A/N: Welcome to my latest story: Potential Man. Here we go with this one. Next two chapters are up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) already if you want to see them early.
I analysed its abilities from what it had given away already. It had the power to rewind time. It had done that to Kenjaku's phone to fix it, and then done the same to the cursed spirits. It remained at the back of the crowd. It never tried to attack because it was always going to bring back the cursed spirits I destroyed. It was just a matter of time. If every time I destroyed its fellows, it brought them back, then this fight was already lost.
Six special grade cursed spirits of varying strengths who would come back once destroyed no matter what, thanks to a seventh. There was only one thing I could do to get myself out of this. I needed to destroy it. But it remained behind the six others for a reason.
They would all attack if I went for it straight up. It would bring them back once destroyed so I could not take that chance either. I sighed as I took my stance again. Mahoraga had killed the ice one in a matter of seconds this time. The giant had forced his wheel to turn as being near it caused his muscles to wither and atrophy like he had been starved for years. It reached out to grab him but he slashed out with his blade. His wheel turned again, and he began to regain his mass.
Mahoraga would adapt to all their abilities with time, I realised. That was the way to approach this. I needed to study the time spirit. With the way it operated, it would need to be taken out in one blow before the others could intervene. I had something that could work, but I didn't want to pull out that trump card unless I was certain that it was going to work. So I decided to gather data.
My shikigami were strewn all over, fighting the cursed spirits. So I had to put my body on the line for this one. I sighed and jumped straight at it. Its skeletal head snapped in my direction and then I felt my body begin to shift. It started inside before it reached the outside. Before I could reach it, I jumped backwards, feeling something had gone very wrong. My body felt wrong. I looked down, noting that my trousers were a few inches too short now. It had aged me. Just from proximity. Time, indeed.
I looked at my body, trying to figure out how much I had aged. I felt stronger rather than weaker, so that was a good sign. Maybe a decade at most? A decade and I had been able to get within a dozen metres. Assuming the rate remained the same, I would age maybe two or three decades to reach it. Worth it? Not at all. I returned Piercing Ox and Tiger Funeral to my shadow as Mahoraga moved on to the mass of water next. They were diminished from their fight against the giant. Their abilities were more useful with me than they were with autonomy at this point.
I took a deep breath. RCT would not be able to heal the damage time caused. Using it for ageing was widely known to be impossible. Getting close to it was not an option. How would such an ability work on a shikigami? My instincts told me they wouldn't work at all. Would I risk it?
Swap, I decided. I jumped towards the one surrounded with fire, feeling the heat begin to lick at my skin as I got close. These wounds I could heal with positive energy, thankfully. My body moved faster than it ever had. The cursed spirit had done me some good, it seems.
The fiery spirit tracked my approach, raising a hand and covering my vision with blue flames. I shoved half my body into my shadow, skating with it to the side as I did so to avoid the attack. Reverse Cursed Technique or not, that would have killed me. I was close enough now. I shrouded my body in my cursed energy before reaching out and punching through the spirit's chest. My shroud lasted less than a second before my hand began to burn— I screamed in pain for a second before I felt nothing. I would lose use of the arm soon, but not before I could send an explosion of positive energy through its form and force its body to explode outwards.
More flames washed over me. I looked at my hand. The damn thing had burned my hand to the bone. That's why it didn't hurt. It had burned the nerves in a matter of seconds. I began healing the hand with Round Deer's positive energy as I looked over the battlefield. The mosquito spirit was heading for Max Elephant as it did battle with the time spirit. Mahoraga rose from the depths he had been plunged in and chopped the mosquito in half.
In less time than it took me to blink, all the spirits were back again. I jumped backwards, falling into my shadow to avoid a blast of flames. I poked my head out some distance away just in time to see the tortoise spirit form walls between Max Elephant and the time one, pushing the massive spirit backwards. Fuck. Mahoraga got to work again. This time, water, ice, and starvation were barely even a threat. I directed him towards fire next, triggering his adaptation with a new opponent. Once Mahoraga adapted to an opponent, they essentially stopped being a threat. I needed my plan to optimise for that. I began to readjust.
He could kill the spirits almost instantly after adapting to them when they respawned. There was a chance I could get out of this without using my trump card. I pushed myself out of my shadow behind Max Elephant's bulk. Its form was pockmarked with burns from its fight with the fiery one, and there were some gouges torn into it from the watery one. It was breaking apart earthen structures now, in a slow battle against the tortoise spirit.
The spirit tried to hem him in with walls and all other sorts of structures and he blew them apart with his seemingly infinite water reserves from his trunk. And he kept his feet moving constantly. Any time the tortoise tried to manipulate the earth beneath its feet, it crushed whatever was forming before it could make it anywhere. The tortoise suddenly stopped moving and attacking. Nue had swept down, picked up a burnt but healing Mahoraga and dropped him right on top the tortoise. It was dead. And then the attacks resumed. The other cursed spirits were back again. I felt a smile building on my face.
This time it was faster for Mahoraga to deal with four of them. Water, ice, starvation, and fire fell to his blade in less than a minute. My shadow split into multiple tendrils, turning the mosquito into a pincushion and watching it dissolve. And then there was one. Mahoraga slammed through earthen structures like they were made of papier-mâché as he closed the distance to land his fatal strike. Time brought them all back again. I felt a smile split my face into two halves. We were going to win in the next few rotations. Mahoraga was adapting even further. His adaptation never stopped, did it? He would adapt to facing them multiple times until they were worth less than insects. We could do this. But something kept niggling at me. Why was it waiting until we had killed all of them until it reconstituted them?
Surely a better strategy was to bring back each cursed spirit as we destroyed it? Unless it could not.
I decided to test a theory. The last one to have been destroyed was the tortoise the first go around. I directed Mahoraga to go for it first this time. He closed the distance as a matter of formality. Max Elephant and I were forced to face the others for the few seconds it took for it to deal with that one. I broke through a glacier, body burning with sheer cold as I watched from the corner of my eyes as Mahoraga sliced the tortoise in twain with one swing and then it began to reconstitute itself. That was it.
A time loop of all things. Triggered by the tortoise's destruction. The others were reconstructed as well even if they were still around. So that meant….
Mahoraga raced about, dealing with the cursed spirits even faster this time. He hadn't just adapted to be able to defend their attacks. He had adapted offensively as well to make it even better at killing them. Divine General indeed. This time it killed them all and then when it reached the tortoise, it chopped off all its legs and then went for time. Kenjaku finally roused himself to attention at that. He looked at the Divine General and he was smashed into the ground. Antigravity system brought to bear, clearly.
My shadow raced out aiming to link up with his. He jumped away. He'd figured out that it shouldn't touch him already? Whatever. The goal wasn't beating him with that. It was forcing him to split his attention. Max Elephant spat out enough water to fill a pool straight at him with enough force to carve stone. A cursed spirit rose from his shadow to take the hit. It had a shield for its face and it took the attack without flinching.
His attention captured, there was nothing Kenjaku could do to stop Mahoraga as he rose like a spirit of vengeance from the crater his body had formed under the influence of enhanced gravity. The time spirit tried to race away but the Divine General was inevitable. He chased, he caught, and he killed. The time spirit died. I smiled. This fight would be mine.
That smile died like a rose in the cold snow of winter as the skeleton that had been sliced in two reformed itself and the cloak came together again. All the other cursed spirits came back to life.
"Toki, the Cursed Spirit created from humanity's fear of the passage of time and its inevitability. He has two abilities. The first is a constant field of time acceleration. You have felt the effects of this accelerated flow already. His second ability is to create self-contained time loops. He can create two at a time. You already deduced this from your refusal to kill Shingenchi. But you did not suspect that it could create other triggers, did you?" Kenjaku asked with a smirk as part of his attention was on his phone screen.
"Do you want to know how it's going? How your sensei is faring?" he asked.
"Couldn't care less. Gojo will win. So will I," I said, and then brought my hands together. Fleeing from my shadow had forced Kenjaku away from the time spirit— Toki. That meant I could make a barrier with him on the outside. Of course he would destroy it the second I formed it. But that was only if I made a standard domain. As my domain began to form, I felt Toki begin to form one of its own, but it was not even a challenge. Its barrier was nothing before my super refinement. My domain consumed its and then formed fully. My world of complete darkness felt a unique comfort.
As I had formed it, I had made a binding vow, flipping the conditions of the barrier inside out. The outside of the barrier was made strong, but the inside was weak. My technique held all the cursed spirits still as I began to consume them. If the time spirit triggered its time loop from being killed then this would be a loophole. The spirits dissolved, consumed by my technique. The growth to my reserves and output were notable, but just like I had suspected, I couldn't call them back as constructs with my reversal. I could not sense them in my shadow at all. Cursed spirits were the exception.
The barrier enclosing my domain shattered a second later. I smiled at Kenjaku as he stood outside looking visibly perturbed for the first time all battle. That time spirit had mattered.
"What did you do?" he hissed, looking at where the time spirit had once floated.
"I took it out. Don't worry, you will be next," I said, my smile eager. I'd regained what I'd lost in reserves and then some across the battle so far, and then some. He had miscalculated in unleashing the spirits and not joining them. His desire to watch the fight as it proceeded was going to be his undoing. The phone slipped back in his robes. And then he shot right at me.
I smiled as I blocked a straight chop aimed for my neck. My foot came out in a kick that he blocked in turn. The gravity around my body intensified a second later and I felt my bones creak as I sank into the ground. The approaching Mahoraga was forced into the same position. He leaned down to kneel next to me and brought his arm around, aiming to stab it into my neck. Far enough away to not feel the effects of Kenjaku's technique, Max Elephant released a blast of water that he had to lean out of the way for. That bought enough time for Mahoraga's wheel to spin a second time. Now, he rose, defying gravity. His blade lashed out, aiming to slice him in half. He dodged out of the way and the effects of his technique disappeared.
I rose, Round Deer's positive energy output healing my wounds in a matter of seconds. I formed a fist with my fingers and Tiger Funeral rose again from my shadow.
"We're going hunting," I said with a smirk— was talking to my own shikigami a sign of madness? Never mind that, I turned my attention back to Kenjaku. I'd forced him to use the bulk of his cursed spirit army already. And then on top of that, I had not used my cursed technique reversal yet. Kenjaku was dancing around the Divine General, avoiding his attacks, but scarcely able to get in an attack of his own. Tiger Funeral shot forward, muscles bulging. Sending cursed energy all around my body, I followed in its wake.
He spotted us out of the corner of his eyes as we approached. Two spirits rose from his feet and came for us. Tiger punched one in the face, and the thing seemed to take the attack, body shifting with the blow, before Tiger was suddenly sent flying backwards. The one I was supposed to face separated into two as I punched at it. More and more copies began to form as they surrounded me in a wall of its copies. Each one was roughly humanoid. Two legs, but four arms and a head that had a face facing the wrong direction, and bright pink skin. Couldn't forget that bit, could I?
I dodged out of the way of a punch, slamming one filled with positive energy into the back— or was it the front of its head. Either way, it exploded but that did nothing for the rest of them. They kept replicating and replicating. Outside this encirclement, Tiger Funeral was struggling against the one that could reverse the force it was hit with.
Max Elephant sent a torrent of water that tore through quite a few of the duplicates that surrounded me. Finding the original in this was going to be hell. But luckily I did not have to. I just had to make sure that they were all in range for what I was about to do. Fighting them individually would yield me nothing. Maybe Mahoraga would be able to adapt to the doubling technique and somehow be able to kill the original with a single blow, but we needed him fighting Kenjaku and keeping him on the back foot. Another cursed spirit rose from Kenjaku's position, this one a very thin girl wearing a kimono. Her lips were stitched shut, and so were her eyes. Her sheer presence spread across the battlefield. Special grade. Of fucking course.
On my direction, Mahoraga grabbed her kimono and tossed her in my direction. The stitches that held her mouth closed began to come loose. Tiger Funeral also managed to wrestle the one she was fighting into her grip and threw it in my direction as well. Once I judged that both of them were in range for what I was about to do, I began to chant.
"Marrow. Dawn. Vow. Halo. Root. — Positive Barrier: Garden of Undying Light." I lifted my hands like I was in prayer as I created a barrier. The circumference of it was the area that encompassed me and the three cursed spirits but none of my shikigami or Kenjaku himself. This was Shoko's magnum opus. A faux domain. A barrier created but instead of being imbued with the user's innate technique, it was imbued with positive energy. Only someone with her natural capacity for positive energy could pull it off.
I cheated— Round Deer made up the difference. The grass at my feet began to grow at a rapid pace while the cursed spirits just began to fade. The inside of the barrier itself was bright like it had its own sun that cast everything in a bright light that banished all shadows. The barrier shattered a second later. I was only able to keep it up for about 12 seconds before the natural incompatibilities between cursed energy and positive energy caused the technique to collapse.
I looked over at where Kenjaku and Mahoraga were going at it. Tiger Funeral had joined in on the fight but was being more than left behind. Max Elephant sniped at the sorcerer with blasts of water to keep him honest as the fight progressed.
I was certain Kenjaku had lost all his strongest cursed spirits now. At least 11 special grades dead, a Mahoraga that kept adapting, and me waiting in the wings. He had to use his other technique now. Either that or his domain expansion.
I jumped forwards, cursed energy shrouding my being, and just as I expected, he lashed out with a different cursed technique once he saw the odds had shifted against him even further.
He clapped his hands together, firing blood that moved at the speed of sound. Mahoraga, already well adapted to piercing blood, twisted and sliced the stream in twain with his sword of extermination. He had expected the surprise technique to give him time to prepare for my arrival. It didn't. He blocked the high knee I aimed at his head, but could do little to stop Mahoraga from slicing off one of his arms for the trouble.
A/N: Second to last chapter of the fight as we come pretty close to the end of the story. Guess I was right when I said this wouldn't last longer than 25 chapters in the end. Next two chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early.