Charles stared at the scorched crater in the asphalt, his hand pointing toward the far side of the plaza in stunned silence.
He had spent the last ten minutes sparring with a walking natural disaster.
“You…
you…”
“Pretty smooth, right?” Julian turned around, offering a broad grin.
“My mechanics are solid.”
Charles remained silent for three long seconds.
Then his trembling finger shifted smoothly into a firm thumbs-up, a wide smile breaking across his face.
“Unbelievable.
That was incredible, man.”
“A five-stack passive takes a bit of setup,” Julian chuckled, scratching the back of his neck.
“Compared to someone who can spam slashes without a cooldown, I actually have to weave my attacks.”
If he wanted to stand toe-to-toe with Ryomen Sukuna, he couldn’t rely on raw stats alone.
He needed to master his technique’s entire sequence.
Julian stretched his shoulders, turning toward the park exit.
“I’m heading deeper into the colony to find a few more combatants.
Want to tag along?”
“I’ll pass,” Charles waved his hand quickly.
“I’m not built for a deathmatch.
I’ll find a quiet spot and wait out the timer.
Good luck out there.”
“Fair enough.”
Julian nodded, taking his leave.
This marked his second official exploration of a barrier, excluding the run where he had immediately crossed paths with Kashimo.
The streets remained sparse.
Aside from a few lingering civilians trapped behind windows, the district felt completely hollowed out.
Kenjaku’s chosen sorcerers were still filtering into the perimeters, and most awakened players were hiding indoors, trying to comprehend the rules.
Julian walked down the main avenue for half an hour without catching sight of an active combatant.
He passed a few shuttered storefronts where terrified eyes peered through the blinds, but he had zero interest in hunting civilians.
In this world, everything felt far too real.
Walking into a living room to cut down an unarmed person wasn’t something his mind accepted. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
“Where are all the aggressive ones?” Julian murmured, looking up at the gray sky.
Then a thought struck him.
Why wait for players to stumble across his path when he already knew where the biggest fish in the colony was hiding?
Hajime Kashimo was currently pacing the halls of the commercial district, looking for a target worth killing.
Before, Julian had been a Grade 4 rookie who had to tread carefully.
Now, he possessed Special Grade capacity, Reverse Cursed Technique, and a lightning-attribute arsenal built for high-output clashes.
Julian concentrated his energy down into his boots.
With a sharp kick, he leaped onto the fire escape of an adjacent building, scaling the brick facade in three fast bounds until he reached the roof.
He swept his gaze across the skyline, zeroing in on the multi-story shopping mall located several kilometers to the west.
That was the exact drop zone from his third attempt.
And Kashimo was definitely inside.
“Kashimo,” Julian smiled, blue sparks beginning to dance along his collar.
“Hold tight.
I’m coming to you.”
Inside the central atrium of the shopping mall.
Hajime Kashimo stepped over the crumpled form of another weak local sorcerer, letting out a frustrated breath as he crouched on a concrete ledge, biting his thumbnail.
“Sukuna…
where are you hiding?!”
He had agreed to Kenjaku’s contract expecting a grand stage of legendary warriors.
Instead, he had been dropped into a ghost town full of fragile modern sorcerers who collapsed after a single blow.
“Is this the best the modern era has to offer?
They’re even softer than the ones four hundred years ago.”
Before the thought could settle, a sudden, violent shift in the atmosphere made the hair on Kashimo’s arms stand on end.
He snapped his head upward, looking through the glass dome ceiling.
High above the roof, a dark silhouette was plunging straight toward the center of the atrium at terrifying speed, wrapped in a dense, howling cloud of blue electricity.
A loud shout echoed through the shattered glass dome.
“Hajime Kashimo!
Step out!”
Kashimo’s eyes flared with sudden shock.
He leaped backward off the ledge, clearing twenty meters in a single breath.
BOOM!
The falling figure slammed into the concrete floor where Kashimo had been standing a fraction of a second prior.
The central plaza exploded.
A heavy shockwave tore through the surrounding storefronts, blowing out display glass and sending concrete fragments flying across the atrium.
Sinuous, snake-like arcs of blue lightning lashed out in all directions, striking the iron pillars with deafening cracks.
Kashimo caught the arc on his forearm.
His natural electrical resistance neutralized the voltage, but the sheer kinetic weight behind the impact forced his boots back half a meter.
“A lightning technique?!” Kashimo’s jaw set.
In all his years of combat across the Edo period, he had never encountered another sorcerer who wielded electrical cursed energy.
As the dust cloud cleared, Julian stood tall in the center of the crater, wiping a speck of dust from his sleeve.
Kashimo lowered his high guard slightly, studying Julian’s face with sharp, analytical eyes.
“Who are you?
How do you know my name?”
Julian grinned, his eyes bright with competitive energy.
On his last run, Kashimo had stood by and watched Sukuna force a finger down his throat without lifting a hand to help.
This time, Julian had zero intention of playing the helpful guide or answering questions.
He slammed his right fist into his open palm, unleashing a massive wave of blue cursed energy.
The sheer pressure rippled through the atrium, cracking the surrounding structural pillars and shattering the remaining glass panels along the upper walkways.
Julian spat to the side, his voice ringing across the empty mall.
“Enough talking!
Let’s see what four hundred years of hype is actually worth!”
Kashimo stared at the surging blue aura, then slowly, a wild, wide grin split his face.
He didn’t care who the kid was.
He didn’t care how he knew his name.
A high-output lightning user had dropped straight out of the sky to offer him a battle.
Kashimo raised his iron staff, his own electrical aura bursting forth to meet Julian’s energy in midair.
“DUEL!”