["What?!"]
[Ranta, fully focused on pinning you in place, went pale. He hadn't expected his technique to hold you forever, sure, but launching a counterattack under this much pressure was a different story.]
[His technique was locked onto you. He couldn't spare the attention to deal with a giant serpent charging straight at him. The binding broke the moment he was forced to abandon you and swing his gaze toward Great Serpent instead.]
["Shift!"]
[The huge phantom pupils hanging in the air snapped sideways, and their stare hit Great Serpent like a solid beam.]
[WHAM.]
[The massive snake froze in the middle of its lunge, like a freight train smashing into an invisible wall. The impact warped its head, the recoil crushing it inward.]
[And in that split-second opening, the man who'd been waiting in the shadows finally made his move.]
["So this is the Ten Shadows Technique?! Doesn't look like much to me! Move in! Chop this snake into paste!"]
[Nobuaki Zenin, captain of the Kukuru Unit, raised his long blade and charged with a dozen of his elites at his back. They came from every side like wolves smelling blood.]
[Steel flashed. The restrained serpent vanished under a storm of blades.]
[Wet, ugly impacts filled the air one after another. Great Serpent was huge, but once it was locked in place and swarmed by that many trained fighters, it got carved apart almost immediately. Scales and black shadow-ichor splashed everywhere.]
[Nobuaki hacked at the serpent's vital point with near-manic excitement, muttering between swings.]
["This is the legendary Ten Shadows? Looks like nothing but an oversized worm to me!"]
[He had no clue every one of those cuts was part of your plan.]
[You'd burned precious cursed energy summoning Great Serpent even though you already knew its attack power and durability weren't anything special. Turning the fight around with it was never the goal.]
[You hadn't summoned it to kill.]
[You'd summoned it to die.]
[The final blade fell. Great Serpent let out a piercing, miserable wail and collapsed, its body breaking apart into a cloud of black motes. But the light didn't scatter.]
[Under the stunned eyes of Jinichi, Chojuro, Ranta, and every Kukuru Unit member nearby, those motes carrying the full power of the destroyed Shikigami surged like iron filings toward a magnet, flying straight into the stone hands still clamped around Murky Plume.]
[Technique Inheritance. Triple Fusion.]
["RRRAAAAAGGGHH!!!!"]
[A roar exploded out from the gaps in the stone prison, a hundred times worse than the thunder from earlier. It sounded like something dragged up screaming from the bottom of a lightless pit.]
[Crack. Crack. CRACK.]
[Those stone hands, tough enough to take Jinichi's fists, started splitting apart like dry biscuits. Fractures raced across the surface in a spiderweb pattern, widening by the second.]
["Wh... what is that?! My stone arms are..."]
[Chojuro's eyes went wide. He could feel it through the link to his technique. Something impossible was swelling inside his construct, growing, pushing, detonating.]
[BOOM!!!]
[The rock prison blew apart. Chunks of stone tore through the air like artillery shells, forcing everyone to throw themselves backward.]
[And through the dust, something stepped out.]
[Something that had shed every last trace of what it used to be, leaving behind a silhouette that drained the hope out of everyone who saw it.]
[It couldn't be called Murky Plume anymore.]
[Its body had more than doubled in size. It looked like a walking hillside. The wolf-shaped frame was now wrapped in heavy serpentine scale armor, and the tail that had once belonged to Divine Dog had turned into a colossal white snake, thick as a tree trunk, its forked tongue tasting the air with slow, deliberate flicks.]
[Nothing about it looked like a normal Shikigami anymore. It looked like a living thing ripped straight out of myth.]
[A Chimera.]
["What kind of monster..."]
[Jinichi stared at the beast pouring out pure annihilation, and his fist trembled. For the first time in his life, an outsider's technique made him feel something he'd never tasted before.]
[Fear.]
["Is this... the Ten Shadows Technique at full power?! Impossible! There's nothing about this kind of fusion in any of the clan records!!"]
[Ranta had gone chalk-white. His technique was already wavering under the sheer cursed energy pressure rolling off the creature.]
[But you had no time to enjoy their terror. No room to stand there admiring how intoxicating Chimera's new power felt.]
[Because what had been a water pump a moment ago was now a black hole, devouring everything you had left at a rate cold enough to make your blood run colder.]
[Your cursed energy reserves felt like a bathtub with the drain ripped wide open, emptying so fast even you felt a spike of fear. If this fight didn't end immediately, Chimera being strong wouldn't matter. You'd hit total depletion in seconds.]
[Chimera moved like black lightning. Nobuaki was still frozen in shock, and the only thing he registered before it hit was the smell of blood.]
["Look out!!"]
[Before anyone could properly react, Chimera's giant serpent tail swept through them like a battering ram.]
[CRACK. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.]
[There wasn't even a fight. A dozen Kukuru Unit elites went flying like bowling pins, bones snapping, screams cut off as they were hurled through the air and left hanging over distant branches like broken dolls. Whether any of them were still alive was hard to say.]
["You bastard! Don't think you've won!"]
[Jinichi roared and gathered cursed energy again, sending countless spectral fists crashing down from above.]
[Chimera didn't even bother looking.]
[Its wings slammed downward, and the massive body rolled through the air with physics-defying agility, slipping around the barrage completely.]
[Then its wolf jaws opened, and a thick beam of violet-black lightning speared upward and hit Jinichi dead center.]
[KRAAKOOOM!]
[A strangled scream tore out of him. Jinichi dropped from the sky trailing black smoke.]
[At the same time, Chimera's forepaw slammed into the ground. The shockwave caught Chojuro in the middle of an ambush and knocked him unconscious where he stood.]
[And the serpent tail, moving like it had a will of its own, coiled around Ranta as he tried to reestablish his line-of-sight lock. One squeeze was enough. His eyes rolled back, and he went limp.]
[Minutes. That was all it took. The Zenin clan's top forces, the Hei and the Kukuru Unit, collapsed in front of a creature fused from three Shikigami like paper walls in a storm.]
[This was the real power of your Ten Shadows Technique, developed and sharpened by your own hand.]
[And then, just when it looked like there might finally be an end in sight.]
[Tap.]
[A tiny sound. Absurdly soft in the middle of all this chaos.]
[Something in your peripheral vision caught it first. An old man in a loose kimono, a sake jug in hand, thin mustaches framing his upper lip. He looked half drunk.]
[Naobito Zenin.]
[Current head of the Zenin clan. The man known as the fastest jujutsu sorcerer alive, second only to Satoru Gojo.]
[He stood at the edge of the battlefield with eyes as still and deep as an undisturbed well. The pressure coming off him was nothing like Naoya's flashy, twitchy brand of power. This was weight built up over a lifetime, compacted layer after layer, heavy as a mountain range and almost impossible to read.]
[You blinked.]
[In that tiny sliver of time, the sake jug Naobito had been holding lost support and began to fall.]
[No!]
[Your pupils shrank. You knew exactly what that meant. The sign that Naobito had already moved. Projection Sorcery had activated.]
[No hesitation. You dumped the last fumes of your cursed energy into a blanket command for Chimera, indiscriminate area attack, and played your final card.]
[Cursed Technique Reversal: Nagihiru Kinkou.]
[Hmmmm...]
[The invisible wave spread outward. Naobito, already blurred into afterimages and closing at near-light speed, slowed. It was like someone had paused a clip that had been running at twenty-four times speed.]
[Real surprise touched that permanently drowsy face. You could see it clearly.]
["Oh? A technique that can nullify Projection Sorcery... how interesting."]
[A precise counter to the Zenin clan's hereditary technique had actually caught him off guard.]
[But it didn't break his rhythm for even a beat. It didn't put the slightest hitch in his movement.]
[That was the difference between the clan head and Naoya. Take away the acceleration from the technique, and Naobito was still a hand-to-hand monster honed to the absolute limit.]
["But I don't survive on technique alone, young man."]
[In the split second of stiffness your Cursed Technique Reversal had cost you, those weathered hands struck like snakes from a burrow, slipping right through your defense.]
[THUD.]
[The punch looked casual.]
[The force behind it could have split a boulder.]
[It buried itself in your gut.]
[You choked. It felt like your organs had traded places in an instant, and blood rushed up your throat.]
[Putting freaks of nature like Toji Fushiguro aside, the kind of monster whose raw physical strength no amount of skill could properly match without outside tools, Naobito was the second person after Suguru Geto to make you feel completely outclassed in close combat. He put more pressure on you than anyone else ever had in a serious fight.]
[And that exposed the fatal weakness this whole night had been prying open bit by bit.]
[Strip away the oversized power of the Ten Shadows Technique, and you on your own couldn't hold the line against this many battle-hardened Special Grade 1 jujutsu sorcerers at once. Your cursed energy was running on empty, and your reaction speed had been dulled by battle after battle after battle. You'd hit the wall.]
[Chimera lunged with a roar, serpent tail whipping toward Naobito with devastating force.]
[Maybe it was instinct. Maybe those veteran senses had already taken apart the mechanics of your technique. Either way, the old man moved with the slippery grace of an eel, twisting mid-motion and using his own momentum to throw you directly into the path of that incoming tail.]
[Dodge, and you'd have to split your focus to redirect your own Shikigami.]
[Take the hit, and your own creation would break you in half.]
[In that razor-thin instant, you bit down hard and killed Nagihiru Kinkou, rerouting your connection to the Ten Shadows Technique to order Chimera to stop.]
[The shackle on Naobito disappeared.]
[A sly, knowing smile tugged at the corner of the old man's mouth.]
["You got distracted in the middle of a fight, young man."]
[He was free. The world of twenty-four frames unfolded before him again.]
[Tap.]
[His palm landed lightly on your shoulder.]
[Light as that touch was, it was a death sentence. The contact branded you as a target under the twenty-four-frame rule. And with your previous technique still forcibly shutting down, there was no way you could keep up with what came next.]
[Rule violation triggered.]
[Your body locked up like cast iron. Frozen solid. Trapped inside an invisible flat frame, like a cardboard cutout that couldn't resist.]
["It's over."]
[There was no mercy in the words. Naobito rode the rest of his forward motion into a spinning kick, channeling his whole body's force into the heel that smashed into your chest.]
[CRACK.]
[Bone shattered. Your body blasted backward like a baseball off a bat, flying dozens of meters, punching straight through a tree trunk thick enough that two people could barely wrap their arms around it, then slamming into a boulder hard enough to kick up a cloud of dust.]
[You lay facedown, coughing up blood again and again while the edges of the world went blurry.]
[Through the fading link in your mind, Chimera let out one last defiant whine. Without your cursed energy feeding it, that massive body began to come apart, collapsing into a shapeless pool of black sludge that slowly seeped into the earth.]
[Your broken ribs screamed. But worse than the pain was the vertigo of total cursed energy depletion, that awful hollow emptiness so complete that even lifting a finger had become impossible.]
["Hah... what a mess."]
[Naobito retrieved his sake jug, which somehow still hadn't fallen and shattered, and took a long drink.]
[His eyes drifted toward Naoya, who stood nearby with a blank stare, his mental state clearly wobbling on the edge of collapse. Then he looked at the puddle of black residue still left on the ground, still giving off an unsettling trace of residual cursed energy even as it faded.]
[Finally, the clan head looked toward you in the distance, where you were still trying to force yourself upright. He could read your condition as easily as if it were written on a chart.]
[But what genuinely surprised him, and stirred the faintest flicker of something close to admiration in an old man who'd survived everything the jujutsu world could throw at him, was simple.]
["One person. One person turned my entire clan upside down."]
["I have to admit, I didn't expect this little incident to be the work of Tokyo Jujutsu High's famous Copy sorcerer..."]
[Then Naobito noticed two beast-shaped figures approaching from nearby, one black and one white. And on the white one's back sat a small figure.]
[He didn't need anyone to remind him who Megumi Fushiguro was. One look at that face, and Toji's shadow was staring right back at him.]
[Unlike the other Zenin clan members who'd already pieced together what was happening from the half-conscious Ogi Zenin during the chaos, Naobito himself had only just been dragged awake by the commotion.]
[He suppressed a hiccup and frowned, genuinely puzzled why Toji's son had shown up at the Zenin compound at a time like this.]