Naoya's pupils contracted.
"What?!"
"Why can't I touch her?"
His palm trembled, cursed energy shattered at his fingertips, and the momentum of Projection Sorcery was swallowed by that barrier, as though he had punched cotton.
Utahime Iori's voice rang out.
"This is the Projection Sorcery you're so proud of?"
"So weak..."
Naoya jerked his head up.
He saw a pair of eyes, very still, but with anger burning within them.
And Utahime Iori's fist.
She used no cursed technique, no cursed energy, no fancy tricks of any kind.
She simply threw a punch.
A very ordinary punch, but demon chi wrapped that fist like an invisible boxing glove.
The fist struck Naoya square in the face.
The sound was loud, like a hammer striking stone.
Naoya's face deformed in that instant, his cheekbones shattered, his teeth flew out, and he slammed heavily into the ground.
Boom!
A crater split open in the asphalt road surface, cracks spreading in every direction as rubble flew.
Naoya lay embedded in the crater, his eyes rolling straight back.
Whether he was alive or dead was unknown.
From the punch to the finish, only a fraction of a second had passed.
Utahime Iori withdrew her fist and shook her wrist.
"That's it?"
She tilted her head, looking at Naoya in the crater.
"Projection Sorcery, twenty-four frames per second, each frame inheriting the previous frame's speed, accelerating multiplicatively. In theory, it can reach subsonic speeds."
"But you haven't trained enough."
"Your frames are packed too tightly, and you don't have enough cursed energy. Every frame consumes it. Your speed built up, but your power dispersed completely."
She turned around and looked at the armed troops and jujutsu sorcerers.
The armed troops came to their senses.
"Monster!"
"Open fire!"
Someone shouted.
Gunfire erupted. Dozens of rifles fired