Responding to Mirai's gentle touch, Jedora instinctively lowered her head.
Mirai's eyes widened with pure excitement. "Is it really you? You kept your consciousness?"
Jedora offered a serene, elegant smile and nodded in silence. A simple gesture, but an incredible surprise! Mirai was immediately overjoyed, ready to properly welcome the newly birthed Miss Jedora into the world.
But in that tender moment—
Clang.
Like a single drop of pitch-black ink polluting a crystal-clear pool, the distinct, chilling chime of a bell rang directly in Mirai's ears!
This wasn't a hallucination. The physical vibration against his eardrums proved it was happening in reality.
Instantly, Mirai's posture stiffened as if facing a mortal enemy. A suffocating, terrifying sense of absolute crisis slammed into him—the primal dread of being hunted by an apex predator from the ancient world!
Jedora reacted instantly. Without a second's hesitation, she scooped her master up by the waist, placed him securely on her back, and wrapped three of her massive, fluffy tails around him to form an impenetrable shield.
Directly in front of them, light and shadow violently inverted. Reality and illusion blurred together.
From the void, twin rows of pitch-black, spectral hounds materialized, howling at the heavens to announce His arrival!
And at the epicenter of the shadows, a massive, suspended cocoon woven from dense cursed energy thrummed with life.
Its true name: Eight-Handled Sword Divergent Sila Divine General, Mahoraga!
"Hey... hey, hey, hey..." Mirai's voice trembled, all the color draining from his face. "Are you kidding me?! I never initiated the subjugation ritual for Mahoraga!"
He was currently at the absolute weakest he had ever been in his short life. His cursed energy reserves, mental stamina, and physical endurance were utterly depleted. With his Stand, Lexus, temporarily locked out due to his exhaustion, his only line of defense was the newly birthed Jedora.
Although Mirai could vaguely sense the apocalyptic power slumbering within Jedora's body, he wasn't certain of her limits. Without the massive reservoir of her master's cursed energy to draw from, could she actually overpower—let alone instantly obliterate—Mahoraga? Because if she couldn't one-shot it, they were dead!
"Damn it!" Mirai cursed his ancestors in his heart. "This isn't scientific at all! Why wasn't this anomaly recorded in the clan archives?! A bunch of useless old fossils!"
He desperately tried to forcibly manifest Lexus, but a splitting headache flared in his skull, completely shutting down the attempt. He was forced to pin all his hopes on his new Shikigami.
Rrrrip!
Flashing a terrifyingly pristine, unhinged smile, Mahoraga shattered its cocoon!
Towering, half-naked, and corded with unnatural muscle. The Dharmachakra of absolute adaptation hovering above its head. The Blade of Extermination fused to its right arm. The absolute zenith of the Ten Shadows. The jujutsu world's literal 'Wall of Sighs' had violently crashed the party!
Swoosh!
Like a localized hurricane, Mahoraga didn't waste time posing. It vanished from Mirai's line of sight, blurring into a hyper-sonic shadow.
"Jedora! Don't bother testing the waters!" Mirai roared, his heart leaping into his throat. "Hit him with your ultimate attack right now!"
However...
BANG!!!
Before Jedora could even begin to channel her cursed energy, Mahoraga was already there. It delivered a devastating, world-shattering punch aimed directly at the tails protecting Mirai!
The tremendous, armor-piercing force didn't immediately shatter Jedora's physical defense. But before Mirai could celebrate, the residual kinetic shockwave bypassed the fluff, penetrating straight through to his fragile body.
"Gah—!" Mirai violently coughed up a mouthful of blood.
Fuck... this game is rigged! Through their newly forged mental link, Mirai instantly grasped the grim reality. For the newborn Jedora to generate enough burst firepower to shatter Mahoraga's absolute defense, she needed time to charge her cursed energy. But becoming a stationary glass cannon against a hyper-speed tank was suicide.
If she charged, she'd be beaten to death. If she evaded, she couldn't charge. Faced with this unsolvable paradox, Mirai issued a single, desperate command:
RUN!
Whoosh!
Under the bewildered and horrified gaze of Zenin Toji—who had just sprinted into the dojo—Jedora scooped Mirai onto her back. Expanding her massive tails, she snatched up Toji and a newly arrived Naobito like freshly wrapped dumplings.
As for Mirai's uncle, Zenin Ogi? What kind of trash is he? I don't know him. Glancing back, Mirai couldn't even spot Ogi's universally hated horse-face; presumably, Mahoraga had already swatted the useless uncle into the next prefecture.
But contrary to Mirai's hopes, Mahoraga wasn't distracted by the collateral damage. Its hollow, unblinking eyes were locked dead onto Mirai.
Jedora bulldozed through the Zenin estate like a runaway freight train. Buildings, walls, shrines—she obliterated everything in her path, completely ignoring the architecture to maintain the shortest possible straight line.
While her speed easily matched Mahoraga's, Mirai's battered six-year-old body couldn't withstand the extreme, violent G-force. Seeing her master's terrifyingly pale face, a flash of cold, piercing anger marred Jedora's elegant features.
Using her tails like hands, she unceremoniously shoved Mirai into Toji's sturdy arms. Then, she hurled the three humans miles away into the safety of the perimeter, turning sharply to face the Divine General.
It was like Mars colliding with Earth.
The sprawling, centuries-old Zenin estate was treated like soft farmland, brutally plowed and pulverized by the clash of the two titans!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Watching the apocalyptic destruction of his ancestral home from a safe distance, Naobito's mouth twitched violently. "Mirai... how could you initiate the subjugation ritual for Mahoraga in the very center of the clan compound?! Are you insane?!" Naobito wept internally. "And what in the world is that Shikigami?!"
Mirai rubbed the back of his head, offering a completely unapologetic, cheeky grin. "Ahaha~ An accident! A complete accident! But hey, I'm the Clan Head now, right? It's just a little collateral damage on my own property. A drop in the bucket!"
Naobito covered his face, mourning the clan's finances.
Beside them, Toji watched the clash with intense focus. He could clearly sense the monstrous, bottomless power radiating from both Shikigami—power that far eclipsed his own current, unawakened state. He clenched his fists, his Heavenly Restricted blood boiling. If he weren't under strict orders to protect the young master, he would have already thrown himself into that meat grinder.
Back in the cratered battlefield.
Having shared Mirai's tactical knowledge, Jedora knew exactly how terrifying Mahoraga's adaptation was. Therefore, until she was absolutely certain she could land a fatal, one-shot kill, she strictly limited herself to pure physical combat, relying entirely on her raw speed and strength to avoid giving Mahoraga any cursed energy data to adapt to.
However...
While their base stats were nearly identical, the scales of victory inevitably tilted.
CLANG. After perfectly dodging a piercing strike from Jedora's nine tails, the Dharmachakra above Mahoraga's head spun.
It hadn't adapted to a cursed technique. It had adapted to Jedora's raw physical strength and kinetic velocity. Strengthening its own parameters to perfectly counter hers, Mahoraga began to overpower the Chimera.
Like a snowball rolling down a mountain, Jedora's disadvantage grew terrifyingly apparent.
In this historic, first-ever clash between the apex Shikigami... there was no doubt. If this continued, Mahoraga would inevitably emerge victorious.
A/N: For this week, every 100 Powerstones will get ya'll an extra chapter! Thank you!