Kenji stayed still, he didn't even notice that he had been attacked until blood began dripping from his cheeks.
Everybody in the class looked at the two in surprise, they hadn't expected a fight to start this early.
"Huh? Is that all you commoners know? Even in such a small situation you still need to resort to violence? Fine then let's settle this"
Kenji said as he drew his sword, he was a sword cultivator who was a level higher than Shiro, he used a double katana which he held together like one sword. Although Shiro had fought much higher cultivators, he knew that those who were classified as geniuses were a league apart from the rest. Underestimating him even slightly could lead to his defeat.
Kenji smiled at Naomi before looking at Shiro with a glare, he had hated commoners for a long time and being able to fight one now gave him the opportunity to unleash his anger.
[Kenji Sword Style: First Form; Kenji illusions]
Kenji lunged at Shiro while chanting, his body turned into a blur and separated into three different beings. Once he felt that he was close enough, Kenji thrusted his swords into Shiro's body from three different angles, while thrusting, he split his blade into two revealing the second one, now there were six swords coming at Shiro.
Shiro looked around him while remaining calm, his mind worked nearly three times faster than theirs so he had more than enough time to think a lot during battles.
He observed the swords while watching out for any gaps in their attacking formation, he traced the course of the blade with his martial awareness before activating his evasion technique.
Kenji watched as Shiro turned into a blur and weaved through the gaps of his attack, he was shocked by Shiro's speed in seeing the flaws in a technique and coming up with solutions. Seeing that his close range attack wasn't getting him anywhere he jumped back and began attacking from mid-range.
All his three clones surrounded Shiro and began thrusting their blades towards him, of course they were too far apart to hit each other but each thrust carried energy that was pushed out towards Shiro. Shiro sensed the attack coming from all sides, there was not much he could do since the attacks were fast and the attackers were too far for his martial awareness to reach.
Shiro attempted dodging once the energy wave entered his range, but a measly one meter was easily covered up in less than a second, even with his faster mind, Shiro was having trouble just detecting the attack talk less of dodging it.
The attacks slammed into his body as blood sprayed from the injury directly soaking his robes, he had experienced this method of handling him since it was the same way Naomi had used to corner him during their fight.
Shiro winced in pain but he didn't let it show on his face, he still carried that aloof, indifferent and calm look he had when the fight first started.
"Are you done?"
Shiro asked as he put his hand on the hilt of his sword, he couldn't fight when he couldn't see his opponent so he resorted to moving around till he found his target.
Shiro planted his right foot on the ground before kicking the ground with his other leg, he lunge towards one of the three Kenji and began lashing out with his sword, he didn't know if that person was the real Kenji since his martial awareness couldn't differentiate between them.
His sword danced around with speed and precision but unfortunately it was a clone, once it had reached its threshold for damage intake it exploded and turned to dust.
Shiro looked around again, now he was trapped, he couldn't continue with this tactics since the space between the three of them was now much.
Kenji looked at Shiro with uncertainty in his eyes, he had watched clips of Shiro's fight with Naomi but he didn't want to believe that a blind person could enter the academy talk less of taking down the first ranked person on the ranking least.
In other to test if Shiro really couldn't see, he used a technique which had a lot of obvious flaws. Although, it had no flaw when sensed with sensory techniques, the clones each looked different from the user which made it easy for those who could see to identify the real body, however, Shiro couldn't see and he mainly relied on martial awareness which was a sensory technique so this attack walked wonders on him.
Shiro stood helplessly at the center of two opponents as he got bombarded by attacks. Just like Naomi had done during her fight with Shiro, Kenji also used attacks what didn't reveal where he was attacking from and in addition to that, he was also moving around too.
Shiro was helpless, he was the one who had initiated the fight and now it looked loke he was about to lose, Shiro felt like he couldn't go on like this, his evasion technique only helped in reducing the amount of punishment he received at ones.
"I guess this is it"
The crowd looked like they had seen enough, most of them carried in them the thoughts that commoners didn't know their place thus resulting in the battle outcome.
Shiro himself had stopped trying to fight back, his body just stood there as blood flowed out from every attack, he too believe that he had lost the fight.
Shiro smiled internally, maybe commoners like him truly didn't know their place.
"Don't give up! The battle isn't over yet!"
Those words might have been said in the spur of the moment but the effect it had on Shiro's already broken mind was enormous.
Black tattoo like marks began spreading around Shiro's faces from the right side of his neck, steam came out from the cuts on his skin instantly healing all his injuries.
His eyes were now black and his pupils were red with a specific pattern on them, he looked around until the image of Kenji reflected on his eyes.