[You chose not to conceal it, instead allowing a trace of coldness that saw through everything to show on your face, covered in pitch-black cursed energy.]
[In the sewer space filled with stench and deathly silence, you spoke directly, answering the woman's doubts in a flat tone that sounded like a statement of established fact.]
["Just as you suspected, without my forcible intervention, following their original trajectories of growth, those two would have needed at least another few years to reach their current level of mastery over Hollow Technique and Maximum Technique."]
[At your words, a trace of profoundly incongruous confusion instantly crossed the woman's bloodstained face.]
[Your tone was too strange. It was not a boy making some logical deduction or estimate at all, but a chilling certainty.]
[It was as though... you could confirm with absolute precision that they would "need a few years" to reach their current level, as though you had truly witnessed that future that had yet to happen in some nonexistent timeline.]
[That cognitive dissonance sent an inexplicable shudder through this mastermind who had always prided herself on controlling everything.]
[But you gave her no time to investigate the incongruity in your tone.]
[After briefly answering her question, you pressed the Soul Liberation Blade gripped in your hand down slightly. Its sharp edge cut a thin line of blood between her brows, and with that cold pressure, you forcibly steered the conversation back on track.]
["I already killed Toji Fushiguro earlier."]
[You looked down at her from above, without a trace of warmth in your eyes.]
["So why exactly did you go to such lengths to make Tengen's assimilation fail?"]
[Hearing those words, especially the instant you so casually dropped the bombshell that "you had already killed Toji," the woman's body visibly went rigid