Kiniro blinked as he suddenly found himself in a completely different setting. Instead of a forest, Kiniro stood in the middle of a traditional sand garden surrounded by a perimeter of uncut rocks.
"Forgive me for interrupting your fight, but I couldn't sit back and let my peers be harassed."
Kiniro glanced over his shoulder before turning around to face the speaker, who sat atop a large boulder that was bound by a thick length of knotted rope, "I don't know if harassed is the right word. After all, they attacked me, unprovoked."
"Maybe, but you were never in any real danger."
"Do you think so little of your friends?" Kiniro asked with a raised brow.
"You've seen it firsthand, they're all too boring. Besides, against someone of your caliber, even I don't stand much of a chance." The speaker replied honestly before he stood up and dropped to the ground with a muted thud, "Still, I can't help but be curious about how I'll fare against you."
Kiniro cocked his head to the side, "You're not part of the plot against my life, but you still want to fight me just for shits and giggles."
"Is that not an acceptable reason?" The man asked as he reached up and tore his shirt to shreds, revealing his imposing physique covered in muscles.
Kiniro grinned, "In a perfect world, that would be the only reason. Tell me, kindred soul, what's your name?"
"Aoi Todo!"
A fire ignited in Todo's eyes as he stared at Kiniro, "Now let me ask you a question in return…Kiniro, what kind of girls do you like?!"
"My taste in women?" Kiniro muttered, caught off guard by the question but immediately took a second to think over his answer, "Well, that depends on your definition of a woman. If we're talking in a traditional sense, I like a brash attitude with thighs thick enough to suffocate me, and an ass you can see from the front. But if we're just talking about people who are feminine, then I don't mind someone who's a bit more petite and withdrawn."
"That is…an excellent answer," Todo replied with tears welling up in his eyes, "I knew you wouldn't disappoint me, and now I know for certain this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."
"You're a rather eccentric guy, you know that?" Kiniro asked as cursed energy slowly started to rise into the air around his body, "But I wouldn't expect anything less, given the shape of your soul. It's rather refreshing to see someone who's so liberated from emptiness and has begun to realize their form."
"Emptiness and form," Todo repeated as his eyes gleamed, "You're referencing the Heart Sutra."
A broad smile spread across Kiniro's lips, "So you're not just a muscle head, good, this will make things far more interesting."
"Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is form." Todo muttered as his muscles tensed and cursed energy flowed through them, "Do you fully comprehend it?"
"No," Kiniro replied with a sigh as he shook his head, "It's not made for the human mind to fully understand, but I'm working to remedy that. Now enough talking, it's only a matter of time before your classmates find us and try to interfere."
"If they do, I'll kill them before you can," Todo muttered as he raised his hands that balled into fists, "It's been far too long since I've faced a worthy opponent."
"Funny I was just about to say the same thing," Kiniro muttered as Lust slid into his hands, "My technique is Sin, when someone within my line of sight takes a hostile action, they are marked as a sinner, applying a stacking negative modifier to their cursed energy output. I can also absolve those sins as a requirement to activate seven unique extension techniques."
As Kiniro revealed his hand, the cursed energy around his body rose from completing the most employed binding vow in all of jujutsu.
Seeing that Kiniro was prepared to go all out, Todo didn't hesitate to respond in kind, "Boogie Woogie is the name of my technique, by clapping my hands, I can switch the location of any two objects that contain a certain level of cursed energy."
'So that's what he used on me earlier,' Kiniro thought as his eyes dipped down to glance at Todo's hand, only for the latter to immediately act when he noticed Kiniro's attention wavered.
Pushing off the ground, Todo shot forward, causing a geyser of sand to shoot up into the air. Still, despite Todo's perfect timing, Kiniro reacted instantly by reading the flow of his cursed energy.
'He's fast,' Kiniro thought as he started to backpedal, keeping him at the very edge of Todo's reach, who pursued with a greater fervor, unleashing a string of testing jabs like a boxer, 'That body of his combined with excellent cursed energy reinforcement is a dangerous combo. But if he keeps up at this rate...'
Watching Kiniro move with a keen eye, Todo continued to walk him down as more and more marks of sin appeared across his body, 'Alone they're not enough to worry about, and it isn't a flat increase. I only notice a difference after the first one, when I earned seven marks. With his technique being Sin, that number is significant. There are seven deadly sins, meaning that he most likely has seven extension techniques, each performing a function related to that sin.'
With seven probing jabs, Todo surmised the details of Kiniro's technique beyond what he had revealed during his binding vow, 'He's an attrition fighter, draining his opponents of resources as the fight progresses. Meaning that the extensions of his innate techniques require a weakened opponent to have much effect, or more likely become more powerful, a great amount of sin is absolved. Either way, the longer this fight drags on, the worse my chances are.'
Devising a strategy, Todo committed himself to ending the fight as soon as possible as he threw another punch, and just as Kiniro moved his body to weave under the blow, he pulled back his arm and clapped.
In an instant, Kiniro's perspective shifted, and with an urgency he searched for Todo only to feel a surge of hostile intent directly behind him, 'That was faster than I expected, far faster.'
Despite facing away from Kiniro, Todo didn't need to look to know his exact location, with his brilliant mind effortlessly triangulating despite the sudden teleportation.
With one foot planted on the ground, Todo spun his hips and snapped up with his other leg in a spinning back kick that was powerful enough to shatter a concrete pillar aimed at the small of Kiniro's back.
"Belphegor"
Todo felt the weight of his sins vanish, allowing his cursed energy to flow unimpeded once more however, in exchange, he felt the air around him thicken drastically, slowing his movements. And it wasn't just his body that Todo felt slow down to a crawl, but his mind dulled as well with his thoughts moving at a quagmire's pace.
The sensation only lasted for a split second, but it was more than enough to let Kiniro spin to the side, not only avoiding the devastating attack but also letting him face Todo and use the window to finally take the offensive, 'Forty-two seconds of atonement. It'll be interesting to see if he can figure out the specifics of my cooldown.'
'That's one,' Todo mentally noted as the effects of Kiniro's technique ended and he regained control of his thoughts and movement, 'Belphegor, the Demonic Prince of Sloth, activating it cripples the sinner for its duration, preventing them from taking any action.'
A grin split Todo's face as he realized that Kiniro's technique was not one that could be used mindlessly, but rather required a highly technical mind to utilize its full potential, 'I knew that we would be one and the same, my friend, Kiniro!'