Chapter 849: Moon-Kick, There's Another Master?!
Golden Ki burned with furious intensity behind Kaito Shirogane, while across from him, Boros was similarly bathed in blinding magenta and white luminescence.
Having both unsealed their ultimate stances, their presences compressed and ground against one another. In terms of both velocity and raw physical output, their combat had completely broken past the perceptual limits of ordinary Reincarnators and narrative characters alike.
Streams of golden and magenta-white light collided across the upper atmosphere at speeds exceeding standard visual tracking. Every glancing shockwave of their exchange obliterated entire municipal sectors of the shattered City A. Skyscraper frames dissolved like tissue paper beneath the concussive wake.
Everything caught in the perimeter of their clash disintegrated into fine ash.
Boros bellowed with unbridled ecstasy, surrendering entirely to the trance of absolute combat. Burning through his cellular vitality in Meteoric Burst subjected his nervous system to agonizing, tearing pain, yet the sheer euphoria of an all-out life-and-death struggle eclipsed the biological backlash entirely.
He roared like a rabid beast, venting decades of stagnant boredom and existential isolation. Cells groaned, flesh unraveled, yet his fighting spirit burned hotter than an incandescent star.
Yes... this is it!
This is what combat was meant to be!
BOOM!
Boros's head snapped violently sideways as Kaito's fist tore clean through his shoulder and the atmospheric envelope behind him. Dropping out of his luminescent state, Boros plunged like a high-energy particle beam straight through the superstructure of his own dreadnought, smashing into the pulverized continental crust below.
Shockwaves rolled across the terrain as the bedrock groaned.
Swarms of dragon-beasts clawing their way out of the subterranean depths were pulverized into red paste by the concussive heatwave before they could even register the threat.
The cataclysmic commotion drew Neltharion's attention, only for an explosive uppercut from Garou to catch the Dragon King flush against his lower jaw. Moving with blinding speed, Garou's fists were enveloped in the fluid martial intent of the Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist, intertwined with a pitch-black, flame-like current of cursed energy that flickered around his limbs.
The instant Neltharion's center of gravity tilted backward, Garou shifted into a stream of pure motion. Countless fist phantoms detonated across Neltharion's chassis, his golden Dragon King's Authority flaring across his black dragon scales to repel the assault.
Yet the very next microsecond, a lethal spatial distortion flashed with pitch-black lightning.
Black Flash!
Concealed within the shadow cast by the rubble, Dead of Night nearly burst out laughing. Garou's evolutionary talent was simply grotesque; he wasn't even a native of the Jujutsu universe and possessed zero biological aptitude for cursed energy on paper.
Yet he had genuinely grasped the spatial impact of a Black Flash through raw combat adaptation!
Under normal circumstances, she would have despised seeing a narrative character gifted with such absurd scaling. But now, the stronger Garou became, the higher her survival odds climbed. The sheer horror of nearly being wiped out alongside an entire metropolis the moment she deployed into this realm still had her nerves wound tight.
And more than that...
Dead of Night recalled the anonymous, lower-tier hero who had used his dying breath to plead with her to run. Looking upon the fragile mortals of this world, unfamiliar warmth stirred within her cynical chest.
A faint ember of empathy native to human hearts.
A world and civilization like this did not deserve to be cleansed by arrogant, grotesque lizards.
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!
Garou unleashed an unbroken barrage of crushing strikes.
Yet the concussive detonations in the upper atmosphere were drifting further and further into the distance. Those two absolute monsters, Mercenary Tao and Boros, seemed to have shifted their theater across the horizon.
Neither titan spared a single glance for the slaughter unfolding on the ground below.
Creak—crunch!
The agonizing sound of flesh being torn apart by brute force tore through the gale as the stellar dragon howled in mortal terror. Aurelion was desperately signaling Neltharion for reinforcement.
Through his golden slit-pupils, he looked upon the petite green-haired girl floating above the burning city. Streaks of blood stained her cheeks, framing a feral, ruthless sneer as her open hand locked onto his frame from afar.
Tornado of Terror was still alive.
"Lord Nelthar—"
Pfft!
Arterial blood sprayed into the sky. Aurelion attempted to unseal his true dragon form, only to find the crushing psychic vice grip far denser than he had calculated; even physiological shifting was suppressed.
Draconic language magic was thrown into violent discord by the psychic field. What kind of joke is this...?!
Tornado was far from peak condition. To preserve the surviving civilians, she had fragmented her defensive barrier across the entire municipal grid. Taking an internal strike from Aurelion—though intercepted in part by that pink-haired woman—had momentarily broken her focus, allowing the titanic black dragon to land a catastrophic direct hit.
Seeing the city practically wiped from the map the moment she had been knocked out of the fray, with casualties climbing past calculation...
Standing amidst the smoking craters, an unquenchable, towering fury boiled within her chest.
She burned with rage at the cruelty of these draconic abominations. She burned with rage at the pathetic frailty of the other heroes.
She burned with rage at herself for entertaining the naive fantasy that others could shoulder the defense of this city.
And above all, she burned with absolute rage at her own weakness!
Hum!
Brilliant emerald radiance blanketed the ruins of City A. Shattered high-rises and pulverized slabs of asphalt tore free from the ground, drifting into the sky. The entire municipality lost its gravitational anchor, spacetime buckling under the strain.
Driven by unprecedented wrath, Tornado finally unleashed her unvarnished, pinnacle might.
For far too long, the adversaries crossing her path had been so hopelessly frail that Tornado had never needed to deliberate over tactics or maximum output.
She needed only to raise a hand, wrap them in telekinesis, and clench her fingers; even Dragon-level Mysterious Beings were reduced to crushed meat in a fraction of a second.
That effortless supremacy had long conditioned her into a casual, detached combat demeanor.
She had practically forgotten how to fight with her complete reserves.
She had carried such unyielding arrogance in her own might that even when that colossal dreadnought breached the clouds and a dragon spanning half the city emerged, she had still thought to siphon away vast reserves of psychic energy to insulate the weak, intending to dismantle the apocalypse with whatever power remained.
Yet now, Tornado realized that on this day, she stood entirely alone.
That man had not returned, and Mercenary Tao for Fun had contributed nothing toward preventing the annihilation of City A.
"In the end... humans can only ever rely on themselves!"
BOOM!
The floating remnants of City A inverted their trajectory, plunging like a storm of falling asteroids. The terrifying display left S-Class veterans like Bang and Atomic Samurai completely stunned.
They knew the Rank 2 hero was monstrously powerful, but the threshold she commanded right now operated on an entirely separate plane—a walking calamity.
Neltharion turned his head. The desperate wails of the young stellar dragon ended in a wet, choked gurgle as draconic blood showered from the sky, accompanied by the mass of an entire city collapsing toward his coordinates.
Neltharion was already intensely irritated by Garou's continuous Black Flash counterattacks. While the strikes failed to shatter his core draconic defenses, trading blows in his humanoid-dragon hybrid form against Garou's martial adaptation was proving thoroughly aggravating.
The boy adapted at blinding speed, and every strike was specialized for dismantling humanoid targets.
Martial artists truly were a troublesome breed!
ROAR!
Reverting to his gargantuan dragon form, a single whip of Neltharion's tail blasted Garou into the distance. The falling ruins of City A slammed squarely across his chassis, the kinetic weight forcing even his colossal frame to stagger backward.
That indignity pushed his fury past the boiling point.
Time was his rarest commodity, yet these native narrative figures refused to stop impeding his path.
Sensing that the energetic wake of Boros's duel had drifted far across the horizon, he recognized that he could grant Garou no further room to adapt. The boy was becoming an authentic liability.
Neltharion unfurled his colossal black wings. When extended to their operational limit, the wings blotted out the firmament entirely, swallowing all sunlight. The pulverized ruins of City A fell into absolute, abyssal shadow.
The footprint of that shadow far eclipsed the municipal borders of a single city.
Whether it was the newly returned Tornado, or Bang, Flashy Flash, and Atomic Samurai who had been dodging stray shockwaves, or Yusuke Godai struggling to his feet to unlock an advanced form, or even Li Qingzi lingering along the far perimeter—every last one of them was caught beneath that suffocating eclipse.
A wave of existential dread seized the nervous systems of everyone present.
Scalps prickled with searing pain, spines felt set ablaze, and primal biological instinct screamed in unison: Run!
Flee with everything you have!
Put as much distance between yourself and that shadow as physically possible!
Demon energy surged uncontrollably across Li Qingzi's skin. Pushed past her limit by the overwhelming pressure, she moved to break through her boundaries, but Dead of Night lunged from the shadows, grabbing her arm.
"Are you insane?! Run! That monster is about to drop a catastrophic Authority, we have to—"
Hum!
Within the pitch-black shadow, an incandescent golden eye flared to life.
A colossal golden pupil manifested in the empty air before Neltharion, its radiant glow washing over every single living being caught in the dark.
In that instant, Li Qingzi felt her demon energy and Godspeed traits drain away to zero.
Dead of Night was violently ejected from the shadows, discovering that her cursed energy and cursed techniques were entirely offline.
Every supernatural trait was systematically stripped away.
The colossal black dragon opened its cavernous jaws, white-hot, catastrophic thermal energy pooling within its maw.
The nature of the strike was unmistakable: an absolute city-cleansing breath.
A mass ability-purge paired with an extinction-level area-of-effect execution...
"That bastard... truly is... a cowardly snake..."
Stripped of negative energy enhancements, Dead of Night's biological parameters sat far below ordinary Third Step Reincarnators. Knowing that evasion was mechanically impossible, she spat curses through parched lips.
This combination of Authorities was an unavoidable execution sequence.
Any entity lacking high-tier conceptual immunity could never hope to walk away from this strike alive.
Was this the mechanical foundation backing their plot to purge human civilization from this world...?
Makima stood motionless upon the rubble. She looked down at her hands. The foundational authority of the Control Devil had been severed; she couldn't even verify whether her contractual immortality with the Cabinet remained active.
Would she revive after this strike wiped the sector?
It no longer mattered.
Stripped of her powers, Makima tasted rare, profound serenity.
Before absolute power, her grandiose ambitions finally evaporated into dust.
If the world was reduced to ash, the root causes preventing universal happiness lost all relevance anyway.
Makima opened her arms, quietly preparing to embrace her demise.
This tier of power far exceeded any benchmark she had ever observed.
Even Tornado of Terror could not stand against it.
As for the fabled S-Class Rank 1, Makima had never seen him step onto the field, dismissing him as an institutional myth manufactured by the Hero Association to pacify the populace.
This world was beyond salvation.
Makima closed her eyes, yet the figure clad in the dark-green overcoat surfaced within her thoughts. Only now did she grasp his true anomaly.
It wasn't merely his destructive output.
In fact, since crossing paths with him, the man hadn't even displayed an astronomical display of force before her.
Yet she had abandoned Aurelion and this apocalyptic dragon to cast her lot with Mercenary Tao.
Because that man carried an absolute, unyielding detachment that looked down upon all existence.
Makima revered that brand of might, much like her obsession with the Chainsaw Devil in the depths of Hell. Both entities possessed an unshakeable sovereignty that walked their chosen path regardless of how the world churned around them.
An eternal, incorruptible existence. That foundational strength of will filled a Devil who could only dominate the weak and bow before the strong with profound envy.
Just as the cataclysmic dragon breath ignited the horizon, a concussive shockwave of apocalyptic energy detonated from far beyond the borders of City A.
Magenta and white energy exploded outwards as the continental plate sank several meters, warping the vault of heaven.
A blinding white shockwave sliced across nearly half the planetary curvature. A streak of golden light pierced the upper atmosphere, blasted clean off the crust.
Boros threw his head back, roaring into the vacuum:
"Aaargh!"
His hair withered to brittle ash, Meteoric Burst practically draining his cellular vitality dry. Yet that unprecedented metabolic tax had catalyzed the most terrifying combat output of his life.
In that final fraction of a second, he had broken past his physiological ceiling.
He had transcended the threshold of his previous luminescent state, his consciousness detached from physical mass entirely.
Boros felt the omnipotent illusion that anything he willed could be achieved.
In that singular microsecond, crossing all concepts of distance and space to manifest directly before Mercenary Tao, he had clearly caught the flicker of surprise in the human's eyes.
Then came the strike: his frame stretching across hundreds of meters within warped space, his knee driving upward with absolute, unyielding momentum.
BANG!
The atmosphere disintegrated, the continental bedrock inverted, and tsunamis erupted across oceans hundreds of miles away—the mere kinetic aftershocks of that single knee strike.
Boros sensed it with absolute certainty: Mercenary Tao had been kicked clean off the surface of the planet, transformed into cosmic dust drifting through the void.
Even with cellular regeneration, an impact of this magnitude was enough to grant the warrior an honorable death.
Boros staggered, pushing himself upright as his battered tissues began their slow, agonizing recovery. He knew this duel had shaved away the vast majority of his remaining lifespan, but...
It mattered not.
None of that held weight.
Though stumbling, his displacement velocity was blinding. Crossing tens of thousands of meters in mere strides in his humanoid form, his footwork mirrored Kaito's biomechanics under the Martial God's Ultimate Intent down to the millimeter.
Boros felt profound gratitude toward Mercenary Tao, and by extension, a lingering trace of respect toward the world that had nurtured such a warrior.
He decided to attend to one final, unnecessary matter.
Step.
Another stride, and the colossal dragon blotting out the sky entered his vision.
Step.
Crossing the threshold, Boros materialized directly behind Neltharion's cervical spine.
BOOM!
Upon the lunar surface, a concussive impact resonated without sound across the vacuum, yet the orbital trajectory of the moon shifted by an imperceptible fraction of a millimeter.
A colossal impact crater spanning nearly the depth of the celestial body opened across the regolith.
At the very bottom of the crater, torn flesh and ruptured muscle tissues were vigorously sprouting cellular buds.
Kaito Shirogane's neural awareness reconstituted long before his optical vision returned.
The physical yield of Boros's moon-kick was absurdly devastating. Pure rapture welled within Kaito's core as his mind replayed every microsecond of Boros's Meteoric Burst, dissecting the absolute execution of that final, desperate knee strike.
Suddenly, his movements froze.
Kaito turned his gaze toward the horizon of the lunar crust.
There, swirling plumes of pale, chalky mist were expanding across the regolith, a staggering energetic presence continuously cycling within the vapor.
"Wait... There's another master here?!"
~~~
Get early access to 30+ advanced chapters on Patreon!
https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn
~~~
Every 5 new reviews = 1 extra chapters
Every 150 Power Stones = 1 extra chapter