Chapter 945: Stacking Corrections

The first clash between Yamato and Totsuka produced no explosion of energy. There was no thunder, dimensional rupture or pressure strong enough to destroy the courtyard. Even so, in the next instant, the two blades began exchanging blows so quickly that Tsukuyomi lost the ability to follow each individual movement. Susanoo advanced with precise cuts, alternating angles, rhythm and distance without repeating a single sequence, while Vergil responded with Yamato using only his own body and what he could do with the sword. The difference from a few minutes earlier was absurd. He still made mistakes, many of them, but each mistake seemed to exist for less time than the previous one.

Susanoo attacked the left shoulder.

Vergil blocked too late.

Totsuka passed through his defense and stopped a few centimeters from him, but Susanoo did not complete the strike. In the next movement, she repeated the same principle from a different angle, expecting to find that opening again.

Yamato was already there.

Susanoo narrowed her eyes.

She changed the sequence.

A vertical slash forced Vergil to retreat, a thrust immediately attacked the center of his defense and the third movement came deliberately delayed, using the expectation created by the previous two to induce him to respond too early. Vergil fell for the trap and moved Yamato before the correct moment.

Totsuka passed through his guard.

Susanoo stopped again.

In the next sequence, she tried the same trap.

Vergil waited.

Totsuka met Yamato at exactly the right instant.

Susanoo began to smile.

The exchange accelerated.

Vergil stopped trying to follow Susanoo only with his eyes and began interpreting her entire body. Shoulders, hips, feet, finger position on the hilt, weight distribution and even small changes in breathing became part of the reading. Susanoo noticed immediately and began hiding that information, creating false movements and changing attacks midway through execution.

Vergil made another mistake.

Then corrected it.

Made a different mistake.

Corrected that too.

Susanoo advanced with Totsuka in a sequence so complex that the sounds of the blades began overlapping. Vergil blocked four strikes, dodged the fifth, tried to answer the sixth and realized too late that the strike did not even exist. Susanoo had used the movement only to shift his attention before striking his side with the flat of Totsuka.

Vergil was pushed back two steps.

“You look at the sword too much.” Susanoo commented while immediately resuming the attack, giving him no time to comfortably think about the correction.

Vergil did not answer. In the next attack, he stopped following Totsuka.

He began following Susanoo.

The difference was immediate.

Susanoo tried to reproduce the same distraction and found Yamato intercepting her sword before the false movement was even complete.

Her eyes opened a little wider.

Then the duel truly began.

During the following minutes, even Amaterasu stopped paying attention to the small ruptures she had still been finishing repairing. There was nothing left to fix. Qliphoth was keeping absolutely all of Vergil’s power isolated, while he and Susanoo used only technique, movement and the natural resistance of their own weapons. Even so, the technical violence of the exchange was enough to turn the courtyard into a dangerous zone.

Totsuka passed by Vergil’s neck.

Yamato touched her wrist and diverted the trajectory.

Vergil tried to strike the abdomen.

Susanoo trapped Yamato against her own guard, rotated Totsuka and tried to disarm him.

Vergil released one hand.

Instead of resisting the movement, he followed the rotation, recovered his balance and transformed the disarm into another slash.

Susanoo had to retreat for the first time.

“Interesting.” Susanoo murmured while her feet touched the ground several meters back, but Vergil was already in front of her again.

The next impact sent a gust of air across the courtyard.

Tsukuyomi tilted her head when a sequence of missed slashes passed dangerously close to where she floated. The first did not reach her, but the second cut off a loose strand of her hair before she realized it.

“Hey.” Tsukuyomi looked at the small silver strand slowly falling in front of her face and immediately raised one hand.

A lunar barrier appeared around her.

The translucent surface had barely finished forming when Yamato scraped against its side after Susanoo deflected an attack. The entire barrier vibrated, and Tsukuyomi widened her eyes upon realizing that this had happened without any energy applied to the sword.

“I’m definitely staying in here.” Tsukuyomi reinforced the barrier and sat back down in the air, now watching the two through the protection with much greater interest.

Amaterasu said nothing.

She was simply speechless.

A few minutes earlier, Vergil had not even known how to prevent his own energy from escaping his body. Now he was facing Susanoo without using any power and learning at a speed that was beginning to exceed what she considered reasonable. It was not just talent. Vergil absorbed a correction during the fight itself, tested it immediately, found a problem caused by the change and created another correction on top of it.

It was extremely imperfect.

But it worked.

Susanoo noticed exactly the same thing.

After a few more minutes, Totsuka met Yamato in one final impact. Susanoo rotated her wrist, pushed Vergil’s sword away and immediately raised her other hand.

“Stop.” Susanoo took two steps back and lowered Totsuka, breathing normally despite the absurd intensity of the previous minutes.

Vergil stopped the movement.

“Already?” Vergil asked while lowering Yamato, clearly still willing to continue.

“I need to understand what you just did.” Susanoo kept her eyes on him while mentally reconstructing the entire fight from the first attack. “Because technically you did almost everything wrong.”

Vergil fell silent.

Tsukuyomi started laughing inside the barrier.

Amaterasu finally recovered her voice.

“That was unexpected.” Amaterasu commented while looking at the intact courtyard and then at Vergil, still trying to reconcile what she had just watched with Susanoo’s description.

“I’m not saying he fought badly.” Susanoo slowly sheathed Totsuka and walked toward Vergil. “I’m saying his mistakes form such an absurd sequence that normally someone would have lost long before reaching the next correction.”

Vergil rested Yamato on his shoulder.

“Explain.”

Susanoo nodded.

“You started by putting too much weight on your front leg. You corrected that after I attacked your knee, but shifted your center too far backward. To compensate, you started using your hips too much. When you noticed that delayed your lateral response, you reduced the hip movement, but your sword lost reach.” Susanoo raised one hand and began listing each flaw, remembering all of them with frightening precision. “Then you changed your grip. The new grip corrected the reach, but left your wrist exposed. You protected the wrist using your forearm, except that stiffened your shoulder. Then you relaxed the shoulder, lost stability in downward attacks and changed your foot position again.”

Vergil began to understand where she was going.

Susanoo continued.

“You also anticipated too much. You corrected that by waiting for my movement. Then you started waiting too long and lost initiative. You corrected again by observing my body instead of the sword, but I managed to deceive you with false movements. You corrected that by watching my weight distribution. When I started hiding my weight, you began using distance and rhythm.” Susanoo crossed her arms and spent a few seconds staring at him. “You’re stacking corrections.”

“Is that bad?” Vergil asked while looking at Yamato and trying to mentally reconstruct his own changes.

“It’s horrible.” Susanoo replied without any hesitation, but a faint smile appeared shortly afterward. “And absolutely terrifying.”

Vergil raised an eyebrow.

“Every mistake creates another problem because your correction still isn’t natural.” Susanoo approached and touched his shoulder, then pointed at his feet. “But before I can exploit the new problem, you notice it and place another adjustment on top of it. You’re overwriting your own mistakes faster than they can be used against you.”

Tsukuyomi stopped laughing.

That really was strange.

“So he isn’t developing a perfect stance.” Amaterasu observed, beginning to understand the pattern. “He’s building a response to every imperfection while fighting.”

“Exactly.” Susanoo nodded and looked at Vergil again. “That’s why you improved so much in just a few minutes. It doesn’t mean you’ve learned everything. It means your ability to adapt is absurd.”

Vergil remained silent, absorbing that without trying to turn the compliment into something greater than it really was.

Susanoo pointed at Yamato.

“Your next goal is to remove the need for those corrections.” Susanoo spoke much more seriously. “The correct positioning needs to happen before the mistake. Your balance needs to be natural. Your grip needs to change without you thinking. Distance, rhythm, intent and movement need to stop being conscious decisions.”

She paused briefly.

“If you refine that to the point where you no longer need to stack adjustments…” Susanoo narrowed her eyes while imagining the final result. “You’ll be practically invincible with a sword.”

The silence that followed was different.

Even Vergil seemed surprised by the conclusion.

“And we’re talking only about swordsmanship.” Susanoo continued before he could respond, pointing toward his body. “Without your demonic energy. Without divine energy. Without Sins. Without Death. Without spatial magic. Without draconic power. Without regeneration. Without any conscious physical enhancement.”

Vergil looked at his own hand.

Qliphoth continued keeping everything sealed.

Susanoo looked at it too.

“That’s exactly the part that worries me.” Susanoo admitted while her expression became more serious. “Your current strength is temporarily sealed. I don’t even know what your physical limit is anymore after what Qliphoth did.”

“Neither do I.” Vergil replied while slowly closing his hand, feeling that an absurd amount of strength was waiting behind that restriction.

“That’s the problem.” Susanoo looked at Totsuka and then Yamato. “If you use all that strength with an ordinary sword, you’ll probably disintegrate it with the first serious movement.”

Tsukuyomi leaned forward inside the barrier.

“Disintegrate?” Tsukuyomi asked, realizing Susanoo was not exaggerating.

“Not break.” Susanoo corrected while looking directly at Vergil. “Disintegrate. The structure wouldn’t withstand the acceleration, the pressure of the movement and much less the impact. Even ordinary supernatural weapons would probably have problems.”

Vergil lowered his eyes toward Yamato.

The katana vibrated subtly in his hand, almost offended by the comparison.

“Yamato is different.” Susanoo immediately noticed the sword’s reaction and placed one hand on Totsuka. “She’s a soul sword. Her existence is directly linked to yours, and now Qliphoth has strengthened that connection even further. As you grow, she grows. Her durability is monstrous precisely because it doesn’t depend only on the material forming the blade.”

Yamato vibrated again.

Satisfied this time.

Vergil let out a small laugh.

“She liked that part.” Vergil commented while running his thumb along the katana’s guard.

“I figured.” Susanoo replied before observing Vergil for a few seconds, now with something very close to excitement appearing in her eyes. “Scathach saw an extremely powerful man using a sword imperfectly. I’m beginning to see something else.”

Vergil raised his eyes.

Susanoo drew Totsuka again.

“I’m seeing someone who can stop making one mistake while he’s still making the next.” Susanoo took her stance and pointed the blade at him, clearly determined to discover how far that adaptation could go. “Now we need to turn that into real technique.”

Vergil smiled while Yamato left its sheath.

“Finally.”

On the other side of the courtyard, Tsukuyomi reinforced her barrier.

Amaterasu merely sighed and created another around herself.

This time, neither of them intended to take any chances.