38 Chapter 38 - Dragon Paradigm Sword Style

"Ugh, why is it so far away?" Ryuji yawned as he hugged his blade while leaning his head on the window of the bus. Looking outside the vast expanse of green fields, he saw the distant silhouette of the exam area coming into view.

Tall walls covered the entire stage, and only the top of the tallest buildings poked through the covers. White clouds roamed through the sky while wind drifted along the blades of grass beneath.

Moving his gaze away from the window, he instead went on to inspect the others inside the bus as he and his keen eyes managed to latch onto a few particular individuals that piqued his interest.

'Look at that guy with white and red hair. Isn't he the son of Endeavor? Heh, I can't wait to turn that guy into my little pawn once things are a bit calmer.' Ryuji grinned. 'Well, maybe I might be able to finally mess with All Might's mind now since One for All is already transferred to Izuku, but that's still too risky for now.'

'I still lack enough data to safely mess with their minds. If I'm not careful, then the remnant wills of previous holders might detect my presence and damage my soul.' Ryuji shook his head and fiddled with the blade in his hand.

'No worries. I have time on my side, enough time to have them dance around the palm of my hand.' He snickered and rubbed the edges of the sheath of his blade with a smile.

Soon enough, the bus arrived at the gates of the testing facility, and the students alighted from the bus in droves. Ryuji was among them, and he lazily inspected the area with bored eyes.

"It's you again."

Ryuji moved his eyes and stared at the young girl right beside him. She was Momo Yaoyorozu, the same girl who he met back at the entrance to UA High. She appeared the same as usual, but this time, she wore a strangely revealing outfit that caused Ryuji to squint his eyes.

"I didn't know young mistresses like you wear this type of clothes nowadays." Ryuji pointed his sheathed blade at her body.

Momo's face turned bright red at Ryuji's vulgar response. She subconsciously covered her chest and stomach, averting her eyes to the side as she clenched her teeth, "Y-You!"

"What?" Ryuji yawned and slung his blade over his shoulder. "I just stated a fact."

"E-Even so, that's something you shouldn't say so plainly!" Momo harrumphed and glared at Ryuji. "Besides, I have to wear this because of my quirk."

"Ohh…" Ryuji straightened his back and sneered. "I could say the same goes for me too. I have to wear this golden robe because of my quirk!"

"Yours is different!" Momo pointed at Ryuji with an annoyed face.

"And how could you say that, young miss?" Ryuji was about to continue teasing her when all of a sudden, they heard a ring from the surrounding speakers around them.

"What are you all waiting for? Do you think the villains would wait for you to start? Ha! Get going already if you don't wanna fail!"

"Oh, it already started?" The boy nonchalantly moved his gaze to the others around them and grinned. "That's pretty unexpected."

"Hmph, it seems like you were saved by the bell this time." Momo shifted her body to the side and waited for the gates to open.

"Well, I can't deny that it was fun talking to you, young miss." Ryuji winked at her with a teasing grin. "But I gotta go now. I don't wanna miss out on this fun and all, you know?"

As soon as he said so, he disappeared from her eyes like he was a mere illusion.

"Eh?" She looked around, confused by his abrupt disappearance.

Momo tried to process what just happened, but the others quickly went to rush over to the gate. Clearing out her thoughts, she also took off into a swift run and muttered under her breath, "What was that just now?"

…

"Now that's more like it." Ryuji grinned atop the walls of the city and stared down at the horde of examinees flooding the area. From the distance, he saw robots of different appearances popping out of buildings or alleyways, and engaging with the students in battles.

"Heh, amateurs. They're nothing more than third-rate trash of some trash sect." Ryuji mocked as he nonchalantly sat at the edge of the wall, staring down with a big grin on his face at the spectacle unfolding.

Many of them struggled to face one-pointers and two-pointers, much less the three-pointers. While it was still the start of the exam and the participants were still adjusting themselves to the level of difficulty, Ryuji still thought of them as nothing but mere trash.

As he thought so, his eyebrows rose at the same time gargantuan glaciers rose from the ground that destroyed tons of robots from that one singular attack.

"Oh?" Ryuji grinned. "Quite daring, are we? Using such an attack so early is quite a gamble on his part.

"That must be that white hair kid back then…" Ryuji squinted his eyes and saw the boy gliding through the ground with a trail of ice beneath him.

On the other hand, far away from where the ice was, Ryuji saw the rich las wielding an array of weapons and dealing with one robot to another, and she displayed exceptional skills with the weapons she wielded.

"Oho? She's quite skilled, which is unexpected." Ryuji murmured. "But she's still far from being at a satisfactory level. Why doesn't she just create guns instead of relying on her paltry physical strength?"

As he watched all of the participants display their poor skills for a while, he checked the time through the huge clock in the distance and saw that the remaining time left was 5 minutes.

"That should be enough of a headstart for these third-rated trashes." Ryuji slowly stood up with a widening grin, and he tightened his grip on the handle of his sheathed blade.

…

Inside a dark room, numerous monitors were glowing dimly as live footage of the exams was playing out in front of a certain group of people. One was a man with a cement-like body, the other had a dark orb for a head, and the other was a comical rat the size of a child.

The rat thing smiled as it watched the live feed from multiple fronts, and it commentated with glee in its voice.

"Doesn't this year's group look promising?"

"The son of Endeavor."

"The daughter of the Yoayorozu family."

"Someone with a keen sense for combat and a deep understanding of his explosions."

"A young boy with a quirk that can destroy a robot with a simple punch, displaying overwhelming physical strength and speed."

"A lot of talents have gathered here today to embark on the path of becoming great heroes." The rat thing chuckled, and it leaned back on its chair as it remained smiling.

"Indeed." The guy with a dark orb for a head nodded his head.

"While that's true, there is someone who has been abnormal since the very start." The cement dude pointed at a certain screen where a young boy wearing a golden robe sat at the edge of the high walls. He stared at the numerous fights unfolding in the replica city with mocking eyes.

"He seems to be friends with those two, right?" The rat asked while pointing at Katsuki and Izuku.

"That appears to be the case here." Dark orb head guy replied while checking on the profiles of the peculiar boy.

The rat thing rubbed the handle of its chair with interested eyes. 'How peculiar to have a boy young as his look at others with such contempt and arrogance. Is it because he is confident of his own success that he hasn't done a thing for five minutes?'

Just as the rat wondered, the boy suddenly muttered something, "That should be enough of a headstart for these third-rated trashes."

Ryuji slowly stood up and gripped his sword. His tall back stood straight against the entire city, showcasing the endless arrogance hidden within his eccentric appearance.

Immediately, the trio in the dark room fixated their eyes on him as the cement person commented, "He's finally making a move."

"What kind of ace does he have up his sleeve to be so arrogant?" The orb dude shook his head.

"Let's wait and see." The rat thing replied, and the trio quieted down.

Ryuji grinned with a devilish smirk, and he slowly unsheathed his blade out of its cover. A sudden shift then occurred in the entire city, as if a fearsome dragon has just woken up. The others all paused, and they went on to move their eyes to the top of the wall subconsciously.

"Bear witness to the might of this Sword Saint, and forever embed this image into your brains." Ryuji whipped out his blade, revealing the simple golden metal underneath unlike its unnaturally beautiful handle and sheath.

Ryuji took a deep breath, and as the trio leaned forward to better see what he was going to do, he raised his blade up into the sky and paused. In the next moment, with a movement so simple that it became anticlimactic, Ryuji swung his blade down into the ground.

"…"

"That's… it?"

"Did he activate his quirk just now?"

"I don't know."

The rat thing remained silent as his eyes trembled. 'W-What did I just see?'

'Even with my quirk, I barely managed to discern what just happened!'

'But if that was true, then his simple swing must have!'

As if to show that something more mystical happened underneath its simple exterior, their eyes landed on a distant robot suddenly being cleaved into two by… nothing. Not a single person was even near it. Not only that but behind the robot, a deep gash was left on the ground that ran deep into the depths of the earth.

"Is that his quirk? He can launch attacks from a distance?" The orb guy moved his gaze back to his tablet and went on to look up Ryuji's profile, but what he saw next shocked him.

"Huh?!" He stood up in surprise, piquing the attention of the two beside him.

"What is it?" The cement person asked and took a look at what was on the tablet screen.

"It says that his quirk is…" He slowly showed them the contents of the screen. "It says that his quirk is to cast illusions."

"So… How did he do that?!"

"Illusions?" The rat thing muttered under its breath as it vividly recalled what it just saw a few moments ago.

'If I wasn't hallucinating, then that boy finely sliced through the air and shot forward wind pressure to slice the robot from a distance!' The rat thing widened its eyes. 'How is that even humanly possible!'

'Does that mean he did it through skill alone and not through his quirk?'

Just as they were racking their brains over what just happened, Ryuji started to ramp up the speed of each swing. With every swing he did, the next one came faster to the point his sword turned into a blur. Left in the aftermath of his actions were numerous robots destroyed one by one, stealing the points of the other examinees as if an invisible force just came to destroy the party.

"Heh! This is the difference between us, you plebs!" Ryuji jeered. "A barbaric swing from me is more refined than whatever you could hope to do in your entire life!"

"This is what it means to be a revered genius born only once in a thousand years!" He swung his blade with boundless joy in his eyes, showcasing his immense talent as a martial artist.

"Who is doing this!"

"Who is destroying all the robots!"

The examinees looked around, stupefied by the nameless criminal of unknown origin.

"What kind of quirk is this? Is there a limit to their spamming?!"

On the other hand, Shoto Todoroki inspected the sword strokes scarred onto the ground with squinted eyes. "They all seem to come from the same direction."

As he traced back the sword marks left on the ground, his eyes landed on top of the tall walls out in the distance and managed to see the moving ray of golden light constantly reflected in different directions.

"Hmph." Shoto snorted and waved his arm toward the top of the wall. Then, a strange mystical energy gathered at the tips of his fingers as the temperature rapidly plummeted.

Ice expanded out from the soles of his foot, and more and more of the formless energy gathered within his body and out into the world. He pressed both his palm down to the ground and as he exerted more of his strength, the ice rapidly expanded out through the arena and towards Ryuji in the distance.

Ryuji glanced at the rapidly spreading ice that was aiming right at him with disdain in his eyes. "Heh, you don't even match the ice breath of an infant ice dragon!" Ryuji stopped his swing and calmly sheathed his blade. "It's a shame that you decided to go against me."

With pity in his eyes, Ryuji watched as towering ice took over his entire field of view. The ice completely snaked up the tall walls, arriving right where he stood and ready to devour him whole.

"I'll let you see how far the gap is between us!" Ryuji's eyes flashed with brilliant light, and with a body that was like an ant compared to the tidal wave of ice and frost, he gripped the handle of his blade and lightly pulled.

"Dragon Paradigm Sword Style." Ryuji planted his legs onto the ground and stabilized his foundation. Sucking in a deep breath, he puffed up his chest and tightened his core.

"Quick Draw!"

At a speed that broke the limits of the human body to the point the blade appeared as a mere shadow to the human eye, sword light flashed through the ice and out into the horizon. With deafening silence, the entire world entered a standstill.

But, the silence was quickly broken by the sound of glass shattering. From the enormous mass of ice and frost, cracks upon cracks formed all throughout its massive body, and layers of ice broke underneath its exterior.

In the end, a soft gust of wind blew, transforming the massive glacier into scattered petals of snow and ice that rained down the sky.

It was winter brought to life by a simple swing, displaying the pinnacle of swordsmanship that clashed against the force of nature.

'What a beautiful illusory snow.' Ryuji wore a dazzling smile and caught a falling snowflake with the edge of his finger. 'Even artificial creations such as this can outshine the original.'

AN: This chapter has 2490 words.

Ngl, I kind of fucked up in this mini entrance exam arc, but that's for later me to deal with. Like, I'm a pro with dealing with my own fuck ups so this is pretty much easy shit. Although Katsuki did kind of needed what I have in store for him since my plans require pretty much require all important characters to be "slightly" better than their original counterparts.

Also, MY PROSE IS TRASH! I'M HAVING A HARD TIME DEVELOPING MY PROSE BRO!

(May 21, 2023 - 542nd day of writing)