Chapter 6: The new Grind!
"No combat experience Takumi...Uh Oh, will you really make it?" Kurayami's voice echoed in Takumi's mind as he stood frozen in place.
His hands were shaking, trembling heavily but his mind was doing its best to control that. He was sweating, profusely infact, as if he'd just gotten out of the biggest match in his life...but yet all he had done was stand there, fearfully, shaking and wordless as he watched the beefy Taurus rip apart man after man with its enormous blade.
It was like watching a majestic ballerina go at it. Her skills would be smooth, swift and well balanced, each step calculated to blend with the next and each movement flexible to adjust to new ones...such was the case for the majestic ballerina before him. Its sword slashes were faster than he could comprehend. Each slice cut would blend with the next as if carefully orchestrated by a martial artist grand master. Once a right blow was made, a left swing would follow after faster than its tip could come into contact with the blood stained ground.
One man who managed to flee carried a message for Takumi before hurriedly zooming past him.
"GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!" he shouted out, attracting the attention of the enraged beast.
All it took was the blink of an eye and Takumi had then on lost it...for a brief while. The sound of a scream and audible blood gushing pierced his ears from behind him before a flowing stream of liquid splattered onto his back. A low growl then came after it followed by the puffing of hot steam onto his back that nearly had him gagging...but clearly his body didn't even have the strength to react.
"Oh no...he's behind me, isn't he" Kurayami's voice blurted out mockingly before releasing the most demonic laughter Takumi had ever heard in his life, was this truly who he formed a pact with? or was this simply a demon masked as the one he'd formed an agreement with?
"Takumi dear, I'd advice you to stay away from that beast...it seems to hold more of a personal grudge from my perspective" she mumbled out again mockingly yet managing to snap Takumi back to reality.
With a quick shift of feet movements, Takumi turned and leapt back a few inches before stopping dead on his tracks as he gazed upon the pure monstrosity before his very eyes. Its massive form, muscles rippling beneath its thick, matted fur, quaked with a primal rage that radiated palpably through the air. With each heaving breath, steam billowed from its flaring nostrils, casting an eerie mist around its imposing figure.
Its eyes, usually dull and listless, now blazed with an intense crimson glow, burning with a fiery intensity that seemed to pierce through the very soul of anyone unfortunate enough to meet its gaze. A low, guttural growl rumbled deep within its chest, building into a deafening roar that echoed through the cavernous depths, shaking the very ground beneath Takumi's feet, causing him to lose balance and trip.
Every sinew of its body tensed with raw power, veins bulging beneath its thick hide like rivers of molten lava coursing beneath the earth's surface. Its hooves, normally placid and steady, now scraped against the rocky ground with a thunderous fury, sending sparks flying with each furious stomp.
As it lowered its massive horned head, the air crackled with an electrifying energy, charged with the sheer force of its fury. With each step forward, it seemed to embody the wrath of a thousand storms, a force of nature unleashed upon the hapless souls who dared to stand in its path...it was no wonder why the well trained high-levelled men couldn't stand a chance against this creature. Takumi had well known this already...but what had him truly immobile was that this very creature that went from being beat up to ruthlessly slashing down its opponents, was just a simple manifestation of his human emotions accumulated over the past fifty five years that he'd lived...the sheer thought of this nearly left him gasping for breath under the pressure. The past had truly come back to haunt him.
The beast, angered to the core raised up its beefy arms, lifting the blade to the top most height it could possibly reach, its fury was clear and its goal were wordlessly understood by all...To kill all in its sight. Noticing this, Takumi rolled off to one side, shakily grabbing his blade as he barely missed the swing taken by the beast.
The ground was the unlucky one on this end, the blade pierced into it, creating a loud blast that left Takumi light headed and with ringing ears for a second or two. What followed was a shockwave that pushed him back and a massive crack that left the earth below him reverberating furiously, even as the enraged beast pulled out its blade. Debris fell from the roof, crumbling down like drops of rain on a stormy night, one of which smashing into Takumi's shoulder, leaving him shouting in pain as he dropped his blade to tend to the wound...but that's where he first slipped up, he'd now lost visual contact with his enemy and what followed was expected.
CRACK!!
The world remained motionless for a short second as Takumi's brain attempted to piece out what had just occurred. The movement was fast and incredibly agile, the contact was heavy, precise and brutal...lethal in fact. Was it some stray debris that bounced back at him? Not possible, the rocks simply shattered as they fell...The contact its self felt more familiar if not tuned up by a mighty scale. It was a blow, the heavy feel of a fist crashing into Takumi's abdomen, one that left every single bone within him parting ways with its connected part.
That was it, a blow! One well cultivated mighty blow from the Taurus' massive fist at a humanly impossible speed. It was all Takumi needed to leave reality for a brief moment before his body smashed into a series of walls, only stopping once it had found its self at a satisfying distance that pleased the Taurus.
At this distance, Takumi could only see a blur...a bloody blur as he spat out every liter of blood humanly possible. His abdomen was numb, paralyzed and broken to pieces, he could physically feel ribs move while others broke off...all from one blow? Was this truly how much he'd kept hidden within him all those years?
"STRIKE! Taurus 1-0 Takumi, now isn't this lovely?" Kurayami mockingly commented, echoing infinitely in Takumi's mind as he blurrily and helplessly watched the Taurus close the distance between them, one wall at a time, breaking off any wall that was narrower than its body size with a ruthless determination within its rage fueled heart.
"get...me out...get me out." Takumi worded out in a voice that barely exceeded a whisper, a single trickle of blood lingering in his eye.
"What was that Takumi? Do we have a chicken here already?" Kurayami responded before releasing another demonic laughter...one that Takumi was in no way pleased to hear.
"GET ME OUT OF HERE PLEASE! I CAN'T DO THIS! I DON'T WANT THIS ANYMORE!" Takumi blurted out at the top of his cracking voice, blood spewing out of his nostrils with the sheer utterance of his words, echoing in the dark halls that surrounded him. Causing even the Taurus to pause for a moment.
"I can't Takumi...I'm afraid this is up to you and yourself." Kurayami responded nonchalantly as if she were enjoying what she was watching.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN ME AND MYSELF?!" Takumi responded in pure anger before slipping onto the floor in an attempt to crawl away from his slowly approaching doom.
"Did you forget already? That's you, the fifty five year old geezer who couldn't do anything meaningful with his life" She responded, causing Takumi to briefly pause before shifting his dead gaze to the closer Taurus.
The rage that seeped out of it, its heavy stomps, its sheer steaming through its nostrils and its loud roars...all of it was him. The bottled up anger within him had been released, turning an easy to kill creature into a killing machine. Was this really what he had hidden within him?
"See it now? all that fifty five years has managed to turn it into a walking tank, ready to blow through everything it sees, do you finally understand what's happening?" Kurayami added, this time her tone being indifferent. Takumi noticed this and his first attempt to protest instantly cancelled its self out. All he could do was remain silent as he watched the Taurus rip through walls as if they were simply made of edible material.
"You still have that, the fifty five years of anger, it's still within you...just silent and hidden. If you use it just as much as this monster did, just how much do you think you could achieve?" She added, her point now hitting Takumi's mind like a hard cobble slab on thin ice.
"JUST...just how exactly am I supposed to force all my years of anger out of me? and how exactly can I turn into that by just using my sheer anger?" Takumi worded out, now willing to listen to the irritating demonic voice in his head, which simply chuckled back in response.
"My power, dummy. Its demonic, it only works with negative energy. Just think about something that makes you angry and *poof* just like that it works in your favor." she responded casually.
"look...I cant...just think of something that angers me and expect it to actually anger me. once its passed its...its gone" Takumi commented, groaning in pain as he carefully dragged himself back to a sitting posture with the support of the barely holding wall.
"That's simply the beauty of being a demon, anything from the past stays as fresh as it did long ago. Or are you going to let yourself beat you up, like you always did anyways." Kurayami cheekily commented.
"I...just can't!" Takumi mumbled out in frustration, seeming to please Kurayami.
"So I guess that's the end then, huh? no future, no success...no paying for your little sister's school fees?" She added, cleverly plotting her next move and successfully hitting her shot.
"Hey! Leave her out of this!" Takumi shouted out, his voice echoing through the halls. Yet still pleasing his demonic partner.
"Oh sorry my bad, but surely it must be a shame knowing that that girl in college who university was right, you're a sack of shit...and you won't be anything more than this" Kurayami responded, keeping her tone in a smooth yet irritation manner that seemed to scrape Takumi's soul.
"Fuck you and fuck her! Leave me alone!" Takumi shouted in response, shutting his eyes in pain as a haunting new feeling crept up on him, he couldn't understand yet he understood it...what the hell was going on.
It was as if every moment that Kurayami was mentioning had just freshly happened. Takumi again felt as if he had just been rejected by the one girl who he helped during every situation. The line was still fresh in his soul...a wound that had once healed but suddenly tore his heart open, what was this? Whatever it was, it simply had him clenching his fists and taking in deep breaths to control himself that clearly didn't work.
"But what can I say? she's right, right? I like how you got beat up the very same day too trying to fight you "best friend" who took her away from you, man aren't you the ideal sack of shit eh?" Kurayami continued, adding more pain to his fresh yet old injury.
"Very funny Kurayami...but I'm warning you, shut the actual hell up or else!" Takumi growled out, his heart heating up.
The moment was again like a fresh memory. He could see it before him, the smug look on his friend's face as he spouted out the words "Take a hike kid", the same buddy who swore to walk the face of this earth together with him till the day they died. The remembrance of this was enough to make Takumi steam up...quite literally frankly, jets of steam seemed to seep from his torn out clothing as his fractured bones visibly moved back into place. His eyes remained shut forcibly.
"or else what? Or else your mom dies again? all because you couldn't fight your past self, bro shut the fu-" Kurayami pasued her statement mid utterance as she viewed her results, invisibly standing beside him yet to her surprise, Takumi's gaze was staring right at her, unshaken, pissed and purely out for blood.
It was letting out a dim red glowing hue as well, similar to hers yet what was more oddly interesting was how it actually managed to instill an uncomfortable feeling within her, was the fifty five years of anger that she had anticipated been less than what he actually had hidden? To be honest she didn't really put fifty five years worth of anger into the Taurus, that was a simple throw of imbalanced negative energy, she was prepared to intervene in the case that his negative energy wouldn't be sufficient enough to counter the Taurus...but having enough negative energy that can possibly make a demon feel an ounce of any sort of feeling was possibly enough.
Even the Taurus noticed this, but its blood seeking rage was enough to blind it from reasonable thinking, instead of pausing and assessing its new situation, the Taurus' pace increased to a steady yet angered run; tearing down any bit of wall in its way without being disturbed in any way with the sword ready to slice down Takumi on sight.
"Remember this feeling dear, because the world doesn't care about it, you or anything concerning you...show it true fear and regret. Become the true you." Kurayami spouted out before floating slightly off the ground to escape the tremors that she expected to occur. The perfect prediction at the perfect moment as well.
In a split second, the Taurus had closed the distance between them, its massive form moving with an unnerving grace despite its sheer size. Takumi stood his ground, his heart pounding in his chest as he faced down this formidable opponent. But strangely, amidst the chaos and fear, he felt a strange sense of relief wash over him. It was as though a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders, freeing him from the suffocating grip of an unseen force.
With a sudden surge of energy coursing through his veins, Takumi moved with a speed and agility he never knew he possessed. He dodged the Taurus's initial blade strikes with swift, fluid movements, his body reacting almost instinctively to the threat before him. As the Taurus left itself momentarily exposed, Takumi seized the opportunity, launching himself forward with a surprising burst of strength.
In a blur of motion, Takumi disarmed the Taurus with a calculated precision, his movements guided by an otherworldly force that seemed to flow through him. The Taurus, caught off guard by Takumi's sudden onslaught, found itself at a distinct disadvantage as Takumi pressed his advantage, delivering a series of precise blows that left the creature reeling.
With each strike, the cavern reverberated with the force of their clash, the sound of their blows echoing off the walls like thunder. Takumi's fists collided with the Taurus's body with a ferocity that seemed to defy logic, each impact sending shockwaves rippling through the air.
Finally, with a mighty roar, Takumi delivered a decisive blow that sent the Taurus crashing to the ground in a heap. The creature lay motionless, its once fearsome form now reduced to a bloody mess upon the cavern floor.
"Congratulations, Hiroshi Takumi," Kurayami's voice echoed through the cavern, carrying an air of sinister satisfaction. "You've conquered your past. Now, you no longer need to live as you did and suffer the same fate."
"I feel like I should beat your ass too for what you we're saying just a few minutes back." Takumi responded, a cold and indifferent tone taking up his old self.
He felt invigorated, more alive than he had ever felt before. The surge of rage coursing through him seemed to fuel his determination, igniting a newfound sense of purpose. Even if it meant embracing a darker side, he realized that the world was not solely defined by heroes; sometimes, the path to success demanded a willingness to tread in shadowed alleys. For Takumi, the driving force was simple: to provide for himself and his loved ones. Nothing else mattered in comparison, and now, he believed he possessed the strength and resolve to achieve his goals.
"But I suppose I could reconsider," he added with a wry chuckle, his gaze shifting to the aftermath of the battle. "So, umm... how exactly do I profit from this? A dead body doesn't fetch much, especially when it's splattered against a wall," he queried, pondering the logistics of earning from the chaotic aftermath.
"Try looking below you maybe, you might find something rather interesting in there." Kurayami suggested cryptically, gesturing toward a glimmering object beneath the remains of the Taurus.
In an instant, realization dawned upon Takumi, filling him with instant gratification. Before him lay a golden ingot and a blood-stained dagger. The sight brought a surge of satisfaction, knowing that the golden ingot alone could fetch him a handsome sum of 10 credits.
"Holy shit if I can actually get 2 more then I'm absolutely set!" He shouted out, joy evident in his tone.
"Why stop at just 2?" Kurayami mumbled mischievously, as if she had inadvertently revealed a secret plan.
The comment struck Takumi hard, resonating with the truth. The combat hadn't felt as daunting as he'd imagined. He realized he could acquire both skills and money simultaneously, so why limit himself to just two ingots? Sensing Takumi's silent concurrence, Kurayami flashed an evil grin before disappearing into thin air, leaving behind only a crimson glow from her eyes.
"Then shall we begin...Takumi?" She echoed out
Her words were swiftly followed by a series of menacing growls emanating from behind Takumi. He released a slightly anxious breath, his grip tightening around the damaged dagger as he assumed a ready stance, prepared for whatever new challenge awaited him.
"Hell fucking yeah." Takumi growled out in response.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
yusuf_abdul
yusuf_abdul im so sorry if at any point you find the name Tanaka instead of Tanuki, I was working on a project and used the name Tanaka on it so now it cant get out of my head!!!! thx for the reads guys, hope you're enjoying this.
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