This was the final round.
Both Mahito and Kinji Hakari were acutely aware of this fact. 13 seconds—this was the window that would decide the victor!
In 13 seconds, Hakari would be able to expand his Domain again, restarting the endless nesting doll of "infinite cursed energy."
Everything that needed to be said had been said. The resolve had been set. Now, there was only one thing left to do. Fight!
13 seconds on the clock!
The Dragon suddenly opened its maw. Deep within its throat, a miniature sun ignited. It was a massive convergence of cursed energy, rapidly compressing and gathering. Lowering its majestic head, the Dragon aimed this miniature sun directly at Hakari. Yet, Hakari's first reaction wasn't to dodge or flee—he charged straight at the gathering sphere of light, roaring like a stampeding bull.
Solar discharge. Dragon's Breath!
The Dragon let out a long sigh. A colossal pillar of light erupted from the miniature sun in its throat, blasting forward. The entire underground arena shuddered as if heaven and earth themselves feared the Dragon's exhalation. The sheer density of the cursed energy bombardment felt like divine wrath. Even before making contact, Hakari's instincts screamed that a direct hit would instantly vaporize him, leaving not even ashes behind.
His heart hammered like a frantic drumbeat. He could vividly picture himself being reduced to human vapor. Absolute terror threatened to hijack his mind, but in that very moment, he was actually smiling. Grinning ear to ear, he extracted cursed energy from the depths of his fear, transmuting terror into raw courage. A fraction of a second before the Dragon's Breath struck, he violently slid across the ground into a baseball tackle. The torrent of cursed energy roared inches above his body, the staggering heat and gale-force winds whipping his hair wildly like seaweed in a storm.
Riding the momentum of his desperate slide, Hakari skidded right up to the Dragon's face. He launched himself upward from beneath its chin, fists tightly clenched. Gritting his teeth, veins bulging and muscles swelling, he threw a devastating punch!
The next instant, he was swatted away by the Dragon's claws.
The Dragon's eagle-talons and tiger-palms raked across Hakari. The beast had never intended to hit him with the Dragon's Breath. It knew perfectly well that when it came to fighting giant monsters, Hakari's experience far exceeded its own. Hakari was a seasoned Jujutsu Sorcerer; the number of Curses he had beaten to death likely outnumbered the ones he had merely seen. Low-intelligence Cursed Spirits generally followed the rule of "bigger equals stronger," so Hakari was undoubtedly more adept at hunting giants than tracking beasts in a forest.
But his past experience in hunting giant Curses proved to be his undoing. The Dragon had deliberately held back its breath attack, waiting for Hakari to close the distance. And just as predicted, Hakari took the bait. The moment Hakari was airborne and committed to his strike, the Dragon swiped its claws, perfectly intercepting him mid-air.
A completely unblockable counter!
For a Jujutsu Sorcerer, having your guard up versus being caught off-guard are two entirely different worlds. Hakari never expected to be the one ambushed. He barely had time to brace himself before the Dragon's claws slammed into him with catastrophic force. He was launched backward like an artillery shell, vomiting blood mid-air—blood thick with chunks of his own internal organs. The lethal agony short-circuited his brain. He smashed into the arena's outer wall, but the momentum didn't stop there. He crashed cleanly through the concrete, tumbling violently into the multi-story parking garage's open plaza.
Kirara Hoshi screamed, moving to intervene, but a sudden wall of fire completely cut off his line of sight. Jogo glared at him with lethal intent. Hanami slammed both hands into the ground, and a dense ring of timber erupted from the earth, completely sealing Jogo and Kirara inside. Standing on the edge of the barrier, Hanami gave the Dragon a slight nod.
[Leave this to me,] Hanami said.
1 second passed. 12 seconds left.
The Dragon didn't waste a single glance on Kirara. Confident that its allies could easily handle the spatial sorcerer, it focused entirely on Hakari.
Shifting its visual perception, the Dragon peered through the smoke and the shattered arena wall, locking onto Hakari's battered form as he tumbled across the plaza like a skipping stone. It took a deep breath. The atmospheric cursed energy fused with its own innate reserves deep within its throat. Its lion-like mane writhed and whipped wildly despite the lack of wind. Half a second later, the Dragon opened its massive jaws and unleashed another torrent of energy.
Dragon's Breath!
The solar-beam-like flood of cursed energy pierced straight through the parking garage's remaining walls, rocketing toward Hakari. But Hakari was already back on his feet. He sprinted frantically outward just as the Dragon's Breath obliterated the exact spot he had been lying in. A deafening explosion ripped through the air, sending shockwaves expanding outward in frantic, concentric rings. Hakari instantly shifted all his cursed energy reinforcement to his back. The shockwave clipped him, sending him tumbling violently forward as if struck by a cluster bomb, skipping across the asphalt.
As Hakari scrambled to stand, he suddenly stumbled.
He had gone deaf.
His 'Ears' had been sealed!
2 seconds passed. 11 seconds left.
The Dragon finally moved. It violently bulldozed through the ruined outer walls, spilling into the plaza. Its serpentine body seemed large enough to swallow the entire square. It didn't slither; a localized current of cursed energy buoyed it in flight. As its talons lightly brushed the earth, agonizing gouges were ripped into the pavement. The Dragon lunged at Hakari, swiping its claws without a hint of hesitation.
Hakari, having just gotten to his feet, had absolutely no time to dodge. He had assumed the arena walls would slightly obscure the Dragon's line of sight, completely unaware that the Dragon's eyes possessed X-ray perception. Because of this, he didn't anticipate the lethal speed of its combo. The moment he managed to steady his footing, the talons were already in his face.
He was already blind. His eyes perceived absolute nothingness. His ears were deaf, completely devoid of sound. But the crushing pressure of cursed energy washing over his skin warned him of the incoming strike. He frantically gathered his cursed energy to guard, but the Dragon's claws simply snatched him up and violently pile-drived him straight into the concrete.
And it wasn't over. The Dragon didn't stop flying. Gripping him tightly, it dragged Hakari through the asphalt at breakneck speed. The catastrophic impact and the sheer crushing pressure of the earth continuously ground Hakari down. Even with maximum cursed energy reinforcement, the agonizing friction began to tear him apart.
Without his Jackpot, Hakari lacked the automatic Reverse Cursed Technique. He felt his internal organs churning violently while his external wounds rapidly multiplied. He was on the verge of passing out, but he held on. He felt his entire body burning up—unable to tell if it was adrenaline or his own battle-crazed fever suppressing the pain. He reached out, grabbed one of the Dragon's massive talons, and snapped it backward with every ounce of his strength.
The Dragon let out a staggering roar, violently hurling Hakari away. It lowered its head. One of its claws had been broken. These were Dragon's talons! Their hardness far exceeded even its scales, yet Hakari had still managed to snap one. If Hakari had landed a direct punch, even this mythic draconic form would have suffered severe damage.
3 seconds passed. 10 seconds left.
The Dragon stared at its broken claw. The bones audibly snapped back into place, and in an instant, the claw was completely healed. No, this wasn't healing. Because the technique maintained the shape of the soul, the physical body would automatically mold itself to match the soul's blueprint no matter how severely it was damaged. As long as the Dragon transformation remained active, Idle Transfiguration would automatically anchor its form. Unless Hakari could attack the soul directly, the Dragon's body would never sustain true damage.
Hakari crashed into the distance with a sound like rolling thunder, cratering the ground upon impact. He lay in the center of the pit. He tried to scramble up immediately, but his footing gave out, and he nearly collapsed again. He shook his head, blood spilling from his lips, which he forcefully swallowed back down.
The reason he couldn't stand straight was simple: He was blind and deaf.
Human ears are far more crucial to equilibrium than most realize. Losing hearing drastically affects the sense of balance, not to mention he was currently blind. An untrained person wouldn't even be able to walk straight, let alone fight; they'd have to slowly trail their hands along a wall.
Yet, even severely handicapped, Hakari hadn't lost his combat capability. His cursed energy perception remained fully functional. Even without eyes or ears, he was as fast as ever. The real issue was his internal and external injuries. The internal trauma disrupted his cursed energy circulation, while the external wounds hampered his mobility.
He took a deep breath, trying to force his body to recover, only to realize he couldn't smell anything.
His 'Nose' had been sealed!
He remembered Jiro Awasaka. During a fistfight with Mahito, Awasaka had suddenly frozen in place, his cursed energy reinforcement unconsciously vanishing. This had to be the true nature of Mahito's technique. Upon contact, Mahito was stripping away his five senses. First the eyes, then the ears, then the nose. What was next?
The tongue? The sense of touch? And eventually, the inability to refine cursed energy altogether, effectively isolating his consciousness?
Hakari reached a grim epiphany: He couldn't take another direct hit from the Dragon. Every attack stripped away another layer of his perception. Eventually, he would be reduced to a fish on a chopping block, entirely at its mercy.
Suddenly, an eruption of cursed energy spiked in the distance. Dragon's Breath!
Perhaps it was an illusion, but the more senses he lost, the sharper his cursed energy perception became. He could 'feel' the Dragon taking a deep breath from afar. The attack was imminent. A split second before the breath fired, Hakari leaped out of the massive crater. He hit the ground running. Just as expected, the Dragon's Breath arrived instantly, obliterating the exact crater he had just evacuated.
But it wasn't over! This time, the Dragon's Breath was a continuous beam, not a single burst. The breath swept across the battlefield like the scythe of the Grim Reaper. Hakari let out a monkey-like screech, his legs spinning like tires as he sprinted for his life. The sweeping beam chased hot on his heels, threatening to swallow him whole at any moment.
4 seconds passed. 9 seconds left.
The Dragon took to the sky, continuing its breath attack from high above. The staggering volume of cursed energy triggered atmospheric anomalies; the very sky seemed to darken. The Dragon soared through the oppressive clouds, its breath relentlessly tracking Hakari. Through his cursed energy perception, Hakari 'saw' the Dragon in the sky. Ignoring the lethal risk of a direct hit, he abruptly changed direction, sprinting directly underneath the airborne beast.
If he kept running away, the beam would eventually catch and vaporize him. He understood this perfectly; he had to counterattack, not just stall for time!
Hakari manipulated the flow of his cursed energy with surgical precision, reinforcing his leg strength to the absolute limit. He sprinted faster and faster in a tight circle. For the Dragon to track him, it only needed to turn its head, and logically, turning its head should have been faster than Hakari running a wide circle. Yet, Hakari was running so fast that the Dragon's neck couldn't physically keep up.
5 seconds passed. 8 seconds left.
Hakari finally reached the exact center beneath the Dragon. In that exact moment, the Dragon cut off its breath attack. The cessation of the roaring beam allowed the deafening explosions of the devastated terrain to finally catch up. The two-second sweep of the Dragon's Breath had radically altered the landscape, gouging out a serpentine trench over three hundred meters long. The expanding shockwaves hadn't stopped; the violent winds mixed with cursed energy launched shrapnel and dust into the sky, whipping up a literal sandstorm.
From within the blinding dust storm, Hakari suddenly launched himself straight up. It was time to counterattack! The Dragon was at least two hundred meters in the air, yet Hakari cleared that distance in a single, explosive leap. The Dragon's eyes tracked Hakari, then the beast violently banked to the side. Hakari's airborne status meant he had no leverage to change direction mid-air, effectively turning him into a sitting duck.
The Dragon violently whipped its tail at Hakari. Hakari crossed his arms over his face to guard. The tail slammed into his arms with an earth-shattering crack, the kinetic shockwave rippling infinitely outward. Hakari was swatted down like a perfectly struck tennis ball, plummeting back to earth with an explosive crash. He took the absolute full brunt of the impact. Despite maximizing his cursed energy defense, he felt his bones dislocate and his internal organs rupture. Unable to hold it back, he opened his mouth and vomited a torrent of blood mixed with pulverized tissue.
He had miscalculated! He thought that by reaching the Dragon's blind spot directly underneath it, his sudden leap would act as a perfect ambush, leaving the Dragon unable to react. He hadn't accounted for the Dragon's flawless dynamic vision and impossible agility. It didn't move like a behemoth of that size should.
Dynamic vision, reflexes, raw strength, explosive power, and flexibility—the Dragon was utterly flawless in every category. Hakari now intimately understood what it meant to face a "higher-dimensional organism."
6 seconds passed. 7 seconds left.
The crushing pressure of a falling meteor descended from the heavens. The Dragon abruptly U-turned into a vertical dive. It didn't use its breath attack. Based on the last few seconds of data, the Dragon concluded that a ranged breath attack would never hit Hakari. It had to close the distance and fire at point-blank range to secure the kill.
The Dragon's Dive!
Ignoring his agonizing injuries, Hakari immediately scrambled to dodge, but as he moved to stand, he swayed dizzily. Although completely useless in a fight, he noticed that the sensation in his mouth had vanished. He felt a foreign object on his tongue and spat it out, realizing it was a chunk of his own organ—but he couldn't taste the blood. It was as if his tongue were purely decorative.
Following his 'Eyes,' 'Ears,' and 'Nose,' his 'Tongue' had now been sealed.
Suddenly, the colossal body was upon him. He had missed the final window to escape the Dragon's blast radius. The Dragon let out a low, whale-like call that sounded like the tolling of an ancient bell. The sound was practically tangible, a wave of sonic pressure that pinned Hakari down, making it impossible to stand. He could do nothing but brace as the Dragon's horns slammed directly into his body.
Dragon's Roar!
For a fraction of a second, the world went dead silent. And then—Eruption!
The blast radius exceeded a hundred meters. A cursed energy storm whipped into a hemispherical cyclone. Inside the dome, cursed energy ricocheted violently. The entire plaza was pulverized into dust. The asphalt rained upward from the ground, the debris instantly atomized by the cursed energy detonations until it was reduced to microscopic powder.
The ground caved in continuously. Amidst the churning earth and stone, the blast radius continued to expand. The entire multi-story parking garage shuddered violently until half of the structure completely collapsed. Finally, the hemispherical storm lost its containment, and a catastrophic shockwave swept outward, seemingly racing toward the edge of the world.
When it was over, an abyssal crater had been carved into the earth. The Dragon let out a triumphant roar from the center of the pit, the bell-like resonance echoing endlessly. The cursed energy storm blew away the remaining dust and debris. Hovering over the abyss, the Dragon lowered its head, its heterochromatic eyes glowing like divine spotlights as it peered down at the bottom of the crater.
7 seconds passed. 6 seconds left.
At the bottom of the pit, a barely intact Hakari gasped frantically for air. Despite throwing every ounce of his being into his cursed energy defense, his body had been practically incinerated. The cursed energy burns and the localized storm of death had left him covered in catastrophic lacerations. The wounds cut straight to the bone. He didn't even know how many bones were broken; his spine was completely unresponsive, likely shattered. His brain was mush. The terror of death clung to him like a second skin.
He was gasping heavily, practically panting, but he had lost all perception of the outside world. He was covered in agonizing wounds, yet he couldn't actually *feel* his body. It felt like sinking into the crushing depths of the ocean, his entire being compressed by unimaginable pressure. He was drowning in a pitch-black abyss, frantically struggling. His only remaining anchor to reality was his cursed energy perception.
His sense of touch had vanished. His 'Body' had been sealed!
*I made a mistake,* he thought numbly. *I should have abandoned a full-body guard and made a Binding Vow, sacrificing an arm to maximize my defense just to survive that hit.*
In the original timeline, Hakari had survived a catastrophic underwater explosion by sacrificing an arm for a localized defense boost, walking away without a scratch elsewhere. Had he made that call here, he likely would have survived the blast intact.
But that was impossible.
In the original story, he made the perfect call because he was able to accurately gauge the incoming attack's yield *before* it hit. But right now, all his physical senses were dead. He was flying blind on pure cursed energy perception. If he had time to adjust to this state, he might have been able to fight back.
But he didn't have the time.
8 seconds passed. 5 seconds left.
He struggled desperately, trying to force himself to stand, but suddenly, he stopped.
Stripped of his five senses, he "looked" at the world solely through cursed energy. In that world, a massive talon was descending from the heavens. He wanted to get up and dodge, but because he had lost all sense of touch and proprioception, he couldn't even command his legs to stand. He could only watch helplessly as the terrifying claw descended upon him.
The Dragon's talon reached down and gently tapped Hakari on the forehead, like a deity gracefully blessing a mortal.
Hakari immediately collapsed to the ground.
'Eyes.' 'Ears.' 'Nose.' 'Tongue.' 'Body.' And finally, the 'Mind.'
This was the Purification of the Six Roots!
9 seconds passed. 4 seconds left.
Kinji Hakari plummeted into the abyss.