"I can't get greedy here. If I focus too much on the weapon, I'll only end up restricting myself."
The instant Kaede felt that blade-like gust of force approaching, his fingers released the staff without hesitation.
Freed of support, the hardwood staff was slammed straight into the ground beneath the weight of Mei Mei's axe, landing with a heavy crash.
Mei Mei did not show the slightest delay just because her target had vanished.
One of her long legs, wrapped in dark purple fabric, traced an almost perfect half-circle through the air, the force of it kicking up gravel from the ground and tearing out a shrill whistle.
Kaede rolled sharply across the ground, dragging up a haze of dirt and crushed grass.
At the exact instant the sweep that could have snapped his neck passed over his head, he barely managed to pull himself two body lengths clear.
"My body is wide open right now. If I were her... this is exactly when I'd attack."
That was Kaede's thought, and he did not stop moving for even a second.
His rough fingers caught hold of the staff again as it lay on the ground. Using the momentum of the roll, his waist twisted hard.
The staff carved a wide, violent dark red arc through the air, bringing with it a heavy pressure wave as it blindly swept toward where he sensed her presence.
Whoosh!
The strike shattered the air, but there was no feeling of impact against flesh.
Just before it could land, Mei Mei's long body bent backward with a flexibility that seemed to defy normal human anatomy, almost parallel to the ground.
Her massive braid flicked lightly through the air as the broad axe spun once at her fingertips with the turn of her waist.
The flat of the axe tapped the passing staff with a clean metallic ring, effortlessly draining away the brute force behind a blow that could have shattered stone.
"Good instincts.
Even after losing visual contact, you still picked up on the subtle change in the flow of air. Looks like Gojo-kun's tuition fee included a premium for talent."
"Still too fast... our speed difference is probably ten to fifteen, and the gap in strength is even bigger..." Kaede thought, cold and steady.
"And yes, in the world of jujutsu, a burst of emotion can absolutely spike your output. But at the same time... unstable emotion drags down cursed energy efficiency.
That's why I'm losing the hand-to-hand exchange."
Mei Mei planted one hand against the ground, and with a graceful crossing of her long legs she recovered her balance in a single motion.
She straightened, the smile in her pale blue eyes fading into something colder, more appraising, like someone deciding the market value of prey.
"But instinct alone won't keep you alive for three minutes in a real fight.
Too slow. To an experienced sorcerer, your movements are as easy to read as ink on white paper."
Before the words had even settled, Mei Mei vanished again. It was not ordinary movement, but an explosive burst driven by precise cursed energy reinforcement.
The next second, she had already appeared in the dead angle behind Kaede, just as the momentum of his staff was dying.
She did not swing the axe. Instead, she drove the thick end of the shaft, heavy with enough force to punch through a lung, straight at the side of his back.
At the edge of the woods, in the shade, Megumi's pupils shrank sharply.
He stepped forward half a pace without thinking, and the shadow at his feet twisted and spread violently in the sunlight, as if some black creature were about to claw its way out.
"So she showed an opening on purpose to bait the counter, then entered the blind spot during the moment his force hadn't recovered yet... This is the combat logic of a Grade 1 sorcerer?"
Megumi's knuckles popped faintly from the force of his clenched hands.
He held his breath, his gaze locked on the figure cornered beyond any normal escape.
"Kaede, don't turn around. It's a trap!"
But his voice was still slower than the descending strike.
That deadly pressure was already pressed against one side of Kaede's spine.
There was not a trace of waste or violence in Mei Mei's motion, and yet she had sealed off every ordinary line of escape.
"My amplification doesn't neutralize techniques... it neutralizes cursed energy. Which means I can block this!"
In the next instant, Kaede snapped the staff upright and, instead of retreating, drove his body forward into the strike.
The heavy haft of the axe smashed into the center of the hardwood staff with a shriek that tore through the air.
But instead of the crisp sound of wood splintering, what burst out was a low, strange vibration.
A paper-thin shimmer clung tightly to the surface of the staff and the front of his uniform.
The purple cursed energy wrapped around the axe shaft, enough to pulverize internal organs, melted away the moment it touched that film, like packed snow thrown into boiling water.
The raw force that remained was still heavy, but in the gap created by that neutralization, Kaede abruptly threw his weight forward and slid straight inside Mei Mei's range on the rebound.
The leg of his deep blue uniform snapped upward in a vicious arc, a high kick shrieking through the air straight toward the side of her head.
Mei Mei's pupils shrank to pinpoints.
A shift of that level, and that kind of interference with the nature of cursed energy itself, was completely outside what she had expected from a "newcomer."
She did not try to take the kick head-on. Instead, she folded her left arm up to shield her temple at blinding speed while her upper body bent backward at an angle that looked almost impossible.
THOOM!
The sound of his foot scraping across the leather guard on her arm was strangely dull. Mei Mei's long body slid several yards back across the grass, her heels carving deep lines through the dirt.
The moment she stabilized herself, the huge axe spun half a turn at her fingertips and came back across her body, ready again. Her braid lashed madly through the wind, covering half the smile on her face.
"That just now... wasn't something simple cursed energy reinforcement should have been capable of.
Was that a form of 'extension,' compressing your domain against your own body? That's an unexpectedly expensive trick."
Mei Mei raised two fingers and brushed lightly over the shallow dent left in the arm guard.
Deep in those pale blue eyes, the mercenary greed of a professional sorcerer was already being replaced by something darker, a deeper appetite for the unusual.
"The price Gojo-kun quoted did not mention that you had already learned a technique on this level.
If you intend to 'save money' by hiding details like that, then I'll have to consider charging more. Or... perhaps increasing the intensity of this lesson."
From the shadow at the edge of the woods, Megumi's hands had clenched so tightly that his nails bit into his palms, the pain reminding him this was not an illusion.
His dark green eyes remained fixed on the lingering distortion in the air at the center of the field, while the tactical picture in his mind was being torn apart and rebuilt.
"He neutralized Mei Mei-senpai's technique... no, not the technique, the cursed energy attached to it itself?
That wasn't a fluke. His movements are still rough, but that suppressive force against the nature of a technique..."
Megumi's jaw trembled faintly with tension as he caught the shift in the mood on the field.
"This is bad. Mei Mei-senpai's serious now.
That look... she's not observing him as a 'coach' anymore. She's hunting him as an opponent on her own level."
Before the words had fully faded, the crow on Mei Mei's shoulder let out a sharp, tearing cry.
Several black birds that had been circling idly through the trees dove at once, becoming a vortex of black wings around her.
And the cursed energy staining the giant axe began to darken from purple toward black, growing so dense it looked almost sticky.
"This old witch..." Kaede frowned.
"I completely forgot for a second that her technique, Bird Strike, works through shared vision with crows too. Which means...
she may have been using her technique from the very beginning.
That possibility definitely can't be ruled out..."