A domain?!
Was this thing really that common?
"Panda!" Kusakabe shouted urgently, crouching down and gripping the sheath and hilt of his sword as he assumed an iaijutsu stance.
"Simple Domain, True Shadow Style, Iai 'Evening Moon.'"
A translucent ring 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 Simple Domain's range.
Ijichi had warned them that this Curse User had liked sneak attacks when he was alive. He probably was not much better after death.
Sure enough, he had been right.
The instant the attack descended, Kusakabe, who possessed a Simple Domain, immediately sensed that something was wrong.
"That seems 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 supposed to be?
It could not have traded "guaranteed hit, guaranteed kill" for an "open domain," could it?
"Isn't that the same as Megumi's domain?" Panda blurted out.
Still nursing Megumi.
More and more vines lashed toward Kusakabe, but they were all sliced into fragments the moment they entered the Simple Domain.
Sensing that the attacks were not particularly powerful, Kusakabe nodded and made his judgment.
"We can handle this."
"We'll win."
He made his pre-battle declaration of victory.
The next instant, his Simple Domain rapidly expanded, growing larger and larger as it sought to envelop the Cursed Spirit Haruta as well.
Kusakabe had figured it out. Cursed Spirit Haruta's incomplete domain seemed to have been obtained by giving up his own mobility, turning himself completely into a flower that could only remain rooted in place.
In that case, all they needed 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, sending them plummeting down to the first basement level.
Though both man and Panda reacted swiftly, bracing against the walls and repeatedly jumping back up to the first floor, that brief disruption was enough to break Kusakabe's Simple Domain.
The unexpected accident left Kusakabe somewhat stunned, but he still intended to crouch down and deploy his Simple Domain again.
But at the very moment 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 appeared on Kusakabe's forehead.
He got cramps?
What kind of joke was that?!
Kusakabe merely liked to slack off. It was not like 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 skill?!
That meant the enemy's Cursed Technique had already affected him...
"Cursed Technique... Cursed Technique..."
Kusakabe looked at Cursed Spirit Haruta and discovered that two more petals had fallen from his flower at some point.
Two petals missing, two activations of the Cursed Technique...
So, although 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 several dozen petals or as many as over a hundred.
How were they supposed to fight this?
And...
Watching new petals slowly grow beside Cursed Spirit Haruta, Kusakabe's expression darkened further.
While Kusakabe was still analyzing the opponent's Cursed Technique, a mass of vines stabbed toward them once again.
This time, Panda stepped forward to defend.
He leaped hard into the air, landing in front of Kusakabe, then swung his fist.
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 rubble suddenly dropped from the ceiling, nearly hitting him.
"Panda!" Kusakabe suddenly shouted. "I understand now!"
Another petal suddenly fell, and Kusakabe's jaw nearly dislocated.
That only made Kusakabe more certain of his theory.
Vines kept striking from overhead and underground as Kusakabe and Panda continuously dodged.
"As long as we intend to attack him and can genuinely pose a danger to him, we'll encounter an accident!"
"Each accident consumes one or more petals, and a petal takes roughly five minutes to regenerate." Kusakabe drew his sword and severed the surrounding vines as he spoke. "This flower has seventy-six petals in total. Four... seven petals have fallen so far... which means that if we can pose around fifty potentially fatal threats to him within the next five minutes, we can take him down."
"We don't need to actually hurt him. We only need the opportunity to do so!"
Forced to finish that entire explanation, Cursed Spirit Haruta lost 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 over and turned, assuming an iaijutsu Batto Slash stance.
"True Shadow Style..."
But at that moment, an accident happened again.
This accident was bigger than any of the previous ones.
Almost at the exact moment Kusakabe figured out Cursed Spirit Haruta's mechanism, the constantly whipping vines abruptly stopped.
"Huh? Does it have some Binding Vow where it instantly loses as soon as someone sees through it?" Panda asked instinctively.
"I don't know..." Kusakabe had just begun 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.
"This is bad!" Panda cried out strangely. "This Cursed Spirit has an accomplice!"
To him, "flowers" and "butterflies" were a very common pairing in all kinds of film and television settings.
The vines stretching out were undoubtedly equivalent to humans extending their hands to one another.
"No, something feels 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 surged with astonishing speed, stabbing toward the Butterfly in the air like spikes.
Sure enough, it was attacking.
The Butterfly did not appear particularly fast. She spun gracefully and nimbly through the air, always dodging 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, yet they could not stop the Butterfly from drawing closer.
Nothing happened between them. No "bad luck" appeared at all.
Panda and Kusakabe watched as the Butterfly nimbly bypassed every obstacle and landed at the center of the flower, behind Cursed Spirit Haruta.
Cursed Spirit Haruta immediately panicked and threw a punch.
The next second.
Black lightning erupted before everyone's eyes.
At the flower's core, Haruta Shigemo's eyes widened, his body stiffening.
The Butterfly stopped behind him, her syringe-like proboscis piercing straight through his head and extending out from the flower's core.
Black Flash!
Panda's guess had not actually been wrong.
"Flowers" and "butterflies" were indeed a common pairing in fiction.
But the most important point was that in reality, flowers were food for butterflies.
Their relationship should have been one of predation.
Cursed Spirit Haruta still wanted to resist, but his entire body was rigid, unable to move at all.
Under Cursed Spirit Haruta's terrified gaze, wrinkles grew across his skin. He instantly aged, and his body gradually shriveled.
In only a few seconds, Cursed Spirit Haruta, who had originally 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 open.
He had been killed by a Butterfly to begin with, yet after death, he had actually become a flower.
His luck really was terrible.
With Cursed Spirit Haruta's death, this incomplete domain collapsed with a thunderous crash.