BOOM!
CRASH!
Gojo slammed violently into the concrete, coming to a rest in the center of a smoking impact crater.
"Haha... I never imagined I'd actually be losing someday," Gojo chuckled, pushing himself up onto his feet.
His body was mapped with shallow slashes, along with a few deeper gouges from high-output Cleaves that had managed to force their way through his defenses. Heavy steam poured from his open wounds as his Reverse Cursed Technique kicked into overdrive, the intense heat vaporizing his blood as the flesh rapidly knit itself back together. Wiping a streak of red from his chin, he locked eyes with his opponent.
CRASH!
Sukuna landed twenty yards away, his knees absorbing the impact as thick, suffocating waves of Cursed Energy rolled off his four-armed frame. Standing tall, he smirked down at Satoru, resting his upper pair of arms on his hips while crossing his lower pair over his chest.
"Enjoying the ass-kicking?"
"Don't act so mighty. You haven't landed anything that actually lasts," Gojo said, tilting his head back with a sharp smirk of his own.
"What a lame excuse from a mediocre sorcerer."
"Whatever you say, Geezer."
Gojo's Cursed Energy erupted once more. A dense sphere of Blue materialized directly in the space between him and Sukuna, the gravitational pull yanking the King of Curses forward. Capitalizing on the momentum, Gojo drove a heavy, reinforced fist straight into Sukuna's face, snapping his head back with a sickening crack.
Before Sukuna could fly backward, his lower right hand shot out like a iron vise, clamping down onto Gojo's wrist. In the same motion, Sukuna drove his knee straight up into Gojo's sternum, launching the Strongest Sorcerer of the Modern Era through what little structural ruins remained of the block.
Throughout the entire clash, Gojo had been strictly limiting the range of his attacks to prevent total catastrophic fallout across Shibuya. He didn't know why, but Sukuna didn't seem interested in leveraging that handicap to force a tactical mistake. He was simply meeting Gojo's peak output head-on with pure, overwhelming force.
WHAM!
Gojo caught himself mid-air, only for Sukuna to materialize directly above him, swatting him back down toward the pavement like a ragdoll. Pointing two fingers down at the falling sorcerer, Sukuna unleashed a storm of hundreds of invisible slashes that carved shallow, bloody lines across Gojo's torso.
'How the hell is he doing that...? My Infinity is definitely still active...' Gojo thought as the steam from his RCT flared around his waist.
Landing on a pile of concrete rubble, Gojo instantly leaped into the sky just as Sukuna's heavy boot smashed the ground where he had been standing a microsecond prior.
"Red!"
Gojo pointed a single finger downward, unleashing a point-blank Reversal Red that detonated against Sukuna's chest, burying the King of Curses deep beneath the collapsed street.
"It's useless," Sukuna's voice echoed from the dust. He shoved the crushed asphalt off his shoulders, standing tall as he dusted off his arms. "You should just sit back and watch your students die."
Gojo's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. He instantly forced his Cursed Energy to teleport his body away just as Sukuna swung his upper arm, launching a massive, multi-city-block Dismantle that cleanly sheared through three adjacent skyscrapers, collapsing them into dust.
"Tch." Sukuna scanned the ruined horizon, a flash of annoyance crossing his face. "Such a cheap trick... but I'm impressed."
Whoosh!
The air directly behind Sukuna displaced violently. Before he could turn his head, he caught a sudden, blinding glare of crimson in his peripheral vision--
"RED!"
BANG!
A massive, roaring trail of crimson energy plowed through the city streets. The sheer force drove Sukuna violently through several entire blocks, tearing up gas mains and pavement in his wake.
"Very good!" Sukuna yelled, using his raw physical strength to forcibly deflect the red sphere away from his chest.
The compression exploded violently behind him, shattering the surrounding storefronts. Digging his boots into the asphalt to stop his backward slide, Sukuna bounded forward at high speed, closing the distance toward Gojo, who was already weaving his next technique.
In a fraction of a second, Gojo manifested both Red and Blue in Sukuna's direct movement path at the exact same spatial coordinates. The two opposing forces collided, instantly spawning a concentrated, unstable sphere of Hollow Purple. Sukuna leaped high over the micro-singularity just as it detonated, annihilating everything beneath it.
"Don't you have any other tricks, Gojo-brat?" Sukuna called out, tossing a casual Dismantle mid-air that carved a shallow line across Gojo's abdomen before a small pulse of RCT closed the wound.
"A few."
Gojo vanished, instantly reappearing deep inside Sukuna's physical guard. Sukuna's four eyes tracked the movement effortlessly, his arms coming up to block, but Gojo was already swinging.
BLACK FLASH!!
A spatial distortion burst into existence as heavy, pitch-black lightning exploded off Gojo's Blue-infused fist, driving straight into Sukuna's lower jaw.
If any other sorcerer in history had taken the full force of a Blue-amplified Black Flash to the skull, they would have been reduced to a fine red mist. But Sukuna was not just any sorcerer. He was the Disgraced One, the Fallen, a biological monster enhanced far beyond human limits. Even as the kinetic shockwave sent him tumbling through the air, he wasn't even winded.
"Nice one! Try even harder, Gojo-brat!"
Sukuna kicked off the bare air with enough raw speed to create a solid physical shockwave, launching himself straight back at Gojo while coating his body in Domain Amplification. Catching Satoru by the face, Sukuna drove him headfirst through the interior of an office complex.
"Not nearly enough!" Gojo roared, kicking Sukuna off his chest before firing another Red at point-blank range to create separation.
Sukuna raised a forearm, blocking the red sphere. The attack carried 120% of Gojo's maximum output, scorching Sukuna's skin and leaving his arm temporarily numb before his own hyper-accelerated regeneration restored the tissue.
Utilizing a refined application of his short-range spatial movement through Blue, Gojo began flashing around the battlefield in unpredictable patterns. He materialized directly above Sukuna's blind spot, but the King's battle instincts were already ahead of him.
"Sloppy..." Sukuna murmured, swinging his upper arm back to swat him out of the air.
Except Gojo wasn't there. He teleported again in the middle of his own motion--
BLACK FLASH!!
Another brutal, spatial-shattering uppercut landed directly on Sukuna's chin, rattling his brains against his skull.
"Nobody has ever survived long enough against me to let me chain Black Flashes! I suppose I should thank you for the new experience!" Gojo's voice echoed from nowhere.
Gojo vanished once more. Sukuna sensed the spatial shift a fraction of a second early, swiping his lower hands toward the predicted coordinate. Yet Gojo altered his entry vector mid-teleport--
BLACK FLASH!!
A monstrous, black-lightning-laced blow detonated against the back of Sukuna's head, driving him face-first into the concrete with cratering force.
"How annoying."
Using the downward momentum of the strike, Sukuna whipped his lower body around, planting a heavy heel-kick straight into Gojo's chest. The sheer kinetic impact shattered Gojo's ribcage, sending him soaring through the air. Gojo crashed through a second-floor window, digging his boots into the floorboards to stop his slide.
Steam billowed from Gojo's chest as his RCT instantly reset his broken ribs. Dropping into a stance, he began to chant, focusing his mind for a maximum-output strike.
"I wonder where he'll attack from next," Sukuna muttered, standing in the ruined street below as he rotated his neck.
"Hollow Purple!"
A blinding flash of purple light illuminated the district. The massive, erasure-like sphere engulfed Sukuna's entire frame, driving him through three city blocks before detonating in a massive shockwave.
Gojo lowered his hand, taking a deep, heavy breath. He had to admit, this was without a doubt the most insane, terrifying fight of his life. And as much as he hated to admit it, a quiet voice in the back of his mind was telling him that even this might not be enough.
Whoosh!
The sound of displaced air cut through the silence. Gojo glanced to his right, his eyes widening in genuine shock.
"You look a bit different, Gojo-brat. How long have I been dead?"
Gojo's face wore a look of utter surprise, identical to the expression he had worn years ago when he first saw a young Megumi Fushiguro and recognized the striking resemblance.
"You're that Sorcerer Killer guy... Aren't you supposed to be dead?"
"Yeah, well... some old hag brought me back to kill sorcerers or something," Toji said, scratching the back of his neck casually. "After I fought that black-haired kid, I followed the biggest presences around here. Never thought I'd run into you again, though."
Whatever necromancy had summoned Toji gave him an overwhelming compulsion to hunt the strongest targets on the field, but his own dominant willpower allowed him to consciously restrain himself. He could feel the absurd, untouchable atmosphere surrounding the grown Satoru Gojo--a far cry from the teenager he had stabbed in the throat years ago.
"You two enjoying yourselves?"
Sukuna walked out from the cloud of settling dust down the road. His clothes were shredded and battle-damaged, but his body was completely unblemished, his skin completely restored.
"I will warn you, though," Sukuna said, a dark, terrible smile spreading across his four-eyed face. "That man isn't going to help you win this."
Over the course of their brutal exchange, Sukuna had achieved the impossible. Through pure combat intelligence and raw physical endurance, he had forcibly learned how to expand the target of his technique--switching the target of his Dismantle from Cursed Energy or matter to space itself.
He could now fire the World Severing Slash without restriction. It burned a ludicrous amount of Cursed Energy to cast it without its original vows or hand signs, but with his 40-Finger reserve, that cost was a mere drop in the bucket.
'Oh well... it's been fun, but now it's time to end things.'
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