"Not even close."
Jogo's head snapped toward the voice, but before his single eye could locate Geto Suguru, the nunchaku was already there. It caught Jogo across the cheek with a crack that echoed through the burning streets.
Jogo flew—through one wall, then another, then a third—before embedding face-first into an armored transport vehicle. His legs kicked uselessly in the air, his body too stunned to extract itself.
'That brat. That brat!'
Flames erupted from the volcano on his head, a torrent of concentrated rage that melted the armored car into slag. The explosion threw him free, but the secondary damage—the heat, the shrapnel, the indignity—only fueled his fury.
He looked up.
Geto Suguru stood on a rooftop across the street, looking down at him. His clothes were pristine. His hair was unmussed. There wasn't a single scorch mark anywhere on his body.
Jogo's mind rebelled.
'Impossible. My attack hit him. I felt it connect. His human body should not have survived that temperature. Should not have survived at all.'
"How?" Jogo's voice was raw. "How are you unharmed?"
Geto tilted his head, feigning confusion. "Hmm? Why do you think that is?"
He made a face—tongue out, eyes crossed, the picture of juvenile mockery.
"Not telling. Nah nah nah."
Jogo's remaining eye twitched.
'Substitution. He must have used a Substitution Cursed Technique. Swapped himself with something else the moment I touched him.'
The realization only made him angrier.
"Despicable brat." Jogo's hands clenched, magma dripping between his fingers. "Whatever tricks you have, they will not save you. The wrath of the earth cannot be avoided forever."
*「火山噴火」
Volcanic Eruption. *
The building beneath Geto's feet detonated.
Flames erupted from its foundation, consuming it from the ground up. Geto was already moving, leaping to the next building before the first collapsed. But that building was already shaking, already cracking, already preparing to join its neighbor in oblivion.
Geto jumped again. And again. And again.
Each building he touched erupted behind him, transforming the city block into a sea of fire. The heat was intense enough to melt glass, to warp steel, to make the air itself shimmer and dance.
Soon, there was nowhere left to land.
Geto's feet touched the ground—and immediately felt the heat seeping through his shoes. He reinforced the soles with cursed energy, but the ground itself was becoming a furnace.
'He's not trying to hit me anymore. He's trying to make standing impossible.'
Geto smiled.
He had just the thing.
*「呪霊装備・耐熱靴」
Cursed Spirit Equipment: Heat-Resistant Boots. *
A shoe-shaped Cursed Spirit materialized around his feet—ugly, lumpy, but unmistakably effective. The heat vanished. The ground beneath him became just ground again. And as a bonus, his movement speed increased.
Jogo watched the boots form, watched them attach themselves to Geto's feet, and felt something inside him snap.
"You... you dare enslave a Cursed Spirit in front of me?"
Geto shrugged. "They're useful."
"We are not tools for your amusement!" Jogo's voice rose, cracking with centuries of accumulated rage. "We are the true humans! You are merely collections of falsehoods, temporary existences destined to be replaced! A hundred years from now, when the wilderness has reclaimed your cities, it will be us Cursed Spirits who remain! Who laugh!"
He threw his arms wide. The earth answered.
*「拳壊」
Fist Break. *
Giant hands of lava and stone erupted from the ground—massive, crushing, each finger the size of a car. They rose on either side of Geto, blocking his escape, and began to close.
Geto's eyes tracked the hands, tracked the openings, tracked Jogo's position beyond them.
'He's not healing. I've hit him multiple times, and he's not healing.'
He had noticed it during the fight. Jogo's injuries—the cracked skull, the bruised arms, the damage from the nunchaku—remained. The Cursed Spirit was not regenerating.
Not because it couldn't. Because it wouldn't.
'He's prioritizing offense. Every moment he spends healing is a moment he's not attacking. He thinks he can kill me before his injuries matter.'
Geto's grip tightened on the nunchaku.
'He doesn't know. He hasn't realized that my weapon's damage is permanent. That the wounds I inflict don't heal.'
The lava hands slammed together.
Geto was already through the gap, accelerating, stacking enhancement Cursed Techniques on his body until he was a blur of motion. Jogo's eyes tracked him, but his body—slowed by accumulated damage, by exhaustion, by the arrogance of a creature that had never needed to dodge—could not keep up.
The nunchaku came around.
'One decisive blow. That's all I need.'
Behind Geto, a lava giant rose from the earth—massive, crude, wielding an axe that could split buildings. It swung. The ground cracked. Magma erupted from the fissure.
Geto dodged. Weaved. Kept moving.
'Almost there.'
Jogo's hands came up, magma gathering between them. He was preparing another wide-area attack, one that would leave no room to dodge.
Geto's nunchaku swung.
'Now.'
Geto Suguru moved like a phantom through the inferno.
Behind him, the lava giant's axe carved deep furrows into the earth, each strike sending magma fountaining skyward. Before him, the ground cracked and erupted, volcanic traps triggering just after he passed, never quite catching him.
But they were narrowing his options.
The patches of safe ground grew smaller. The paths between them grew narrower. Jogo had turned the battlefield into a deadly puzzle, and Geto was running out of moves.
Until only one safe spot remained—a small rock, barely large enough for a single foot, not far from where Jogo stood.
Jogo's eye tracked Geto's trajectory. Calculated. Smiled.
'You'll have to come through here. And when you do...'
Its mouth opened wide. Cursed energy gathered in its throat, superheating, condensing, taking shape.
*「焔龍帝」
Flame Dragon Emperor. *
The dragon erupted from Jogo's maw—massive, roaring, its body made of liquid flame and molten fury. It filled the street, blocking all escape, rolling toward Geto with the force of a volcanic eruption.
There was nowhere to dodge. No side paths, no alternate routes. Just the dragon, and the small rock beyond it.
Geto did not stop.
He stacked more Cursed Techniques on his body—enhancement after enhancement, layer after layer, pushing his physical limits beyond what should have been possible. His muscles screamed. His bones creaked. His cursed energy burned through him like a second fire.
He raised the nunchaku.
And charged.
The dragon's jaws closed around him.
Heat engulfed Geto from all sides—not the dry heat of a flame, but the crushing, suffocating heat of a volcano's heart. His clothes began to smoke. His skin began to redden. The nunchaku in his hands grew hot enough to blister.
He did not slow.
The nunchaku spun—a blur of motion, a vortex of cursed energy, a drill of pure will. It pierced the dragon's throat, carving through its core, splitting it from the inside.
Geto emerged from the dragon's back, steam rising from his body, his clothes singed, his hair smoking.
And Jogo was right there.
The Cursed Spirit's eye widened. Its hands came up, too slow, too late.
Geto's nunchaku swung.
*「極・壊天」
Extreme: Heaven Breaker. *
The blow caught Jogo across the torso, tearing through its body like paper, separating its upper half from its lower. Half of Jogo—the left half—simply ceased to exist, erased by the combination of Geto's stacked techniques and the spirit-slaying nunchaku's permanent damage.
Jogo's remaining half tumbled across the ground, coming to rest in a heap of smoldering rubble.
'I need to regenerate. Now.'
It gathered cursed energy to the wound, focusing, willing its body to reform.
Nothing happened.
The wound pulsed with a wrongness that Jogo had never felt before—a foreign Cursed Energy entanglement that blocked its regeneration, that prevented its flesh from knitting, that made the concept of "healing" utterly impossible.
'What... what is this?!'
Geto was already moving toward it, nunchaku raised.
Jogo had one option left.
*「領域展開・蓋棺鉄囲山」
Domain Expansion: Coffin of the Iron Mountain. *
The world shifted.
They stood in a cave of molten rock, surrounded by rivers of lava, the air thick with heat and ash. This was Jogo's domain—a place where temperature alone could kill, where even breathing was a challenge.
Geto stopped walking. He looked around. He nodded, as if appraising a piece of architecture.
"Not bad."
Then he raised his hand.
*「領域展開・胎蔵の濫り」
Domain Expansion: Womb Profusion. *
His domain expanded through Jogo's, overwhelming it, shattering it from within. The lava cave cracked, crumbled, dissolved. In its place, a vast, dark space opened—the interior of Geto Suguru's soul, where Cursed Spirits went to be stored.
Jogo felt its consciousness falter.
'No. No, I cannot—I will not—'
But the Domain was already working. Geto's power was already pressing against its defenses. And Jogo, wounded, exhausted, its Domain shattered, could not resist.
The Cursed Spirit Manipulation took hold.
Jogo's form dissolved—not into death, but into containment. It became a sphere of condensed cursed energy, floating in the darkness of Geto's domain, waiting.
Geto lowered his hand.
The domain faded. They stood again in the ruined street, surrounded by cooling magma and shattered buildings. Jogo was gone.
Geto breathed out.
"You will stay by my side," he said quietly, "and witness the world a hundred years from now. With your own eyes."
He turned and walked back toward the guardian barrier, where Kamo Itsuki's clone waited.
The battle was over. The war continued.