The silence of the night was broken by laughter. The street lights, fickle as they were already owing to structural damages from Sukuna's previous fight, as well as this current fight, began to flicker as well, making the atmosphere a grim one. The clouds moved lazily in the sky, obscuring the moon for a heartbeat.
Then it drifted past the pale celestial body, revealing the recovered form of Sukuna. He laughed. The Malevolent King of Curses laughed, his shirt thrown to the side and discarded, allowing a clear view of the cut that cleaved its way from his shoulder down to his navel. Sukuna was already applying the reverse curse technique to the injury, but this was the difference between a cut delivered by a simple supernaturally sharp blade and a cut delivered by a supernaturally sharp blade coated with negative curse energy.
The negative curse energy first weakened the body further, resulting in a more devastating injury, followed by leaving residual negative curse energy that made healing slower and slightly more difficult.
Sukuna's laughter petered down, one hand over his face, then he pulled it down and looked at me with a four-eyed stare that was partially curious, partially furious. Then he glanced back at his injury, blood still trailing down slowly. He had nearly completely healed, but so had I. There was a reason I had remained still so far.
"I suppose this is what I get for playing with my food," Sukuna admitted to himself, then he laughed as he turned back to me. "I unconsciously treated you how I did Jogo, and I paid the price. You're not Jogo. Jogo could not touch me. He fought me with fear in his heart, but you are different, after all. You can see my curse technique, can't you, Mahoraga!"
My silence was my reply, and his grin widened even further. "Your silence won't protect you forever, and I'll pull out every secret you've bundled up in you, like a chef skinning a salmon, starting with this!" he yelled, his eyes brightening with fire.
I knew what was coming, calculated his next action before he even did it. An escalation. The moment I physically hurt Sukuna, things had changed. He still didn't realize enough about my curse technique to know to immediately open his domain and kill me with a fuga, and he was still enjoying the thrill of the fight. An escalation here simply meant destruction on an unprecedented scale.
Sukuna's cursed energy output surged, turning him into a beacon to anybody with the senses to interpret it.
"Die!"
A hand swung down, a simple dismantle bolstered by his massive output. Everything before him ceased to exist: the road, the buildings, the parked car blaring an alarm into an uncaring world, everything obliterated as the slash traveled toward me. I moved. I could see it as clear as day. Its power was stronger, its travel speed was faster, its cutting range was wider, but I had no reason to tank it again, not when Sukuna was already aware of my ability to see it, so I dodged, slipping past it, just to come face to face with a second one that had been following after it.
Sukuna laughed at his own cunning.
It was not the clean, surgical dismantle Sukuna had been using. This was a brute expression of power. A butcher's knife, compared to the butterfly knife strikes he had hit me with previously. This was output for output's sake. The cursed energy screamed as it tore towards and through me, space buckling under its passage. The air itself fractured, pressure slamming outward in a violent ripple that shattered the windows and buildings that were stubborn enough to survive the first.
I could not dodge, so my body hardened. I ducked in on myself like a tortoise around its own shell. My feet dug into the asphalt, sinking inches into the road as my mass settled. Muscles locked. My spine compressed until the pressure bordered on agony. My arm raised in a boxer's guard, protecting my head.
Then the dismantle struck.
For a split second, there was nothing but force as the slash bit deep, tearing into my left hand not squarely protected by the sword of extermination, then my torso, splitting flesh, rattling bone. Pain flared for a second before my body's indifference to suffering kicked in. I was driven backward, heels carving trenches through the street, concrete folding and cracking beneath my weight.
But the cut did not finish. It slowed. The cursed energy bled off on contact, dispersing faster than before, like water that had polished a bulky stone smooth, and now watched as it slipped off the stone instead of hammering into it.
KLNK
The wheel above my head turned once more. What was it, the fourth adaptation? It was not enough, but an understanding settled into me regardless. Sukuna's slashes still cut, still hurt, but they no longer bite with the same strength as they used to. With every adaptation, the technique was loosening its lethality, its killing power, and Sukuna noticed immediately. He did not automatically realize my curse technique. What he realized was the weakness of the cut.
His grin sharpened, eyes narrowing as his cursed energy surged in response, output climbing once again to compensate. More output than most sorcerers could conceivably produce in an entire lifetime. The greatest sorcerer in history showed his sublime understanding of combat. He was already adjusting on instinct, like a wolf scrambling to break through a tortoise shell after the first bite failed.
Sukuna activated his technique again, uncaring for the destruction the first two slashes had caused, the absolute ruin that was left of the neighborhood. Instead, his hand viciously swung to the side. The next dismantle came faster. This one, I knew, would tear me apart. So I ran, and the dismantle chased.
My feet cratered what was left of the ground as the invisible blade tore after me, then a shadow appeared above me, blocking the moon and creating the silhouette of a man.
"Survive this, Mahoraga!" Sukuna screamed as he shot down another dismantle. My right hand instinctively shot up, the sword of extermination in the way, and it blocked the slash. I was hit with a realization. The slash was weaker. Too weak to have done more than scratch my adapted form.
It had been a taunt, a feint to slow me down. I turned as the original slash made its way to me.
Time slowed. My winged appendage flared to the sides, granting me a near 360 degree view of my surroundings. I was going to be hit; that was not in doubt, but I needed it to benefit me. I needed a rapid counter. My wings twitched as they caught sight of something. I grinned in response.
Sukuna's dismantle tore through a line of parked cars, folding steel like wet cardboard, detonating engines in a chain of thunderous concussions before slamming into me and splitting me in half, my lower body and upper body both hurled through the glass front of a fuel station. The pumps ruptured from the force of my entry, and gas and fuel leaked out, then the sparks of fire that trailed kissed both, and for a heartbeat, there was silence.
Then the world ignited.
Fire swallowed the structure in a violent boom, pressure crashing outward as the station detonated. The shockwave hit like a freight train, flattening nearby buildings, tossing debris into the sky. Sukuna vanished from the blast radius in a flicker of motion that turned him into a blur, only his laughter echoing through the inferno.
The fire burned more than anything. More than the cut that had split me in half. The pain blanked my rational mind for a second before it disappeared as quickly as it appeared, but I was still in the middle of the fire. Mahoraga's body had automatically crawled to where his lower half had been and forcibly joined the two back, making me whole once more.
I stood up, even as my pale skin charred, even as the blood in my body boiled beneath charred muscle and flesh. I let out a demented chuckle, then I walked. Slowly, ignoring the way the flames crawled over my shoulders as I stepped through the wreckage, my body already knitting itself back together. Burned flesh reforming slowly, muscle reattaching, bone settling back into place with wet, grinding sounds. Steam poured from my mouth and joints as heat met regeneration, rolling off me in thick, white plumes.
The fire clung to me for a moment longer before I stepped out of the spontaneously formed oven.
KLNK
The wheel turned again, and I chuckled, a slow, demented chuckle that Mahoraga had never given. My gamble had paid off. Purposefully aiming myself toward the gas station had worked. Things had changed. That intricate fear I had for Sukuna had not died, but it had diminished. It was only a single turn, but it was enough because of what it represented.
Sukuna sat on a ruined car, a soda in his hand, and his head tilted to the side as he watched me. Four eyes tracked me, curiosity back, as well as calculation. This time, I didn't wait; I didn't react. I struck first. The ground cratered beneath my feet as I shot forward in a shoulder check that caught him mid-motion as he moved to stand and sent him crashing through a storefront, concrete exploding outward.
He checked a follow-up punch that should have lifted him off the ground and buried him into the side of a building hard enough to crack its support beams, catching my giant fist in an open palm. So I punched with my sword hand. He twisted to the side, dodging the blow, then laughed as he pivoted on the spot and flung me away.
The moment he released my fist to send me flying, my arm snaked out and caught his own forearm. My feet dug into the ground, using him as an anchor. He only had a second of surprise before I swung to the side with my right hand, a slash from the sword that opened his side, the blade biting deep and leaving behind cursed energy that resisted his healing.
Blood splattered across the street.
Sukuna laughed, loud and genuine, even as the reverse curse technique crawled sluggishly over the wound.
"Ah, yes," he breathed. "This is it. This is a fight!"
Then his cursed energy surged again, and he did something different. There was no swing of his hand, no twist of his fingers, no gestures. Just a simple activation of his cursed technique. I had not seen this before, I realized. Sukuna was growing alongside me as we fought.
The dismantle that followed was not aimed. It was not measured. It was everywhere. Multiple dismantles fired at once, shot indiscriminately. It was like a domain expansion, without hand signs or a barrier. It was the prototype to his open domain, I realized a heartbeat later.
I flinched back, and that was what saved me. My left hand, which had been gripping his forearm, did not come back with me. Instead, it split into ribbons, blood flying as the ground split apart beneath us, the street collapsing as if erased from existence. Buildings sheared at their foundations, tilting inward as the slash plunged downward, dragging us with it. The earth screamed as layers of asphalt, concrete, and stone were torn free and gravity took hold of us.
I shifted my weight as we fell, flipping off a stone, then another. The tail behind my head helped me balance across fist-sized stones. The wings that served as eyes twitched, and I skipped a stone that a dismantle turned into dust a second later. Even while we fell, Sukuna was relentlessly trying to strike me, his laughter ringing out louder than the destruction he had rendered.
Then I slammed into the earth. Concrete had given way to tunnels. Lights flickered overhead. A railway on the left looked twisted and tortured, and with another flick of my wings I realized where we were. The subway system below. The blast wave and remaining debris landed just after I did, the air displacement bringing forth shrill screams.
My wings twitched again, and I sensed it. Movement.
Two dozen people were gathered at the edge of the pathway, bundled together as they shook on the spot, fear and worry filling them as a man stood before them. A man that staggered through the wreckage, bloodied, burned, and breathing hard.
Nanami.
His clothing was ruined, his suit and shirt gone from where he had taken on Dagon's domain with sheer durability. His glasses were missing, the left side of his body severely burnt and charred from Jogo's ambush. This was a man pushed far past his limit, a man who should be dead, and yet he still moved with purpose. His hand still gripped his short, one-sided blade, its dulled edge buried in the middle of a transfigured human.
Even as he stood, dying, he still fought to protect. He turned to face me, only a single eye working, half his head burnt and charred to nothing. He looked at me with an eye that saw, yet did not comprehend. Did not understand.
A twitch of my wings. This time sensing curse energy and not just physical presence. There was something else here, someone else. I turned to a side tunnel and pointed with my sword hand. Nothing moved for a second, then I let out a low growl, enough to resonate in the weakened structure.
A pale-haired, patchworked curse that could be mistaken for human stepped from the shadows, smiling. His blue and grey eyes were little dots on his face.
"Ah, I didn't think anyone would spot me. Then again, I didn't think you guys would find your way down here either."
The snake had been trailing after Nanami, waiting for him to be at his weakest. For the first time since I came into existence, I wished to kill something.
That was when he finally arrived.
Sukuna landed hard, his stance low, and he took a split second to take in everything before deciding nothing had changed. "Focus on me, Mahoraga!" He screamed as he swung down once more, careless and overwhelming and unrestrained. His output soared once more, an attempt to keep up with my adaptation. The dismantle tore forward, wide enough to annihilate the platform, the humans, everything.
Nanami.
I stepped forward.
I was already swinging before rational thought crept in, unveiling a secret trump card I had hoped to use to surprise Sukuna. My feet braced to absorb the force, then the sword of extermination swung, its grey edge screaming as it caught the technique and forced it aside. Deflecting it upward and behind me. The cursed energy howled as it ripped through the ceiling. Steel beams snapped. Concrete shattered. Everything groaned but remained in place.
I turned my head just enough to look at Nanami.
Once.
Then I slammed my foot down. The subway roof collapsed inward. The tunnel gave way. Walls folded inward as the structure finally gave up and collapsed, tons of debris burying the platform and sealing the pathway to Nanami and the remaining humans beneath layers of earth and stone.
Out of sight, and out of reach. This was as much as I could give him. Whether he survived and got help now was up to his resilience.
Sukuna stilled, like he had not expected it, like something had fundamentally changed. He tilted his head, curiosity and amusement on his face as he watched the destruction settle.
Mahito peeked from behind a broken pillar, eyes bright. "Sukuna-sama, looks like you're having some trouble. Should I..."
A careless dismantle crossed the space between them, and Mahito was cut in half a second later, blood splattering as the technique continued to carve a deeper line into the walls.
His body hit the ground in two pieces, blood and bone already reshaping itself, his body already reforming as he scrambled backward, grin gone. "I'll take that as a no then," he said with an annoying laugh. He looked at the passage where Nanami was, at the stones and debris that blocked it, then let out an annoyed grunt and fled into the tunnels without another word, looking for easier prey.
That left only us.
"Hm," he mused. "Was that the will of your summoner, Mahoraga? To protect that sorcerer? Was that sorcerer's life important enough for you to reveal that you can deflect my cursed technique now?" He questioned. Of course, he noticed it.
My reply was silence once more as I flexed my wrist. That I could deflect a dismantle did not change the fact that the force continued, traveling forward and leaving my body to bear the brunt.
Sukuna rolled his shoulders, dismissive. "Tch. Doesn't matter. This simply further shows that you can plan, you can think, you can adapt!" Sukuna cracked his neck, cursed energy surging once more, eyes burning as he finished, "but so can I, Mahoraga!."
The wheel above my head turned once more in anticipation of renewed violence.
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