Chapter Twelve
A tension invisible to any ordinary human eye—or even a demon's—reigned in the air, creating an unseen ripple. The collision of powerful and threatening intentions from both opponents resonated through the space between them as a carefree gaze and a furious one locked together. Doma widened his smile, watching the Endeavor who was irritated by it and lost in thought. It was this oni's singular and unrivaled talent—the ability to drive any human or inhuman creature out of their mind.
The hero was not yet moving to attack, studying the head of the woman that had fallen from those pale, lean hands. Not that Enji Todoroki was a beacon of intellect—but what his straightforwardness lacked, his considerable experience compensated for. He had not been holding his high position in the top ten hero rankings for so short a time. And every instinct in the man told him that the type he had encountered was extremely dangerous. Extraordinarily so. This was not All Might's level, certainly, but the catch lay somewhere else entirely. A thought hammered insistently in the fiery pro-hero's mind: there was no way he was winning this fight alone.
His teeth ground together with anger at that, and the "Enmu's" teal eyes narrowed in a mixture of amusement and vile sarcasm, displaying a set of terrifying fangs. Swallowing his pride, Endeavor raised his fingers to his ear and called for backup. Help would have come eventually regardless—the battle promised to be particularly heated—but this way would be far more efficient, more rational, and more correct. Assistance would arrive much faster. The gesture did not escape the cannibal's sharp and glowing eyes, and he spoke in a polite tone while keeping his dreamy smile in place:
"What was that gesture, Endeavor-san?" He raised a finger with a sharp nail to his pale lips, though he didn't bother batting his eyes—no need. "Warned someone? Is there someone else nearby, or perhaps you've called for help?"
"That's none of your business, you damned ghoul." The man's tone was sullen and dark as the flames across his body and costume—which had diminished somewhat—blazed back up with terrifying new force.
The temperature rose noticeably, and the surrounding cold began to vanish as though it had never existed. The fire grew brighter and brighter, deepening to a vivid orange. Watching the smiling, insolent creature stand and wait for his attack, Todoroki was not about to let a fool's opening go to waste. Rolling his shoulders back, the champion of justice bent his arms at right angles at the elbows. Hungry tongues of heat spread across his palms, straining already to break free—and the man did not hold them.
A gehenna of countless pillars of heat tore open and rushed toward the monster.
And he simply dodged. Without so much as a change of expression.
Yes, Doma genuinely enjoyed playing with an opponent and drawing things out. Not one Hashira in his previous life had ever managed to make the demon fight in earnest—that task, rather than being accomplished by the demon slayers, had been accomplished by circumstances. Poisoned by a dose of wisteria venom seventy times the lethal amount for an ordinary demon, he had been shamefully destroyed by the blades of upstarts who had only recently risen to a strength comparable to middling Hashira. The First Upper Moon would undoubtedly have considered it an indelible disgrace for a demon of such caliber.
Enji grimaced but said nothing, and the oni waited patiently for him to continue his furious assault.
He did not wait long. The man surged forward with startling speed—and Doma was surprised. A sharp crack announced that insane velocity, tearing the air apart with the reactive stream of flame chasing at the hero's heels. That speed was comparable to the demon's own current level.
Baring his teeth with delight, the cannibal prepared to receive the fierce onslaught. His eyes widened with glee as he broke the sound barrier, raising a cloud of dust and concrete fragments from the erupting asphalt behind him. It was unlikely that anyone in the area had failed to hear this chaos by now.
Dodging his head away from the torrent of bright fire rushing toward it, the former leader of the Paradise Faith cult became covered from head to toe in swollen veins that surfaced even through his clothing. His inhuman nature was all but screaming its presence aloud.
The heel of a shoe shot toward the man's temple before he could transition into his next attack. Their characteristics might now be equal in combat, but that told only part of the story—an oni lived forever, and the experience of their strongest and most ancient members was truly something to dread. For over a hundred years, Doma had fought demon slayers from time to time, and upon joining the Twelve Demon Moons, other demons as well. The battle of blood sorted them by rank within that organization.
The pale mouth rounded in surprise and admiration when his opponent managed to successfully evade the damage and spring back, making good use of considerable flexibility. Yes—that was not typically something one expected from a human. Breathing techniques of the hunters were unlikely to be widespread here, but almost every Quirk exerted some positive effect on the body to a degree.
On the whole, the average person here was stronger, their physical potential greater. In Doma's former world, people like that had been a rarity—here, it was nearly the norm. And someone like Endeavor was considered exceptional even by this world's standards.
Were the flames not evaporating all moisture from the hero's body, cold sweat would be running down his temple right now. Yes—he could distinctly feel his opponent's superiority over him, both in technique and in combat experience. The counterattack had come so easily, and if not for his phenomenal reflexes he would have been stunned with little effort, and death was not far behind a stun. Someone was playing with him.
A vein swelled on the hero's darkening forehead.
"You're not bad, not bad~." Every trace of respect and every undertone of it had vanished from the monster's speech once it had confirmed their inequality. "I wonder—just how strong is All Might-san…?"
A vicious snarl twisted the Endeavor's face when he heard that name used in this context. He had no desire to respond—the clusters of plasma that had formed across every finger of both hands would say everything for him. Rising into the air, he brought his hands together and snapped them sharply apart, revealing threads that were nearly white and blazing brilliantly—threads that were meant to carve unacceptable damage into the oni.
*Whoa… it looks like Rui-kun's Blood Demon Art!* The thought passed through the demon's mind a fraction of a second before his entire body was chopped into smoldering, scorched little cubes of flesh.
Amazement printed itself on the hero's face as he took in the result of his action. It was replaced in an instant by bewilderment, as the pieces—as though enchanted—began to hurl themselves back toward one another in midair, assembling once more into the original figure, which bore an unmistakable expression of happiness on its face.
"What the hell?!" A stunned cry lit up everything around them.