Breaking Free

Hajime Kashimo moved.

His speed had completely surpassed the limits of physics, even exceeding the Rabbit Talisman's acceleration. He became a beam of light, a beam of destruction wrapped in high-voltage current. Shiyue Shuo stood where he was, feeling an unprecedented sense of danger lock onto him.

The Twelve Talismans wheel within his mind had begun to emit a piercing grinding sound from overload, but he did not retreat.

"Maximum Technique: Judgment!"

Twelve colors of holy radiance erupted from his eyes. In that instant, less than one ten-thousandth of a second long, he stacked [Dog]'s immortality, [Horse]'s healing, [Ox]'s brute force, [Tiger]'s balance, and even [Dragon]'s explosive power onto both arms.

"Boom!"

The entire Second Barrier lost all sound in that instant.

A gigantic mushroom cloud of white-violet lightning and dark golden flames rose from the center of the earth. Buildings within several kilometers, as though built from fine sand, shattered completely the moment the shockwave touched them.

Hajime Kashimo's short staff slammed viciously into Shiyue Shuo's crossed arms. It was a direct clash between lightning and talisman power. The air was forcibly electrolyzed, and black, spiderweb-like cracks appeared even in space itself.

"Hold on... Hold on for me!!!" Shiyue Shuo gritted his teeth as blood sprayed from every pore of his body. He could feel Hajime Kashimo's power frantically eroding his flesh, that current trying to tear him apart.

The Tiger Talisman and Horse Talisman played the role of stabilizing pillars at that moment. The Tiger Talisman dispersed the violent energy, while the Horse Talisman continuously repaired his body.

The two remained locked in midair.

Hajime Kashimo's eyes were filled with shock. He had never imagined that someone could withstand Mythical Beast Amber's full-force strike head-on with nothing but their body.

"You... caught it?" Hajime Kashimo's voice had become the hum of electric current.

Crack.

Just as the collision reached its peak, and a moment before Hajime Kashimo's technique was about to burn out, the wheel Shiyue Shuo had supported for so long finally could not endure any further. After one final flicker, it completely shattered.

All the strange phenomena went out in an instant.

Shiyue Shuo became like an empty shell that had had its soul ripped away. The divine power protecting him vanished at once. The lingering force of the lightning sent him flying heavily, carving a trail of blood through the air before he fell stiffly into a pile of rubble.

Having lost his target, Hajime Kashimo also suffered a backlash from the massive inertia generated by his technique.

He let out a muffled groan. His transparent amber body rapidly dimmed and returned to human form, though it was covered in charred cracks. Dropping to one knee, he vomited blood in great mouthfuls.

Between them remained only scorched earth that had been reduced completely to ruins.

Hajime Kashimo looked at the motionless body in the distance for a long time. Then, an utterly satisfied smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

"Seriously... I've never felt this good before."

He slowly stood up, enduring the agonizing pain in his nearly broken spine, and gave Shiyue Shuo a deep look. Since the brat had taken his strongest attack, this duel was already over, regardless of whether he lived or died.

Player: Shiyue Shuo. Points earned: 5.

In the darkness, that sensation of shattering did not stop.

Shiyue Shuo felt like a smashed mirror, every fragment reflecting the afterimage of a talisman. This pain did not affect his flesh; it reached directly into the deepest part of his soul.

At this moment, he was in a state of "nothingness." The wheel that had once carried the Twelve Talismans was broken, and the thin thread connecting the talismans to him had snapped, yet he did not feel panicked.

Because at the core of that former wheel, a true fluctuation of soul—one that had been suppressed within him for a long time—was breaking through the ground. That was right. He was a transmigrator. In a sense, much like Maki Zenin and Mai, his body belonged to an independent individual, and so did his soul. Only by preserving and fully merging them could he advance to a higher level.

"So that's how it is..." Shiyue Shuo murmured in his subconscious. Hajime Kashimo's devastating bolt of lightning had been like a sledgehammer, forcibly smashing apart his original body. Then, the talismans reconstructed his flesh according to the transmigrator's soul. What had broken was not his power, but the shackles of that "outsider."

"Bzzzz—!"

The motes of light scattered throughout his mind began gathering of their own accord. They no longer took the forms of the twelve zodiac animals, instead becoming an almost transparent fluid.

[Horse]'s vitality merged into his marrow, [Rabbit]'s frequency became his pulse, and [Dog]'s immortality was carved into his genes.

The twelve authorities... became one.

Second Barrier, edge of the ruins.

A chill swept in. Sparse raindrops struck the charred chunks of concrete, producing soft pattering sounds.

Shiyue Shuo's fingers trembled faintly, his fingertips touching the icy rainwater. He felt his perception expanding outward at an utterly absurd speed. He could hear insects several kilometers away gnawing on corpses. He could hear faint residual charges dancing in the air.

"Mm..."

He let out a weak groan and slowly opened his eyes.

The mixed colors that had once filled those eyes were gone, replaced by an ultimate clarity, as though he could see through the entire world.

"Shiyue! You're actually... still alive?" A somewhat hoarse yet delighted voice rang out.

Shiyue Shuo turned his head and saw Yuta Okkotsu striding toward him. Yuta's white school uniform was still stained with thick black blood, and his face was somewhat pale as well.

"Thanks to you, I'm not dead yet." Shiyue Shuo supported himself on the ground and sat up. His clothes had long since turned to ash in the earlier lightning strike, leaving him with no choice but to awkwardly cover himself with a slightly larger piece of rubble.

"That light just now... what exactly was it?" Yuta Okkotsu moved close to Shiyue Shuo, one hand resting on his sword hilt. "That power was already comparable to Gojo-sensei's."

"I tried something... that isn't quite mature yet." Shiyue Shuo gave a bitter smile.

"All the rules have been added." Yuta Okkotsu sat beside Shiyue Shuo, his expression becoming incomparably grave. "But I received word that those old bastards in the Higher-Ups took advantage of us fighting in the barriers to thoroughly purge their own ranks. Principal Yaga... died in the line of duty."

Shiyue Shuo froze.

He had considered saving the principal, but he could not fight the entire Jujutsu Higher-Ups alone. He had thought himself numb already, yet when the news truly left Yuta's mouth, an indescribable chill still spread through his entire body.

"I couldn't then. But now..."

Shiyue Shuo slowly rose to his feet. The charred scars covering his body peeled away like a cicada shedding its shell, revealing an almost flawless physique.

He looked south, toward the Tokyo Barrier, the center of every storm in the original story.

"You should hurry up and start working on unsealing Gojo-sensei."

"What about you?" Yuta Okkotsu looked into Shiyue Shuo's unfathomable eyes, his heart suddenly skipping a beat. He felt that although Shiyue Shuo's cursed energy fluctuations were still weak, the pressure he gave off was already close to catching up with that man.

"I have something more important to do."

Shiyue Shuo extended a hand. The water vapor in the air strangely condensed in his grasp into a set of pure black combat clothes. This was the Monkey Talisman's ultimate application.

The moment he finished speaking, Shiyue Shuo vanished from where he stood. There was no surge of air. He simply disappeared abruptly.

Add Bookmark

Return to Contents

Report Chapter Error

Share with Friends: