A breeze swept dust across the training ground. Atsuya Kusakabe stood rigidly in place, and the more he recalled their lightning-fast exchange, the more his heart pounded with uncontrollable alarm.
Wait... when I drew my sword just now, did I really ease off subconsciously just because I saw he was a kid? Did I really deliberately hold back without even realizing it!?
Even that absurd doubt rose uncontrollably in Kusakabe's mind, but he quickly clenched his back teeth and ruthlessly crushed the thought.
No, that makes no sense! Nobody knows the sword in my hand better than I do! That strike avoided his vital points, but its speed and explosive power were definitely above the passing standard for a Grade 1 Sorcerer!
But if he had not held back, Kusakabe found it even harder to understand. Had Li Shunchen's flowing counters, which seemed almost prophetic, really just been a case of blind luck?
Wait! That just now... was that the kid's cursed technique!?
Kusakabe sucked in a sharp breath, every hair on his back standing on end uncontrollably.
That was right! He suddenly realized an extremely frightening blind spot. Although Mei Mei had mentioned that this transfer student named Li Shunchen possessed a bizarre ability to "copy" other people's cursed techniques, during that brief exchange, he had not sensed any cursed residue from the activation of an innate cursed technique on the boy at all!
That made it even more outrageously absurd! He, a battle-hardened Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer, had actually had his bread-and-butter specialty, New Shadow Style, broken head-on by a first-year brat who had only become a sorcerer a few months ago, using nothing but physical combat without activating an innate cursed technique!?
What kind of sick joke was this!?
*Right...! It was that extremely strange way he