Flowers and Butterfly

A domain?!

Were these things really that common?

"Panda!" Kusakabe shouted, quickly crouching down and gripping the sheath and hilt of his sword in an iaijutsu stance.

"Simple Domain, True Shadow Style, Iaijutsu: Evening Moon."

A translucent ring of light spread out from beneath his feet, surrounding Kusakabe and Panda.

Vines that suddenly thrust up from the grass in an attempt to ambush them were severed by invisible slashes the instant they entered the range of the Simple Domain.

Ijichi had warned them that this curse user had loved sneak attacks when he was alive. He probably had not gotten any better after death.

Sure enough, he had been right.

The attack had barely arrived when Kusakabe, who possessed a Simple Domain, immediately sensed that something was off.

"That seemed to be an incomplete domain?"

"Incomplete?" Panda asked from behind Kusakabe.

"Yeah. It doesn't seem to have a guaranteed-hit effect." Kusakabe glanced back at the mall entrance, which had not been sealed off. "And it isn't closed, either."

What was this? He could not have traded "guaranteed hit and guaranteed kill" for an "open domain," could he?

"Isn't that just like Megumi's domain?" Panda blurted out.

Still glazing Megumi.

More and more vines lashed toward Kusakabe, but they were chopped into pieces the instant they entered the Simple Domain.

Feeling that the attacks were not particularly strong, Kusakabe nodded and made his judgment.

"We can handle this. We'll win."

He made his declaration of victory before the battle.

The next instant, his Simple Domain rapidly expanded, growing larger and larger as it attempted to envelop Cursed Spirit Haruta as well.

Kusakabe had figured it out. Cursed Spirit Haruta's incomplete domain seemed to have been obtained by sacrificing his own mobility, turning himself completely into a flower that could only remain rooted in place.

In that case, all they had to do was...

As long as they could reach that spot...

But just as the Simple Domain was about to touch Cursed Spirit Haruta, one petal fell from the surface of his flower.

Click.

The ground beneath Kusakabe suddenly collapsed.

Huh?

The platform beneath Kusakabe and Panda gave way, and the two fell down to the basement level.

Although both man and panda reacted quickly, bracing themselves against the walls and leaping back up to the first floor, that brief interruption was enough to break Kusakabe's Simple Domain.

The accident had left Kusakabe somewhat stunned, but he still intended to crouch down and deploy the Simple Domain again.

But at the same time as he crouched—

"Hngh!" He suddenly grunted and toppled sideways, going from a crouch to kneeling on one knee.

"My leg... My leg cramped..."

Cold sweat broke out on Kusakabe's forehead.

He got cramps? What a joke!

Kusakabe merely liked to slack off. It was not as though he was actually weak.

As the strongest Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer below Special Grade outside the Three Great Families, how could Kusakabe possibly cramp up from using a technique himself?!

That meant the enemy's cursed technique had already taken effect on him...

"Cursed technique... cursed technique..."

Kusakabe looked toward Cursed Spirit Haruta and discovered that, at some point, two more petals had fallen from his flower.

Two petals missing meant the cursed technique had been activated twice...

So, while he did not know what the cursed technique did, it was certain that using it consumed petals.

Kusakabe's face twitched.

That was a chrysanthemum.

A chrysanthemum could have as few as dozens of petals, or as many as hundreds. How were they supposed to fight that? And...

Watching new petals slowly grow around Cursed Spirit Haruta, Kusakabe's expression darkened even further.

While Kusakabe was still analyzing his opponent's cursed technique, a mass of vines stabbed toward them again.

This time, Panda stepped forward to defend.

He forcefully leaped in front of Kusakabe, drew back his fist, and swung.

Bear's Strength!

The approaching vines were instantly smashed apart.

Then, just as Panda rushed forward to attack the Cursed Spirit's main body, several petals fell, and chunks of stone suddenly dropped from the ceiling, nearly hitting him.

"Panda!" Kusakabe suddenly shouted. "I understand!"

Another petal suddenly fell, and Kusakabe's jaw nearly dislocated.

That only made Kusakabe more certain of his conclusion.

Vines kept attacking from overhead and underground, forcing Kusakabe and Panda to dodge without pause.

"As long as we have the intent to attack him and can genuinely pose a threat to him, we'll suffer an accident!"

"Every accident consumes one or more petals, and a petal takes around five minutes to recover." Kusakabe drew his sword and cut through the surrounding vines as he spoke. "This flower has seventy-six petals in total. Four... seven petals have fallen so far... In other words, if we can create around fifty potentially fatal threats against him within the next five minutes, we can take him down."

"We don't need to actually hurt him. We just need the opportunity to do so!"

Forcing himself to finish that speech, Kusakabe made Cursed Spirit Haruta lose six petals in succession.

Meanwhile, Kusakabe suffered a dislocated jaw, bit his tongue, got a toothache, lost his breath, inhaled a huge amount of dust, and developed a sore throat.

He returned his drawn katana to its sheath, bent at the waist, and turned, taking up the stance for an iaijutsu slash.

"True Shadow Style..."

But at that moment, another accident occurred.

This accident was greater than any of the previous ones.

At almost the exact moment Kusakabe figured out Cursed Spirit Haruta's mechanism, the vines that had been constantly lashing at them suddenly stopped.

"Huh? Does he have some Binding Vow where he loses as soon as he gets figured out?" Panda asked instinctively.

"I don't know..." Kusakabe had just started to answer when he saw all the vines change targets and stretch toward the sky.

A pane of glass on the side of the mall's third floor shattered, and a golden butterfly flew in from outside.

"Oh no!" Panda cried out strangely. "This Cursed Spirit has an accomplice!"

In his view, "flowers" and "butterflies" were a fairly common pairing in all kinds of film and television settings.

The vines extending outward were undoubtedly equivalent to people reaching out their hands to each other.

"No, something seems off." Kusakabe offered a different opinion.

He could not shake the feeling that the Cursed Spirit did not look like he was waiting for the butterfly to merge with him.

The vines shot forward at terrifying speed, stabbing toward the butterfly in the air like spikes.

Sure enough, it was attacking her.

The butterfly did not seem particularly fast. She spun gracefully through the air, always managing to evade the attacks by the narrowest of margins.

Golden scales fell from her body, transforming into tiny butterflies.

Petal after petal of the chrysanthemum rapidly withered and fell, but they could not stop the butterfly from approaching.

Nothing happened between them. No misfortune appeared at all.

Panda and Kusakabe watched the butterfly nimbly weave past every obstacle and land in the center of the flower, behind Cursed Spirit Haruta.

Cursed Spirit Haruta immediately threw a panicked punch.

The next second—

Black lightning erupted before everyone's eyes.

At the flower's pistil, Haruta Shigemo's eyes widened, his body frozen stiff.

The butterfly stopped behind him, her syringe-like proboscis stabbing straight into his head and extending through the pistil.

Black Flash!

Panda's guess had not really been wrong.

"Flowers" and "butterflies" really were a common combination in film and television.

But the most important issue was that, in reality, flowers were food for butterflies.

Their relationship should have been one of predation.

Cursed Spirit Haruta wanted to resist, but his entire body was rigid, and he could not move at all.

Under Cursed Spirit Haruta's terrified gaze, wrinkles spread across his skin. He instantly aged, his body gradually shriveling away.

In only a few seconds, Cursed Spirit Haruta, who had looked to be in his twenties, became a shriveled old man in his eighties.

At last, completely drained, he let his hands hang limply at his sides, dying with his eyes still open.

He had been killed by a butterfly to begin with, yet after death, he had somehow become a flower.

His luck really was terrible.

As Cursed Spirit Haruta died, the incomplete domain collapsed with a roar.