What Do You Mean You Don't Suffer Sorcerer Burnout?

The enormous pale hands crisscrossing the sky and the churning clouds collapsed like shattered glass, accompanied by a cracking sound that stabbed at the eardrums.

The night wind of the real world flooded back into the area. With both domains forcibly dispelled, Satozakura High School's devastated, muddy grounds were exposed beneath the night sky once more.

The torrential rain that had threatened to drown everything stopped abruptly the moment the domains shattered, leaving scattered droplets to fall into the puddles.

Feng stood in the muddy water, his chest heaving. Every breath sounded like the working of a worn-out bellows.

His right hand, which held Mikazuki Munechika, had been completely tainted by ominous black cursed energy. It had even spread beyond his wrist, turning his flesh a withered, deathly gray.

Blood kept pouring from the wound that pierced his left shoulder. He could no longer even maintain the basic phenomenon of "Rainfall."

The very second their figures reappeared in the real world, before Mahito-now suffering cursed technique burnout-could even catch his breath, he saw Feng abruptly raise both arms and slam his palms together.

"Sorry, but I don't suffer Sorcerer Burnout."

As Feng's calm yet lethal words fell, he played his trump card: revealing his cursed technique.

Under the rules of jujutsu combat, revealing the secrets of one's abilities to an enemy established a binding vow that increased cursed energy output.

Mahito's mismatched pupils instantly shrank to pinpoints.

How was that possible?!

The dizziness caused by his overloaded cursed technique still raged through his head. He could clearly feel the heavy stagnation of the technique engraved into his flesh.

Yet before his eyes, intense, densely packed cursed energy erupted between the palms of Feng, who should have been suffering the same temporary loss of his technique.

Boosted enormously by the binding vow, a jet of high-pressure water compressed to its utmost limit became a silver lightning bolt too fast for the naked eye to follow. It tore through the air with a piercing sonic boom.

Squelch-!

The muffled sound of flesh being pierced rang out with startling sharpness across the deathly silent grounds.

Mahito had no chance to dodge. With unstoppable penetrating force, the high-pressure water jet punched straight through his neck!

A great cloud of black-red blood, mixed with fragments of shattered cervical vertebrae and windpipe, sprayed from behind his head in a fan and splattered into the muddy water.

"Ghk... hhss-!"

The tremendous kinetic force threw Mahito backward. A horrific hole had been opened clean through his throat, and air flooded into his ruptured windpipe, producing a strange, hoarse wheeze like a leaking bellows.

Mahito hit the ground hard, his legs twitching in agony in the mud.

He clamped his hands over his wildly bleeding throat. Mouthfuls of black blood poured through his fingers.

A sense of mortal danger coiled tightly around his nerves like an icy venomous snake.

No cursed technique!

During burnout, he could not use Idle Transfiguration to maintain the shape of his soul and regenerate.

He was now trapped in a fragile body that physical attacks could truly kill, and it was rapidly bleeding out!

As he coughed up clots of blood containing fragments of his organs, he forced himself to retain a beastlike lucidity through the pain.

That guy hadn't suffered cursed technique burnout.

Why?

Because his body itself was "water" constructed from cursed energy. As long as his cursed energy wasn't completely exhausted, there was no technique engraving to overload.

But...

A twisted, savage grin stretched across Mahito's blood-covered face.

He forcibly mobilized the vast, crude reserves of basic cursed energy inside him and recklessly gathered them at his neck. Like thick glue, it sealed his severed carotid arteries and windpipe, keeping his last breath from slipping away.

His opponent couldn't even sustain the bare minimum of rainfall anymore. He could only resort to a primitive jet of water like this.

That meant that madman's cursed energy had hit rock bottom too!

"Hhss... cough, cough..."

Mahito did not try to fight head-on, nor did he resign himself to death. He rolled violently through the muddy water, like a wild dog with a broken spine that remained deadly nonetheless.

Using the strength left in his legs, he kicked hard against the ground, flinging up a sheet of mud to obscure his enemy's vision. Rolling and crawling, he frantically retreated toward the shadows of Satozakura High School's school building, several dozen meters away.

If he could just outlast this brief loss of his technique, even if it lasted a few dozen seconds, he could rebuild his throat and turn this life-or-death battle around completely!

Struggling to survive on the brink of death, Mahito pressed a hand tightly over his leaking neck. Like a cornered beast, he rolled and crawled across the mud-covered ground toward the deeper shadows of the school building.

He did not even dare look back. All his concentration went into mobilizing his last remaining cursed energy to seal the fatal wound through his neck.

Just as he was about to vanish into the darkness.

Feng's right arm shot up. His wrist, tainted by black cursed energy all the way to his forearm, traced a vicious arc through the air.

The heavy [Replica Mikazuki Munechika] left his hand, becoming a streak of fierce black lightning. With a piercing whistle, it hurtled straight toward Mahito's unprotected back.

It was a killing blow that left no room for escape.

Just as the blade was about to tear through Mahito's back, something unexpected happened.

"Scree-!"

A bloated, low-grade cursed spirit covered in pustules sprang without warning from behind a collapsed concrete wall above and to the side.

Its timing was ruthlessly precise. Its enormous body wedged itself directly into the sword's flight path between the blade and Mahito.

Squelch! Boom!

The black blade instantly pierced the low-grade cursed spirit's body. The power of the cursed residue clinging to it shredded the creature into purple blood spray that filled the air.

But that obstruction, lasting only a fraction of a second, completely neutralized the sword's lethal momentum.

Mikazuki Munechika let out a metallic wail, veered sharply in midair, and spun as it fell at an angle.

Taking advantage of that unexpected cover, Mahito ducked away and disappeared completely into the pitch-black darkness behind the school building.

Only a few drops of black-red blood remained as evidence of his desperate struggle.

"Is someone else here?"

Feng's slightly hoarse voice rang out across the empty ruins.

Before his words had faded, he abruptly stopped leaning forward to pursue, and the muscles in his legs tensed.

He lowered his center of gravity and shot backward several meters like an arrow loosed from a bow, putting himself at a safe distance from which he could either attack or retreat.

His dark red eyes warily scanned the deep night and the blind spots among the ruins.

Plop.

The sword that had veered off course finally fell.

But just before it touched the muddy water on the ground, an eerie ripple spread across the surface of a small puddle left behind by the earlier domain clash.

The puddle seemed to become an invisible maw, gently yet swiftly swallowing the entire sword.

Without even the sound of metal striking water, the sword vanished from the spot, reclaimed into Feng's body of cursed-energy water.

The night wind howled. Apart from the creaking of ruined buildings, there was no other movement.

No new attack came, and no enemy presence emerged.

Feng stood where he was, his chest still heaving. His right hand, damaged by the backlash, hung unnaturally at his side, its fingertips twitching slightly.

"I can't keep chasing... I don't have much cursed energy left. It's recovering, but there's absolutely no way I can use a second Domain Expansion anytime soon...

"I should check on Itadori first."

He murmured to himself, his voice sounding faint in the night wind.

Then Feng turned around.

He made no further attempt to search for the unknown intervening party, nor did he glance toward the direction in which Mahito had fled.

Dragging his heavy body, covered in mud and blood, he walked toward Satozakura High School's gates. His steps faltered slightly, but remained utterly resolute, his retreating figure gradually blending into the streetlights outside the school.

Several hundred meters from the grounds, on the top floor of an abandoned, unfinished building.

A man wearing a five-strip Buddhist robe, with a horizontal line of stitches across his forehead, stood quietly at the edge, where there was no railing.

The night wind made his wide sleeves snap and flutter. An almost coldly rational gleam shone in his narrow, foxlike eyes.

That low-grade cursed spirit had been a "disposable pawn" he had casually released from his sleeve.

"That was a close one..."

Kenjaku watched the young man below walk farther and farther away until he disappeared beyond the school gates. A meaningful smile curved his lips.

He had actually been watching the battle all along.

Ever since Feng had appeared out of nowhere and severed Mahito's arm, events had developed beyond his original predictions.

Especially that closed-barrier double Domain Expansion, and the determination to drain every last drop of cursed energy for a single killing blow.

"Not only did he survive Kurourushi's onslaught, he even pushed Mahito into cursed technique burnout and nearly killed him.

"A body of water constructed through the properties of Heavenly Restriction... He isn't just Satoru Gojo's 'toy.' He's a major variable in his own right."

Kenjaku gently rubbed his chin, a flicker of wariness crossing his eyes.

He had not saved Mahito out of any sense of camaraderie.

Rather, Mahito's Idle Transfiguration, which could touch the soul, was an indispensable key to his upcoming grand plan spanning all of Japan-the Culling Game.

Until that plan was ready, Mahito absolutely could not die.

Besides, he did not yet want a direct confrontation with that young man.

"He didn't even have enough energy left to trace cursed energy. A sound judgment.

"But now that you've been drawn into this game..." Kenjaku withdrew his gaze and turned toward the deeper shadows of the rooftop.

"We'll meet again soon, sorcerer of Rainfall."

The man's figure disappeared without a sound, as though melting into the night.