No Time to Mourn the Scum; the Next to Arrive on the Battlefield Is...

Bang—!!!

The dull impact of flesh against flesh was like a heavy hammer slamming viciously into raw iron.

The tiles across the entire martial arts arena let out an overburdened groan, spiderweb cracks exploding outward from the two of them.

Todo Aoi's savage right fist, wrapped in cursed energy, struck Mizuki Makoto squarely in the chest.

"Makoto—!"

Miwa Kasumi cried out from the stands and covered her eyes, while Maki and Inumaki Toge instinctively gripped the edge of the bleachers. Inumaki pulled down his collar, and Maki was already preparing to jump in and save him.

In every student's eyes, that punch was enough to shatter the ribs of that scum whose physical ability rivaled Miwa Kasumi's and whose hand-to-hand combat rivaled Zenin Mai's—perhaps even turn him into a shooting star flying out of the arena.

However, the expected sight of Mizuki Makoto spraying blood and being sent flying never appeared.

Within the few centimeters between the fist and his shirt, the air seemed to turn into a viscous, heavy liquid. Todo's punch, powerful enough to pierce through a building, was like a beast plunging into a bottomless abyss, flattened and weakened infinitely within that tiny distance.

—"Limitless." First time.

"Sorry for getting all of you worked up for nothing!"

Mizuki Makoto gritted his teeth as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

It was not a passive effect constantly maintained like Gojo Satoru's, but an "absolute distance" forcibly constructed at the instant of impact by overdrawing his cursed energy, one that could only last a fraction of a second.

"An opening?!"

Todo Aoi's pupils abruptly contracted, and cursed energy immediately shifted toward the technique engraved into his body.

As a genius who had survived Yuki Tsukumo's hellish training, he reacted the instant his fist touched that strange resistance.

—But you were one beat too late, Todo!

—To throw that heavy punch meant to end the match, you couldn't have held anything back! More importantly, during that second when you poured all your cursed energy into it, even you couldn't directly activate [Boogie Woogie] to switch your own position!

"Todo, got you."

Mizuki Makoto revealed an exceptionally savage yet radiant grin, the madness of a gambler shouting, "I'm checking the cards."

His left hand clamped tightly around Todo's right arm, which hung suspended in midair. His right hand curled into a fist and twisted, a blue spiral gathering over his knuckles!

[Ushura Bullet: Blue]

This punch avoided Todo's heavily defended pectorals and, like a high-speed drill, burrowed precisely into his abdomen.

Crack.

It was the sound of cursed energy and muscle fibers tearing apart.

Accompanied by the final frenzied electronic beat of aizo, the azure spiral exploded within Todo's abdomen. The tower-like brute let out a muffled grunt and was blasted straight backward like a cannonball, smashing through the stone screen wall in the distance that symbolized "victory."

The students in the stands fell into deathly silence.

"What happened? Makoto... was that teleportation just now?" Miwa Kasumi asked blankly.

"No. He didn't move. Todo's fist stopped." Kamo Noritoshi furrowed his brow. "It was practically... Gojo-sensei's 'Limitless.'"

—That wasn't a clumsy imitation, but genuine "Infinity"!

In Kamo Noritoshi's understanding, the power Mizuki Makoto had displayed was merely the clumsy tribute of Gojo Satoru's student, using warped applications of cursed techniques to emulate "the strongest."

After all—without the Six Eyes, Limitless could not be used.

But now, that ironclad rule had been torn apart.

Yet the atmosphere in the observation room was entirely different.

Gojo Satoru had completely pulled down his blindfold, and his azure Six Eyes reflected an intensely excited light. Beside him, Mei Mei also paused her fiddling with her phone, the corner of her lips curving into a meaningful smile.

"My, Makoto is quite the stingy artist, isn't he?" Mei Mei chuckled, her tone carrying a merchant's sharpness. "For that instant, he truly reached the domain of 'Infinity.' But before that, he hadn't, had he? Your student is quite the sly liar, Gojo. He fooled everyone else."

"That's right. It's a completely different method."

Gojo Satoru stared at Mizuki Makoto, who was swaying as he rose to his feet on the screen, his voice carrying an indescribable delight. "The students think he's been blindly imitating me, but he's always known his own limits. He's been approaching 'Infinity' in his own way."

"Huff—"

Todo Aoi slowly rose from the distant ruins. The upper half of his uniform had been completely shredded, revealing abs like forged steel—except a purpling fist mark was now clearly stamped across them.

Not only was he not angry, he instead wore an almost saintly expression of fervor.

"Mizuki Makoto... you scum, you actually showed me your 'sincerity'!"

Todo Aoi spat out a mouthful of clotted blood, cursed energy once again surging wildly over his body.

Though he was injured, though he had expended an enormous amount of cursed energy offsetting the impact of that last punch, his aura rose to a new peak.

—True "Infinity"? Wasn't that only natural?

—Because he was my "best friend"! Only such resolve deserved a soul equal in weight to mine!

—Then, Todo Aoi, would you leave your brother to fight alone!?

"Hahahaha! That's it! This is my 'best friend'!"

Todo Aoi tore off the remaining scraps of cloth on his body. His bare chest faced the wind, and the bluish-purple fist mark on his abdomen looked more like a medal beneath the wash of cursed energy. He spread his arms and roared fervently:

"Brother! Though you can use 'Limitless,' you aren't Gojo Satoru. You can't sustain that absolute defense, can you? You only maintained that strike for three seconds! So how many more times can you use it? Twice? Or three times?"

In his heart, his best friend's strength was an inevitability.

To answer that "sincerity," Todo's brain began to overclock, and he plunged wholly into a 200% "flow state."

"For a brother who gives everything, I too must burn everything I have in battle!"

Mizuki Makoto stood at the other end of the ruins, pushing up his monocle, now even more deeply cracked. A confident curve lifted at the corner of his mouth.

"Todo, this is 'Phase Two.'"

Every clash up until now, including that self-destructive heavy blow just then, had been rehearsed countless times in Mizuki Makoto's mind.

More than anyone, he knew that once this became a pure battle of attrition, Todo's bottomless cursed energy and inhuman body would drain him dry in three minutes at most.

—So, I need a perfect deception, just like when I toyed with Suguru Geto.

—Except Todo Aoi wasn't that "righteous man" whose intelligence had been corroded by the Ape Emperor Path, nor was he Zenin Jiahao next door, who had inherited the Zenin Clan's bloodline.

Then... he needed a little all-or-nothing gambler's luck.

The core of this deception was to make Todo Aoi believe that "Boogie Woogie was ineffective against Mizuki Makoto."

Before this, Mizuki Makoto had perfectly adapted to the position switches through the Spatial Perception granted by [Echo Mimicry: Ushura Bullet]. But at this moment, he silently severed his imitation of [Ushura Bullet].

The sharpness of his Spatial Perception instantly declined, but Mizuki Makoto did not panic.

Because aizo's warped melody had finally entered its final climax—