Luke steadily raised his hand and accurately caught Naoya’s high-speed punch.
The Word Spirit Kamaitachi had enhanced his hearing into a superhuman talent similar to radar or sonar.
As long as Naoya’s speed hadn’t broken the sound barrier, even the slightest disturbance in the wind or vibration of cursed energy couldn’t escape Luke’s perception.
Naoya, who had been completely confident a second earlier, froze in shock.
“You bastard—?!”
Although his speed was still inferior to his father Naobito’s, it remained among the very best in the jujutsu world.
Speed alone was enough for him to overwhelm the vast majority of Grade 1 Sorcerers.
Yet now, the fast punch he was so proud of had been caught head-on by Luke.
Naoya’s expression changed slightly.
“Was catching my punch just luck?”
He abruptly retreated several dozen meters and looked Luke over again with uncertainty.
It wasn’t only Naoya.
The surrounding Zenin clan members also erupted into commotion.
The Ten Shadows Technique didn’t enhance Luke’s physical body.
Under normal circumstances, directly trading punches with a close-combat sorcerer like Naoya should have left him completely suppressed.
A spark of anticipation suddenly appeared in Naobito’s eyes.
“This brat… actually came prepared?”
Naoya stared at Luke for a moment before a cold smile appeared on his lips.
“You don’t seriously think that’s all I can do, do you?”
Cursed energy surged around him, but instead of attacking directly, Naoya retreated again and widened the distance between them.
Projection Sorcery—activated.
Twenty-four cursed-energy afterimages instantly appeared in his vision, and his body flashed through them like lightning.
Every time he passed through another afterimage, his speed increased sharply.
Naoya began circling Luke at high speed.
He grew faster and faster until, in the eyes of the spectators, he had become a rotating hurricane, leaving behind only the piercing shriek of displaced air.
Luke tried to track him visually, only to discover that his dynamic vision could no longer keep up.
“The Byakugan I got from the Hyuga Luke doesn’t improve dynamic vision much… Against this guy, I’ll still have to rely on the hearing enhanced by Kamaitachi.”
His hands rapidly formed signs as he activated the Ten Shadows Technique.
The shadow beneath his feet churned violently, with a shikigami already concealed inside and waiting for his command.
Naobito looked at the moving darkness under Luke’s feet and thought,
“Other than Mahoraga, the Ten Shadows shikigami have almost nothing that can effectively counter Projection Sorcery. Their combat performance is a major weakness here.”
Naobito frowned slightly.
With Projection Sorcery enhancing him, Naoya was simply too fast and agile.
Most of the Ten Shadows shikigami couldn’t keep up with him.
After summoning his shikigami, he closed his eyes and concentrated almost entirely on his hearing, shutting out everything else as he tracked Naoya’s position.
For several seconds, the air became oppressively tense.
Then Naoya used Projection Sorcery to push his speed to two hundred meters per second and launched a surprise attack at Luke’s back.
Now.
Luke twisted his hips sharply and turned, driving a punch behind him.
Bang!
Their fists collided violently.
A fierce blast of air exploded outward, sending dust flying and making the robes of the surrounding clan members whip in the wind.
The shock on Naoya’s face was impossible to hide.
His pupils contracted sharply as disbelief surged through him.
“What the hell happened to this guy? Both his physical reaction speed and cursed-energy reinforcement have improved several times over!”
The first time his punch had been caught, he could still dismiss it as luck.
But this second exchange proved that Luke truly possessed the reaction speed needed to deal with subsonic attacks.
What shocked Naoya even more was the tremendous cursed energy that came through Luke’s fist during their collision.
A sorcerer’s close-combat strength had always been directly tied to cursed-energy output.
The greater the output, the more terrifying their physical attacks became.
Without cursed-energy reinforcement, they were little different from ordinary humans.
And right now, Naoya could clearly sense that the cursed energy surging through Luke had already far surpassed the level of an ordinary Grade 1 Sorcerer.
Both the sheer volume and instantaneous output of that heavy, violent cursed energy were almost enough to suppress his own.
The instant their fists collided, a sharp pain and numbness spread from Naoya’s knuckles up his arm.
He was secretly shocked.
Luke’s cursed-energy output was at least twice his own.
If Naoya’s punch hadn’t carried enormous kinetic force from the speed granted by Projection Sorcery, he had no doubt that his own fist might have been the one crushed in that exchange.
Luke’s sudden burst of power also left Naobito visibly surprised.
The old clan head muttered inwardly,
“Didn’t this brat use half of his cursed energy for taming Mahoraga?”
No one had expected Luke to still be capable of such an explosive performance.
His sudden strength caught everyone present off guard.
Naoya’s expression became completely serious.
The arrogance and contempt from earlier disappeared, leaving only caution.
“So this is what gave you the confidence to challenge me?”
Surprised or not, his reaction was extremely fast.
Cursed energy surged through his body as Projection Sorcery activated at full power again.
Twenty-four cursed-energy afterimages instantly appeared before him.
The next moment, Naoya’s figure turned into countless afterimages as he threw twenty-four subsonic punches at Luke in a single second. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Luke kept his eyes closed, pushing his hearing to the limit.
He relied on sound to capture every vibration created by Naoya’s punches, attempting to lock onto each trajectory.
But this was far from easy.
Naoya’s fists came from every direction like a torrential downpour, every strike vicious and potentially lethal.
Luke had been able to calmly block the previous two attacks by predicting them in advance.
But catching dozens of closely spaced subsonic punches in an instant placed an extreme burden on his concentration, reaction speed, and physical endurance.
It was as though he were being surrounded and attacked by dozens of Naoyas at the same time.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Dense fist shadows crossed wildly through the air.
The muffled impacts merged into a continuous series of explosions, tearing through the air like rapid cannon fire.
The violent cursed energy carried by their punches twisted the airflow around them into a turbulent barrier.
Naobito and Mai stared fixedly at the center of the battlefield, their hearts tense.
Then their expressions changed at the same time.
Luke couldn’t block every attack.
Every second, at least seven subsonic punches slammed directly into his body, leaving fist-sized indentations beneath his clothing.
After only several dozen seconds of bombardment, Luke had already taken more than a hundred punches head-on.
Naoya’s expression grew increasingly excited and vicious, years of suppressed jealousy and madness surging through his eyes.
“You’re nothing but a thief who got lucky enough to inherit the Ten Shadows Technique! You don’t have what it takes to become clan head!”
As that thought roared through his mind, he precisely caught a momentary opening in Luke’s defense and slammed his palm into the center of Luke’s abdomen.
In the next instant, Luke found that his entire body could no longer move.
This was the restraining effect of Projection Sorcery.
Anyone struck by it had to complete twenty-four specific movements within one second to break free.
Otherwise, they would be forcibly immobilized for one second.
In a high-intensity exchange like this, it was extremely difficult to spare the concentration needed to break the technique.
Luke’s body was instantly frozen in place, turning him into a stationary target.
“The position of clan head can only belong to me!”
Naoya’s emotions reached their peak.
His punching speed shot directly to three hundred meters per second.
Driven by his overwhelming desire for the inheritance, he unleashed twenty-four subsonic punches in an instant, mercilessly smashing every one of them into Luke’s body.
It really helps the fic grow!