Villain: Your Heroines Were Delicious

Chapter 145: Chapter 10

Renji looked at the hole he had made earlier, still feeling the shockwaves from Yukina and Takeko’s clash that made the floorboards beneath his boots tremble.

He let out a low whistle, impressed by how hard they were going at it.

“Damn, Yukina and Emi are really tearing this whole place down,” he muttered, a reckless grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Can’t let the girls have all the fun, can I? When will that opponent that Haruka was talking about arrive?”

He straightened his back, his golden spirit energy flickering around his knuckles like dying embers waiting for a breeze.

Then, he heard it.

The slow, deliberate cadence of heavy footsteps approaching from the darkness of the north corridor.

The weight of the newcomer’s presence was oppressive—it didn’t feel like the refined Ki of a martial artist nor a spirit energy of a Karyoku user, but the raw, bludgeoning power of a street-certified killer.

From the shadows, a figure emerged.

He was tall and built like a mountain of corded muscle, his blonde hair cropped short and his green eyes reflecting the hallway’s dim emergency lights with a predatory glint.

He wore the Saint Shinomiya boxing club’s elite tracksuit, the fabric straining against his massive shoulders.

Kamuro Ryu, the Captain of the Boxing Club and the undisputed powerhouse of the Eight Limbs.

Renji’s eyes widened, and the casual grin on his face vanished, replaced by a snarl of pure, unadulterated hatred.

His teeth ground together with a sound like crushing gravel. “Kamuro… Ryu.”

Ryu stopped ten paces away, his expression one of bored indifference as he looked Renji up and down, his gaze lingering on the flickering golden energy.

He frowned, his voice a deep, dismissive rumble. “And who are you supposed to be? Another one of Kageyama’s strays?”

The insult hit Renji like a physical blow, but it only served to stoke the furnace of his Ki. “Forget me already? After what we went through? Then let me remind you, Ryu. Let me remind you of the fists you once learned to fear in the back alleys of your gym!”

Without wasting another word, Renji moved.

His golden spirit energy detonated with the force of his anger, and with a burst of supernatural speed that left a literal afterimage, Renji closed the distance in a fraction of a second.

He appeared in Ryu’s guard, his lead hand snapping out in a lightning-fast jab aimed directly at the bridge of Ryu’s nose.

But Ryu’s reflexes were honed by thousands of hours in the ring, and he dodged the punch by a hair’s breadth, the wind of the golden fist ruffling his blonde hair.

He immediately stepped back into a Southpaw stance, his chin tucked and his massive lead right hand raised in a tight guard.

His green eyes narrowed, the gears of memory finally turning.

“I see,” Ryu said, a cruel, mocking smile curling his lips. “I remember now. You’re that loser from back then. The one who had good power but no discipline. You’re the one who fell at my feet in the third round.”

“Fell?” Renji laughed, a jagged, dangerous sound as he began to circle Ryu, his feet dancing across the floor with the grace of a middleweight and the weight of a heavyweight. “Maybe in the tournament, where you were saved by the referee and the bell. But remember that night outside your gym? If the police hadn’t swarmed the place, I wouldn’t have just defeated you, I would’ve turned you into a vegetable and left you for the crows.”

Ryu’s face contorted, the mask of the elite athlete slipping to reveal the face of a man who had tasted true terror.

That night was a stain on his record he had tried to erase with titles and trophies—the night a “nobody” from a gutter school had nearly ended his life in an unsanctioned street fight.

“Shut up!” Ryu roared, his voice shaking the lockers lining the hall. “I’m different from back then! I’ve been trained by the Society! I’m the strongest of the Limbs!”

Ryu lunged, his right cross coming in like a wrecking ball.

Renji parried it with a golden forearm, the impact creating a shower of sparks.

The two men stood chest-to-chest for a heartbeat, the air between them screaming with the friction of their clashing wills.

Then, the boxing match from hell began.

It wasn’t the clean, technical sparring of a gym, no, this was a “Supernatural Brawl.”

Ryu’s punches carried the weight of a professional, his fists coated in a dense, dark-red spirit energy that felt like being hit with hot lead.

Every time he swung, the air crackled.

Renji countered with his golden spirit energy, his style a frantic, high-octane mix of classic boxing and desperate street brawling.

He moved in a blur, his head movement so fluid it looked as if his bones had turned to liquid.

He slipped under Ryu’s massive hook and delivered a stinging three-punch combination to Ryu’s ribs.

Thud-Thud-CRACK!

Ryu winced as the golden energy bypassed his muscular armor, vibrating through his internal organs.

He growled, catching Renji with a short, brutal uppercut that lifted the blonde boy off his feet.

Renji tasted copper as his lip split, but he didn’t back down. Instead, he spat a glob of blood onto Ryu’s pristine white shoes and surged forward again.

“Is that all, ’Saint’?! I thought you were supposed to be the strongest!?!”

“Shut up! Shut up! I’ll kill you!” Ryu screamed, his form losing its technical polish as the “thug” within him took over.

They traded blows in the center of the hallway, neither willing to give an inch of ground.

The sound was like a construction site—rhythmic, violent, and unrelenting.

Left hooks, right crosses, and devastating body shots exchanged at a pace that would have killed a normal human.

The golden light of Renji’s spirit clashed against the dark red of Ryu’s hate, illuminating the hallway in flashes of violent amber and crimson.

For Renji, this wasn’t just about the 24th District or Seijirou’s war.

This was about the shadow that had haunted his dreams for years, the blonde monster who had ruined not only his life, but also the life of his beloved coach!

“Die you bastard!” Renji roared, finding an opening.

The impact of Renji’s fist into Ryu’s solar plexus was muffled by the sheer density of the boxer’s abdominal muscles, but the golden Ki behind the blow bypassed the flesh, rattling Ryu’s diaphragm.

For a split second, the “Saint” of the Boxing Club gasped, his eyes bulging as the oxygen in his lungs was forcibly evicted.

But Ryu was a veteran of the Society’s brutal training. Instead of doubling over, he used the proximity to his advantage.

His massive hands clamped onto Renji’s shoulders like iron manacles, pinning him in place.

“Got you, you gutter rat!” Ryu hissed through clenched teeth.

He drove his knee upward with the force of a battering ram, the strike connecting squarely with Renji’s chest.

The sound of the impact was sickening—a dull, wet thud that sent Renji into a violent coughing fit, his vision swimming with white spots.

“Gah! Cough! Cough! You bastard! And you call yourself a boxer!?”

But Ryu didn’t give him a second to breathe as he unleashed a barrage of clinical, high-speed combinations.

Left, right, hook, uppercut—a relentless storm of leather and red Ki that turned Renji’s face into a map of bruises.

Finally, sensing the end, Ryu stepped into a pivot and launched a vicious side-kick, aimed at Renji’s head.

In an instant, his heel connected just above Renji’s left ear. The world tilted on its axis for Renji; the equilibrium in his brain shattered, and he hit the floor with a heavy, unceremonious crash.

Ryu stood over him, chest heaving, a cruel and triumphant sneer twisting his features.

“Trash is trash after all,” he spat, wiping a bead of sweat from his blonde hair.

He watched as Renji’s fingers twitched against the floorboards, his eyes still burning with an unquenchable, burning hatred.

Ryu smirked, enjoying the sight of the struggle. “What? Still got some fight in those eyes? Are you angry? Do you think I’m ’unworthy’ of the sport? Hah! Who cares about your pride? Who cares about dignity? In this city, in the Society, winning is the only truth. History is written by the one standing over the body.”

Renji didn’t answer.

But slowly, with a staggering display of willpower, he pushed himself up. His signature pompadour, the pride of his delinquent identity, was a ruined mess of tangled strands.

He touched it, and sighed in disappointment as he reached into his pocket, pulled out a simple black tie, and with steady hands, pulled his shoulder-length hair back into a practical, messy ponytail.

He stood tall, the golden spirit energy around him suddenly going silent. No, it was not disappearing, but compressing.

The air in the hallway grew frigid, then began to vibrate with a low, tectonic hum.

“You talk too much, Kamuro Ryu,” Renji said, his voice eerily calm.

Suddenly, his golden Ki didn’t flared up, no it erupted into a towering pillar of light that cracked the ceiling!

Then, behind him, the shadows coalesced into the phantom figure of a gargantuan, ancient man.

He was covered in the trophies of a thousand wars, his skin a roadmap of jagged, silver scars, and his hands large enough to crush a dragon’s skull.

Renji reached for the hem of his shirt and tore it away in a single motion.

As his bare chest was exposed to the cold night air, the hallway seemed to gasped as red tribal markings, glowing with the heat of a furnace, began to spread across his skin, perfectly mirroring the scars of the ancient spirit behind him.

Ryu’s smirk vanished. He took a reflexive step back, his instincts screaming that the person standing before him was no longer a “delinquent.”

“Use your Karyoku,” Renji commanded, his voice resonating with a metallic, ancient weight. “Use it now, or you will die where you stand.”

Ryu felt a surge of wounded ego and terror. “You… how dare you! I am a Saint of Shinomiya! You’re just a—”

“This is my Karyoku,” Renji interrupted, the red lines on his arms pulsing with light. “The manifestation of a soul that knows no defeat. This is the gift granted to me by the Great King of the Geats, the hero who tore the arm from Grendel with his bare hands. This is the power of Beowulf.”

Renji took a single step forward.

The floorboards beneath his feet creak, before they disintegrated into splinters.

The golden aura and the red markings fused, creating an amber glow that made him look like a statue of a vengeful god.

“Even in the ring, you couldn’t even be called a boxer. You’re just a cheater, a shame to the name boxer, and that’s all you are.” Renji whispered, his eyes now glowing a solid, terrifying gold. “But out here, in the dark… I am a warrior even dragons would fear.”