Chapter 154: Azure Flame Curse (Patreon)

Watching the Golden Flame shift from gold to a blazing red, from a gentle healing effect into an energy that differed from ordinary Crimson Flames yet was just as fierce and unrestrained, Iori Yagami's pupils contracted sharply.

It wasn't the heat, and it wasn't the flames themselves. The instant that fire appeared, Iori felt a surge of agitation rising from his very blood.

The curse flowing through his veins, the one called Orochi, began to boil and howl. It felt as though every cell in his body was screaming at him.

An uncontrollable urge to kill welled up from the depths of his blood, as if it meant to burn his reason to ash.

As everyone looked on, blue-violet Azure Flames erupted around him, shrieking through the air.

His eyes were flooded with bloodshot veins, and in the glow of the Azure Flames his already cold face looked like an asura's.

He took a step forward. The paving stones beneath his feet cracked silently under the licking flames, but he didn't strike right away.

His body trembled violently. Iori glared at Yang, refusing to submit to his instincts.

"Who... exactly are you?" Iori's voice was hoarse and low, each word squeezed out of his throat one at a time.

Facing him, Yang drew a deep breath of his own.

Plenty of people saw Iori Yagami as brutal, ruthless, cruel and savage, a born-evil Yagami brat.

But that impression came mostly from his vicious fighting style in The King of Fighters series, and from the Orochi Iori mode's berserk form, which was more beast than human.

In truth, it was the exact opposite. In the official lore, Iori was never a powder keg. He actually despised meaningless fights.

He scorned duels with the weak and treated battle as a way to prove his own existence. Even his attitude toward Kusanagi wasn't really about the family feud. Or rather, it had started with the feud, but after they crossed paths it had turned into a personal obsession, a kind of kindred respect.

Like now. The hatred the Orochi blood held for the Crimson Flames was surging into his mind through the bloodline curse, yet Iori refused to yield. He just kept glaring at Yang.

"Why... do you wield the Crimson Flames?"

"Shiranui-ryu." Meeting Iori's gaze, Yang answered calmly.

"An ancient ninjutsu school born in this land. A thousand years ago, their ancestors wielded the power of the Crimson Flames, known as the 'Flowing Flame Secret Arts.' Later they were attacked by a group who wielded a special kind of fire. The Flowing Flame Secret Arts were lost, and the survivors could only trim the remnants down into today's Mind-Flame arts."

Iori only kept staring at Yang. Chun-Li and the others, meanwhile, instinctively turned their eyes to Mai Shiranui.

Mai said nothing. She simply gazed blankly at Yang's back.

Yang paid it no mind. He looked at Iori's eyes, still caught between reason and madness, and said calmly:

"I inherited the legacy of Shiranui-ryu. So uncovering the truth of that year and finding whoever attacked Shiranui Town has become my responsibility."

"...Responsibility?" Iori paused, then the corner of his mouth twitched into a look of contempt. "In other words, a grudge left behind by your ancestors. Right?"

Sensing the disdain in Iori's words, Yang knew full well that Iori loathed family feuds.

But he wasn't in a hurry. He only smiled faintly, a smile that was neither polite nor provocative. He didn't answer right away. Instead, a distinctive aura began to spread from his body: the pheromones stirred up by Shiranui-ryu's Charm Arts, carrying Yang's own conqueror's will and fighting spirit, flooding outward without any restraint.

"A grudge passed down through Shiranui-ryu... maybe. But I don't see it as a curse. It's a responsibility I have to shoulder because I chose to learn their art. And even without that responsibility, I'd still have come to ask you."

Yang looked at Iori quietly.

Hearing him, feeling his gaze, Iori sensed that something about this man was different.

The Orochi blood was a curse. It made the men of the Yagami clan quick to anger, the women frail and sickly, and gave them all short lives and periodic fits of the Riot of the Blood. But alongside that price came a primal nature, or rather a bestial one, far beyond that of ordinary people.

That wildness, born of nature itself, gave the Yagami clan a keen sensitivity. Their beastlike sense of danger let them pick up traces and details ordinary people couldn't detect.

And now, as the pheromones spread, Yang's eyes looked especially radiant and bright in Iori's sight.

They were not the eyes of someone driven by a so-called family destiny. They were eyes that came straight from the heart, from the depths of instinct: a fighting spirit that was pure and unconcealed.

It wasn't for hatred. It wasn't for fate. There was no division between justice and evil.

He simply wanted to fight.

It was like a man starved for a long time finally seeing a table piled with delicacies. No stray thoughts, just a raw hunger, almost childlike in its innocence.

Iori felt it.

The man before him was exceptionally hungry... and had an exceptional appetite.

Meeting Iori's gaze, Yang said gently, "Fighting isn't the goal. It's a way of living."

Hearing this, and sensing Yang's thoughts, Iori froze for a moment. Then he drew a deep breath, feeling an inexplicable impulse strike his heart.

He could tell that the fight Yang pursued wasn't violence for its own sake. And that gave Iori a strange sense of familiarity, as if they were alike.

In silence, Iori forcibly suppressed the blood curse within his body. He felt the thoughts flowing at the bottom of his heart and made sure they weren't products of the curse's influence, but wholly his own. Without realizing it, the corner of his mouth curved upward.

But the curve lasted only an instant before vanishing. Even Yang, standing right in front of him, failed to catch it in time.

Feeling the hunger that came from within himself, Iori looked at Yang, and after a moment let out a cold laugh.

"Shiranui-ryu. Never heard of it."

His eyes were still covered in bloodshot veins, still glinting with a mad light, as Iori said curtly:

"But if that's the way of living you want, then I'll give it to you."

"Here we go again."

Seeing this, Chun-Li rubbed her brow and sighed. "That A-Yang..."

"It's fine, I'm used to it by now."

Juri Han didn't seem very bothered by Chun-Li's words. After living together for so long, she already knew Yang was the kind of battle maniac who couldn't be satisfied without a fight.

Since it was her first time here, Mai blinked curiously and asked, "Huh? Used to what? A-Yang's personality?"

"Pretty much."

Juri shrugged. "For Yang, fighting is like food, or even air. He needs no reason. It's a nutrient he has to keep taking in just to live, or at least to stay healthy."

She paused, then turned a curious look on Chun-Li and the others. "I don't know much about what happened between you guys before, but you probably didn't skip the fighting after you met, did you?"

Chun-Li froze for a second, recalling the first time she and her father had met Yang at Han Court. A trace of helplessness crossed her face as she rubbed her forehead.

"Mm... pretty much. We did end up fighting back then."

"Fusui and I didn't, actually," Kure Karura said after thinking it over. "We went to visit as guests, after all. But once we moved in, we sparred all the time."

When they first met, Tong'ang and Old Gen had been present, so Yang and Kure Karura had kept to polite exchanges. But after they settled in, their daily training always included fierce sparring and combat.

"Same here, more or less." Juri shrugged.

"There was a derelict cop around then too, and there was a misunderstanding. The cop and I teamed up to attack Yang. We lost, the misunderstanding got cleared up, and I've been living here ever since."

Hearing everyone describe how they'd first met Yang, Mai blinked, then thought back to meeting him in the dojo. She couldn't help tapping her forehead with her fan.

"So that's how it is..."

"How what is?" Juri asked, glancing at her sideways.

Mai wore a troubled look. "We fought too... well, I guess you could call it a fight, or sparring, something like that. I thought some enemy of my family had come to challenge the dojo, so I went at Yang."

"I was worried I'd been too rash and impulsive, that I'd left a bad impression or something. But from the way you all talk, fighting Yang seems like the most natural thing in the world?"

"Pretty much." Juri nodded and patted Mai's shoulder. "Even if you hadn't brought it up, sooner or later he'd have found a way to fight you."

Juri remembered it well. Back then, Yang had had plenty of chances to explain that he wasn't with Shadaloo. But because he wanted a fight, he'd kept quiet, even escalating the conflict.

It was irritating, but since she was the one who'd attacked without even listening, Juri hadn't said anything about it.

"Anyway, just watch."

Juri tapped her rice bowl. "Watching a fight while eating isn't bad either."

"Don't tap your bowl while eating." Chun-Li warned her wearily. "Only beggars do that. It's bad luck."

"Tap tap tap, I'll tap if I want to~"

Juri had clearly made up her mind to defy Chun-Li.

Chun-Li didn't indulge her. With a single "Docking your allowance," she shut Juri up and made her admit defeat on the spot.

Meanwhile, Iori and Yang had moved to the open ground in front of the restaurant.

Facing Yang, Iori took no stance. He just kept his hands in his pockets and hunched slightly, his long red hair hiding most of his face, the Azure Flames rising around him.

Though they were flames, these Azure Flames didn't feel hot. They felt more like the hellfire of the underworld, bringing not warmth but a cold end.

Even Iori's own healing effect and vital qi flickered and swayed as the Azure Flames ignited.

Merely wielding this fire sent pain surging from deep in his blood. That pain, which came hand in hand with the power, was part of the blood curse.

It was also why the Yagami descendants had always died young: besides qi and intent, the Azure Flames literally burned away the user's lifespan.

But precisely because of that steep price, the Azure Flames, though weaker than the Crimson Flames in raw destructive power on paper, had abilities in other respects that far exceeded them.

Even now, just from the aftershocks leaking off the Azure Flames, Yang felt his body's instincts send up a warning.

With that in mind, Yang cupped the golden Flame of Life in both hands. The vigorous healing effect spread outward with the leaping flames. It was probably the first time Yang had released the Flame of Life at full power.

Unlike when he'd healed Shiranui Hanzo and Juri Han, this time Yang was truly using the Flame of Life to invigorate his own body.

As his whole body surged with vitality, the waves of life rippling through the air stirred an odd throb in Iori. Whether Yang meant it or not, Iori could feel it: the moment his body touched that spreading life force, the pain that had been everywhere in him eased considerably.

Even the mental erosion from the blood curse, the madness of his ancestors' blood, cooled down noticeably.

That caught Iori's attention. Almost instinctively, he turned a questioning look on Yang.

Yang simply set his stance and said calmly, "Come at me with everything you've got."

Iori fell silent, then nodded.

"You'd better be ready."

It was probably the first time Iori had ever warned an opponent before a fight, and his voice carried a clear awkwardness. He seemed to notice it himself. After a brief pause, he grew inexplicably irritated and said coldly:

"I've never known what holding back means. If you came here thinking this is just sparring, be careful not to die here."

Yang didn't mind. He simply took another coin from inside his coat and held it up for Iori to see.

Once he'd received Iori's look of understanding, the coin was tossed high into the air.