"Damn it... at this distance, that kid's dead in less than a second."
Kaede frowned, his thoughts racing.
Under that extreme concentration, it felt as though time itself had slowed around him.
"I can control liquid infused with my cursed energy... I can control it... then...
Got it!"
The black-haired boy steadied the step that had been forced backward, the hem of his deep blue uniform sinking sharply in the cold air.
Without a moment of hesitation, he spoke the command clearly and evenly.
"Rainfall."
At once, he raised both arms, and a denser, even more tightly compressed high-pressure stream of water burst out from in front of him.
It tore through the air with a shrill sonic crack, like an indestructible spear, and punched cleanly through the gray-white flesh tentacle wrapped around the little boy.
Foul black fluid sprayed everywhere as the thick appendage split apart in the middle.
Freed from the grip, the boy let out a terrified scream, his body dropping straight toward the rubble-strewn floor below.
But just before he hit the ground, the water that had pierced the tentacle did not dissipate when it lost its target.
Instead, it changed shape midair, flattening out in defiance of all common sense and spreading into a soft yet resilient liquid net that caught the child securely.
At the same moment, the physical space of the entire abandoned office shifted.
With no ritual buildup at all, heavy black clouds surged into existence beneath the ceiling.
A torrential downpour crashed down inside the sealed room without warning.
The rain instantly swallowed the entire space, and Kaede's own cursed energy, vast and pure as the sea, flooded every corner with the arrival of the storm.
Wrapped in that all-consuming curtain of rain, the net supporting the boy seemed to gain a life of its own.
Following the path of the falling water, it retracted sharply backward and, in the blink of an eye, dragged the stunned child safely to Kaede's feet.
"It's not over yet!"
And the countless raindrops falling from those storm clouds changed completely the instant they touched the giant curse embedded in the wall.
One second they were ordinary rain. The next, upon contact with an enemy, they hardened into something tougher than steel.
They struck like the bullets from a full-auto rifle, carrying overwhelming kinetic force as they drilled mercilessly into that massive body made from fused human faces.
Thk-thk-thk-thk-thk!
The piercing impacts blurred together into one continuous burst.
The curse's supposedly durable gray-white flesh was as fragile as tofu under that hail of gunfire.
Black blood and chunks of rotting tissue exploded into the air under the beating rain.
Nobara stood in the middle of the storm.
Her first instinct was to raise an arm to shield her face, only to realize in shock that the same rain turning the curse into a sieve landed on her as nothing more than harmless water.
Her light brown pupils shrank to pinpoints.
She stared fixedly at Kaede, standing at the center of the rain, his body now even thinner than before.
"Th... this is... a Domain Expansion!?"
Her voice bent under the force of her disbelief.
She simply could not accept that an art standing at the absolute summit of jujutsu, one that even most Grade 1 sorcerers never touched in their entire lives, could appear in the hands of a first-year student her own age.
But the brutality of live combat left her no room to stand there stunned.
The curse in the wall, riddled with holes, did not vanish immediately.
Instead it released a hysterical shriek so sharp it felt ready to split the eardrums.
The core mass embedded deep in the wall began swelling violently, glowing with a dangerous, muddy red light, while the surrounding load-bearing concrete started cracking under the strain.
"That monster's going to self-destruct!"
Nobara read the battlefield instantly.
Even inside an ally's domain, if a dying curse on the level of a Grade 3 or close to a Grade 2 detonated in a sealed room, the shockwave of venom and cursed energy could still injure Kaede's already diminished body and the unprotected hostage.
Now that the hostage had been pulled clear, she no longer had any restraints.
"Don't start hogging the spotlight just because you pulled out a domain, newbie!"
Gritting her teeth, the girl snapped three nails into her left hand as fast as a card trick.
She poured blue cursed energy into them without holding back, every muscle in her arm tightening as she hurled the nails straight toward the bulging core in the wall.
Three blue streaks tore through the rain and buried themselves precisely into the cracked flesh.
Then Nobara gripped her hammer in both hands and struck hard through empty air with a ringing crack.
"Straw Doll Technique: Hairpin!"
The nails embedded in the curse exploded with violent cursed-energy spikes.
The internal blast tearing it apart from within and the bullet-like rain shredding it from without formed a perfect kill.
With a heavy boom, the wall collapsed outright.
Caught in that double attack, the curse that had tried to take everyone down with it finally broke apart completely, its massive body dissolving into black ash beneath the downpour.
"Guess it's just a feature of my technique. Sorry about getting your clothes soaked... but I did think of some new ways to use it."
Kaede gave a faint smile, his dark red eyes tilting upward for a moment before he released the domain.
The instant his voice fell, the storm clouds and heavy rain filling the sealed room collapsed like an illusion.
The rain vanished from the air. Aside from the wreckage of puddles on the floor and the damp scent still clinging to the room, the overwhelming domain felt as though it had never existed at all.
Without the rain, Kaede's deep blue uniform suddenly hung loose and hollow on his frame.
The fabric, deprived of the support of the body beneath it, sagged heavily at the collar and sleeves.
Nobara shook out her wet orange hair, droplets flying from the strands to splatter the dust-caked wall.
She tugged irritably at the soaked cloth sticking to her shoulders and waist, her brow pulling down at once.
She had gone out of her way to get this uniform tailored properly.
"Cut it out. Even if it's a feature of your technique, girls' clothes are still valuable."
She clicked her tongue and hooked the hammer neatly back onto the weapon belt at her waist.
She was not actually angry. In that split-second nightmare, he had saved the hostage and created the opening for the kill.
But that did not mean her brain had stopped working just because the fight was over.
Nobara's gaze slid over the black-haired boy's body, now thin enough that a gust of wind looked like it might knock him over.
Calling a wide-scale, fully manifested space takeover like that just a "feature of the technique"? Give her a break.
Whether or not it qualified as a true Domain Expansion, any move capable of rewriting the rules of the environment had to come with a cost beyond normal reason.
And that cost was written plainly across this new student's body. He was using his own physical mass as fuel.
A self-destructive fighting style like that could never become normal.
Following his line of sight, she looked out the window.
The black veil hanging over the sky like an inverted bowl of ink was already breaking apart from the top, torn sunlight spilling through the cracks onto the ruined street below.
"Looks like that feral gorilla downstairs, the one called Itadori, is at least somewhat useful. He didn't drag us down."
Then she turned back, her light brown eyes fixing on Kaede again, and for once there was something almost serious in them, a real warning.
"Listen. Whatever new use you thought of just now, take a look at yourself first.
If you keep treating your own body like a disposable resource on future missions and end up using yourself up until there's nothing left, don't expect me to piece your puddle back together."
After delivering that barbed warning, Nobara looked away from him.
She stepped through the standing water and crossed to the trembling little boy still huddled in the corner.
Dropping into a crouch, she did her best to soften the usual sharpness in her posture and held out one damp hand.
"All right, kid. The monster's dead for good. Give me your hand. We're getting out of this dump."