"Oh, I'm nothing if not a good sport." I recognized the grin on Bing Hei's face. Sure, he was a good sport...as long as he held the advantage. And it was very true that even with him giving them a freebie, Shokoya's ultra-rare Mind Element, which he still hadn't really revealed at all, gave him a severe edge in a battle of sword masters.
It was clear that their captain being a Sword Saint candidate wasn't just bluster, though. By unspoken consent, they fought for hours with just skill against skill. The vast majority of the audience probably couldn't tell, but the longer it went, the closer Shokoya came to taking the upper hand. It took quite a while to get to that point, though. Several hours passed before I judged that the fight reached the same sort of state as my spar with him had, where there was so much play and counterplay going on that nothing less than decoding the opponent's style to the point of practically mapping an entire decision tree would break the stalemate.
