Touma saw the excitement lighting up Megumi's face, and the edge of his expression softened.
He kept going.
Cursed Energy rippled over his fingertips. The dark pool at his feet stirred again, circles spreading across it like somebody had dropped stones into black water.
He muttered something under his breath, bent down, and shoved both hands into the shadow.
When he straightened, there was a wriggling ball of white fluff in his palms.
It was a fragment of Rabbit Escape.
The little rabbit settled against his hands without a fuss, warm and soft and absurdly harmless-looking. Touma held it out for Megumi to see, voice gentle.
"The power in this shadow isn't just the Divine Dogs. Look. This one's called Rabbit Escape."
The rabbit rubbed its face against Touma's palm. Its eyes were a clear, jewel-bright red.
Whatever scraps of composure Megumi usually forced onto himself, all that cool, too-grown-up stiffness, vanished on the spot.
What was left was what he should have looked like all along.
A kid.
He reached out with one careful finger and touched one of the rabbit's long ears. The moment he felt how soft it was, his head jerked up. His green eyes were shining.
"Can... can I learn this one too?"
The look on his face was so eager it could've melted stone.
Touma smiled and gave him the surest answer he could.
"Of course. If you're willing to learn, all of this will be yours one day. But..."
His tone turned more serious.
"Not today. Forcing out Cursed Energy for your first Shikigami at your age puts a huge strain on your body and mind. You've already hit your limit."
He hadn't even finished speaking when Megumi made a small, choked sound.
"Ngh..."
The color drained from the boy's face so fast it was almost scary.
At the same time, the two little Divine Dogs that had been rubbing against his legs and helping keep him upright started to flicker. Their forms stuttered like bad TV static.
Then they broke apart.
Their bodies turned into thick black Cursed Energy, dripping to the ground in heavy drops before sinking right back into the shadow below.
The backlash hit Megumi all at once.
His knees gave out. His body pitched forward.
He never made it to the pavement.
The two full-grown Divine Dogs behind Touma moved first. They lunged in the instant the smaller pair collapsed, pressing in from both sides and catching Megumi between them before he could fall. The boy sagged against their broad bodies, breathing hard.
Touma watched him struggle for air, thoughtful for a second.
In this timeline, he'd interfered early. More than a year earlier than in that other, desperate simulation cycle.
That changed things.
It gave him room to move.
He could start laying the groundwork now, and he'd already decided he was going to push Megumi's training schedule forward hard.
He understood what kind of kid Megumi was.
On the surface, the boy acted cold. Like he wanted the whole world kept at arm's length.
But under that?
Too soft. Way too soft.
The kind of child who'd carry guilt for years if a Shikigami died for good and could never be summoned again. The kind who'd be more shaken by the death of an animal than by the death of some stranger he'd never met.
An exposed nerve pretending to be stone.
Even knowing that, Touma had no intention of repeating what he'd done in the simulation, shielding Megumi under his own protection and personally taking on the Zenin Clan to prove the worth of the Ten Shadows Technique.
No.
This time he would shape the boy himself.
He would make Megumi strong enough to stand in front of that rotten family on his own two feet and crush every last doubt they had with sheer mastery of the Ten Shadows Technique.
To anybody else, that would've sounded insane.
How was a kid this young supposed to force the whole Zenin Clan to bow their heads, especially after what had happened with Naoya Zenin in the previous cycle?
But Touma had already lived through that hell.
He had fought there. Bled there. Died there.
He knew exactly how ugly that clan could get, exactly how far their malice reached, and he'd already worked all of it into his calculations.
Megumi defeating them head-on, with absolute combat superiority, using the very inheritance the Zenin Clan coveted most, was one of the pillars of his long-term plan.
And if Megumi's inherited technique had been something else, something like Projection Sorcery that leaned hard on physical reflexes and raw bodily conditioning, Touma never would've gambled like this.
But the Ten Shadows Technique was different.
Two things made this plan possible.
The first was the cruel, iron rule governing Cursed Energy.
In this world, unless you were some bizarre exception like Touma with his system-granted cheats, or one of the rare monsters whose techniques triggered abnormal mutations, a sorcerer's maximum Cursed Energy was set at birth.
That was it.
Fixed.
Written into the body from the start and not changing again.
What an ordinary sorcerer could improve was control, precision and efficiency. Getting better at moving their own energy, understanding their technique more deeply, and shaving down the cost every time they used it.
The second was what made the Ten Shadows Technique terrifying.
The Shikigami summoned from the shadows weren't like the dead-eyed puppets other Shikigami users controlled.
They could think.
They had instincts.
They fought like living creatures, not disposable tools.
And because Megumi carried the original body-engraved Innate Technique, he wouldn't suffer from the flaw Touma dealt with whenever he used Phantom Night Parade. He wouldn't lose control of his Shikigami just because he had to keep switching techniques in the middle of battle.
That changed everything.
If Touma ran enough precise tactical drills beforehand, he could hammer responses to every Zenin technique, Projection Sorcery included, straight into Megumi's instincts and into the combat habits of his Shikigami.
Like programming it into bone.
With the right framework, with the Shikigami coordinating on their own and making independent decisions in real time, Megumi had every theoretical condition needed to beat people he had no business beating.
And Touma wasn't guessing.
He had tested the Ten Shadows Technique in the simulation with his own blood and his own life.
He knew what it could become.
He knew how monstrous it really was.
He pulled himself out of that nest of plans and let his expression ease.