With a thunderous boom, Hajime Kashimo slammed his foot down like the hammer of a thunder god descending from the heavens.
The instant it made contact, the mole shikigami's head caved in. Without the slightest resistance, that thunderous kick punched clean through its massive skull.
Deprived of the brain that controlled it, the shikigami's enormous body could no longer support itself. It crashed to the ground, its form beginning to dissolve under the force of that blow.
Dhruv Lakdawalla's face twisted with fury as he watched.
That damned bastard. He was already at death's door, yet he still had to destroy my precious shikigami.
"Hajime Kashimo, was it? I promise you, your death will be gruesome."
With that, Dhruv took control of his other two mole shikigami, accelerating their efforts to carve away Kashimo's room to maneuver.
Dhruv swore he would slice Kashimo into little cubes of mango to console the departed soul of his precious shikigami.
Kashimo paid his words no mind at all and sneered:
"If you can do it, go ahead and try."
Ignoring the two shikigami circling him and trying to tighten the domain's paths, Kashimo sensed the charge accumulating on his electric staff.
That should be about enough.
His sudden outburst earlier had not been purely to get back at Dhruv. It had also been meant to conceal the fluctuations in his cursed energy as he accumulated charge.
Now that the charge was ready, Kashimo no longer needed to hide it.
"You can die too, you old bastard."
A surge of cursed energy identical to Kashimo's suddenly erupted from behind Dhruv. As he carefully controlled his shikigami, Dhruv whipped his head around, but it was already too late.
Kashimo's cursed energy had the properties of electricity. By separating charges and allowing them to attract each other, he could make his attacks sure hits even without a domain. Moreover, the target on which he accumulated charge did not have to be an opponent; it could also be an object. Pulling that charged object back to strike an opponent standing on the line between himself and the object-that was his Rebound Electric Shock.
At that moment, [Rebound Electric Shock] activated. Amid the rubble, the staff-shaped cursed tool, wrapped in electricity, suddenly trembled and shot out under Kashimo's pull.
Through Kashimo's deliberate positioning, the electric staff, Dhruv, and Kashimo himself formed a straight line.
The returning staff blasted through Dhruv's waist in an instant.
The waist was the core where jujutsu sorcerers stored their cursed energy. Even Satoru Gojo, powerful enough to bathe in Sukuna's domain and possessing a top-tier Reverse Cursed Technique capable of repairing his body, was helpless when cut in half at the waist.
Vomiting a great mouthful of blood, his upper body toppled backward limply. Dhruv knew there was no saving him now that he had been bisected. He, Dhruv, had lost this round.
Having successfully cosplayed the same look as 2.5jo, Dhruv finally died after enjoying a taste of the strongest's treatment.
"Congratulations, player. You have earned 5 points. Your current total is 46 points."
Kogane's voice rang out at that moment, as if announcing the final end of this mighty warrior of the islands.
With the death of their cursed technique's master, every pterodactyl and mole shikigami in the Sendai Colony dissipated. The domain formed by the paths of those shikigami collapsed as well.
The strongest thunder god's feats were etched into Sendai Stadium.
In other words, Hajime Kashimo had won!
"Dead already? You really were as fragile as a clay doll. You weren't all that strong either, old man. I'll probably forget you by this afternoon."
Catching his returning electric staff, Kashimo said those words with a trace of satisfaction on his face.
If he had not kept Rebound Electric Shock up his sleeve, he really might have been unable to deal with Dhruv.
Before he could start looking for his next target, another powerful presence, no weaker than Dhruv's, rapidly approached his position.
Densely packed cockroaches blotted out the sky above Sendai Stadium. The black demon of the modern age finally revealed itself.
There was no time to mourn Dhruv's death. The next to enter the battlefield was Kurourushi, a special grade cursed spirit that had broken free of Kenjaku's control.
Because Dhruv's domain countered its abilities, Kurourushi had tried several times to invade the area Dhruv occupied, only to return empty-handed each time.
As the paths of Dhruv's shikigami expanded and his domain grew larger and larger, Kurourushi had been ready to find somewhere to simply go to sleep.
It had never expected a new player to arrive and even help it kill Dhruv. The user's death meant the domain could no longer be sustained. With its movements no longer restricted, Kurourushi's first thought was to hurry over and properly repay the other party.
Without interference from Dhruv's path-based domain, Kurourushi successfully invaded the area it had previously been unable to enter.
A black torrent of countless cockroaches surged relentlessly forward. Under Kurourushi's control, it brazenly lunged at Kashimo, who had just finished a fierce battle.
Hailing from four hundred years ago and possessing extensive combat experience, Kashimo could hardly fail to notice Kurourushi's blatant malice.
Cursed energy poured into his electric staff. A sweeping blow smashed apart the oncoming black torrent, and he used the recoil to spring backward, avoiding the attacks that followed.
That didn't feel like something made from cursed energy.
Kashimo frowned at the black torrent his staff had scattered.
Squelch.
He crushed a cockroach trying to approach him underfoot, then flicked his staff to the side, flinging away all the filth clinging to it.
So they're real cockroaches? How disgusting.
The scattered black torrent did not continue attacking Kashimo. Instead, it split into four black whirlwinds that converged toward the stadium stands.
What's that?
Kashimo's gaze followed the black whirlwinds, finally settling on the place Dhruv had occupied before his death.
"You really are a revolting creature."
Electric sparks flickered uncontrollably at the corners of his eyes, and veins throbbed on his forehead. As a human being, even Kashimo, who had been Dhruv's opponent, could not help feeling anger at the scene before him.
On Dhruv's former seat, the lower half of his body, which had still been sitting upright, had vanished. In its place was a giant cockroach with human hands and feet.
With its back to Kashimo, the black cockroach cursed spirit held Dhruv's remains in its hands, repeatedly bringing the corpse to its mouth as it feasted.
Noticing Kashimo's furious stare, Kurourushi stopped and turned its head. A humanlike look of confusion appeared on its cockroach face.
As cursed spirits born from humanity's negative emotions, they instinctively regarded humans as food and actively hunted them. Jujutsu sorcerers in particular possessed far more cursed energy than ordinary people, making them delicacies in the eyes of cursed spirits. That was even truer of someone like Dhruv, whose strength far surpassed that of an average jujutsu sorcerer.
With such a delicacy right before it, its flavor fading little by little as time passed, who would choose to waste it?
"Blood, tastes like iron, like it!"