Right after the Guardian Ape and the Folding Monkeys, you will be tasked by Kuro to obtain “certain thing” in the depth of Ashina. This will eventually lead you back to the well where Wolf first captured. During the road to this place, make sure you make a right to the castle where Kuro was locked at the beginning of the game. You will be greeted by one of the members from Seven Spears of Ashina.

Afterward, continue forward to the well. You will then meet a friendly samurai. This guy does have several interesting dialogues, but let save that for another day. Drop down from the ledge and go straight forward to meet a mysterious figure in purple.

Lone Shadow Longswordsman

I believe this is another “lost in translation” boss name. Just like “Long-Arm Centipede Giraffe”

If you are just like me and initiate a chat with this guy as a fellow shinobi, then you will have yourself a good death in just around 30 seconds to the fight. This one-arm-ninja is capable of deadly thrust kicks and rapid swords play. Your posture will be broken before you realize what just happen on screen.

Lone Shadow Longswordsman Strategy

Ok, if you are already dead (or stumble upon this guide before the fight) Just return to the place where you meet a samurai (We will focus on this guy in another post later on) and instead of jump straight down, go past this place and go straight ahead. You will shortly see another empty hole on the ground (conveniently just above that purple ninja bastard) Jump straight down and his R1 when the red mark appear. This will, of course, take out his first chunk of HP.

Lone-Shadow Swordsman Moveset

One of the thing I like about Sekiro is how From Software balance the stealth mechanic out by just let you take out only one HP bar of a mini-boss. This will force you to fight him and later on learn the moveset of each bosses.

Just like Genichiro fight, Don’t let this guy attack first! Just simply bait him with an R1 (RB) and he will counter with his attacks. This will give you control over the deflect period and to manage the opponent’s moveset. Right after your attacks, this sick ninja will follow with either of the following:

• A Crouching Slash to the right side of Wolf.
• A roundhouse kick to the Left side of Wolf.

Carves these moves into your heart, as you will need this later for other fights. After around two clashes, he will then jump to the air and perform a powerful kick to the ground. This is super annoying when you first face this guy (at least for me) as this is somehow pretty tricky to deflect when you first saw it. However, you must deflect this one – for the sake of later progression.

I found that the gurantee chance of deflecting this jump kick is when he just slightly turn his knee in the air. Pressing L1 (LB) at this point will land you a sweet deflect.

But that’s not the end of it. He will finish his combo by a forward sweep kick. This is when it gets tricky…

I found out that while Jump Kicking to counter a Sweep Attack sound simple in the tutorial. It is pretty hard to learn when you first play Sekiro.

One of the factor to this is the tendency to push the directional input away when you jump – A safety trigger that exist in our gamer’s instict 🙂 Not sure if it is clever design from From Software, or I just suck 🙂

On my first play, I simply dodge this sweeping attack and repeat the process. But if you counter it by jump-kicking, the fight will be a lot easier as it will eat out his posture by a huge amount.

Below is my video tutorial for this guy.

Eventually, this fight will be easier as soon as you know all of this guy moveset. Defeating one of the Lone Shadow member here will reward Sekiro with the following:

• Prayer Bead
• Scrap Magnetite