"Challenger, didn't you want a more powerful move?
For something I improvised, that long-range 'Purple' worked pretty well!"
Satoru Gojo's booming voice pierced the dust that had yet to settle, brimming with undisguised mockery and unbridled swagger.
Almost the instant he spoke, he compressed space and coordinates, teleporting beside Dio as though a phantom had reassembled itself.
Satoru Gojo's silver-white hair danced wildly in the hot wind. A thoroughly satisfied smile played across his lips, and he radiated exhilaration, as though their fierce exchange had been nothing more than an enjoyable warm-up.
Though his jacket had likewise become an honorable casualty of the second impact, it did nothing to diminish his commanding presence on the battlefield.
Power that looked down on everything, terrifying confidence that disregarded the laws of the world and held his own existence above all else-such an audacious, absolute presence was the truest expression of Satoru Gojo, "the strongest of the modern age"!
"An incredible blow. I doubt I'll forget it for the rest of my life!"
Dio wiped away a nonexistent smear of blood from the corner of his mouth, his voice carrying profound acknowledgment.
He rolled his shoulders and neck, the muscles beneath his torn clothes tightening slightly.
"So even rigid 'concepts' themselves have loopholes to exploit."
Their verbal exchange ended in an instant.
Their figures closed in again, fists and feet wrapped in surging cursed energy turning into an even denser storm as they clashed violently!
Dio took a rapid series of short, precise steps. The instant he came within half a meter, he twisted sharply on his left foot, his right toe snapping up like a snake's flickering tongue to strike viciously at Satoru Gojo's groin.
Satoru Gojo lifted his left knee slightly and pressed his left hand down like a flash of lightning, trying to cut off the vicious kick.
Yet a hairbreadth before contact, Dio drew his knee inward. With incredible flexibility and dexterity, he pulled his ankle outward, then swept past the blocking hand at an even greater speed and a trickier angle.
His entire right leg traced a half arc through the air like a steel whip, shrieking as it tore toward Satoru Gojo's temple!
Satoru Gojo's pupils contracted slightly. Repeating his earlier maneuver, he tilted sharply to the right and raised his right hand, bringing his forearm across his forehead to shield his left temple precisely.
At the same time, his left hand, already at his waist, slipped forward. A deep-blue sphere of cursed energy instantly formed at his fingertips.
The gravitational field of "Blue" blossomed silently, attempting to restrain Dio and disrupt his balance and follow-up movements.
But, as expected-unlike the tangible impact produced by "Red," the phenomenon of "attraction" that "Blue" created by defining a negatively infinite distance was completely nullified by "paradox negation"!
In an exchange measured in milliseconds, the pitiful pull of the pressure difference created by merely swallowing air was like a breeze brushing a mountainside before Dio's resilient body, which surpassed even the Heavenly Restriction Tyrant's after reinforcement with cursed energy. It failed to move him in the slightest.
And so Dio's kick, imbued with the concept of "three times faster," slammed into the outside of Satoru Gojo's hastily raised right arm!
Amid the dull impact came the faint sound of bones deforming under tremendous force.
Satoru Gojo flew backward uncontrollably, like an ordinary man struck from the side by a heavy truck!
His feet tapped at empty air. The instant he landed, he stamped repeatedly against the ground with astonishing reflexes, applying force in the opposite direction to halt his retreat by sheer effort and plowing two shallow furrows into the earth.
At that moment, the Six Eyes operated at their utmost limit. Vast quantities of visual information and combat data were sorted and analyzed like lightning within his extraordinary brain.
By now, the mechanism behind "paradox negation" had become utterly clear to Satoru Gojo:
It targeted only the paradoxical phenomena "themselves" that were applied "directly" to Dio.
Thus, direct spatial manipulation was ineffective, but subsequent physical effects generated and transformed from paradoxical phenomena-light, heat, shock waves, and the like-fell outside the absolute scope of its "negation."
"Six Eyes," "Paradox negation," and the unknown defensive concept that briefly took effect...
Can Dio only maintain three concepts at once?
No...
That earlier high-speed movement, which didn't rely on manipulating distance, combined with that highly symbolic helmet...
He's probably also maintaining the concept of "three times faster with red horns" constantly.
Besides, Dio was clearly injured more severely the second time he took a fully chanted "Purple" than the first.
That powerful defensive concept likely requires physical protective gear to work, and has a limit to how much it can withstand.
I also need to watch for other conceptual effects he might be hiding.
I still can't rule out the possibility that Dio is deliberately holding back one or more concepts, waiting to activate them at the most critical moment.
A few dozen milliseconds passed, and his lightning-fast deliberations ended.
Satoru Gojo's lips curved into a wild grin.
As though freed from gravity's hold, he abruptly "pulled" himself off the ground. His figure became a meteor shooting upward, soaring a hundred meters into the air.
"'Phase,' 'Twilight,' 'Eye of Wisdom'!"
He held his right palm upward, and a deep, dark-blue "Blue" that seemed capable of devouring light condensed before him once again.
This time, however, he did not fire it. Instead, as though casting "Planetary Devastation," he maintained "Blue's" manifestation and continuous gravitational output!
Below him, the surface of the enormous crater, already vitrified by repeated devastation, crackled as an invisible, immense force began peeling away countless fragments of every size.
Soil, rocks, surviving shrubs, and the remnants of trees began slowly rising against gravity in defiance of common sense. Like rivers flowing into the sea, they converged on the deep-blue "gravitational core" in the sky, gradually forming a massive, chaotic sphere of earth and wood.
To thoroughly study and analyze the imaginative combat techniques of "Limitless," Dio deliberately allowed Satoru Gojo to carry out these sluggish preparations.
He simply put the operating principles he had just learned into immediate practice, manipulating distance to lift himself smoothly to the same altitude as Satoru Gojo.
Then he raised his hand.
"'Phase,' 'Paramita,' 'Pillar of Light'!"
In his palm, a sphere of cursed energy identical to the one Satoru Gojo had released earlier began spinning rapidly and gathering power, emitting a dangerous red glow as its destructive fluctuations continued to climb.
Once Satoru Gojo finished his preparations, he whipped his right arm toward Dio like an elite pitcher standing on the mound.
That "meteor," an astonishingly vast mass of mixed earth and wood, immediately followed the violent gravitational pull as it abruptly changed direction, crashing toward Dio like an orbital weapon!
Almost simultaneously, Dio calmly released the fully charged red sphere of cursed energy in his hand straight ahead.
A fourteen-meter-long pillar of red impact light plunged directly into the region containing the blue gravitational core.
The positive and negative paradoxes, deployed separately by two people, collided again at such close range and in such a direct fashion-immediately triggering another out-of-control explosion!
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