A pale palm pressed against Kamo Xu's warm abdomen. Buried beneath the rubble, his face beaten out of shape, Mahito let out a shrill laugh.
Like a saw scraping back and forth across sheet metal, he cackled, "Hahahaha! Got it! Your soul!"
I got it! I touched his soul!
How disgusting. Damp, dark, like a pool of stagnant water.
He's a human, so why is his soul even gloomier than a cursed spirit's?
[Idle Transfiguration]...
Mahito drove cursed energy into Kamo Xu's body. Purple flames, like ghostly fire, rose from the hand touching Kamo Xu.
At that moment, Kamo Xu's soul lay completely exposed in Mahito's grasp...
But...
"Huh?"
What... is this thing?!
Mahito froze. His hand had clearly seized Kamo Xu's soul. He should have been the one holding that bastard's soul...
Yet the instant Mahito tried to alter it, Kamo Xu's soul neither fled nor retreated... Like a jackal suddenly spotting prey, it bared its teeth and lunged at him!
The other man's soul actively met Mahito's cursed energy, and the two annihilated each other like water meeting fire...
Kamo Xu's soul lunged at Mahito's cursed energy, tearing Mahito apart inside his body once again through mutual destruction!
The cursed spirit froze. Nothing like this had ever happened before. And if Kamo Xu's soul had perished along with his cursed energy... why was he still alive?
BOOM!!!
In that moment of distraction, Kamo Xu plunged a hand into the ground, grabbed Mahito's mangled face, and hauled him out.
Did you think he meant to let the cursed spirit see daylight again?
The beast had simply been driven too deep into the rubble, ruining the feel of the beating. He dragged him out to do it all over again!
Mahito refused to accept it and tried to touch Kamo Xu's soul once more.
But this time, Kamo Xu reacted and seized his wrist.
With a single wrench...
He tore Mahito's arm off like a strip of rotten cloth and flung it into a nearby building.
Perhaps he had realized that beating him did little good, or perhaps he had only just remembered he had a cursed technique.
Kamo Xu gathered all his strength and slammed his palm into Mahito's abdomen with absurd force.
The surrounding ground cracked again, caving into a deep crater!
"You like playing with other people's souls?"
"Then try mine!"
[Modified Flowing Red Scale]!
Kamo Xu drove his cursed energy into his opponent's body just as Mahito had done. The blood inside was instantly assimilated, surging through the cursed spirit at breakneck speed while turning into blades that shredded his flesh inch by inch, piece by piece.
Unfortunately, this was a physical attack...
But Mahito felt something suddenly appear inside him. A brief inspection made him recoil in shock.
A soul? His?!
Kamo Xu's soul had actually been driven into my body!!!
What a joke! Only I can toy with reality! Only I am a true human!
"You..."
Squelch.
Countless spikes of blood pierced out of Mahito's body. His mouth took the worst of it: a spike went straight through his throat and palate, "growing" out through his cheek.
It cut the scumbag off.
Cursed Technique Lapse heated and reshaped the blood inside his opponent, turning it into blades to attack.
And Cursed Technique Reversal...
He had already used it in his domain earlier: vaporizing blood to strip away heat in an instant.
The blood exposed outside Mahito's body burst apart, dissipating instantly into a bloody mist.
That sudden transformation stripped the heat from the surrounding air, and frost appeared across Mahito's body...
But Mahito could clearly feel that his flesh, if it could be called that, had frozen solid from the inside out like pork left in a freezer.
Forget moving. The slightest exertion would shatter him.
Still, there was good news: someone was there to help him move.
The bad news was that he would be using his fists!
Kamo Xu had no patience to wait for Mahito to fall and shatter on his own. All he wanted now was revenge, by any means, any method, any way possible.
He only wanted to kill Mahito.
To kill the beast who had caused his mother's death.
To kill the scum who took pleasure in the suffering of others.
Die!!!!!!
He punched out, his final blow wrapped in black lightning as it struck the frozen Mahito.
Mahito shattered on impact!
The once-whole mass of frozen flesh instantly became a cloud of fragments. Larger chunks of frozen meat shot away like cannonballs under the tremendous force.
It was like a rainstorm...
Kamo Xu stood amid the ruins, panting lightly.
He knew Mahito wasn't dead. Watching the scattered fragments quiver and struggle to reassemble, he understood clearly that he had no way to kill Mahito.
Yuji Itadori, or Nobara Kugisaki.
He needed those two.
Only they could put an end to this scum for good!
I can't accept this... I can't!
Kamo Xu gritted his teeth in fury, his crimson eyes fixed on every scrap of flesh on the ground.
Suddenly, he stamped his foot hard, shattering the ground once again.
Another wail rang out. Through the cracks in the ground, another cursed spirit with rootlike feelers on its head could be seen trying to slip away underground.
But Kamo Xu's stomp forced Hanami straight out, even bringing the corpse cradled in Hanami's arms back into the open air.
Special grade cursed spirit-Hanami.
This opportunist had been trying to sneak away with Suguru Geto.
His fury flared again, shifting to a new target.
Then I'll deal with the cursed spirits I can kill first!
He aimed his fingertips at Hanami, who was coughing blood beneath his feet, ready to finish the spirit with a shot of Piercing Blood. Just then, a strange little bulge of earth and stone sprouted from the wall beside him.
Like a miniature volcano, the opening at its center released an intense, scorching heat.
BOOM!
Lava and flames erupted at incredible speed, instantly engulfing Kamo Xu's upper body.
He didn't have Limitless. He took the full force of the attack...
"Phew..." Another cursed spirit appeared, resembling a skinny little old man, except he had only one eye and the same sort of volcano atop his head.
His ears looked as though someone had carelessly stuffed plugs into them-crude and hideously ugly.
"Is this fellow really human? That terrifying cursed energy, and those chilling curses all over him..."
"If I hadn't ambushed him, Hanami might have died here."
Special grade cursed spirit-Jogo.
Hanami seized the chance to escape from beneath Kamo Xu's feet, rolling over as that powerful body gradually emerged from the soil.
Still shaken, Hanami placed a hand over the spot Kamo Xu had stepped on. It had already caved halfway in.
That alone showed just how powerful Kamo Xu's stomp had been...
"This fellow is terrifying..." Hanami's utterly wretched voice rang directly inside everyone's minds.
They all watched Kamo Xu nearby, half his body engulfed in flames that clung to him and burned his flesh.
Jogo glanced aside and spotted the fragments scattered over the ground.
He gathered flames in his palm and pushed them out, sending a sea of fire across the ground to cover Mahito's remains.
Mahito was unaffected by physical damage, so the flames couldn't hurt him. This was only to thaw him out.
Sure enough, before long, Mahito was reborn amid the blazing flames.
But his expression was utterly foul. Kamo Xu had altered the blood inside him. Although most of it had been vaporized in that last attack to inflict damage, whenever Mahito tried to restore what remained...
The blood reappeared as something bizarre imbued with Kamo Xu's soul. It was as disgusting as having a soup of stinking dog shit mixed with water flowing through his body.
"Damn it! Why didn't you come kill this guy sooner? Aah, my whole body feels weird! It's unbearable!"
Mahito kept squirming as though bugs were crawling over him, his affected movements making him look like a whore.
Having dealt with Kamo Xu, Jogo didn't care. Hanami set Suguru Geto's corpse down and walked over to Mahito.
Mahito wasted no time either, placing his hand against Hanami.
[Idle Transfiguration]...
Hanami's shattered body recovered on the spot. In particular, the sunken footprint in Hanami's chest grew back as though flesh had filled and smoothed it over.
"Now that it's settled, let's go. Kenjaku will be hurrying us along. For the sake of true humans... we have to make every second count."
Jogo turned away, no longer looking at the burning Kamo Xu.
Hanami picked up Suguru Geto and turned away as well.
Mahito spat angrily, stuck out his tongue, and left too.
"Stop..."
Jogo: !
Mahito: !
Hanami: !
The cursed spirits turned around in disbelief...
Flames still burned across Kamo Xu's body, his skin and flesh charred black like coal.
Even a god would have shaken their head and told them to prepare a dignified funeral...
Yet a crimson light shone from that body, which should have been dead beyond all doubt!
Like the last rays of the setting sun falling to earth from the night sky...
It began to burn away every dark and evil thing!
[None of you are leaving!]
Before you continue