Conviction

The Ubusunagami's enormous body brought more than pressure alone. The bones covering it seemed to come alive, constantly breaking free of the mud on its body. The moment they hit the ground, they began attacking Yu Haibara-some crawling, some limping along, and others writhing on the ground with only half a body left.

Yu Haibara darted around to evade them, seizing openings to clear away the skeletons with his fists and feet while keeping the Ubusunagami's attention on him.

This put an immense strain on his body. After using his cursed technique for a while, he needed to stop and stabilize the speed of his blood flow, but the Ubusunagami gave him no chance. Unable to stop, he found his blood increasingly difficult to control.

He could only ignore the strain and force himself to keep moving, but his speed visibly dropped. His body could no longer withstand the damage caused by his cursed technique, and his tissues had begun to break down.

As Kento Nanami cleared away the surrounding gravestones that were spawning cursed spirits, he noticed Yu Haibara slowing down and quickened his own movements. Finally, just as he finished destroying the gravestones, the Ubusunagami exposed an opening.

The Ubusunagami lowered its two forelegs to the ground and pressed its head against the earth, slowly opening its huge mouth toward Yu Haibara.

A powerful suction came from its mouth. Unable to dodge in time, Yu Haibara grabbed the nearby bamboo and dug his feet into the ground. But the suction tore even the bamboo out by its roots, and he was about to be dragged into the Ubusunagami's mouth.

Kento Nanami arrived just in time, using his cursed technique to sever the Ubusunagami's foreleg. He then ran up its severed limb toward its neck and launched himself into the air, pouring a massive amount of cursed energy into a slash at its neck. Like a blunt knife cutting into a rubber ball, his short blade sank deep into the Ubusunagami's neck. He kept feeding cursed energy into the blade and successfully cut through it.

Kento Nanami's cursed technique was the Ratio Technique: it could forcibly create weak points on an enemy's body.

It divided the target's length into equal portions and forced a weak point to appear at the 7:3 mark. Hitting that "point" would trigger a "critical hit."

It could inflict a certain amount of damage even on enemies stronger than the user.

Any body part could be designated as the target, and it worked just as well on inanimate objects.

The suction stopped. Yu Haibara lay on the ground in bad shape, his chest heaving violently and his heart racing. Blood streamed from his nose and the corners of his eyes. His body had clearly been pushed beyond its limits. His accelerated blood flow could no longer be steadily brought back down to normal, and the damage to his tissues left him unable to move.

But Kento Nanami had no time to attend to him, because the headless Ubusunagami was still moving. Its thick "tail" suddenly split open-this was its true head. Since its entire body was covered in mud, Nanami and Haibara had only been able to identify its head by its mouth.

"Two heads?!" A chill swept through Kento Nanami. There had never been a cursed spirit like this in the records.

And now, without his teammate's support, he could no longer strike the "point" accurately. Worse, with his remaining cursed energy, even hitting it would not be enough to cut through.

"Being a jujutsu sorcerer really is an awful job... The road is paved with your comrades' corpses, and your own waits at the end..." Kento Nanami used what little cursed energy he had left to clear away the smaller cursed spirits falling from the Ubusunagami. By now, he had resigned himself to death; only his body continued to resist on instinct.

Kento Nanami was already on the verge of collapse under the Ubusunagami's attacks. Exhausted, he could barely lift his feet. He staggered as he dodged, only to trip over a skeleton and fall to the ground. He did not struggle. He simply stared up at the sky, gasping for breath, seemingly ready to welcome his own death.

Just as the surrounding cursed spirits surged forward to devour the feast lying on the ground, a figure rushed over and knocked away the spirits around Kento Nanami. With his back to Nanami, he slowly spoke.

"Still haven't rested enough? I'm back at full strength!!"

Yu Haibara's face was covered in blood. He had to catch his breath before he could finish the sentence.

Hearing Yu Haibara's voice from where he lay, Kento Nanami felt a sudden, inexplicable surge of strength. Forcing his weak legs to support him, he slowly rose and stood upright.

"What good does refusing to accept it do..." Kento Nanami asked the figure before him.

"The body can be destroyed, but the will cannot," Yu Haibara answered without hesitation.

"You really... ask too much..." Kento Nanami unwound the cloth around his short blade and used it to bind his hand tightly to the hilt.

"Then let's at least die with a little dignity." Kento Nanami turned his back.

Though both had exhausted their strength and could only support each other by standing back-to-back, the conviction blazing in their eyes was like steel.

The skeletal cursed spirits around them surged forward, eager to swallow the two jujutsu sorcerers in one go-

Boom! Rainbow Dragon descended from the sky and coiled into a circle on the ground, sheltering Yu Haibara and Kento Nanami within its body. Sakurada Niji and Suguru Geto stood atop its head.

The two had actually arrived a little earlier.

"Aren't we going down yet, Niji?" Suguru Geto's face was full of anxiety. He could barely restrain himself from rushing down to save their two juniors.

"Geto, with Nanami's current mindset, saving him would only delay his death." Sakurada Niji felt that Kento Nanami had always been pessimistic and realistic, living by his own set of rules.

And Sakurada Niji had already noticed Yu Haibara moving. The fearless boy was slowly climbing off the ground, ready to use the last of his strength to jolt his companion out of his surrender to "death."

Back in the present.

"Upperclassmen!!" Upon seeing Suguru Geto and Sakurada Niji, Yu Haibara could no longer keep his forcibly upright body standing. His legs gave out, and he fell to the ground, calling out to them with excitement all over his face.

"Sorry we're late. Someone made us change clothes." Sakurada Niji unhesitatingly shifted the blame onto a certain reader.

Bracing his hands on his knees, Kento Nanami slowly sat down against Rainbow Dragon's body. He closed his eyes and peacefully passed out.

Yu Haibara still had plenty of cursed energy, but his body could no longer hold up, so he remained mentally alert. Kento Nanami, however, had nearly depleted his cursed energy after the prolonged battle and was already mentally exhausted. Without Haibara's encouragement earlier, he would have passed out long ago. Now that their two upperclassmen had arrived, he finally felt completely reassured and drifted peacefully to sleep.

"Haibara, you should get some sleep too. You're exhausted." Suguru Geto released a cursed spirit with a hypnotic effect, forcing Yu Haibara-who could not fall asleep because of the strain on his body-into slumber.

Suguru Geto released several cursed spirits to guard the pair encircled by Rainbow Dragon, then turned his gaze toward the Ubusunagami.

"An ordinary Ubusunagami wouldn't be above grade one, but this one has clearly reached special grade. Fortunately, its cursed technique isn't geared toward attacking, or those two really wouldn't have held out."

"An Ubusunagami uses its suction to devour nearby graves and corpses, then uses them to protect its body. Its true body is in the middle of its belly; the outer layer is just a shell formed from grave soil." The cursed spirit master's encyclopedia lesson had begun.

"This cursed spirit isn't much use. Rather than collect it, I'd prefer to exorcise it and see what made it become special grade," Suguru Geto told Sakurada Niji, seemingly unwilling to do it himself.

"Don't tell me you just don't want to eat it because it's too dirty." Watching Suguru Geto silently take a step back, Sakurada Niji shook his head helplessly, then jumped off Rainbow Dragon.

Sakurada Niji used Flash Step to approach the Ubusunagami and touched its leg. As his cursed energy began to fluctuate, the entire Ubusunagami was fixed in place. But Niji was troubled: he had no way to deal with a cursed spirit with such a thick shell.

Skyward Support was too short to handle large cursed spirits, and the Ubusunagami itself was hardly active. In fact, it barely moved, much like a turtle. That rendered Space-Severing Lines useless as well, since their destructive power depended on the cursed spirit's own movement.

Sakurada Niji glanced back at Suguru Geto, who merely narrowed his eyes and waved at him.

No counting on that guy. He really doesn't want to eat this thing.

Sakurada Niji felt that until he mastered Reverse Cursed Technique, he would not be able to learn a skill capable of quickly killing large cursed spirits.

After weighing the relative efficiency of Domain Expansion against beating it with his fists, Sakurada Niji chose Domain Expansion.

He fired a web-like spatial framework around the cursed spirit, then prepared to expand his domain.

I'll finish it as quickly as possible.

"Domain Expansion-Stillness of All Things."

Cursed energy gushed out and connected to the framework, then enveloped the space around the entire Ubusunagami, forming a domain.

Unlike his previous incomplete Domain Expansion, this one consumed less cursed energy and was more complete.