// SURVIVOR'S GUILT // : MAKI ZEN'IN

4.

All the while stopping his blow just before decommissioning the Semi-Grade-1 sorcerer, as if it were a simple game.

The corpse snarled and its fangs slipped through his lips at the very thought of being taken so lightly, and Maki nearly snapped her second weapon of the morning.

Once the nature of Suoh Yuuya had set in, everyone in attendance came to agree;

This guy......he's crazy strong!

"Panda, follow my lead, and go Gorilla Mode when the opportunity to bash Yuuya out of the boundary comes up...!" Maki spat, aiming her halberd tip Suoh's way.

"Umu....!!"

Maki , while not in any immediate threat herself with Heavenly Restriction, was instantly aware how devastating a Cursed Technique like Suoh's would be on someone like Panda; just as Toge was completely helpless once Suoh activated Delusion, it was imperative Panda not meet the same fate if they had any chance of taking Suoh down.

"Go!"

Maki took a straight dash into Suoh's range, to his delight, and engaged in a full-contact, close-range frenzy of halberd slashes and intricate, aggressive blows;

Blocking Maki's cut aimed at his head with his left wrist, getting his follow-up body shot parried away with a spin of her staff to his right, blocking the ensuing counter of two jabs with the blunt butt of the Cursed Tool with his palms, Suoh's eyes flickered in the face of the hotly-contested rush of strikes from either martial artists, chuckling when Maki pulled her halberd back and nicked his cheek with a laser-focused thrust of her blade, before leaping back, returning to a relaxed stance, slouched over with a sturdy, grounded lower body.

I-, With a bead of sweat rolling down her brow, and her eyes beginning to water, Maki muttered to herself in disbelief, I...couldn't even blink there...

Nonetheless, she grit her teeth.

So what?! Just do it again!

Clashing her halberd blade with Suoh's forearm, Maki kept up, if only by the slimmest of margins; Suoh threw an elbow down the left of her collarbone and nicked the fabric of her top, though, with minor bleeding and negligible fracturing, Maki pushed through with a further mix of thrusts and cuts, clashing heavily with the rapid switching of blows from a near-miniscule distance, to unforgiving kicks from range.

Suoh leapt back from the assault and gave a few metres of space between them, only for Maki to close the space right up, the ensuing strain in her chest from the inability to breathe in the space between the non-stop attacks barely registering in her mind,

all of her focus was placed into-

Beating you into the dirt, for the sake of sending you right out of the field!

Launching a full-bodied thrust of her spear into Suoh's midsection and knocking him back, the Zenin girl couldn't mask the frustration on her face when the opposing boy, hunched over from the blow, stood back up straight, and shook his hand out in front of him and gave his fingers a few flexes, as though he had been blown back by a simple blow.

"Mh. I think I've got a welt on my palm now, aw, man." Suoh pouted, picking at his hand.

The boy turned his attention back to Maki after a moment, though, and the smirk returned to his lips just as quickly. "Say, say, Maki-chan~, I'm really glad that you're as strong as I hoped you'd be, we can do this again, and again, and again once this test is over~!"

"H-Hah...!?" Through her heavy breaths she remembered only now to take, Maki let her frustrations run wild, raising her finger Suoh's way. "You....kelp-headed asshat! Stop treating this like a game and come at me for real, damnit!"