New week guys, Let’s push 🙂
2 Chapters today!
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“Didn’t think you’d go this far, Sukuna!!”
Kaito, wearing the miniature shrine on his head like a hat, was thrilled by Sukuna’s performance!
“Improvising isn’t exclusive to you, Kaito!!”
For the first time in a thousand years, the King of Curses felt real tension… and the feverish battle high of racing the clock for victory!
Thirty seconds!
His Domain could only hold for thirty seconds!
If he could grab Kaito and devour him in that window, victory was Sukuna’s.
But if time ran out and his Domain collapsed, or if [Sukuna] just elbowed him into the dirt, he’d lose.
What was playing out inside the Domain was the essence of Throw-Bows Kaisen!
Close-quarters combat!
Let the elbows fly!
“WHOOSH!”
Every second, Sukuna’s entire body was being diced by a storm of fine slashes.
True, the two Domains’ sure-hit effects had canceled each other out.
But the open-barrier [Malevolent Shrine] ran on an automatic attack protocol!
The sure-hit was gone, but the physical slashes were still there!
Sukuna was forced to lean on Domain Amplification, his resistance to his own cursed energy, and Reverse Cursed Technique.
He endured the agony of a death by a thousand cuts and stubbornly kept up the brutal melee.
Kaito felt a little lucky.
Once his [Malevolent Shrine] had been piggybacked onto the Shikigami’s and turned into a closed-barrier Domain, its mechanics changed.
It worked like a standard Domain Expansion, without the fully automatic slashing protocol.
Otherwise, Kaito would have been stuck enduring a thousand cuts too.
27 seconds.
The real and fake Sukunas traded more than a dozen blows.
Sukuna was sent flying, outmatched on stats alone.
24 seconds.
Sukuna seized a tiny opening in [Sukuna]’s wind-up and reached for Kaito.
The stat gap was too wide.
He came up short, left himself open, and got kicked away.
20 seconds.
Sukuna caught [Sukuna]’s leg, closed in, and took him down, trying to press the advantage.
Instead, he ate a backhand straight to the jaw and went spinning through the air.
15 seconds.
Using his superior intellect and his intimate knowledge of himself, Sukuna began reading his opponent’s movements more and more clearly.
He was still at a disadvantage, but he held his ground without giving an inch.
10 seconds.
[Sukuna] stepped in with an elbow.
Sukuna answered with a knee.
8 seconds.
Sukuna parried a straight punch, spun to bleed off the force, and fired back with a roundhouse kick!
[Sukuna] skidded back several meters.
7 seconds…
6 seconds…
5 seconds…
4 seconds…
3 seconds…
With his absurd learning speed, Sukuna’s hand-to-hand combat gradually overtook the rigid, programmed movements of [Sukuna]!
Final two seconds!!
Sukuna’s right shoulder was pierced, and his arm was torn off and sent flying…
But he’d done it on purpose!
The impact should have blown him away, but he’d deliberately cut the cursed energy reinforcement in that one spot.
He sacrificed his right arm to keep his momentum going forward—
[Sukuna] switched tactics in an instant.
The arm that had just thrown the straight punch bent, driving a brutal elbow at Sukuna’s face!
Sukuna ducked under it.
At the same moment, he squeezed a jet of blood from the stump of his right shoulder.
It splattered across [Sukuna]’s face and blinded him.
“How do you like a face full of blood, you cheap knockoff!”
Sukuna’s left hand blurred as he snatched at Kaito.
He was ready for the escape trick Kaito had used earlier.
The moment his hand made contact, his cursed energy would wrap up and bind the blob!
He wasn’t giving Kaito a second chance to cut off a tentacle and survive!
For once, Kaito was backed into a corner!
The Lower Half of Gojo had been incinerated by Jogo.
[Fraud Megumi] had gone on strike the moment he was summoned.
[Fraud Itadori] was the blinded [Sukuna] right in front of him.
Three [Fraud Shikigami].
One destroyed.
One on strike.
One outplayed and wide open.
In this last, desperate second, Kaito’s single eye clearly reflected Sukuna’s approaching hand.
Yet there wasn’t a shred of panic in it!
Haven’t you heard?
When God closes a door, He always leaves a window open for a fraud!!!
“Come forth, [Fraud Divine Dog]!”
The severed head of a big white dog appeared out of thin air.
Right before the Disaster Curses ambushed them, Kaito had been in the middle of subjugating the Divine Dog’s fraud state!
In a split-second, life-or-death crisis, this joke of a dog-head Shikigami reached the peak of its canine existence!
It clamped its jaws down on Sukuna’s hand!
“YOU BASTARD!!!”
Sukuna’s cursed energy exploded from his hand, obliterating the [Fraud Divine Dog].
But it was too late.
[Sukuna]’s brief window of vulnerability was over.
His voice was ice-cold.
“You’re holding your head too high.”
“BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!”
An explosive knee strike!
Sukuna was launched backward, the blow so brutal he threw up whatever Yuji had eaten for dinner last night.
Time was up.
Outside, the tiny black sphere was riddled with cracks.
Sukuna didn’t even have time for a parting threat.
Before he vanished, he gave Kaito one long, complicated look.
The black markings on Yuji’s body faded away.
The Domain’s shell shattered with a crash!
It was finally over…
It had started with the three Disaster Curses’ ambush.
Kaito had faked surrender, then piloted [Fraud Itadori] to trigger 15-finger Sukuna’s self-destruct.
He’d beaten Jogo so badly the guy’s life flashed before his eyes, gotten dragged into a Domain clash when Hanami showed up as backup, and taken on the Sukuna-and-Jogo tag team.
And finally, he’d pulled off the triple Malevolent Shrine Domain clash.
And now he could finally say that iconic line without worrying about raising a death flag!
In other words, Kaito was the undisputed winner!!
But there was no time to relax.
He manipulated [Fraud Itadori] right away to take back control of the body, before the still-active [Malevolent Shrine] could turn Yuji into ground beef.
He didn’t unsummon [Fraud Itadori] completely, though.
What if Sukuna tried to pull a fast one and come back?
Better to keep his hand on the self-destruct button for now.
“AGHHHH, IT HURTS, IT HURTS, IT HURTS!!!” Yuji screamed at the top of his lungs.
Last time he’d lost half a hand.
This time he was missing an entire arm.
Poor, unlucky kid.
“Stop howling. You’re the man destined to become Emperor Itadori.”
After staying keyed up for so long, Kaito felt his adrenaline crash, and the exhaustion hit him all at once.
“Go pick up your arm. An injury like this isn’t easy to heal. We’ll figure something out later.”
Yuji’s adaptability was astonishing.
Once he’d gotten past the initial shock of returning to his body, he was only wincing now and then and hissing through his teeth.
“Hss… ugh… sorry, Kaito… hss… I couldn’t do what you told me…”
Yuji felt guilty and miserable.
It was him again… Why was he always the one screwing things up??
He’d fully processed the memories of what Sukuna did while in control.
It was nothing like what Sukuna had told him!
What did he mean, ‘Kaito put himself in danger’??
Kaito’s Shikigami had treated those two cursed spirits like spinning tops.
If anyone was bringing danger, it was Sukuna!
“He’s a thousand-year-old deadbeat who specializes in Binding Vow scams. Of course you couldn’t outsmart him,” Kaito said.
“Next time you see him, start trash-talking right away. These ancient boomers can’t handle it. He acts like some edgy classical scholar, throwing around pretentious old-timey words. Hit him with a modern internet flame war, and he’s guaranteed to have a mental breakdown.”
“Got it! I’ll remember that!”
Yuji took those words to heart.
Ignoring the pain, he walked over to pick up his arm.
Kaito sighed.
He hadn’t been handling everything on the front lines himself the whole time, but he hadn’t let his guard down for a second either.
Hmm… there were still three cursed spirits lying around.
Should he keep his finger on the self-destruct button and exorcise all three?
As Kaito thought it over, a familiar voice rang out from above.
“WHERE THE HELL IS MY HUGE JUJUTSU HIGH CAMPUS???”
It was rare to see real shock on Satoru Gojo’s face.
He looked around.
Half the campus had been diced into a hazardous construction site or collapsed into ruins.
The other half was a scorched wasteland!
And sitting right on that wasteland was a giant magma sphere, slowly cooling!
Under its own weight and all those slash marks, it was gradually caving in, setting off rolling tremors and booming crashes.
“The fight’s over, and now you show up. Next time I shoot a horror movie, you’re playing the cop,” Kaito quipped.
“Don’t ask questions yet. Let’s wrap this up first. There are still three cursed spirits left.”
~ Don’t forget your stones 🙂
Check out my new HxH Fanfiction:
Hunter x Hunter: Starting as the Number One Player