Mahito burst through the iron doors to the roof, only to be met immediately with a fist practically half an inch from his face. Mahito's shoes suddenly swelled and burst. What emerged from the ruined fabric wasn't a human foot, but the hoof of a gazelle. His entire leg had morphed into the anatomy of a gazelle's hind leg. The moment his hoof struck the ground, Mahito vanished from Hakari's line of sight.
Hakari's eyes went wide. The gazelle hoof materialized right beside his face.
BAM!
The hoof cracked Hakari directly in the skull, sending him flipping sideways through the air. He dug both hands into the roof's concrete, his fingers gouging the surface, skidding laterally for a full five meters before stopping.
His face was practically destroyed by the sudden strike—cheekbone shattered, facial muscles shredded into pulp. But in less than 0.2 seconds, amidst a hiss of evaporating Cursed Energy, his face flawlessly regenerated. The unrestricted release of Cursed Energy shattered his body's internal limiters. To prevent the overflowing power from outright destroying his flesh, his body was forced into an automatic, continuous state of Reverse Cursed Technique. No matter how devastating the injury, he would heal instantly.
He was, quite literally, immortal!
But immortality only guaranteed survival! Mahito lunged forward, launching himself into the air mid-sprint. Suspended in the sky, he executed a flawless Rider Kick, bringing all his weight and immense physical force crashing down on the half-crouched Hakari. At the critical moment, Hakari adjusted his stance, crossing both arms in a guard to block the incoming dive kick.
*CRACK.* The crisp sound of bone snapping echoed in Hakari's ears.
Hakari was launched backward like a child's kicked ball, tumbling violently across the concrete before crashing into the chain-link fence at the roof's edge. The fence was instantly obliterated, but in that split second, Hakari recovered. He clamped one hand onto the ledge of the roof, his fingers digging into the concrete to arrest his fall.
*Crack, snap.* His shattered arms had already healed to perfection.
He looked up. A gazelle hoof hovered right in front of his eyes. The hoof slowly drained of color and shifted, returning to the shape of a human foot resting right next to his hand. He looked higher. Mahito's grinning face stared down at him.
A devastating stomp!
*What the hell is up with this guy's body?* Hakari didn't have time to process it. Just before Mahito's foot crushed him, he preemptively let go of the ledge. But this wasn't a surrender. Right as he dropped, he stomped viciously against the exterior wall, using the reactive force to vault himself backward and upward into the sky like a soaring eagle.
Mahito looked up. Mid-air, Hakari spread his arms and legs wide, adjusting his posture to plummet back down like a meteor. Blazing Cursed Energy raged across the surface of his skin. At this moment, he had truly become a falling meteor—a meteor of pure Cursed Energy!
Infinite Cursed Energy was absurdly overpowered. It allowed him to ignore all physical limitations and forcefully exert strength far beyond his body's maximum threshold. If any other sorcerer dared to channel their power like this, they would tear themselves apart instantly. But Hakari, armed with infinite Cursed Energy and an endlessly cycling automatic Reverse Cursed Technique, could do it as effortlessly as breathing.
Mahito violently spread his arms. Just before the Cursed Energy meteor struck, his arms morphed into massive wings. He flapped them powerfully, using the massive wind pressure generated by the falling meteor to surf backward, allowing the catastrophic strike to slam into the roof without harming him in the slightest.
A deafening explosion ripped into the sky!
A massive chunk of the roof was pulverized. This was the roof of a multi-story parking garage designed to hold dozens of cars, yet the blast radius of Hakari's crash engulfed over a quarter of the entire structure. If Mahito had taken that direct hit, even if he had transmuted his body into solid iron, he would have been smashed to dust.
Amidst the storm of flying shrapnel, Mahito morphed his wings back into arms and landed safely.
The debris whipped around them like a hurricane! Hakari's infinite Cursed Energy continued to pour out tirelessly, surging like a tsunami.
*He's stronger than I thought,* Mahito mused. Logically, Cursed Energy reinforcement had a hard ceiling. The human body simply couldn't handle omni-directional, unlimited output. Every Special Grade Sorcerer had to be meticulous when reinforcing their bodies. Most of the time, rather than over-reinforcing their flesh, it was safer and more efficient to channel that energy into a powerful Cursed Technique output.
This rule applied even to the absolute pinnacles of the JJK universe, Satoru Gojo and Ryomen Sukuna.
In the original story, Grade 1 Sorcerer Momo explicitly stated that whether it was baseline physical stats or physical reinforcement via Cursed Energy, neither could scale infinitely.
The most obvious example was Yuta Okkotsu. Yuta boasted the highest Cursed Energy reserves in history; in sheer volume, no one in the Jujutsu world came close. His base physical strength wasn't anything special, but the surging Cursed Energy wrapping his entire body made every single one of his strikes lethal, and mitigated incoming damage to the absolute minimum. Combined with his proficiency in Reverse Cursed Technique, he could utterly crush opponents through sheer brute force, without even needing an Innate Technique.
Yet, even Yuta Okkotsu openly admitted that he could run out of Cursed Energy.
But Kinji Hakari was different. He had no ceiling!
The Cursed Energy reinforcement granted by his infinite reserves allowed him to push his physical limits endlessly. Even if his body began to tear itself apart from the stress of the reinforcement, it didn't matter. The overflowing infinite Cursed Energy would automatically trigger the Reverse Cursed Technique, healing the damage before his body could physically break down.
It was flawless! So perfect it made Mahito dizzy just thinking about it.
This was overwhelming statistical superiority. This was Infinite Cursed Energy!
Satoru Gojo had once judged that if they developed normally, both Yuta Okkotsu and Kinji Hakari would one day rival him. Before now, Mahito hadn't quite understood that. If Yuta Okkotsu's infinite potential came from his ability to unconditionally copy techniques, what did Hakari have besides a bottomless gas tank? How could he possibly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a future Yuta and Gojo?
But now, Mahito understood Gojo's assessment—it wasn't just about "rivaling" him. If Hakari continued to grow, once his body fully adapted to the flow of infinite Cursed Energy, it was unimaginable what kind of superhuman he would become. Special Grade Sorcerer Yuki Tsukumo needed her Cursed Technique to punch through a circulating barrier, but eventually, this guy might be able to do the exact same thing with raw physical force alone!
*Good thing I came here,* Mahito thought. The decision to confront Kinji Hakari before he fully matured was absolutely the right call!
Through the roaring storm, Hakari's bellow was deafening: "Don't hide, Lord of Curses! Face me!"
Mahito breathed slowly, ripping off the remains of his shredded white shirt and tossing it aside. He dropped to all fours. In time with his breathing, his body began to warp.
Hakari emerged from the dust storm. His upper garments were completely gone, his bare torso covered in bloody gashes that vanished into flawless skin the next second. Not a speck of dust clung to him, as the sheer force of his erupting Cursed Energy blew the grit away, highlighting his heavily muscled physique.
"Have you ever fought a wild beast infused with Cursed Energy, Hakari?!" Mahito howled.
It was truly a howl—not a human voice, but the roar of a beast! He charged on all fours. Mid-sprint, thick white fur sprouted rapidly across his flesh . His skull elongated, fangs bared, and black stripes painted themselves across his forehead, forming the character for "King" (王).
Idle Transfiguration: White Tiger!
He had transformed into a massive white tiger, standing a meter tall at the shoulder and over three meters long! Its long white tail whipped wildly through the air, cracking like a whip. The tiger roared, the sound echoing like thunder. Its paws cratered the concrete floor upon impact. Mahito's Idle Transfiguration had perfectly replicated even the overwhelming mass of the beast.
The only discrepancy was the tiger's eyes—one gold, one blue—the heterochromia Mahito could never erase.
Hakari's pupils constricted as the white tiger slammed into him. Its claws shredded his torso, and its jaws clamped down hard on his throat, ready to rip his head clean off! A normal tiger had a bite force of roughly 500 kilograms, but one reinforced by Cursed Energy via Idle Transfiguration was infinitely deadlier. Snapping a frail human neck was nothing.
But at the critical moment, Hakari jammed both hands into the tiger's maw. The fangs had already punctured his carotid artery, blood erupting like a violently geysering volcano. The Reverse Cursed Technique instantly clotted the wound, but the tiger's teeth remained buried deep into his neck, physically blocking the flesh from closing completely.
The white tiger pinned Hakari to the ground. It was an incredibly disadvantageous position to generate force from, yet Hakari managed to leverage his muscles using raw Cursed Energy. It was a technique a normal human without Cursed Energy could never hope to learn in a lifetime, but armed with infinite reserves, Hakari did it on pure instinct. Against all odds, he was slowly prying the tiger's jaws open!
But in the next instant, the jaws rapidly shrank. The sudden loss of resistance caused Hakari's straining arms to violently thrust outward, grasping at empty air. Staring back at him was Mahito's infuriating, grinning face.
Mahito had morphed back to his human form in a split second!
Pinning Hakari down with one hand, Mahito used his free hand to viciously pummel Hakari's face. Hakari tried to counterattack, but Mahito's fists ruthlessly and precisely battered his temples. Trapped in a state of severe concussion, Hakari couldn't mount an offense and was reduced to a human punching bag. Infinite Cursed Energy only granted him invincibility, not immunity to pain. Mahito had seized upon this weakness, using infinite concussive trauma to counter his immortality.
As he mercilessly beat Hakari, Mahito was simultaneously trying to channel Idle Transfiguration into him. But exactly as he had anticipated—he couldn't warp Hakari's soul at all.
No, strictly speaking, it wasn't that he couldn't "warp" it; the technique simply failed to activate.
Aside from physical healing, the infinite Cursed Energy seemed to blanket Hakari's soul in an impenetrable defense. The moment Mahito's Cursed Energy invaded Hakari's body, it was immediately swallowed and violently expelled by Hakari's raging torrent of energy. The lingering trace amount that survived was less than a tenth of Mahito's usual output. If Mahito dared to use that pathetic remnant to modify his soul, Hakari could purge it from his system at will.
Now Mahito completely understood how Hajime Kashimo must have felt in the original timeline. Kashimo's fighting style revolved around implanting electrical charges into his opponent, a lethal tactic that had never failed him. But against Hakari, right as he was about to blow Hakari's head off with an electrical discharge, Hakari realized the danger and simply sneezed the cursed electricity out through his nose. The sheer absurdity of forcefully expelling foreign Cursed Energy had left the battle-hardened ancient sorcerer completely dumbfounded.
Mahito was facing the exact same wall. His Cursed Energy was building up inside Hakari's body, but it was entirely unusable. The moment he tried to activate it, Hakari would violently purge it. His absolute sure-kill technique had been completely neutralized through sheer brute-force flushing.
"You're one tough nut to crack, Hakari!" Mahito mocked loudly.
Veins throbbed wildly on Hakari's forehead. Mahito sharply noticed the shift and immediately leaped backward. Hakari's fists swung upward in a devastating uppercut. Even though he was still heavily concussed, the prolonged trauma had seemingly allowed his Reverse Cursed Technique to "accumulate experience." During this savage brawl, his automatic healing had "evolved."
It was exactly like when Kashimo tried to kill him with chlorine gas; without understanding the chemical mechanics at all, Hakari's automatic Reverse Cursed Technique had instinctively evolved to write an "anti-toxin protocol."
Following the exact same logic, his automatic healing had now registered the condition of a "concussion." From this moment on, as long as he was in his immortal state, Hakari would never suffer from "dizziness" again!
"Come on, Lord of Curses! Let's keep going!" Hakari scrambled to his feet, lunging at Mahito with an astronomical surge of Cursed Energy.
Mahito vaulted backward through the air, spreading his arms wide as feathers erupted from his skin. Idle Transfiguration: Giant Eagle! His entire body morphed into a massive bird of prey. Hakari's punch hit dead air, and the eagle retaliated, sinking its massive talons into Hakari's spine, nearly ripping his vertebrae clean out.
But the boiling Cursed Energy regenerated the flesh instantly. Hakari whipped around to strike, only to find the eagle's talons replaced by the snapping jaws of a black wolf. Idle Transfiguration: Black Wolf!
The black wolf leaped, tearing into Hakari's flesh. Hakari went to kick the wolf away, but mid-roll, the wolf morphed again. A python. The massive snake coiled tightly around Hakari's legs, sinking its fangs deep into his kneecaps!
Tiger, eagle, wolf, snake. Bull, crocodile, rhino, bear.
In terms of pure combat experience, Hakari vastly outclassed the relatively newly born Mahito. But that experience couldn't buy Hakari any advantage here. Against an opponent capable of endless, instant metamorphosis, Hakari simply couldn't establish a rhythm. Every time he readied a counter, Mahito had already warped into a completely different beast, resetting the engagement entirely.
Despite fighting with everything he had, Hakari could barely maintain a stalemate. There was simply no other opponent in the world quite like this.
Mahito was utterly absorbed in the brawl, fighting with 100% of his capability! His mastery over Idle Transfiguration grew sharper by the second, his transformations becoming a dizzying blur. Hakari tried multiple times to grapple his morphed forms but grasped at nothing. Through this endless shifting, Mahito was drawing closer and closer to the true core of his being.
His final transformation was a bear!
The largest brown bear on earth, a Kodiak bear . Rearing up on its hind legs, it towered over three meters tall, weighing a staggering 1,000 kilograms! Enveloped entirely in Cursed Energy, the bear's massive paw came crashing down like a hurricane.
Hakari crossed his arms to block, but the bear's swipe swatted him away with catastrophic force. Hakari was launched into the sky, spinning out of control like a top whipped by a leather belt. The bones in his arms rapidly cycled between shattering and healing mid-flight. He cartwheeled through the air before violently impacting shoulder-first, tumbling two or three full rotations across the concrete before finally skidding to a halt.
He lay pinned to the ground, panting heavily, and looked up.
The brown bear's fur rapidly receded, morphing back into Mahito's original human form. Not a single scratch marred his body. His highly defined, muscular physique rose and fell slowly with his breathing. Sweat traced the deep cuts of his muscles, practically glowing under the moonlight.
Diamond-shaped, teardrop-like markings had appeared on his cheeks. Hakari sharply caught the detail. Those markings hadn't been there before; they only surfaced when Mahito reverted to his base form. Was this a hint to the underlying mechanics of his Cursed Technique?
The theme music abruptly cut out. The "Immortal State" had expired. 4 minutes and 11 seconds were up!
But Mahito didn't press the advantage. He looked down at Hakari from his elevated vantage point and asked flatly, "Have you had your fun yet, Hakari?"
Hakari stood up, steadying his breathing. As he rose, he rolled his neck, the cervical vertebrae popping with a crisp *crack-crack-crack*.
Despite being completely suppressed during the exchange, Hakari didn't look the least bit anxious. Everyone endowed with immortality shared the exact same bad habit: they inherently relied on their invincible bodies to facetank their opponent's opening strike. Precisely because they couldn't die, they didn't care about losing the initial clash. The real fight, the counterattack, always came after.
Hakari was no exception. And now, he was ready to strike back. He had fully acclimated to Mahito's endless transformations. Now, the real battle of life and death would begin!
"My technique is probability fluctuation," Hakari declared. Technique Revelation!
"As long as probability is involved, I can record the number of failures. No matter the type of gamble, I can force a success within 30 rolls," Hakari explained. "Not only that, but my technique is directly tied to my physical state. If I'm in peak condition—"
He thrust both hands forward, forming his hand sign.
"—I can seize certainty through sheer luck!"
Domain Expansion: Idle Death Gamble!
The entire rooftop was engulfed by the train station. The animation sequence for Idle Death Gamble began anew! Hakari grinned, looking like an absolute demon.
"Too bad for you, I'm in peak condition right now! I'm predicting the Jackpot odds are—10,000%!!"
The indicator board displayed the first spin: Heroine No. 3! The second spin: Heroine No. 3! —Riichi! The phantom male protagonist rushed onto the platform, gasping for breath. The final spin—
Bursting through the doors from the opposite side, the female character was... Heroine No. 2!
Heroine No. 3. Heroine No. 3. Heroine No. 2. A miss?
Hakari's pupils shrank to pinpricks. He could explicitly feel that he was in peak condition. How could it not be a Jackpot??
But the boiling Cursed Energy regenerated the flesh instantly. Hakari whipped around to strike, only to find the eagle's talons replaced by the snapping jaws of a black wolf. Idle Transfiguration: Black Wolf!
The black wolf leaped, tearing into Hakari's flesh. Hakari went to kick the wolf away, but mid-roll, the wolf morphed again. A python. The massive snake coiled tightly around Hakari's legs, sinking its fangs deep into his kneecaps!
Tiger, eagle, wolf, snake. Bull, crocodile, rhino, bear.
In terms of pure combat experience, Hakari vastly outclassed the relatively newly born Mahito. But that experience couldn't buy Hakari any advantage here. Against an opponent capable of endless, instant metamorphosis, Hakari simply couldn't establish a rhythm. Every time he readied a counter, Mahito had already warped into a completely different beast, resetting the engagement entirely.
Despite fighting with everything he had, Hakari could barely maintain a stalemate. There was simply no other opponent in the world quite like this.
Mahito was utterly absorbed in the brawl, fighting with 100% of his capability! His mastery over Idle Transfiguration grew sharper by the second, his transformations becoming a dizzying blur. Hakari tried multiple times to grapple his morphed forms but grasped at nothing. Through this endless shifting, Mahito was drawing closer and closer to the true core of his being.
His final transformation was a bear!
The largest brown bear on earth, a Kodiak bear. Rearing up on its hind legs, it towered over three meters tall, weighing a staggering 1,000 kilograms! Enveloped entirely in Cursed Energy, the bear's massive paw came crashing down like a hurricane.
Hakari crossed his arms to block, but the bear's swipe swatted him away with catastrophic force. Hakari was launched into the sky, spinning out of control like a top whipped by a leather belt. The bones in his arms rapidly cycled between shattering and healing mid-flight. He cartwheeled through the air before violently impacting shoulder-first, tumbling two or three full rotations across the concrete before finally skidding to a halt.
He lay pinned to the ground, panting heavily, and looked up.
The brown bear's fur rapidly receded, morphing back into Mahito's original human form. Not a single scratch marred his body. His highly defined, muscular physique rose and fell slowly with his breathing. Sweat traced the deep cuts of his muscles, practically glowing under the moonlight.
Diamond-shaped, teardrop-like markings had appeared on his cheeks. Hakari sharply caught the detail. Those markings hadn't been there before; they only surfaced when Mahito reverted to his base form. Was this a hint to the underlying mechanics of his Cursed Technique?
The theme music abruptly cut out. The "Immortal State" had expired. 4 minutes and 11 seconds were up!
But Mahito didn't press the advantage. He looked down at Hakari from his elevated vantage point and asked flatly, "Have you had your fun yet, Hakari?"
Hakari stood up, steadying his breathing. As he rose, he rolled his neck, the cervical vertebrae popping with a crisp *crack-crack-crack*.
Despite being completely suppressed during the exchange, Hakari didn't look the least bit anxious. Everyone endowed with immortality shared the exact same bad habit: they inherently relied on their invincible bodies to facetank their opponent's opening strike. Precisely because they couldn't die, they didn't care about losing the initial clash. The real fight, the counterattack, always came after.
Hakari was no exception. And now, he was ready to strike back. He had fully acclimated to Mahito's endless transformations. Now, the real battle of life and death would begin!
"My technique is probability fluctuation," Hakari declared. Technique Revelation!
"As long as probability is involved, I can record the number of failures. No matter the type of gamble, I can force a success within 30 rolls," Hakari explained. "Not only that, but my technique is directly tied to my physical state. If I'm in peak condition—"
He thrust both hands forward, forming his hand sign.
"—I can seize certainty through sheer luck!"
Domain Expansion: Idle Death Gamble!
The entire rooftop was engulfed by the train station. The animation sequence for Idle Death Gamble began anew! Hakari grinned, looking like an absolute demon.
"Too bad for you, I'm in peak condition right now! I'm predicting the Jackpot odds are—10,000%!!"
The indicator board displayed the first spin: Heroine No. 3! The second spin: Heroine No. 3! —Riichi! The phantom male protagonist rushed onto the platform, gasping for breath. The final spin—
Bursting through the doors from the opposite side, the female character was... Heroine No. 2!
Heroine No. 3. Heroine No. 3. Heroine No. 2. A miss?
Hakari's pupils shrank to pinpricks. He could explicitly feel that he was in peak condition. How could it not be a Jackpot??
"Cursed Technique Reversal," Mahito sighed softly. "Soul Creation."
This was the brand-new Cursed Technique Reversal Mahito had acquired as a "Half-Cursed Spirit." Exactly as his theory had predicted, if his original Innate Technique was to modify and deform souls, then the reversed application of that technique would result in—
Forging souls. Ergo, Soul Creation!
The diamond markings on his cheeks slowly vanished, as if erased by a phantom eraser.
This was Haruta Shigemo's Innate Technique: Miracles! Haruta could stockpile everyday, mundane moments of good luck. When danger struck, he consumed these stored miracles to maximize his survival probability. The diamond marks on Mahito's cheeks represented that exact stockpiled luck. And just now, to counteract Hakari's "peak condition," Mahito had burned through all of it at once.
In truth, the fact that Hakari still managed to roll a Riichi after Mahito had entirely depleted his luck was what truly shocked Mahito. He had tested this before—when he maintained the luck storage and pushed it to maximum capacity, he could walk away completely unscathed even from a direct hit by Jogo's Maximum Meteor.
Just how astronomically high was Hakari's base "condition" to still pull off a Riichi under those crippling probability debuffs?
Mahito's Cursed Technique Reversal, Soul Creation, allowed him to infinitely record the souls he observed. If those souls possessed an Innate Technique, the technique was recorded alongside them. As long as Mahito willed it, he could extract and wield them. Though it came with the heavy restriction of only being able to manifest one Innate Technique per activation, it was more than enough.
Victory and defeat were often decided in a single, fleeting instant!
As expected, caught completely off-guard, Hakari had been played.
"The Domain Expansion nesting doll is over, Hakari," Mahito said, his smile widening. "I win."
***