even half a chance of escaping while I gloated over their seemingly imminent demise like all villains did. There was no hell I would fall for such a cliché trap. No, I wasn’t going to allow them to live even a second longer than they had to.

Suzuki didn’t seem to care. Grinning wildly, he twirled his spear before launching himself at me.

I met his strike resolutely, holding my ground. The earth beneath my feet shattered, but I dug in and halted Suzuki’s momentum squarely. Suzuki grinned as he applied more force, but I countered it before retaliating with a palm to his chest.

“Whoa!”

Suzuki cried out, amused, as he did a backflip and avoided by blow. He retaliated with a swing of his spear, but I ducked under the long, unwieldy weapon and countered with a riposte that he parried with the blunt end of his spear. The two of us traded another dozens of blows that reduced the surroundings to rubble before springing apart in a shower of sparks.

“A few hundred blows…no…we’ve exchanged over a thousand blows and you’re still alive!” Suzuki hooted. “You’ve exceeded my wildest expectations! Woohoo!”

“Nobody expects the Inquisition.”

Nobody expected me to do the things I did, not even the readers. That was why there was so much whining. I got bashed because readers thought I was stupid for holding back against Suzuki during our second fight. They demanded that I summoned my ancient dragon zombie – which I was, I just needed some time to complete the summoning ritual the same way I needed time to summon Matsukaze, but some readers were too impatient to wait for that and demanded immediate gratification and summons which would potentially break the story but they didn’t care because they only wanted overpowered. Then there were those who complained that I let Suzuki live and held back against him without using everything I had, and how I was stupid and dumb to do that.

Never mind that it was all part of an elaborate ploy on my part to consume a bit of Suzuki’s blood to steal at least one of his techniques, and I kept him alive so that he could distract the Iron Knights while I went and did my own thing. Furthermore, I was fighting in front of the Eight Guardians, so it would be even more foolish of me to reveal every single trick I had and display my full strength in front of them. I had already anticipated the possibility that I might inevitably clash with them because we wouldn’t agree on something, and therefore held back from stupidly showing them everything I knew. But no, certain readers didn’t care and continued to bash me for being “stupid” and illogical, and then slapped the story with 0.5 ratings or stopped following it.

Their loss.

In any case, I had used Suzuki for whatever I needed, so there was no longer any reason to keep him alive. I was going to finish this once and for all.

“Aaargh!”

With a roar, Suzuki charged forward again, thrusting his spear at my heart. Lightning sparks danced around the tip, wreathing it in destructive force. I parried the strike and then retaliated with a slash, but he deflected it before kicking me. I caught his foot with my hand and yanked, but he managed to flip himself in midair and respond with a kick from his other leg. I released his other foot and ducked before slamming my elbow into his face, only for him to dodge and spin away.

Our blades met again, kissing in a vicious hiss and a rain of sparks. Blood slammed against lightning, the two spells raging and battering each other relentlessly. I relaxed my grip a little to allow Suzuki to push in, and then suddenly surged forward with a powerful strike that almost knocked his spear out of his hands.

Almost, but not completely.

“Hah!”

Suzuki chortled as he withdrew for a second, then he lunged at me again. More Divine Lightning Spears descended upon my position, but I raised a wall of corrosive blood to form a dark barrier that dissolved the lightning.

Iron was such a great conductor of electricity, though not as good as copper. And blood was made from iron, particularly the haemogoblin component. I could feel the blood barrier becoming magnetized by the electricity that coursed through it, and I decided to make use of it. Bending the wall of blood to my will, I dispersed it into thousands of bullet-sized projectiles, and then used the electromagnetic effects to fire off makeshift railgun projectiles.

“!”

Despite his indomitable lightning aura, Suzuki’s defenses were finally penetrated by the countless railgun blood pellets. He swore as the railgun projectiles pierced his skin in numerous spaces, sending up geysers of blood.

“You…!”

Suzuki snarled and then slashed at me in blind fury. This time, his speed was so fast that I was unable to evade or block it, and his spear actually smashed through my twelve barriers and sliced off my skin.

“Kuh!”

We staggered away from each other, but I seized the chance while his Lightning Aura was down to douse him with a tsunami of blood. Suzuki screamed as he tried to shield himself with his arms and spear, but his entire right arm was turn into smoking bone, the flesh literally melting off as the acidic blood devoured it and stripped every bit of skin and muscle off. Even the sleeve of his hero costume was not spared, the fabric eaten away into nothing.

But I didn’t emerge from the encounter unscathed. Right after Suzuki shattered my Redwood jacket’s barriers, I was just as vulnerable to the corrosive blood as he was. My face briefly turned into a skull and my hands reduced to white bone as much of the corrosive blood splashed over me. However, despite the tremendous pain, I didn’t care. My Regeneration was already kicking in, regrowing my burned flesh and restoring me to full health.

Suzuki’s lip curled when he saw that. Despite his wounded arm, he tightly gripped his spear with skeletal fingers and launched a lightning bolt at me. I countered with a Shadow Lunar Fang and the black and golden energies exploded upon colliding.

We continued to assail each other with our spells. Blood and lightning clashed and exploded around us, but our weapons continued to whirl and clash in indescribable fury. Suzuki’s experience and greater skill with a spear was beginning to show, for he was leaving traces of scars and wounds on my flesh.

Fortunately, I had Regeneration, which allowed me to quickly heal from those superficial wounds almost immediately.

“What a cheating ability,” Suzuki sneered when he saw my injuries close up and disappear in seconds. “What are you, an immortal?”

“I don’t want to hear that from a guy who possesses a thousand different special abilities,” I retorted fiercely. Suzuki laughed and thrust his spear forward again.

“Thousand Divine Lightning Spears!”

That again? I almost shook my head and conjured my blood barrier before repeating the railgun trick with the electromagnetized haemogoblin.

Unfortunately, Suzuki seemed to have anticipated that. He disappeared into a golden flash, dodging every single pellet with ease.

“Lightning Flash Speed!”

Suzuki laughed as he weaved around me, evading the railgun blood pellets effortlessly and launching attacks from multiple directions at blinding speed. It took me everything I had to parry and deflect his strikes, and that was depending on sheer luck and reflexes. Even then, I felt a hundred scratches ripping across me as Suzuki breached my defenses over and over again to cut me with his astonishing speed.

Death by a hundred cuts. That was his strategy.

In contrast, I was unable to land even a single counterattack on him. He was too fast, easily avoiding any riposte or retaliation. I almost felt as if he was toying with me.

Why didn’t he use this special ability earlier? I wondered.

There was one possibility that his Thousand Killer Asura wasn’t as godlike as it sounded, and was subject to limitations. He probably couldn’t use all one thousand of his special abilities simultaneously. Maybe up to three or four special abilities at any one time? It would be easier if I thought of him as a gun. He might possess up to a thousand different special-issue ammunition, but he couldn’t fire all one thousand types of rounds at the same time. Maybe two, or three. Four, at most. Furthermore, if he attempted to spit out all those spells one after another at a terrifying rate, there was a chance that he would burn out just like a gun and overheat himself, causing irreversible damage.

According to my Absolute Appraisal, anyway.

“Ha ha ha ha!”

I staggered forward after Suzuki slashed my back, wincing as the wound began to close up.

At least I had my Regeneration special ability or the battle would have already been decided long ago.

Gritting my teeth, I summoned a horde of Blood Ghouls from the sea of blood. The countless Blood Ghouls began to rise from the red ocean and swarmed over Suzuki. Despite his blinding speed, he was surrounded and mobbed by the innumerable Blood Ghouls. While they didn’t number in the thousands like the human soldiers, there were at least a hundred or so. More than enough to surround and capture Suzuki.

Realizing that he would have a difficult time evading, Suzuki switched his strategy. Dropping down to his knees, he slammed the tip of his spear into the ground.

“Lightning Nova!”

A golden circle of superheated electricity emanated and blasted out from his spear, expanding voraciously and incinerating my Blood Ghouls in a flash, decimating the horde in an instant. This was why I didn’t want to summon them. I just knew Suzuki had an area of effect spell that would perfectly counter anything I summoned.

But I had no choice. If I didn’t summon any zombies or Blood Ghouls, readers would complain and bash me for “not using my special abilities.” Never mind I had already taken the scenario into account and knew my opponents had the techniques to counter hordes or familiars. Furthermore, if I summoned my ancient dragon zombie, Suzuki could slay him near-instantly with his God-slaying Strike. Additionally, he was too small for Ryuu to attack, and the Draconic Meteor spell, while powerful, would be masterfully evaded by the super-fast Suzuki.

In other words, Suzuki would shoot down anything I summoned. Not that readers cared. They would complain and bash me for not even “trying”. Well, I just did, but they would just find something else to whine about.

“Not bad! But it’s still not enough!”

Suzuki whirled around, spinning his spear before unleashing a devastating torrent of lightning. I took a deep breath and swung my sword to release my own deadly wave of black energy.

“Divine Lightning Blast!”

“Lunar Shadow Fang!”

The two colossal attacks collided and erupted in a supernova-like explosion that consumed the ground before us like a miniature exploding sun, reducing everything within that space into a smoldering, molten crater.

“Lunar Shadow Fang?” Suzuki scoffed. “Don’t kid yourself. Since you’re already ripping off Bleach, you might as well call that spell Getsuga Tenshou!”

“To be honest, I think the primary reason why they’re dropping this trash of a story is because of your excessive fourth-wall breaking, which breaks immersion a lot. And that you’re dragging this fight out too much.”

I raised an eyebrow at that. “If you know the fight is being dragged on for too long, then why don’t you let me defeat you already?”

“Are you joking? And lose out on all the fun? Besides, even if I wasn’t having so much fun fighting you, I wouldn’t be suicidal enough to make this easy for you. You think your opponent will just roll over and let you stomp all over them just because you’re the protagonist?”

“That’s what a lot of readers want,” I replied wearily. “They’re obsessed with overpowered protagonists and any main character who isn’t able to curbstomp the opponent in two or three moves is considered weak and the story will be written off as trash.”

“So why the fuck are you pandering to such unreasonable readers? Fuck them. Just do your own thing. Like me! I’m going to do whatever I want, I don’t give a shit about what Kobayashi or anyone else thinks!”

With a hoot, Suzuki lunged at me again. This time, I wasn’t able to dodge in time. Despite raising my sword, I could only barely deflect Suzuki’s spear from piercing my heart. Instead, Suzuki’s weapon lodged itself deep into my lung, splintering my ribs and tearing the soft tissue underneath. I immediately choked and gurgled, blood rising from my chest up my neck and spilling from my mouth.

“Oh…so you’ve finally run out of steam?”

Suzuki chuckled, but I merely grabbed his arm with my left hand and smiled.

“I’ve got you now.”

“Oh? So what?”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t have to. It meant that he couldn’t use his Lightning Flash Speed to escape my attacks this time. I just slashed him with my Blood Dragon Sword.

“Hah! You can’t penetrate my Lightning Aura!”

A fierce explosive aura of electricity crackled around Suzuki, enveloping him in a protective field. The golden energy stopped my blade right before it could bite into his shoulder, preventing him from being bisected.

“I told you so!”

“Shadow Lunar Fang!”

I fired off a Shadow Lunar Fang at pointblank range, the dark energy ripping apart the Lightning Aura and allowing the blade to sink deeper. Even then, I only just managed to cut into his collarbone before my sword stopped.

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Superficial. The wound was too superficial. It wasn’t enough to subdue or defeat Suzuki Shirou.

“Not bad,” Suzuki chuckled as he tried to shrug off my Blood Dragon Sword. “A neat strategy, to blow away my Lightning Aura and strip me of my defenses. Unfortunately, it still isn’t enough.”

I smiled. “Really? Do you really think so?”

Suzuki blinked, falling into stunned silence when he found himself being swallowed by a dark shadow. Looking up, his jaw dropped as a colossal tsunami of corrosive blood rose and towered over us. With his Lightning Aura gone, and me restraining him by grabbing his arm, there was no way he could escape or protect himself from my attack.

“No…no! NOOOOOO!”

Screaming and flailing, Suzuki struggled futilely against my grasp for a few seconds before the both of us were engulfed by the titanic tsunami of corrosive blood.