The Daitengu hovered in the air, its wings beating rhythmically. As it did, the entire mountain seemed to dim, as if the sun had suddenly retreated. A violent wind began to howl from its wings, lashing toward Tetsuya Yamagami with unrelenting force.
Seeing that the Daitengu was holding its position, Hasegumo sprinted back into the treeline.
"What exactly is this?" Hasegumo shouted over the gale.
"This is bad... it's a Special Grade," Yamagami replied grimly. "This is a manifestation of its Innate Domain into the physical world. The environment is shifting to its advantage. How's your Cursed Energy?"
"Used some for RCT, but I'm still at about ninety percent," Hasegumo answered.
"I'm down to fifty. Listen—I'm going all in. I have one move left, but it needs time to charge. During the preparation, I won't be able to support you with my shots. I need you to pin him down for three minutes. Can you do it?"
Hasegumo flashed a confident thumbs-up. "Leave it to me. He's strong, but I've got this."
Even as they spoke, the Daitengu was condensing Cursed Energy into its blade. Riding the wind it had created, it blurred across the distance, appearing before them in an instant.
The two weren't standing idle. Hasegumo dropped into a classic volleyball "dig" stance, arms locked and lowered.
Yamagami understood the intent immediately and leaped upward. At the same moment the Daitengu's blade lunged for Hasegumo's chest, the youth used his entire body's strength to launch Yamagami diagonally into the air and away from the center of the fray. Then, Hasegumo snapped into a "bridge" to dodge the piercing strike. With one hand braced against the ground, he pivoted his hips and delivered a powerful side-kick that sent the Daitengu skidding away.
"Don't you dare die on me, kid!"
Yamagami's voice echoed from a distance as he successfully created a gap.
"Hour of the Devil, the Void between the cracks..."
As Yamagami began his incantation, a surge of Cursed Energy began to coalesce around him. It wasn't massive, but it was incredibly dense and refined.
The Daitengu sensed the threat. Its wings unfurled, intent on eliminating the human preparing the grand technique.
"I won't let you!"
Hasegumo exploded from the ground, leaping high into the air. He delivered a brutal knee strike to the Tengu's midsection, then, locking his hands together into a hammer-fist, slammed them down on the creature's back.
The Daitengu was driven straight into the dirt. Realizing it couldn't bypass Hasegumo to reach Yamagami, it didn't even bother standing up. With a violent sweep of its wings, it took off horizontally from the ground, charging at Hasegumo in a classic "superman" flight pose.
Hasegumo had just touched down when the heavy punch arrived.
I can tank this. If I use every bit of Cursed Energy my body can physically endure, I can stop it.
But my body will break. I'd have to use RCT immediately. What if I don't? I'll be sent flying. The injury won't be as bad, but with its speed, it'll charge straight for Yamagami-senpai. I won't be able to catch up.
In the span of a heartbeat, these thoughts flashed through Hasegumo's mind. His body responded instantly, flooding with energy to block the blow. The moment the punch connected, the Tengu retracted its right fist and followed up with a left.
Hasegumo was no stationary target. He drove his left knee upward, only for it to be caught by the Tengu's left hand. They broke apart after the brief clash, but Hasegumo's chest was already beginning to collapse under the strain of over-reinforcement and the sheer impact.
I won't last three minutes at this rate.
The thought was fleeting, but there was no time for deeper reflection. The Daitengu's next wave of attacks was already upon him.
This time, however, he had a sliver of reaction time. Hasegumo utilized his Dissipation of Force technique, rolling backward the moment the fist touched his surface to dissipate the force.
"Not enough. I have to attack," Hasegumo muttered mid-roll. The Tengu's blade hissed through the air just above his head, the chill of the steel prickling his scalp.
With his back still skimming the ground, he kicked out with both legs.
Black Flash.
The black lightning erupted once more, sending the Tengu reeling. Only then did Hasegumo have a second to activate his Reverse Cursed Technique to heal his crushed chest.
"I've got it now!"
Despite having burned through half his Cursed Energy and facing a Special Grade monster, Hasegumo actually laughed.
Because this Black Flash... wasn't an accident.
Hasegumo had practiced Shingen-ryu for three years. He had achieved total mastery over his physical force; he didn't waste a single ounce of strength, he could guide the flow of power at will, and he knew exactly when the moment of impact occurred down to the millisecond.
His innate technique, Cursed Energy Liberation, allowed him to control the flow of Cursed Energy without latency. This meant his mastery over his energy was no less than his mastery over his muscles.
It had been a long time since his first "accidental" Black Flash. Back then, he was a novice who didn't understand the feeling. But today, in that last strike, he had found it again. And this time, his body had memorized it.
The Tengu dove again, swinging its blade in a wide horizontal arc. Hasegumo dropped low and met the creature with a textbook Rising Dragon uppercut.
Black Flash.
The Daitengu was sent tumbling backward again.
I broke through.
The Cursed Energy reinforcing the Tengu was immense, but it wasn't more than double Hasegumo's maximum output. A Black Flash strike has a power multiplier of 2.5—combined with Hasegumo's monstrous physical strength and his Hard Fist technique, even a Special Grade couldn't tank it without taking damage.
A fist-sized hole appeared in the Daitengu's abdomen. However, high-level Curses are composed of pure Cursed Energy. They don't need RCT; they simply fill the void with more energy to heal.
In the next breath, the Tengu was whole again. It had finally realized that this human was just as much of a threat as the one preparing the ritual.
Slowly, the creature sheathed its blade. It realized that ranged or standard aerial attacks wouldn't work on this human. It would kill him in close quarters.
The Daitengu had made the strategically correct choice. It concentrated the majority of its Cursed Energy into its limbs, leaving only a fraction to defend against Hasegumo using "flow" techniques. Furthermore, with its Innate Domain realized, the wind in the area moved according to the Tengu's will, drastically increasing the tempo of its movements.
Hasegumo's martial arts expertise was technically superior, but under the environmental pressure, he was the one being pushed back.
Hasegumo could only breach the Tengu's defense when he landed a Black Flash. Conversely, the Tengu's standard output was far higher than Hasegumo's passive defense. He had to spend the fight desperately weaving and dodging to avoid unnecessary energy consumption.
If a hit was unavoidable, he had to reinforce his body beyond its safe limits.
The human body has its constraints—joints, for instance, cannot be ignored through sheer willpower. To prevent his combat rhythm from being shattered, Hasegumo was forced to use RCT on these vital areas the moment they were struck.
Two minutes and twenty-seven seconds in. In the heat of this high-intensity brawl, Hasegumo instinctively mastered simultaneous Cursed Energy manipulation—attacking and defending with one part of his mind while his Reverse Cursed Technique healed him with the other.
This is exhilarating, he thought.
In less than three minutes of fighting, two fist-sized holes had been punched into Hasegumo's own abdomen. He had burned through sixty percent of his total energy. He was currently using muscle contraction to stop the bleeding, choosing to save his energy for combat rather than full RCT healing.
If his energy ran out, he was dead. Between healing to avoid pain and maintaining his combat effectiveness, the choice was obvious.
In the face of death, a "flashback" effect often triggers, granting the mind more perceived time to think. Hasegumo had lost count of how many times the world seemed to slow down. The Tengu's fist grazed the tip of his nose as he dodged yet again.
Attack now. Take its center with a leg strike.
He was fully immersed in the fight, his mind empty of everything but the rhythm of battle. Just as the exchange shifted back into Hasegumo's favor—
"Kid! It's ready!"
Yamagami's attack arrived both faster and slower than Hasegumo expected. Faster, because Yamagami still had energy to spare. Slower, because the countless "flashbacks" and compressed perceptions had warped Hasegumo's sense of time.
Has it been three minutes already?
Hasegumo forcibly aborted a side-kick meant to ground the Tengu. Instead, he planted his right foot and leaned back into a sharp, diagonal posture that defied the laws of physics. It wasn't a move a normal human could make, yet he found the leverage to drive a right punch into the Tengu's chest.
Curiously, unlike his previous hits, this one didn't trigger a Black Flash. In fact, the Cursed Energy on his fist was pitifully low—just enough to protect his hand from the impact.
Yet the Daitengu was sent flying backward as if it had been hit by a truck. It felt a strange force carrying it away, an uncontrollable momentum. The resulting wind pressure made it impossible to flap its wings; it could only wait for the drag to slow it down before it could counter-attack.
Yamagami's first shot had long since signaled to the sky.
"Good. The mark is on its head."
"Gun-Spirit Jujutsu: Maximum Technique — Eternal Divine Spear!"
With Yamagami's declaration, the Cursed Energy in his hands solidified. It was an ancient, ornate spear with a slender tip and two protruding branches at the base. Yamagami took two steps and launched it with the form of a professional javelin thrower.
Are you serious? Hasegumo thought. His technique is all about guns, but his Maximum is a spear?
I guess in the Jujutsu world, the 'manual' approach really is the strongest. Ridiculous.
Even in the middle of a life-or-death struggle, Hasegumo couldn't resist a mental quip. He was shocked by the sheer creativity of the move.
In his ten years of exorcising Curses, Tetsuya Yamagami had faced all sorts of monsters and rogue sorcerers. He'd seen people who could track bullets, predict their trajectories, or even catch them with their bare hands. His technique was conceptual—a guaranteed hit that ignored defense—but that only mattered if the projectile itself hit the target area. Improving his "accuracy" was the core of his development.
Should he increase the muzzle velocity? Even at supersonic speeds, there were beings that could react. Speed was good, but for a true "sure-kill," it wasn't enough.
Yamagami had learned that Cursed Energy is born from emotion, and techniques are shaped by the user's perception. A sorcerer who followed the rules was a mediocrity.
What is the fastest thing in the world? Light? Teleportation? No. In the limits of the imaginable, it is human thought.
By studying Barrier Techniques and Barrier-less structures, and using the mythical spear Gungnir as a template...
By establishing an incredibly strict Binding Vow—requiring a teammate's assistance and a long incantation—and condensing every remaining drop of his Cursed Energy, Yamagami had created a conceptually "inevitable" javelin.
Unfortunately, Yamagami had never actually seen the result of his Maximum Technique. Because the moment the spear left his hand, having expended every ounce of his energy, he would collapse into unconsciousness.
To Hasegumo, the activation of the Maximum looked like the world had been set to fast-forward. A few frames seemed to be missing from reality.
One moment, Yamagami was throwing the spear. The next, the spear had already transfixed the Daitengu's head. The crimson, mask-like face shattered into a thousand cracks as the spear passed clean through the skull.
Even though the Daitengu had tried to concentrate its energy to defend its vitals the moment it heard Yamagami's voice, the strike was simply... indefensible.
Hasegumo looked at the headless body of the Daitengu and let out a long sigh of relief. He began to walk toward the fallen Yamagami.
One step. Two steps.
"Wait."
Hasegumo felt the dissipating Cursed Energy behind him suddenly snap back together. It surged, becoming even more powerful than before. A violent gust of wind hissed past him. Hasegumo threw himself into a side-roll, narrowly avoiding a strike.
The silhouette behind him blurred—a dragon returning to the sea—and lunged toward the unconscious Tetsuya Yamagami.