"You're almost running dry, aren't you?"
Blood streamed down Kashimo's face, dripping from his chin and spreading into a small dark patch in the shadows. But he was still smiling, and against all that blood, his smile looked especially jarring.
"Ten Shadows."
Zenin Sawa stood where he was, gasping for breath. Maintaining his domain for so long while controlling multiple shikigami in intense combat had nearly depleted even him, a Ten Shadows user with a terrifying reserve of cursed energy.
Sweat mingled with blood as it trickled down his body. His chest heaved violently, every breath seeming to wrench its way out of his lungs.
He raised his head, looked at the man still smiling across from him, and forced a smile of his own.
It was so strained he could barely hold it.
"Your Hollow Wicker Basket isn't doing much better."
Kashimo said nothing more.
He stepped forward again.
Zenin Sawa gritted his teeth and raised both hands, ready to block again.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
Kashimo stopped in front of him.
"Let's finish it with this one."
His voice was quiet, as though he were discussing something utterly ordinary.
Zenin Sawa froze for a moment.
What?
Before he could react, that fist had already slammed into his face.
Black and red light erupted at that instant. It was no ordinary light, but the color of cursed energy compressed to its limit and detonating-the uniquely heart-stopping light of Black Flash.
The instant his fist struck Sawa's face-
The charge detonated.
At the same time.
The surrounding space began to tremble.
The domain Zenin Sawa had struggled so desperately to maintain began to fracture the moment Kashimo's fist landed. Cracks spread outward from where they stood, like a spiderweb, like splitting ice, branching in every direction.
Then-
BOOM!!!
The domain shattered.
Kashimo stood to one side, one hand against his neck, his head tilted as he watched Zenin Sawa double over and cough up blood.
His posture was so casual he might have been watching a bug someone had crushed half to death.
"You should've admitted defeat sooner."
His voice was lazy, carrying a trace of something like pity-or perhaps he couldn't even be bothered to offer that.
"All you had to do was wait quietly for death."
Zenin Sawa bent over, bracing both hands on his knees as he gasped for breath. With every breath, blood welled up in his throat and dripped from the corner of his mouth onto the ground. At those words, he jerked his head up, his bloodshot eyes all but blazing.
Rage.
Utter rage.
But there was nothing he could do.
Cursed technique burnout.
Every trace of his shikigami had vanished from the shadows. He could no longer sense them, nor could he sense his own cursed technique. Right now, he was merely an ordinary man whose cursed energy was nearly spent and whose hand-to-hand skills were hopelessly outmatched.
But cursed technique burnout wasn't irreversible.
An image flashed through Zenin Sawa's mind. A battle years ago, and the method he had discovered by accident on the brink of death.
Strike the front portion of his brain from within using cursed energy.
Then repair it with Reverse Cursed Technique.
(Zenin Sawa didn't know where the prefrontal cortex was, nor did he possess the Six Eyes' precision in controlling cursed energy, so this has been changed. His success was entirely a fluke.)
That would forcibly end his cursed technique burnout.
The price was an unavoidable, bone-deep exhaustion that would drag him down in the battle to come.
But now-
He raised his head and looked at the man before him, who had already begun gathering cursed energy.
I have to win.
"I'm going to whip up an Electromagnetic Cannon now."
Kashimo's voice drifted down from above, light and airy.
"And blast you into nothing."
Cursed energy gathered in his palm, its blue-white glow growing brighter and more blinding. The surrounding air began to tremble, and bits of rubble rose and fell under the pressure of his cursed energy.
"When it comes down to it, you're just another ordinary man."
Kashimo looked down at him. In those eyes marked with purple patterns, there was no anger, no killing intent, only something that inspired even greater despair.
Indifference.
"I'll probably forget you after today..."
The light in his palm had condensed to its limit.
Zenin Sawa stared at that light, his pupils contracting sharply.
His mind raced.
Kashimo suddenly stopped gathering cursed energy.
Not because he wanted to.
Because he had no choice.
He pushed off the ground and shot backward. The instant he left his position, a massive black shadow came crashing down from above.
BOOM!
A huge crater burst open in the ground.
Rubble flew and dust billowed. Cracks radiated from the crater's edges, as though a meteor had struck. And at its very center was a fist.
An enormous fist.
A fur-covered fist belonging to a humanoid shikigami.
Kashimo landed ten paces away and raised his head.
Within the dust, a figure slowly straightened. Its outline was human, but its body was covered in thick fur, its muscles knotted, its features savage. The cursed energy radiating from it was utterly different from that of the earlier shikigami.
Chimera Beast.
Agito.
Kashimo naturally recognized it. It was one of the few fused shikigami within the Ten Shadows Technique capable of highly autonomous combat, an existence whose strength, speed, and defense far surpassed those of ordinary shikigami.
And the man who should have been completely spent now stood behind Agito, slowly straightening his back.
"Sorry about that."
Zenin Sawa raised his head. His face, which had been smeared with blood only moments ago, now wore a grin that begged to be punched.
"It's two against one now."
Kashimo looked at him without much reaction.
Of course he knew how to end cursed technique burnout: destroy the brain's prefrontal cortex, then repair it with Reverse Cursed Technique. It was vicious enough, and insane enough, that not everyone had the nerve to use it on themselves.
But Zenin Sawa had.
Agito suddenly moved.
The shikigami grabbed Zenin Sawa and hurled him at Kashimo like a cannonball. At that same instant, Agito began moving around the flank, that massive body plowing a deep furrow through the ground.
Zenin Sawa adjusted his posture in midair, spreading his arms and clenching his fists.
"Now it's round two-!"
His voice came crashing down from the air, carrying the ruthless resolve of a man who had burned every bridge behind him.
Kashimo had only just taken his stance when a violent gust struck from the side.
Agito's fist had arrived.
Too fast.
So fast that Kashimo could only raise his arms in a hurried block.
BAM-!
The punch smashed into his arms, making even his bones shudder. Its tremendous force sent him staggering sideways. Before he could regain his footing, Zenin Sawa's fist came crashing in from the front.
After blocking it, Kashimo landed firmly and swept his gaze over the man and the shikigami before him.
A clan head restored to full strength. A Chimera Beast with limitless power.
The corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
Then he charged at Agito.
"Then I'll-"
Before he finished speaking, he was already in front of Agito. He moved so fast he left no afterimage, only a string of crackling electrical arcs in the air.
He drove a fist forward.
"Deal with you first!"
The instant his fist touched Agito's abdomen, violent cursed energy poured inside. No three contacts, no waiting for the charge to build. What he had mastered over these three months was injecting the entire charge in a single strike.
SPLURT-!!
Agito's abdomen exploded.
Flesh, shattered bone, and fragments of organs gushed out in that instant, tearing a massive bloody hole through that enormous body. Agito staggered backward and let out an earthshaking roar filled with unimaginable pain.
But Kashimo had no chance to follow up.
Behind him, Zenin Sawa had already completed his cursed technique.
With both palms pressed together, he furiously condensed a high-pressure stream of water between them. The water's density had reached a visibly apparent level, giving it an eerie gleam in the sunlight.
Piercing Water.
It activated instantly.
The jet of water shot past Kashimo's waist, its air-rending shriek exploding beside his ears. It was so close that he could feel the sting as the stream grazed his skin.
Kashimo was forced to retreat.
He landed back where he had been and glanced down at his waist. A slit had been torn through his clothes, revealing a faint, bleeding red line beneath. An inch farther over, and that Piercing Water would have cut him in half.
He raised his head.
Agito still stood across from him, the bloody hole in the shikigami's abdomen healing visibly. Zenin Sawa was breathing hard, but his eyes were still bright, fixed unwaveringly on Kashimo.
The two men and the shikigami faced off once more.
Before you continue