Almost at the very instant the severed arm shot skyward amid a gruesome rain of blood, Ryomen Sukuna's beastlike battle instincts took complete control of his body.
Without the slightest desire to keep fighting at close quarters, without even half a second's hesitation, he swung his remaining left arm backward and unleashed terrifying cursed energy through his legs, instantly retreating dozens of meters!
"Hiss!"
Sukuna lowered his head, his crimson eyes fixed on the mirror-smooth stump of his right shoulder as blood gushed wildly from it. An unprecedented gravity and shock spread through the depths of his eyes like ink dropped into water.
In that lightning-fast exchange, he had unmistakably sensed something that sent a chill through him.
It was not that he had underestimated his opponent and neglected his defenses.
The instant he saw you draw that bizarre long blade, instinct had already driven Sukuna to concentrate the violent cursed energy within his body into an extremely dense layer over his right arm.
With cursed energy reinforcement of that caliber, he could have taken a special grade cursed spirit's full-powered strike head-on without suffering a scratch.
But it had been useless.
Completely useless.
That slash simply could not be blocked.
The Soul Liberation Blade in your hand, radiating an icy aura, possessed a sharpness that had utterly transcended the limits of physical concepts.
When that deathly pale edge swept through his flesh and bones, Sukuna had even felt the steel-hard cursed energy defenses gathered over his body being unreasonably ignored and penetrated, as though they were nothing but nonexistent air!
Even setting aside the fact that you had been too close for him to make any substantial evasive movement, the ghostlike burst of extreme speed you had just displayed had far exceeded every tactical expectation Sukuna had held of