The streets of Sendai felt exceptionally oppressive under the shroud of the barrier.
The cold wind of late autumn swept through the alleys, rustling the fallen leaves along the roadside.
Kinoshita stood there lazily, his hands spread wide.
He sized up Ryu Ishigori in front of him—that iconic pompadour was certainly much more impactful in person than it looked in the manga.
“Hey, can we be a little more peaceful? At least for now.”
Kinoshita’s eyes were fixed intently on Ryu’s movements, yet a casual smile surfaced on his face.
“Even though I just crawled out of the ground myself, I haven’t breathed enough of this modern air yet. Rather than starting a fight, I’d much prefer to wet my whistle with something from this shop.”
Ryu Ishigori didn’t reply.
Instead, he pulled a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and placed it between his lips.
Click.
“Huuu—”
The tip of the cigarette caught fire.
Following Ryu’s deep inhale and leisurely exhale, a ring of smoke drifted into the air.
“Things like this… I never got to experience them in my previous life.”
“Hmm… We’re both ancient sorcerers. Even if we’ve gained memories through incarnation, these subjective experiences—why not leave some time to actually try them out?”
Kinoshita’s gaze evaluated Ryu.
The guy’s cursed energy manipulation was quite good, but his total reserves…
Guess I should hold back a little.
Ryu, meanwhile, closed his eyes slightly, as if savoring this gift from the modern era.
“Huuu… Whether it’s your wariness… or that overflowing amount of cursed energy, they both send me a single message.”
Ryu’s gaze gradually sharpened, and he snuffed out his cigarette.
Bang!
Power generation, a sprint, a hook.
All occurring within roughly half a second, a fist laced with cursed energy struck out alongside a sonic boom.
“I told you… can’t we be a bit more peaceful?”
Kinoshita effortlessly caught Ryu’s fist, his expression turning from sunny to overcast.
In the next moment, fine, dense lines of blood continuously appeared across Ryu’s captured hand.
Realizing the danger, Ryu immediately tilted his head back and violently fired off a point-blank blast of cursed energy.
Kinoshita condensed cursed energy at the point of impact, but the extremely violent output still burned a massive hole in his clothes.
Ryu looked at the cuts on the back of his hand, which had nearly sliced down to the bone.
Gritting his teeth, he looked up at Kinoshita.
“Condensing cursed energy and then radiating it out—that’s something any ordinary sorcerer can do. But my innate technique… compared to normal cursed energy emission, it goes further and is much easier to handle. It’s like changing a game’s genre from the fixed spells of an Action RPG to the customizable mechanics of a sandbox game.”
The fine lines of blood on Ryu’s palm were already being mended by a body with astonishing regenerative abilities.
This was partly because Kinoshita hadn’t fully unleashed his technique’s attack.
Only now could Ryu truly feel the gap between himself and the man before him.
“Pompadour, you know what?”
Kinoshita tore off his badly burned shirt, exposing a lean, heavily muscled physique.
“Figuring out your technique before I even learned your name after the fight’s already started—that’s really quite impolite. And I mean you’re being impolite!”
“Ryu Ishigori.”
Ryu stood his ground, every fiber of his being on guard against the man in front of him.
Those who reincarnated would remold their vessels into their “past life” or “peak strength” states.
Take that old man he’d seen earlier, Dhruv—his strength had absolutely nothing to do with his physical level, so upon incarnation, he reverted to the shriveled old man form he was most familiar with.
Therefore, even though the man before him looked no older than twenty, his cursed energy was terrifyingly vast.
Whether this was his “past life” appearance or his “peak strength” form, Ryu felt a very palpable pressure.
It wasn’t that the genius sorcerer Ryu Ishigori hadn’t seen strong opponents before.
He wasn’t the absolute strongest of his own era either—his “strongest” only applied to certain aspects.
Highest output?
Strongest constitution?
Regardless…
“I am Kinoshita, the strongest sorcerer of the Muromachi period.”
Damn it, a figure straight out of the history books.
Fuck.
Ryu had sensed something was off early on.
The man before him looked inexplicably familiar—maybe from some text, or perhaps a play.
But hearing the name out loud still made Ryu break a sweat.
“What, judging by your expression, you know me?”
“…I’ve read about you in a book before.”
“And what did it say?”
“A sorcerer who wielded multiple techniques. The strongest sorcerer without an equal. The first beneath Sukuna.”
“Oh? Seems the records were quite subjective.”
Looking at Ryu’s suddenly grave expression, Kinoshita waved his large hand, completely unbothered.
“Whether I have no equals… Whether I am truly the first beneath Sukuna… I came here precisely to prove those very things.”
“…Were you also unsatisfied with your life?”
Ryu stood firm, looking at the man during this brief ceasefire.
“How should I put it… My life was too much of a failure. No rivals, no decent battle records. So what if I defeated every sorcerer in the Muromachi period? There was no way I could ever fight Sukuna.”
Ryu pulled out a comb, running it a few times through his prominent pompadour to fix its shape.
“So you agreed to Kenjaku’s deal.”
Kinoshita didn’t answer, but simply nodded.
“Ha… It seems we’re the same kind of people. Though your dissatisfaction is stronger, greater than mine.”
“My first life left me about ‘eight-tenths full.’ I had decent rivals, and a fine woman too.”
Ryu pulled out another cigarette.
Click.
“From birth to death, I never experienced what it truly felt like to be overwhelmed. It wasn’t until this morning, when I put a ‘cigarette’ between my lips for the first time… when I finished smoking it and tasted that lingering sweetness, that I finally understood…”
Huuu—
Ryu let out a long sigh.
“My life… didn’t have a dessert.”
“No… it’s not the same.”
Kinoshita waved his hand, then clenched his fist.
“I haven’t even…”
The Kinoshita who was just standing a fair distance away appeared right before his eyes in the blink of an eye.
“…had the main course yet!”
“So fast?!”
Boom!
Kinoshita closed the distance in an instant.
A sweeping hook sent Ryu flying through the air.
But before Ryu could even hit the ground, Kinoshita instantly materialized right beside him.
“『Dog: Cleave』.”
Before Ryu even had time to counterattack, Kinoshita’s palm slammed fiercely against his chest.
A flurry of fine slashes erupted into a burst of blood across his torso.
Stung by the pain, Ryu immediately blasted a point-blank cursed energy cannon.
Kinoshita dodged with a sidestep.
Seizing the opening, Ryu kicked off Kinoshita’s body, using the momentum to slide across the ground and escape melee range, simultaneously raising a finger and taking aim.
“『Granite Blast』!”
“『Dog: Dismantle』!”
As the energy fired from Ryu’s finger, Kinoshita had already raised his palm.
Accompanied by a flash of a pitch-black entity, a slash carved into Ryu’s second cursed energy cannon.
The condensed cursed energy slash split the granite shockwave in mid-air—but due to its weakened power, Ryu was able to dodge it with a quick sidestep.
“It’s weaker… even though I’m holding back, the speed didn’t catch up.”
Kinoshita twisted in the air and landed.
Although he had held back and wasn’t planning on killing Ryu, the “slashes” launched by Divine Dogs Black and White were simply too slow.
After all, the enhancement of Black and White merging into Totality was far from a simple 1+1=2.
Hmm…
I probably need to multiply the cursed energy used for Black and White by five to release a slash comparable to Totality’s.
After a brief moment of thought, Kinoshita raised his hand once again.
“『Dog: Dismantle』.”