There were a lot of shadows of other people hidden inside Tengetsu Ares's Blade-Less Style.
Not just the ones already mentioned.
There was also the Dark King Rayleigh.
He had absorbed their sword arts, fused them with his own understanding, then mixed in the shaving-lightslash concept from Rokushiki's Rankyaku. In the end it all evolved into his own unique sword system.
Blade-Less Style.
Hands, dragon tail, even his legs could become Ares's blades.
"Blade-Less Style. Wave Slash."
"Blade-Less Style. Great Dragon Twister."
"Blade-Less Style. Sword of the Dark King."
"Blade-Less Style. Lion's Song."
One gorgeous, destructive technique after another burst out of him.
Clang.
Clang.
Redfield was forced to parry at full power. "This guy has swordsmanship, has body arts, and on top of that his raw strength is terrifying."
It really felt like he was not fighting a single person.
It felt like he was being surrounded and mobbed.
The stormlike onslaught pressed him down the whole way.
The more he fought, the more a chill crept up in his heart.
This was too much.
Losing his future sight meant he could no longer just stroll around Ares's attacks. With Ares attacking like a mad dragon, he was forced to meet every strike head on.
Ares on the other hand was getting more excited the longer it went on. He roared nonstop.
"So satisfying."
"Fighting the strong. That is what battle should be."
"Using your own body as your weapon. That is the right path."
He smashed his body straight against Redfield's umbrella that was wrapped in thick Armament. Again and again. Harder and denser than he had ever done in training.
Ares was drunk on the fight.
Only someone who had trained his body to this absurd level, and who had forged that unique blood-red Armament, was qualified to use his flesh to clash with the world's strongest swordsman.
"Maniac."
Redfield cursed.
Even with Armament hardening, his arms were going numb from the repeated shocks. He was being beaten backward again and again and there was no chance to counterattack.
At that moment
Ares was fighting
And thinking.
He noticed something.
His slashes still were not strong enough.
In his human-beast form, his sword power was not as overwhelming as when he was in full Azure Dragon form.
"Can I use the Armament trick I stole from Garp just now on my Blade-Less Style?"
Ares felt that it was worth trying. At the root, it was the same thing. He just needed to change how it was released.
Buzz.
In an instant a mass of red Armament gathered on his palm like a glowing orb.
But Ares did not shoot it out like a punch. Punching and slashing were two different release patterns.
He began to try spreading that red Armament along the whole tight, corded arm.
Redfield sensed the change and was startled again.
"What is he doing now?"
"It looks like he is studying some outrageous new move again."
He could not help tensing up.
Last time Ares had sat there thinking he had somehow figured out how to block future sight.
And this time
Redfield could tell
This monster was trying to temper Armament.
And the weirdest part.
Why was this monster's Armament blood red?
Clang.
Clang.
After a few more fierce clashes, Redfield's expression changed. He sucked in a cold breath.
"His attacks just got stronger."
He could clearly feel the power spike. Fear rose in him almost instinctively.
What kind of monster was this?
Why was he getting stronger while fighting?
Is this a joke?
Is he just choosing to comprehend things?
Are we supposed to live like this?
Right then, in Ares's mind, an image surfaced.
It was from back on Beehive Island, when the Golden Lion Shiki had personally shown him some of his sword principles.
In the memory
"Ares, I know you want to forge yourself into the strongest blade in the world, so I will teach you everything I know."
Shiki chomped on his cigar, still with that wild, unruly look. But his eyes, when they looked at Ares, carried obvious expectation.
This brat had punched him up pretty badly that time, but he had also, by accident, awakened that strange blood Armament.
Every time he remembered it
Shiki wanted to laugh.
He had said it to Ares very seriously.
"Ares, listen."
"A true swordsman can use his own Armament Haki to temper a blade into a true Black Blade."
"Black Blade?" Ares back then had not fully understood. "What is a Black Blade?"
Shiki continued to explain.
"Ordinary blades, even good ones, will take damage over time. They chip. They crack. Even famous blades."
"Only when you temper a blade into a Black Blade will it not break. And any blade can become a Black Blade."
"But it takes relentless tempering."
Ares had listened in silence.
Shiki had told him how to do it. How to temper, how to polish, how to let battles and Armament beat the edge again and again until the steel's spirit changed.
So
Forging a Black Blade was hard.
Even Shiki himself had not completely turned his own Oto and Kogarashi into Black Blades.
He was a top powerhouse on this sea.
If even the Golden Lion Shiki found it hard, what about everyone else?
That was why on this sea, Black Blades were incredibly rare. Rarer even than the twelve Supreme Grade Blades.
Everyone who had tempered a Black Blade was a swordsman who had left legends on the seas.
Shiki had looked at Ares and grinned.
"Jihahahaha."
"You said you wanted to surpass the Supreme Grade Blades, didn't you?"
"I am really looking forward to seeing if one day you can create a method to temper your own body."
After that he had told Ares the actual method, step by step.
Then
Another memory rose.
This one was from long ago, when he was still small.
His father had always been pounding steel. He was the blacksmith everyone in the village praised.
No.
More accurate to say
He was a swordsmith.
Because Ares remembered clearly.
What his father hammered was a blade.
Heat it up, hammer it flat, repeat, quench it. Again. Again. Again. It was also where Ares got the idea for his own body training method.
He called it
Forge Blows.
Use the blows to beat out the impurities. Then quench.
Back then, the child Ares had watched with big round eyes and had asked curiously.
"Father, why do you put it in water?"
"Because fast cooling changes the structure and hardness of the material. It makes the blade stronger," his father had said.
Little Ares had watched that process every day. The hammering, the quenching, the tempering.
It seared itself into his mind.
Back to the present
Ares's eyes suddenly lit up. They were bright and shocking.
He looked at his arm.
To him
That was his blade.
In the past he had stubbornly thought, as long as he made his body hard enough, then covered it with blood Armament, that was enough.
But now, thinking back
Maybe that was also a path.
Because if ordinary swords could be turned into Black Blades through constant battle and Armament tempering
Then why couldn't his own body
Be tempered the same way?
Why couldn't his flesh blade
Become a Black Blade?
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