15 - Regretless Soulful

Bruised, battered, exhausted and in pain. In their conditions, any other soulful would have collapsed or straight up died.

At last, with most of the soulfuls’ cards except their main ones removed from the table, it all came down to a simple brawl. Sakuto would instantly incapacitate Aizawwa if another soul breaker landed. Aizawa would instantly incapacitate him if complete memory erasure landed...

Aizawa wasn’t completely alien to the feeling of being struck by Soul Breaker. She quickly made an adjustment. She stepped on Sakuto’s foot to prevent him from quickly backing away, and she reached for his head. But Sakuto, who was already on the lookout for counterattacks, managed to react properly. He leaned back, unsummoned his weapon and grabbed Aizawa's hand, carving into it with his nails and ripping off a chunk of muscle from it.

He quickly dashed back. The fourth spark appeared on his chest. Yet at the same time, his injuries were starting to catch up to him. The clock that had always worked in his favor was now against him. On the other hand, Aizawa was put in a difficult situation. Either she would land her killshot, or she would die trying.

“Her hand still hasn’t healed yet.” Sakuto thought, staring at Aizawa. “She’s bleeding out of her eyes. She’s as fucked up as I am.”

“I can’t use shadow manipulation properly. I have to keep them and my regeneration busy taking care of my internal injuries. If I let go of them, my body would probably collapse.”

“But most importantly...I’m four sparks in. Just one more, and she’ll be out of options.”

More blood dripped down the top of his mouth. There was also a rather serious injury on his stomach, from his Soul Breaker trap, and blood oozed out of it too. He touched the wound, it was still difficult to heal.

“Oskar, you hang in there, alright?

“Once I’m done with this bitch, I’ll get back to you. Hopefully I don’t scare you too much with this type of appearance.”

Aizawa, despite being in a difficult situation, didn’t lose her morale.

“Without his shadow manipulation or other fancy soul expressions he stole, despite the fact that my soul-bound weapon is half-functional, he does not stand a chance against me up close.”

“The superiority of my swordplay is not to be doubted.”

“And once he’s gravely injured, I’ll optimize him.”

“He’ll be the ultimate Nachtvessel. I’ll send him on a quest to hunt and subjugate the rest of the Heisei too while I’m at it.”

“The salvation of humanity is soon.”

Since Aizawa’s hand was missing, she simply shoved one of the blades into the wound. She held the other blade in her right hand. Sakuto held onto his blade, with both arms intact but severely wounded.

The moon waited in anticipation to see who would make the first step.

Sakuto changed in, and the final set of exchanges commenced. Aizawa greeted him with a slashing attack, which carved a rather nasty wound on his chest. Sakuto swung at Aizawa with all his might, cracking her chin again with an overhand right. He tried to go in with a left hook afterwards, but Aizawa stepped back and dodged the punch. She stabbed Sakuto in the stomach, but the latter just kept the pressure going.

Aizawa got her blade out and kicked Sakuto in the leg, but Sakuto checked the kick properly, protecting himself and hurting Aizawa pretty badly. He front-kicked her in the head and hit her with a right straight. He summoned his weapon, preparing to go for...

The activation of Soul Breaker was interrupted. Aizawa chopped his left hand off and went in for another deep cut. Sakuto quickly pulled back and tried to recover, but Aizawa chased him down. He struck him with a knee to the stomach and unleashed another slashing attack, this one ripping his left arm off completely.

But Sakuto at this point knew that no matter the damage and the lack of regenerative capabilities, he had to keep pushing forwards. Aizawa didn’t show it, but she was also hurt pretty badly.

“This determination...”

“Where is it coming from?”

Sakuto continued his advance. He threw a nasty kick aimed at her liver and upon contact, Aizawa was visibly in discomfort and pain. He tried to recover it by wildly swinging her blades, but Sakuto quickly escaped the dangerous distance and struck her with a right hook, followed by a right uppercut.

Aizawa faked being stunned and successfully baited Sakuto closer, stabbing him in the stomach with one of her blades, and in the leg with the other one. Sakuto, however, took the chance and summoned his weapon. With one quick swing, he managed to cut Aizawa’s left arm off.

“Now we’re even, you...evil bitch...”

Sakuto coughed up more blood. And Aizawa, whose body was covered not only in her own blood, but also Sakuto’s, was starting to struggle to maintain a proper breathing rhythm. But contrary to her initial defensive fighting style, she rushed forwards with a flurry of slashing attacks. Instead of all of them being blade attacks, some of them released small gusts of soul prowess, and they cut Sakuto badly.

One of them even landed on his head. More blood spurted out of his missing eye, parts of his skull were visible. And the eye that he still had was leaking blood too. His vision was getting more and more blurry by the seconds, but he still kept going.

Until, suddenly, one of the slashes seemed more dangerous than all the others. This one impaled him right in his left lung, a bit too close to his heart. He coughed up some blood, but punched Aizawa away with his remaining arm. Instead of going back to catch his breath as Aizawa would expect, he rushed in even closer and after feinting a right straight he landed an almighty high kick on Aizawa’s face. She was out cold for a moment. Sakuto recognized it, but she came to her senses before he could straight up chop her head off.

She wasn’t used to this sensation, so it was hard for her to think properly. She fell back more and more, trying to poke Sakuto with her blade as if he were a balloon. Sakuto dodged most of the attacks, and ended up getting pierced by some. His body at this point looked absolutely butchered. They fought each other on the debris, on a small hill of debris, in fact, that was formed as a result of their relentless destruction.

Sakuto suddenly charged in. He struck Aizawa with an oblique kick, strong enough to snap her knee backwards and knock her off balance for a bit. He summoned his blade and slashed her with it, if he was closer, he might’ve cut her apart. He quickly followed it up with a piercing strike aimed at her leg, and this one really impaired her movements. He unsummoned his blade and threw a right hook, and Aizawa jumped back, struggling to properly control her legs. Sakuto saw an opportunity to kill. Aizawa, however...

“He knows that I’m tired...”

“This is a battle of endurance. At least that is what he thinks he is!”

Aizawa suddenly lunged forwards, evading a rock hard overhand from Sakuto. Sakuto was quick enough to greet her with a powerful knee and further pick her apart with a dangerous elbow, but he didn’t expect the calculated Aizawa to make the rash decision to stay up close. He swung his fist again, but he felt something cold go through his body...and not let go of it.

He looked down, he got stabbed. Right in the spot where Diego stabbed in not too long ago. He quickly tried to summon his blade.

“That’s it! I can cut her other hand off, and she’ll have nothing to do!”

“I’ll fucking kill her-!”

“ ✦ Complete Memory Erasure. ✦ ”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Sakuto looked back up. The weapon was still there. But her hand wasn’t holding on to it. Instead, it was placed on his forehead. Aizawa didn’t laugh, she didn’t scream in joy or give a terrific grin, she just smiled. The very smile that has enchanted her face for so many years.

The area fell quiet. A few streams of blood squirted out of Aizawa’s beautiful but lethal eyes, this was her ultimate gambit. Her legs were shaking from the beating they sustained and their half-broken state. Even her arm was a little shaky. But this was it. The fight was over.

“To think it would take such a perilous amount of effort...” Aizawa said, her breathing unstable. Sakuto was blankly staring at her, as if life itself escaped his face. “But the duty of saving a species...does not come free...” It felt like her heavy breathing was interrupted by words and not the other way.

“Welcome to the Servata Cordis...”

“Nachtvessel Ultimate.”

But something didn’t quite add up. Sakuto’s eye, albeit covered in blood, still retained its usual color...

“You...stupid bitch...”

He tried to communicate his feelings, but speaking was kind of off the table for him due to his heavily injured face. He instead made strange sounds, but their presence alone made Aizawa almost shit herself in surprise.

“I’ve already adapted to Memory Manipulation.”

A fifth and final spark appeared on his chest. Sakuto’s four sparks of adaptation weren’t completely ineffective, they bought just enough time for Sakuto to adapt one more time instead of instantly dying. For the first time in her life, Aizawa experienced genuine fear. And not just fear, but terror. Absolute and raw terror.

Sakuto grabbed onto Aizawa’s head itself. Aizawa tried to step back or do something, but she was far too injured or straight up exhausted to move around too much. Sakuto dug his claws into her head itself.

And with one hateful motion, he ripped her head off.

Blood spurted out of her now exposed neck, as her body fell flat on the debris below her. A few shadow tentacles emerged from the ground and ripped it apart like a starving pack of jackals feasting on a corpse. The soul-bound weapon stuck in his chest disappeared. Sakuto, however, wasn’t done yet. He was anything but done, in fact.

He threw the head on the ground with enough strength to crack it open. And he began to punch it with his fist. He punched it over and over again, with unintelligible screams escaping whatever was left of the body parts that allowed him to speak. He punched it on and on, the head slowly began losing its shape.

He struck it with not just ground and pound, but also elbows. A few of them were enough to break the skull apart and spill the brains outside. These were the brains that, by the way, were considered priceless by professors all over the world. Now they would serve as a punching bag and a quick snack.

Sakuto struck the head that was slowly turning into pure mush. He punched it, elbowed it, once his hand got a little tired, he started trying to bite at it, but it looked more like just scraping it with his leftover teeth and headbutting it, rubbing the biological material more and more on the ground. And once that got tiring, he went right back to punching with his hand.

Each punch was followed by some type of sound. At this point, there wasn’t even much left there, he just kept punching and punching. The ground and the debris were taking a heavier beating than what was left of Aizawa’s head, they started deforming and cracking under Sakuto’s severely limited force. Every single bit of strength in Sakuto’s body was busy with this task. Until one such punch broke his own hand, mashing it into a puddle of flesh, broken bones and blood.

And yet, he still kept going. It didn’t even matter that his own hand hurt or that the recipient of this beatdown couldn’t even feel pain anymore. He kept striking at the place where Aizawa’s head was, blood and even some tears running out of his eye, as if saving themselves, thinking that they’re next in line.

At last, his own body shut down. His arm didn’t move properly anymore. He didn’t see it, but he knew that he successfully stored the adaptation to memory manipulation inside Withering Strelitzia.

He stood up straight. Aizawa wasn’t just dead, she was pulverized. Her story had ended, and the Eura Stronghold, alongside its leader, had fallen.

Sakuto tapped on his earpiece and tried to speak into it. The words were unintelligible, but the message was understood. There were celebrations. He heard the proud yet tired celebrations of the rest of the Heisei.

All that was left for him to do was to go back to his life, under the wings of peace. There was no threat like Aizawa around anymore. He also needed to take care of his teammates because they were also on death’s door. And of course, he needed to take care of himself, he looked like something even more dead than a corpse.

But he still had one more thing to do.

His body barely moving, half of his blood depleted and his face mutilated to the extreme, he walked out of the castle, slowly limping under the dark sky. He could sense Oskar’s presence, even though his exhaustion would make enhancing his perception extraordinarily painful, he powered through it.

“He’s somewhere there.”

“Somewhere by the ruins. It feels like he’s weak...”

He manifested a pair of shadow wings on his back and took off - heading to the source of the presence. Now that a world-ending threat wasn’t actively trying to kill him, he had far less strain on his body. The exhaustion was still in full effect, preventing him from even regenerating his missing jaw or horrible facial scars. And in a minute or so, he located Oskar on the ground.

He slowly descended.

“Finally...I get to-”

He saw Oskar’s glare lock onto him. But his attention was elsewhere. While Oskar crawled, trying to get to Sakuto, Sakuto saw Ausra’s corpse.

He froze. His fingers twitched a little, he looked at the body as if expecting it to get up. He couldn’t properly process that image, causing him to just look at it, no matter how little he wanted to accept that fact at that moment, his body forced him to. It reminded him of the scene from the war, it looked awful enough to numb his other senses. He only heard a static in his ears. There was no presence, there was no breathing. There was just the corpse of someone he was close to.

“...”

“...Oskar?”

He looked down at the zombie-like creature that used to be his friend. Oskar grabbed onto Sakuto’s leg and tried breaking it, but couldn’t. He was too weak. He tried scratching it instead - actually being successful in drawing blood.

“No...they...”

“They did turn him into a slave. No, nonononono...what is Ichika gonna think when she sees this? Does...Oskar himself...know that he...”

“Fuck...”

Oskar ripped a chunk of skin out of Sakuto’s leg and tossed it aside, the limb bleeding. But the pain wasn’t nearly enough to break Sakuto’s glare. A moment later, fortunately, he snapped back into his senses.

“No...there’s time to fix this shit...”

“At least Oskar’s still alive. Come on.” Sakuto thought, mustering up his strength and regenerating his right hand. He summoned his blade. He used every last remaining bit of soul prowess in his body and channeled it into one ability.

“Soul Interpretation.”

The green and purple marking on Withering Strelitzia’s handle shone a little, and a similarly colored spark appeared on the tip of the blade.

“Please, if miracles do exist...I really hope one happens right now.”

“Perfect Counter.”

He lightly gave Oskar a small cut on his forehead. Oskar tried to lunge at him, but halfway through the motion, his body weakened. He tumbled around and eventually laid on his back. There was a strange purple and green energy hovering above his eyes, like a flame that was finally extinguished.

His eyes regained their spark.

“Oskar...” Sakuto tried to say, but couldn’t. His speech came off as unintelligible noises from his throat.

“Come on, are you there?”

“You’re there, right?!”

“...”

Oskar slowly closed his eyes. And his presence began to rapidly fade away. Sakuto watched with horror, grabbing onto Oskar’s shoulders and shaking him a little.

“What? No, this...his body is a mess, but with enough determination, he should be able to give himself another chance-”

Sakuto looked at Ausra’s corpse again. The realization started setting in. But so did a glimmer of hope. He remembered just what kind of object she was in possession of. He rushed towards her and a while later found the soul crystal laying on the ground. He carefully grabbed it and walked back to Oskar, as the latter’s presence was on the brink of extinction.

“Come on, this gotta work...” Sakuto thought, trying to figure out how to utilize the crystal. “If this worked on me, if what you need is a bit of determination, this will work for you. You’re way less shaky than me. This has to work.”

After a while of thinking, he just chose to shove the crystal into Oskar’s chest. Nothing happened. Those fruitless seconds felt like centuries, each one bleaker than before.

But a spark appeared on it. Sakuto gasped, had he been able to do so, he would smile. His eye teared up as he held onto Oskar’s hand. He had already missed a hint that the treatment wouldn’t go as he’d expect it to.

Fedor’s method of recovery relied on a complicated setup that he was in control of, courtesy of everything being a part of his soul expression. Artificially killing the body was done in a special manner, under a specific environment and reinforced by a soul expression. This was not that case. Keeping the body under observation and inside a stable deadzone...all of that was crafted to create a fully functional process.

None of that was available. The soul crystal captured Oskar’s soul directly, leaving his body suspended in its wounded state. Normally, he should’ve been healed and placed in a secure environment.

The only hope to save Oskar was an instant reignition of willpower, and a surge of determination strong enough to keep him afloat. Which, in this case...