Looking downwards towards his defeated opponent, Yami Zenin could only sigh.
The kid was sprawled across the arena floor like a starfish that had given up on life. His eyes were open but vacant, staring at the ceiling with the hollow expression of someone who had just learned a valuable lesson about overconfidence. A thin trail of drool escaped the corner of his mouth.
Yami had hit him just once.
"And the winner is Yami ZENIN!"
The announcer's voice cracked with enthusiasm, practically vibrating with the kind of energy usually reserved for championship matches and discount furniture sales. He thrust his arm toward Yami like he was presenting a prize horse at auction.
Yami stood there with all the enthusiasm of a man waiting at the DMV.
The crowd erupted, stamping their feet against the wooden bleachers until the whole structure groaned in protest. Someone in the back row was actually crying, though whether from joy or allergies remained unclear.
Yami watched them all with the same expression he might give a particularly uninteresting wall.
'Bunch of clowns.'
He scratched the back of his neck absently.
'Seriously. Who wants to watch a bunch of kids fight? Is this entertainment? A ten year old punching another ten year old in the face? This is what passes for excitement around here?'
A clan elder in the front row was literally on his feet, fists pumping the air, face red with excitement. He looked like he was watching the finals of some legendary tournament and not a children's qualifying match.
'You are seventy years old. Sit down. Your hip is going to give out.'
The announcer was still going, describing the match in breathless detail as if anyone had missed it. The whole thing had lasted approximately four seconds. Yami had walked forward. His opponent had tried to throw a punch. Yami had redirected the punch into the kid's own face. The kid had fallen down. End of story.
There was not much to describe.
'Three years,' Yami thought, finally turning away from the cheering crowd. 'Three years I spent preparing for this tournament. Three years of training, planning, and waiting for the age requirement and for what?'
He stepped over his opponent's unconscious body without looking down. His hands found their way into his pockets automatically.
'Weaklings. Every single one of them. I hit that kid once and he folded like wet paper. The one before him lasted two hits. The one before that actually dodged once before I knocked him out, so I guess he gets points for effort.'
He walked toward the exit with the unhurried pace of someone who had somewhere better to be but could not quite remember where.
Behind him, the crowd was still cheering.
'What a waste of time.'
***
"The last round is decided to be a free for all!"
The announcer's voice blasted across the arena with the same nuclear intensity he had maintained since dawn. His enthusiasm had not dropped a single decibel, not even during the bathroom breaks.
Yami stared at him with genuine scientific curiosity.
'How are his lungs okay?'
This man had been screaming at full volume for six hours straight. At this point Yami was half convinced the announcer was actually a cursed spirit that fed on the suffering of people with functional hearing.
"He's been at it since morning," muttered a hoarse voice beside him.
Yami turned to find Shigetsuni Kamo standing there, heir of the Kamo clan, looking like he had swallowed sandpaper. His usually composed expression was slightly strained around the edges. Apparently even prestigious bloodlines were not immune to auditory assault.
"What a surprise," Yami said flatly, his tone carrying enough sarcasm to fill a swimming pool. "The Kamo heir graces us with his presence."
Shigetsuni ignored the jab. His eyes scanned the arena floor, then the waiting area, then the crowd. His brow furrowed slightly.
"Where's Miss Strongest?"
A reasonable question. Satori Gojo was not exactly easy to miss and yet the arena was noticeably lacking in her particular brand of overwhelming presence.
Yami's eyes gleamed with something that might have been anticipation or indigestion. Hard to tell with him.
"Has the battle started?"
Right on cue, the announcer took a massive breath, his chest expanding like a balloon.
His face turned an alarming shade of red and then he released the kind of sound that should have required a permit.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
The word stretched across the arena like a dying animal.Somewhere in the crowd, a small child started crying.
Shigetsuni winced. "Well that's loud."
"Sup boys."
The voice came from directly behind them, somehow cutting through the announcer's fading echo with perfect clarity. It was amplified with just enough cursed energy to make sure neither of them could pretend they had not heard it.
Satori Gojo swayed into view like she owned the arena and everyone in it. Which, given her clan's wealth and influence, was not entirely inaccurate. Her glasses sat at a slightly crooked angle today.
She patted both of them on the back with the casual familiarity of someone who had never once considered personal boundaries.
"Having fun without me?"
Her grin was wide and and absolutely insufferable.
"Don't sweat it though." She cracked her knuckles with theatrical slowness. "I won't do much. Just kick your asses."
Shigetsuni chuckled, apparently immune to provocation after years of exposure. He gave a small bow that was fifty percent respectful and fifty percent mocking.
"As you say, Your Majesty."
Yami did not reply, the announcer, apparently recovered from his previous outburst, drew another massive breath.
"The top three are HEREEE!"
Something inside Yami snapped.
His hand moved before his brain could object. His slipper left his foot, arced through the air with surprising accuracy, and smacked the announcer directly in the forehead.
The arena went silent.
The announcer blinked, the slipper slid down his face and landed on the ground with a soft thud.
"LOOKS LIKE YAMI ZENIN HAS GOTTEN ANGRYYYYY!"
Yami was already walking toward him.
His pace was unhurried, his remaining slipper made soft padding sounds against the stone floor.
The announcer's enthusiasm flickered for the first time all day. His voice dropped several octaves.
"Okay okay, chill dude." He held up both hands in surrender. "I have a family to feed."
Yami kept walking.
"I can get rid of them as well."
The announcer's eye twitched. His professional demeanor cracked just long enough for genuine irritation to leak through.
"Corny ass kid."
Behind him, Yami could hear Satori and Shigetsuni snickering. The sound was barely contained, muffled behind hands and turned faces, but unmistakably present.
His expression did not change.
'Since when did this stuff become corny?'
He had used that line successfully at least three times before. It had landed perfectly each time.
Now apparently it was comedy material.
'Kids these days have no appreciation for classics.'
The announcer cleared his throat loudly, straightening his robes and retrieving what remained of his dignity from the floor along with the slipper.
"ANYWAYS." He pointedly did not return the footwear. "Ignoring the rest of... that... let us begin this free for all battle to determine the champion!"
The crowd stirred back to life. The momentary awkwardness evaporated under the weight of anticipation.
"The winner, as we all know, receives a personal meeting with Tengen-sama!" The announcer's voice built toward its crescendo. "Ask for anything! Power! Knowledge! Guidance! The choice is yours!"
Yami retrieved his slipper from where the announcer had passive-aggressively dropped it and slipped it back on.
A meeting with Tengen.
Now that was worth fighting for.
*****
In the ground, Yami Zenin, Satori Gojo, and Shigetsuni Kamo stared at each other.
"So… 1v1v1 or do we bracket it out?" Shigetsuni asked, scanning both of them.
"Free for all makes sense. A 1v1 just gives whoever sits out—"
"Boring."
Satori cut Yami off mid-sentence. She wasn't even looking at him, she was stretching her arms above her head like she was about to go for a morning jog.
"The strongest doesn't need a format advantage, Zenin. If you're worried about matchups, you've already lost."
Yami sighed. "I didn't say I was worried."
"Then stop talking." She cracked her knuckles one by one. "Let's run it."
The shift was instant. Satori's lazy demeanor didn't change, but the air around her did. Shigetsuni felt it first. His legs moved before his brain caught up, creating distance, a lot of it.
'So it's me and her first,' Yami understood. That was fine, he'd prepared for this.
His cursed energy surged. Reinforcement flooded his body from the soles of his feet to the crown of his skull.
Satori noticed, her eyes widenedg in recognition.
'His reinforcement… it's almost as good as mine.'
A grin split her face as she said, "Okay. You're not boring."
She brought her hands together slowly and snapped her fingers.
"Phase. Twilight. Eyes of Wisdom."
The Six Eyes opened fully.
"Cursed Technique Lapse Blue."
A sphere of impossible blue materialized at her fingertip and then the area folded toward it.
The ground ripped upward, everything within a thirty-meter radius bent toward that single point. Shigetsuni hardened his entire body just to stay planted.
"Starting with that?" he muttered, teeth clenched.
The compressed singularity launched at Yami like a cannon round.
Anyone sane would dodge. Blue's attraction would tear muscle from bone if it connected clean.
Yami didn't dodge, he clasped his hands together in a Piercing Blood stance and Shigetsuni's stomach dropped.
'No way.'
But the output wasn't concentrated, nor was it in a line. From his clasped hands erupted a geyser, a massive, violent explosion of water that sprayed outward in a wide, turbulent wave.
Not a piercing attack but adrag system!
The water crashed into Blue's vacuum and fed it. High-density matter pouring into the negative space, stabilizing the attraction, neutralizing the pull from the inside out.
Satori watched the geyser swallow her Blue whole.
And she laughed.
"THAT'S SO COOL!"
'He didn't try to overpower it.' Her grin was manic now. 'This kid is a genius.'
The flood cascaded toward her,a wall of churning water taller than the trees behind them.
Satori didn't move, and soon It hit her, engulfing her completely.
The water raged for three seconds, slowly thinning and soon vanishing.
Satori stood in the exact same spot, untouched.
"That was cool, dude. Genuinely."
'Damn cheatcode,' Yami thought.
Yami exploded forward, closed the gap in two steps and threw a right hook aimed at her jaw. Satori's head tilted just enough to let it pass, and her fist buried itself in his stomach.
Something was wrong.
The cursed energy in her punch wasn't just force. It moved weird, his organs lurched and his vision blurred.
For a half-second, Yami felt like the world had flipped upside down.
He dispelled it immediately, flooded his core with his own cursed energy and ripped hers out before it could settle.
But she'd already hit him again.
"AHAHA! You purged it that fast?! You're INCREDIBLE!"
Her cursed energy wasn't normal anymore. The output from her fists carried rotation and vicious spirals that moved like a contained tornado.
Get caught clean and your body wouldn't know which way was up. Your guts would twist and puke before you could throw a counter.
The Six Eyes made it possible. That insane precision, that perfect control over every atom of cursed energy she produced, she could shape her output into anything she wanted, on the fly, in real time.
"The hell?" Yami blocked a kick and felt the spiral try to drill through his guard. "Your cursed energy was normal a second ago?"
Satori tilted her head, smile never dropping. "Oh, that? I saw your geyser and thought, what if I could do something like that with my cursed energy?"
"A geyser needs way too much raw output for me to copy straight, so I dropped the concept down. Kept the rotational force, ditched the volume. A tornado instead of a geyser." She flexed her fingers.
"I wanna try applying it to Blue next. Rotational attraction? That'd be sick, right?"
Yami felt the ground open beneath him. Not literally but something in his chest hollowed out.
'I spent a week developing that geyser application.'
'She saw it once.'
'She didn't even copy it, she improved on the concept and made her own version.'
The thought should have broken him. For a lesser sorcerer, it would have but Yami Zenin was not a lesser sorcerer.
His eyes changed.
The pupils narrowed, contracted into vertical slits. His gaze sharpened until the world itself seemed to slow.
[Predator Eyes]
"Fair warning. This has 120% effectiveness against kids."
The real fight had begun.