371 Joker and Executor (1/2)

Shin closed his eyes as the system teleported him towards the final's battle arena. And right after appearing in the center of that ruined city, his ears were immediately assaulted by a lot of loud shouting from the audience stand – all of the players watching from the audience stand started going wild the moment they saw Shin and Demon standing at the center of the battle arena.

”Tsk! Such a noisy place for the final battle,” muttered Shin as he reopened his eyes. And just like his previous matches, he immediately swept his gaze around him to observe the whole place.

At the same time, Demon did the same thing as if it was a usual routine for him. And when they were done checking everything, both of them simultaneously looked at each other and tried to assess each other's auras.

That stare down lasted for a couple of seconds before 'Demon' started talking first. ”Looks like we really have gone through a similar training discipline, hmm? So~, from what camp did you come from.”

Hearing that, Shin raised brows behind his mask while saying. ”So, you really came from that place after all.”

He paused for a moment before giving his answer from the previous question. ”Since that was the case, I don't need to answer you since we both know the rules, right?”

After that, both of them suddenly turned quiet as they waited for the system to announce the start of the fight.

Even if Shin really wanted to know more about this guy's origin, he was still too eager to start the fight so that he could assess his opponent's real strength.

What's more, he also didn't need to put more thought on it currently since he would know about it later – after seeing Demon's real battle style and habits.

During his time in that hell-like training camp, Shin learned that the Black Serpent Mafia had a lot of other training camps and each of those camps had their own style of training. And since these camps had their unique training regime, the agents graduated from those places and had their own style of fighting compared to the ones who graduated from the other training camps.

Even if Shin didn't officially graduate in the initial phase of his respective training camp, he still adapted most of the battle styles from that place – which was the style that focused on 'versatility'.

The training camp that he came from trained their agents to become flexible on all kinds of situations – and this particular style clearly had a huge influence on his current battle style.

At the same time, this style was further enhanced by Professor Plum when he took Shin as his disciple since his own version of Yin-Yang Arts was a quite complex Martial-Arts. After all, his martial-arts was a balanced combination of offense and defense.

Shin and Demon looked at each other as they were trying to see if they could guess what type of agents their opponent was.

Unfortunately, both of them were quite cautious of showing any signs that could become useful for their opponents.

Actually, they could even make a guess about that based on the previous battles of each other. It's just they chose not to completely trust those data since some of them might be there to mislead them. After all, there was a certain rule on the Mafia regarding it. And that was the assassin rule no.9 – ”Don't trust everything that you see since it can be a trap set by your enemy.” –

After the whole minute of 'talk time' set by the system, the signal for the start of the match finally rang at everyone's ears which also silenced the entire audience stand – all of their shouting and yelling suddenly came into a halt the moment they heard that familiar sound.

And as if coordinating with their silence, both of the fighters standing at the center of the arena quickly started their battle right after hearing that particular signal.

Swoosh!

Demon suddenly rushed forward and instantly appeared in front of Shin while thrusting his jade spear along with his charge.

The tip of that jade spear went straight at Shin's face as if Demon was trying to execute his opponent right off the bat.

Unfortunately, all it hit was the fading figure of his opponent as Shin dodged it by doing a simple yet fast ducking motion while taking his signature sword-drawing stance.

He was planning to use his opponent's forward momentum to his advantage while he himself was pulling out his sword as fast as he could.

But Demon was also clever enough to prevent himself from being in disadvantage. He used his momentum to accelerate forward before using his other hand to prevent Shin from pulling his sword from being drawn.

Pa!

With a strong push, the [Yamato] was immediately sent back to its sheath!

After that, Shin and Demon simultaneously did a slight turn with their bodies and made themselves to brush past each other.

During that time, Shin was turning his body along with Demon's movements to have the dominant position to attack. But before he could even pull his sword out from its sheath, Demon suddenly jumped and turned his body around while thrusting his jade spear at Shin in the process.

Swoosh!

Shin was not fast enough to unsheathe [Yamato] in time so he immediately leaned sideways trying to dodge the sudden thrust. But while he was trying to dodge, Demon suddenly used the remaining momentum of his turn to change the trajectory of his jade spear and turned his forward thrust into a wide swing.

Seeing that, Shin quickly raised his sheathed sword at the path of the spear, planning to use it to block the incoming strike.

Clang!

That swing was not that strong since it already lost a lot of its initial force when Demon forcefully changed the trajectory of the spear. Given that, Shin didn't have much problem at blocking that attack.