I forced my breathing to stay steady.
This domain wasn't meant to kill outright. It was meant to drain an opponent until they had nothing left.
Which meant I still had time.
After my first move correct move, I made a mistake.
After the first incorrect move, I felt it clearly.
A portion of my cursed energy was ripped away without any physical sensation at all. No impact. No strike. Just an enforced subtraction.
'So Falling Blossom Emotion really doesn't work here.'
I clicked my tongue internally.
That technique was designed to counter aggressive or basic sure-hit attacks—slashes, blasts, physical harm. Something like this, a rule-based extraction of energy, wasn't an attack in the conventional sense.
And Falling Blossom Emotion had nothing to clash against.
Annoying.
I looked down at the grid beneath my feet.
A full Rubik's Cube spread flat like a colorful battlefield.
In theory, solving a cube wasn't hard. I had learned how to solve them in my previous life.
But this wasn't a normal cube.
It was a two-dimensional projection of one.
The depth was gone. Relationships between faces were distorted. Moves that would be intuitive on a real cube felt strangely disorienting here. Not just that, but the thirty-second timer on each of my moves was making it hard to focus.
Even recognizing which rotations corresponded to which sections took effort.
This wasn't a test of intelligence—it was a test of spatial perception under pressure.
Exactly the kind of unfair game a bitter sorcerer would create.
Above me, the timer continued its silent countdown.
Twenty-five seconds.
I didn't move.
No reason to rush.
The rules demanded a move every thirty seconds. That meant I could wait until the final moment every time and stall as long as possible.
Tomogui was on his way.
All I had to do was buy time.
Fifteen seconds.
Kuroda watched from his podium, arms folded, clearly enjoying himself.
"Go on," he sneered. "Show me how a genius solves problems."
I ignored him.
Instead, my thoughts drifted somewhere else entirely.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A brief memory surfaced, from the actual series of JJK.
Gojo Satoru standing there teaching a young Yuji Itadori about jujutsu.
"... cursed techniques are fundamentally etched into your body from the day you are born" he had said. "So the power of a jujutsu sorcerer is roughly 80% innate talent"
I didn't reject the idea.
Up until now, my priorities had been simple.
Learn the basics.
Build a foundation.
Reinforcement, efficiency, physical conditioning, barrier theory—those were universal skills. No matter what situation I found myself in, they would always be useful.
So that's what I'd focused on.
Meanwhile, my cursed technique had been unique, it wasn't something the rest of the clan had so researching it would be up to me. It would take time, and didn't seem as direct a method to power.
At the time, that made sense.
I was inexperienced.
Still figuring out how cursed energy even worked.
But that excuse didn't really apply anymore.
Somewhere along the way, my fundamentals had become solid, continuing to study these things wasn't benefiting me, it was taking time from something more.
I was still training like a beginner.
I thought back over the last few months.
How many hours had I spent drilling footwork?
How many days had I spent practicing reinforcement?
How often had I defaulted to generic training simply because it was familiar?
Compared to that, how much time had I actually dedicated to experimenting with Chiral Manipulation?
The answer was embarrassingly small.
I actually underestimated my cursed technique, and didn't bother training it.
Training in stances/fighting skills while useful, wouldn't benefit me as much as it used to.
My cursed technique would.
And unlike before, I finally had both the time and the breathing room to actually study it.
No constant survival training.
No frantic race just to keep up.
Just a rare opportunity to sit down and ask:
What could Chiral Manipulation really do if I treated it like my main discipline instead of a backup option?
I've been neglecting the biggest part of myself, my cursed technique.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I exhaled. My mindset getting back into the fight itself
If I couldn't beat the puzzle directly—
Then I would beat the sure-hit itself.
I gathered cursed energy into my eyes.
Enhanced perception.
The world sharpened.
I could see it.
The way cursed energy formed when a punishment was approaching, and it's unique pattern.
'That must be it, the sure hit effect forms from those threads of cursed energy'
Five seconds.
Four.
Three.
At the very last moment, I stepped onto a tile.
Wrong move.
The punishment triggered instantly.
This time it was on purpose though, I focused on reinforcing my eyes.
There.
The way the sure hit effect was formed and configuration of cursed energy.
And most importantly.
It had handedness.
Which meant it could be mirrored and neutralized.
I adjusted Falling Blossom Emotion.
Normally, Falling Blossom Emotion would react automatically to incoming attacks, and strike back with cursed energy.
The shroud of cursed energy would fail to block sure-hit effects of 'complicated' designs.
But instead of letting it counterattack for naught...
I used it as a method to channel my cursed technique.
And the instant the sure hit would hit me instead of using that cursed energy to try and fail to counter the sure hit...
I manipulated the cursed energy shrouding me so that it activated my cursed technique Chiral Manipulation.
I created a mirror of the sure-hit-effect. Then allowed that mirror to counter attack the original sure-hit-effect.
And when two mirrors of opposite handedness interact.
They neutralize each other.
The punishment unraveled before it could touch me.
Kuroda's confident expression faltered.
"What…?"
I let out a slow breath.
So it worked.
'Wow, to think I could complete something like this so smoothly, I truly am talented at this'
The timer reset.
Thirty seconds.
I remained perfectly still.
No need to rush.
Kuroda leaned forward on his podium, disbelief creeping into his voice.
"That's impossible. A domain's sure-hit is guaranteed."
"Guaranteed doesn't mean unstoppable," I replied mockingly, the smug bastards confidence from opening his domain was gone.
Twenty seconds.
"I could explain the method behind my attacks but I don't actually care much to do so, especially when you wouldn't be able to understand"
Fifteen.
"Just know that from now on, your sure hit effect will not ever get me. I will just stall for a while, eventually someone will notice I am missing and they will discover this domain"
Ten.
"Once they discover it and shatter it from the outside they will find you, in other words"
"This is my perfect victory," I said, unable to stop the reference from slipping out. "That's right, I win!"
Five.
I stepped at the final moment again.
Another deliberate wrong move.
The domain's sure-hit activated.
I mirrored it and cancelled it cleanly.
Kuroda grit his teeth.
"You… you bastard, what's your cursed technique, Falling blossom shouldn't be able to defend against my sure-hit-effect"
"Are you sure you want me to reveal my cursed technique, the revealing one's hand vow is pretty dangerous"
I adjusted my posture, while responding to him. I wouldn't reveal my cursed technique in this situation, ignoring whether Tomogui could come in time he would run out of cursed energy just by maintaining this domain. The benefits from revealing my hand were worthless in this situation.
"I won't reveal my hand though, you're way to pathetic for me to even consider it"
Another timer began.
Thirty seconds.
"Are you going to keep your domain up? You know its useless, all you're doing is wasting cursed energy to keep the domain active"
Kuroda stared down at me from his podium, sweat forming at his temples.
"You're bluffing," he muttered. "You have to be bluffing. There's no way a kid like you can just ignore a domain's sure hit"
I shrugged.
"Believe whatever you want. Either way, you're finished."
The timer counted down again.
And that was when I felt it.
A presence.
Not Kuroda's.
Not Tomogui's.
Something else entirely.
Heavy.
My eyes snapped toward the far edge of the domain.
A pair of arms went through the domain's barrier, completely ignoring it..
Slow. Unhurried. Completely unconcerned.
From the empty space beyond the grid, a silhouette emerged—walking forward as if the barrier itself didn't exist.
Kuroda froze.
"What… what the hell?"
I stared in disbelief.
Because standing there now, inside a closed Domain Expansion that should have been impossible to enter—
It was a figure of overwhelming intensity.
And he hadn't broken the domain.
He had simply stepped inside.
[Author Note: Who y'all think it is]
[Also what do you think I should call this new anti-domain technique the protagonist created. I was thinking Chiral Blossom Emotions]
The idea behind it is that instead of letting cursed energy that shrouds you during Falling Blossom to counter attack, it used to fuel the cursed technique Chiral Manipulation, which then creates a mirror, that neutralizes the sure hit.
This technique will defend against any domain sure hit that doesn't apply instantaneously after the domain is open (ie. Unlimited Void). The reason it doesn't defend against Unlimited Void is because the protagonist wouldn't have time to mirror the sure hit of unlimited void since it would land instantly.
Next chapter Friday