The city became their arena.
Sukuna and Gojo Satoru moved through the skyscrapers like twin comets, their trajectories carving invisible paths through the urban landscape. One moment they were at street level, the next on a rooftop, the next inside a collapsing building. Their clashes lit the sky like lightning strikes, each impact releasing shockwaves that shattered glass and buckled steel.
Streaks of light—blue and red, purple and black—wove together in a deadly dance, falling, rising, colliding, separating.
And in this high-speed duel, Sukuna was losing.
'He teleports. I need purchase. Every time I push off a building, he's already somewhere else.'
Gojo's Blue pulled at Sukuna's limbs, disrupting his balance. His Red pushed, forcing him off course. The King of Curses, for all his power, could not match the mobility of the man who had turned space itself into a weapon.
Sukuna's Domain Expansion Counter flickered on and off, neutralizing what it could, but Gojo's attacks came too fast, from too many angles. Slashes deflected some blows. Cleave carved through others.
But Gojo still controlled the rhythm.
Sukuna was being pushed back.
Then the pattern changed.
Gojo stopped.
Sukuna's instincts screamed. He was already moving, his knee rising, aiming for Gojo's lower abdomen—
One centimeter away, his knee stopped.
Between his leg and Gojo's body, a tiny sphere pulsed—dark red, malevolent, waiting.
The light that followed was not a flash. It was an absence—a hole in the world where light could not exist, where matter could not endure, where Sukuna's knee ceased to be.
The explosion sent Sukuna skyward, through the clouds, into the stratosphere. The wind pressure alone carved a hole in the atmosphere visible from the ground.
Sukuna's face was grim. Reverse Cursed Technique flowed through his broken leg, knitting bone, regenerating flesh. The damage was severe—the equivalent of a point-blank nuclear detonation, only partially mitigated by his cursed energy.
'He's not trying to kill me with that. He's trying to position me.'
Sukuna's ascent slowed. He had nothing to push off from. No buildings, no ground, no purchase.
He was a target.
Gojo appeared before him, smiling.
Two spheres of Blue materialized—one on Sukuna's left, one on his right. Their gravitational pull yanked his arms outward, spread his twenty fingers wide, pinned him in place like a specimen on a board.
"You think this will tear me apart?" Sukuna's voice was strained, but his eyes still blazed. "My body isn't that fragile."
"Of course not." Gojo's voice was calm, almost gentle. "I'm not that naive."
He raised his right hand, middle finger hooked.
*「九縄」
Nine Ropes. *
*「偏光」
Polarized. *
*「黒と白」
Black and White. *
*「表裏」
Between Front and Back. *
*「虚式・紫」
Hollow Purple. *
The incantation completed. Crimson-purple light gathered at Gojo's fingertip—not a sphere, not a beam, but a singularity. The convergence of Limitless and the divergence of Limitless, overlapping, annihilating, creating something that should not exist.
Gojo's cursed energy control was absolute. He had compressed power beyond measure into a point smaller than a pinhead, sharpened it, focused it, aimed it.
He flicked.
Hollow Purple erupted.
Sukuna had never felt anything like it.
The converging Limitless pulled him apart. The diverging Limitless crushed him together. The two forces, normally opposite, became one—and that one was destruction.
His skin burned. His muscles tore. His bones cracked. The pain was not localized—it was everywhere, every nerve ending firing at once, every cell of his body screaming.
'I can't dodge. I can't block. I can't—'
He did the only thing he could. He poured every scrap of cursed energy into protecting his vital organs, his brain, his heart, the core of his existence.
Hollow Purple consumed him.
When it passed, Sukuna was unrecognizable—a charred, smoking figure, his flesh burned away in patches, his bones visible through ruined skin. He flew backward, propelled by the force of the blast, crashing through the sky like a falling star.
He did not die.
But for the first time in a thousand years, Ryomen Sukuna knew what it felt like to be afraid.
The impact of Hollow Purple shattered the Blue spheres that held him. Sukuna's body, suddenly free, tumbled through the air—but he was already healing, already moving, already adapting.
His arms evaporated.
Reverse Cursed Technique surged through him, and they grew back. Then evaporated again. Grew back. Evaporated. In the space of a single second, this cycle repeated more than a dozen times, each iteration consuming cursed energy at a prodigious rate.
'Too much. He's burning through my reserves too quickly.'
His Cursed Energy barrier, which should have been impenetrable, tore like wet paper. The flesh he regenerated could not keep pace with the destruction. But he preserved what mattered—his head, his torso, the core of his existence—and found a gap in the shockwave.
He pushed through.
The destruction continued past him, upward, outward, disappearing into the stratosphere. Sukuna hung in the air, seemingly unharmed—but only seemingly.
'I cannot take another direct hit. Not like that.'
He needed to land. Needed solid ground beneath his feet, something to push off from, something to give him options.
Gojo appeared before him.
Blue pulled at Sukuna's limbs, spreading them, immobilizing him. Gojo's finger hooked, the incantation already forming on his lips—
Sukuna's eyes blazed.
*「開」
Fuga: Open. *
No hand signs. No incantation. A Binding Vow, made in an instant, traded future power for present survival. From now on, he would need twice the hand signs, twice the incantation, to use this technique. But now—now—it came freely.
An arrow of condensed flame formed before his chest, its heat warping the air, its light outshining the sun. It flew.
Hollow Purple met Fuga in the sky.
The collision was not an explosion. It was a cascade—energy feeding energy, destruction multiplying destruction, the two attacks tearing at each other, merging, separating, growing. The clouds shredded. The air itself ignited.
Below, the city crumbled. Buildings that had survived centuries collapsed in seconds. Streets buckled and split. The guardian barrier held, but everything outside it was being unmade.
A storm formed above the clouds—a vortex of fire and Cursed Energy, spinning faster, growing larger, threatening to swallow the sky itself.
At its center, Sukuna and Gojo hung suspended, their powers locked in mutual annihilation.
The storm began to dissipate.
Not because one had won, but because both had spent. Sukuna's arrow faded. Gojo's Hollow Purple thinned. The vortex slowed, shrank, unraveled.
And Sukuna was already moving.
He used the storm's power—the winds, the pressure, the chaos—to accelerate his descent. He fell like a meteor, carving a crater into the earth, and lay there for a moment, healing the damage from impact.
His breathing was heavier than before. Not labored, not desperate, but noticeable. He had spent more than he wanted to admit.
Gojo Satoru appeared at the crater's edge, hands in his pockets, expression unreadable.
"Oh, King of Curses from a thousand years ago." His voice was light, almost teasing. "Have you rested well? My back is aching from waiting up here."
Sukuna rose, dusting rubble from his shoulders. "Your back is already failing you at your age? I'm still full of vigor."
They stood at opposite ends of the crater, the ruined city spread between them. Both were smiling.
The loneliness of the pinnacle, the isolation of being too strong to find an equal—in this moment, in this battle, it vanished. Here was someone who could match them. Here was someone who understood.
All trump cards had been revealed. All tricks had been played.
Only one remained.
Both of their hands moved, forming the same seals, preparing the same ultimate technique.
Domain Expansion.