"Tell me, Ryomen Sukuna. What is humanity's greatest strength?"
For a moment, both Mahito and Sukuna were silent, the only noise around them being Dagon and Uraume's fighting.
"I'll give you a tip. It's not a human's power!" Mahito continued.
"No, it's not. Humanity's greatest strength...
Is its adaptability."
Responded Sukuna before looking back up to Mahito and smiling, though it didn't reach his eyes.
Then, he moved his free hand and turned it to his trapped arm.
"DISMANTLE."
Sukuna cut his arm in two, and he jumped back, landing on a nearby pile of rubble.
Of course, Sukuna couldn't use the slashes innate to his cursed technique. But with enough cursed energy output, one could simply brute force a slash, which would allow him to mimic his dismantle technique.
"You... You didn't use your technique for that slash, Sukuna. Why?" Asked Mahito.
"You are not worthy." Responded Sukuna.
But Mahito called his bluff.
"I know you're lying.
Could it be, then... That you...
Can't use it anymore?"
Then, Mahito's speech was suddenly interrupted by the loud crack of ice and the sound of rushing water.
--<>--
On the other side of the crater, the large ice wall finally cracked under the pressure of Dagon's trident, then finally returned to being regular water.
When it did, Dagon manipulated the water into a whirlpool, spinning rapidly behind him.
Meanwhile, the transfigured humans trapped inside were finally freed, charging wildly toward Uraume.
With a simple flick of a hand, a large number of ice spikes rose from the concrete, piercing their chests.
Dagon then lifted his arms, bringing the whirlpool forward, before jumping on top of it.
Then, he put his arms forward, summoning both his large fish and eel shikigami, and many of his piranhas as well.
Before Uraume could counterattack, Dagon used the momentum of his whirlpool's spinning to launch his shikigami toward his opponent.
A cloud of ice was sent toward their direction, freezing the majority of the Shikigami, but their quantity was too overwhelming.
Uraume's left shoulder and arm were caught by a school of piranhas, with all of the fabric covering them completely torn off.
When Uraume finally shook them off, deep red bites were rendering that arm completely unusable. They used reverse cursed technique to heal, but using the chaos of the fish attack, Dagon had gotten out of the whirlpool and was now right beside Uraume, attempting to stab them directly through the chest.
--<>--
"But how could you lose access to your slashes, then?" Asked Mahito.
There's only one explanation. You made a binding vow, didn't you?"
Mahito's smile grew wider.
"You are perceptive." Responded Sukuna.
"So... Jogo actually beat you... And if he had caught your bluff, you... would've been dead!" Yelled out Mahito, with a mix of amusement and rage.
"I only did as I told you. I adapted." Sukuna said, looking at Mahito with mock pity.
Mahito then reformed his face and made the mouths and eyes around his body disappear.
"You're not the only one who can!"
He then increased the size of one of his hands drastically before picking up a broken piece of a nearby building's roof, before throwing it in Sukuna's direction.
--<>--
Dagon's trident cut through the air in Uraume's direction with shocking speed. They lifted their right arm in front of their chest to block and coated it in a thin layer of ice.
Dagon's Poseidon Trident concentrated all of his strength into a small point at its tip, causing any solid and hard surface it made contact with to shatter on impact.
Uraume recognized that if it managed to reach into their bones, they'd be cracked to pieces, rendering them unable to help their master and, less importantly, dead.
There was also not enough time to form enough ice to completely stop the trident, so they decided to only use a small amount of it to thinly coat their arm, and use the rest for... something else.
When the trident made contact with the thin ice layer, it immediately cracked with no resistance, before making its way cleanly through Uraume's elbow, causing it to fall to the ground and roll helplessly.
The ice didn't do anything to stop the Trident's momentum, but it did absorb the shattering effect of Dagon's trident, effectively sacrificing a part of their body to save the whole.
But, most importantly, Dagon had shifted his weight to only one leg while he thrusted his trident. Using this to their advantage, Uraume formed a burst of ice from the floor, completely freezing Dagon's leg and trapping him.
Uraume then lowered their body, covered their remaining hand in frost, and then touched the ground.
"ICEFALL!"
Ice shards suddenly began falling from the sky, once again trapping Dagon's body almost completely, with only three holes: one around his head, one for his chest, and another on his back.
Then, while Dagon was desperately attempting to free himself, Uraume healed their missing forearm with reverse cursed technique, then made a crunching motion with both hands.
When they did so, a large triangular spike of ice arose in front of them, lifting Dagon and piercing clean through his chest, with dark purple blood dropping to the floor below.
"...Disappointing. You were never on their level. Of those two other curses. And now, they'll die. Due to your incompetence. How pathetic." Said Uraume, their face completely calm and aloof, causing Dagon to scream out in rage.
"This... This isn't over, Human! I'll still... I'll still catch u-"
Suddenly, the ice spike grew in width even more, threatening to tear Dagon apart. That silenced him for good.
Then, Uraume heard a familiar sound right next to her... it was master Sukuna!
"Hey, Uraume, I exorcised that curse back there! Now, why don't you let this one be, and let's get outta here?"
But this Sukuna... he seemed... off.
He didn't quite sound like himself. His skin was perfectly clean, some of his tattoos were slightly smudged, and his clothes, whatever remained of them, seemed perfectly smooth and perfect, as if he hadn't gone through exhaustive fighting for the last hour.
''You're not master Sukuna." Said Uraume coldly.
Then, Sukuna's face and body disgustingly contorted and shifted, finally turning into a pale-skinned and blue-haired curse with patches all over his face.
He looked at them and smiled widely, his pupils contracting unnaturally.
"Was it really that obvious?"
--<>--
Meanwhile, where Sukuna was, the smokescreen formed by the rubble finally lowered, and where Mahito was once standing, there were easily more than one hundred transfigured humans, like predators ready to pounce on their prey.