With Kamo Shizumi’s current level of cursed energy control and efficiency, he was nowhere near capable of compressing blood to such an extreme degree.
But if he took a step back, it was not a problem at all.
Simply compressing it to one-third of its original volume, without aiming for the kind of speed that could break the sound barrier…
Using bullets as a standard of comparison, within a range of one hundred meters, the Blood Arrow could completely achieve the destructive power of an assault rifle.
It suddenly shot out without warning, and it was also a ranged attack.
Zenin Mai, unable to dodge in time, was struck in the left shoulder.
The Blood Arrow accurately pierced through her outer coat, skin, and muscle, until it mixed with her blood, bursting out from the back of her shoulder and producing a spray of blood.
One hit landed.
But Kamo Shizumi was somewhat surprised.
—Why was this woman not using cursed energy to reinforce her body?
An assault rifle bullet from ten meters away could indeed penetrate a human body, especially with a larger caliber…
But this woman was a jujutsu sorcerer.
Reinforcing the body with cursed energy was one of the most fundamental and thoroughly mastered techniques.
There was no way she could have failed to learn it.
Kamo Shizumi’s thoughts raced.
Taking advantage of Zenin Mai’s momentary pause from the pain, he immediately rushed in front of her and threw a heavy punch straight at her face.
So what if she was a woman?
He would hit her all the same!
The punch, reinforced with cursed energy, slammed into the right side of Zenin Mai’s face.
The other woman let out a scream.
The force sent her entire body flying at an angle.
She spun once in midair before being sent tumbling away in a miserable heap, finally coming to a stop after crashing into the edge of the corridor.
“Urgh…”
With half her face covered in blood, Zenin Mai tried to grab onto something, but the submachine gun that had slipped from her pocket hit the ground, leaving her no time to seize it.
Looking at the miserable sight before him, with Zenin Mai’s cheekbone caved in and half of her face visibly crushed inward, Kamo Shizumi hesitated for 0.2 seconds.
Then he gathered his strength and advanced.
He could not stop now.
They had already come to blows.
Did he really expect the two sides to suddenly understand each other?
After all, there were plenty of lunatics in the Zenin family, and if this crazy woman started targeting him afterward, the trouble would be endless.
Although killing Mai would probably prevent the Zenin Twins scenario from being triggered…
Kamo Shizumi felt that Okkotsu should actually thank him for removing one exceptionally violent and troublesome burned-out lunatic from the world.
Sigh…
It was not that he wanted to harm her.
It was the world that had harmed her.
As these thoughts flashed through his mind, Kamo Shizumi suddenly saw her curl up the corner of her mouth and let out a laugh.
“…?”
A faint sense of unease rose in his heart.
Before Kamo Shizumi could do anything, he saw Zenin Mai’s right hand, which had been hanging at her waist, pull something out…
A handgun?
It was the same one she had used earlier.
I did not even give her enough time to reload.
At this point, the thing in Zenin Mai’s hand should only be a useless piece of metal.
—At least, it should have been.
But at the instant that thought surfaced, all the information he knew about her flashed through Kamo Shizumi’s mind.
Construction Technique.
Using her own cursed energy as the foundation, she could construct matter from nothing.
Unlike other methods of materialization, the objects produced by the Construction Technique would not disappear even after the technique ended.
As a result, it placed an enormous burden on the body.
It not only consumed a tremendous amount of cursed energy, but also required the user to maintain sufficient physical condition.
‘She did not use cursed energy to reinforce her body, the gun was empty, and she still tried to resist…’
The thoughts connected one after another, forming a complete chain of reasoning during that fleeting pause.
Zenin Mai had abandoned using cursed energy to reinforce her body and resist the attack.
Instead, she had used the Construction Technique to forge another bullet and load it into the firearm?!
As though she could read every thought reflected in Kamo Shizumi’s expression, Zenin Mai kept half of her face slack and grinned as she pulled the trigger.
“Go to hell, trash.”
Click.
The trigger was pulled, and a bright yellow, distorted muzzle flash erupted in an instant.
Bang!!!
The bullet burst forth, shooting straight toward Kamo Shizumi’s face.
As a Grade 3 sorcerer, Zenin Mai’s cursed energy reserves, technique precision, and other such attributes were all kept at a relatively low level because of her status as a twin.
Her Construction Technique could only mass-produce one bullet per day.
Therefore, once she had completed the preparation, all of her cursed energy had already been poured into it.
Naturally, there was nothing left that could stop the attack.
Take it with your life, trash.
The spiraling projectile tore through the air and came hurtling violently toward Kamo Shizumi with tremendous momentum!
Speed, power, accuracy…
All these parameters had undergone even more obvious changes under the guidance of cursed energy reinforcement.
Dodging it at normal speed was impossible.
Then should he take it head-on?
Without knowing how powerful the bullet was, Kamo Shizumi did not want to gamble on that uncertainty.
After all, it was aimed directly at his head.
What if he could not block it and got his head blown off?
The faint sting coming from his forehead caused Kamo Shizumi to concentrate completely.
He stared wide-eyed until his entire field of vision seemed to turn red at that moment, becoming covered in a vivid layer of blood-red.
The half or so of his cursed energy that remained began to boil, circulating around his body.
At the same time, the image of Kamo Noritoshi’s back from earlier surfaced in Kamo Shizumi’s mind.
I should be able to do it now.
Flowing Red Scale!
Thump…
The tremor of his heartbeat suddenly rang out.
Invisible power erupted with every heartbeat, surging together with his blood and causing every organ throughout his body to emit sharp, explosive sensations.
His body became lighter, and his thoughts became sharper.
In this state, Kamo Shizumi stared ahead, slightly leaning his head forward while simultaneously turning it to the left.
It was as though everything had been slowed down fivefold, like a black-and-white silent film.
The bullet spun and whistled through the air, passing directly beside Kamo Shizumi’s face.
It tore through flesh, carving a bloodstained gash about the thickness and length of a little finger along the side of his face before continuing through the air…
Then time resumed its normal flow.
Kamo Shizumi, having emerged from Flowing Red Scale, collapsed onto his knees with a thud and began gasping heavily, as though he had just been hauled out of the water.
“Cough, cough, gah, gah, gah…”
A last-second breakthrough certainly seemed like something the protagonist would do.
But the burden it placed on the body was enormous.
Flowing Red Scale itself was not an ability that a Grade 3 sorcerer could use casually.
Even though he had maintained it for only a brief moment, his cursed energy reserves were already nearly exhausted.
At the same time, his organs and muscles throughout his entire body had undergone all kinds of violent reactions, to the point that he even felt as though breathing had become difficult.
In fact, this was not an exaggeration.
Kamo Shizumi painfully closed his eyes, his entire head covered in sweat.
The blood that had previously been concentrated beneath his skin had not even had time to properly disperse, and now he had gone and overloaded his entire body on top of that.
It felt like someone who normally did not exercise much suddenly decided to run a marathon one day, only to be carried off the track after five kilometers with their body barely holding together…
Zenin Mai watched him struggling to catch his breath.
She immediately gritted her teeth and tried to force herself into a sitting position, attempting to retrieve the spare submachine gun lying not far away.
Kamo Shizumi noticed what she was doing and likewise struggled to crawl toward it, trying to grab the gun before Zenin Mai could.
“How are you… still not dead?!”
“You can die before me, crazy woman!”
At this point, both sides had already reached the end of their strength.
From a distance, the two of them looked almost like two maggots, miserably writhing across the ground…