The ground continued to sink as if driven by a colossal tamping machine. The exposed seabed, once soft and silty, was being compacted into a solid mass. Little Boy paid no special attention to the unconscious Satoru Gojo; after obliterating the Blue overhead, the curse simply began venting its cursed energy indiscriminately into the surrounding space.
Even so, Gojo felt like he was on the brink of death.
The moment the cursed energy exploded above, he had been crushed into the mud. The sheer agony jolted his consciousness awake, followed immediately by a crushing pressure from all sides, relentlessly grinding against his body.
"I can't keep this up... I have to use the Reverse Cursed Technique to heal the radiation damage, use cursed energy to reinforce my body so I'm not flattened... and I still have to fix my Technique Burnout."
"Can I really do this?" Gojo's mind raced as he redistributed his cursed energy to focus on self-repair.
Managing three distinct, high-level operations simultaneously was like drawing a circle with his left hand, a square with his right, and a five-pointed star with his left foot. The internal contradiction flashed through his brain, yet the primal instinct for survival wouldn't let him stop. He couldn't stop.
Gojo's breathing slowed.
February 26, 2018. Afternoon. 17:35.
A battle that would decide the fate of humanity seemed to have reached its conclusion.
Only thirteen minutes had passed since Little Boy regained consciousness. Yet, not a single sorcerer observing the scene could get close to the rampaging curse. When Gojo was crushed into the seabed, many sorcerers had already begun an orderly—or rather, frantic—retreat. It wasn't that they didn't want to stop it; it was that they knew they couldn't.
After the footage of two Grade 1 sorcerers being pulverized by the tide of cursed energy was broadcast via Mei Mei's crows, the gap in power became terrifyingly clear.
As the saying goes, when the sky falls, the tall men will hold it up. But for a sorcerer to die silently without even catching the enemy's eye... that was a death no one could stomach.
Little Boy continued to destroy everything in its path with that "Infinite" power. Looking out from its position, the seawater had vanished, replaced by towering waves of debris and powdered matter that surged forward tirelessly. It was a portrait of the apocalypse: the earth shook, mountains crumbled, and a storm of destruction swept through all existence.
Nagasaki... the entire city of Nagasaki was gone. Japan's territory had effectively shrunk by four thousand square kilometers. Its residents had met a fate with a grim sense of "poetic justice"—exterminated by the same "Little Boy" just as their ancestors had been.
Governments worldwide had entered a state of emergency. Satellite feeds showed a tiny, swirling white vortex on the Japanese archipelago that was rapidly expanding—a sight more terrifying than a traditional nuclear strike.
Suddenly, an incredible sight occurred.
Little Boy, hovering over the trench that used to be the sea, gave a sudden convulsion. Its body spun three hundred and sixty degrees through the air. With that motion, the apocalyptic storm temporarily ceased its expansion.
"What's happening?"
"Did he overexert himself?"
"Is his power not actually 'Infinite'?"
A few sorcerers who hadn't fled yet were still in the monitoring room with Mei Mei. Their thoughts were largely the same: if no one could stop that thing, the world was ending anyway. There was nowhere to run, so they might as well stay. If the situation was somehow resolved, they'd have witnessed history and would technically be a "cut above" the cowards who ran—the ultimate "don't care if I die" attitude.
Though they had little hope, they witnessed something truly bizarre.
Less than two seconds later, Little Boy was knocked back several meters, its head snapping violently to the right.
Though Mei Mei's crows were far above, the sorcerers watching the feed felt it instinctively: it looked like something had just punched the curse in the face.
For the next two minutes, Little Boy became a pinball in a box, flying erratically up and down within a localized area. It was clearly being driven by an external force. The expanding storm of cursed energy began to contract, eventually vanishing entirely.
The world-ending crisis stopped just like that. Little Boy darted through the sky like it was having a seizure.
Every single observer, including Lord Tengen, was baffled. "Miss Mei Mei, please zoom in."
Mei Mei complied. The concentration of cursed energy had dropped enough to give her crows a safe path to approach.
"I see. Satoru Gojo is attacking him, but he's moving too fast for the crows' eyes to track," Naobito Zen'in stated from a corner, clutching his sake gourd.
He had just finished a phone call with the Zen'in clan to settle some final affairs. Now, looking like a man who had put down a heavy burden, he offered his assessment. As a user of Projection Sorcery, his dynamic vision far surpassed that of an ordinary sorcerer. He understood that vision varied wildly even among the elite; some could see things at high speeds, while others saw only a blur.
He concluded that Mei Mei's technique had a limitation—the crows simply couldn't transmit frames fast enough to capture the movement.
In truth, he was right. As for why he didn't guess it was some other sorcerer, it was because this was a level of power only Satoru Gojo had ever demonstrated.
"Honestly, I still prefer the Limitless. Being without it feels terrible."
"Can a guy like you even block a teleportation-speed punch?" Gojo's voice drifted into Little Boy's ears.
Even before the voice arrived, a titanic force slammed into the curse's chest, limbs, and skull. Its body exploded and healed in a continuous loop.
After being hammered back and forth nearly a hundred times, Little Boy finally managed to use its contracted cursed energy to stabilize its form. It slammed its hands together, and a blue-black shockwave flared out. The resulting wind pressure blew its hair into a disheveled mess.
In less than a second, the tall, white-haired figure appeared in front of Little Boy. He was in a punching stance, but his movement came to a halt just inches from the curse.
"Do you really think physical strength can rival my 'Infinity'?" Little Boy snarled, seemingly forgetting the nature of the man before him. It was becoming increasingly deranged. "Why won't you die?! You—all of you—should just die!"
The ground in the trench exploded as a pillar of cursed energy shot into the heavens, carrying Gojo upward as if to launch him into outer space.
"Oh no..." Mei Mei gasped. Her crow happened to be directly above them and was instantly swallowed by the energy. The feed in the monitoring room cut to black.
The final image on the screen was of Gojo lying flat atop the pillar of energy, looking oddly relaxed despite his ragged appearance. His shirt was gone, his left arm was twisted at a grotesque angle, and his body was covered in sores and weeping fluid—the mutations brought on by the radiation.
"Who do you think I am?"
An invisible field blocked everything, including the attack beneath him. As Gojo stood up, the wounds and horrific pustules vanished. With a flick of his wrist, his left arm snapped back into place, fully healed.
"Using my fists to beat the hell out of this guy definitely feels better," Gojo muttered, leaping downward. "What happens to the world isn't my concern; I've already done my best."
"Now, let me show you what true Infinity looks like."
As the words fell, Gojo flickered and reappeared in front of Little Boy. He didn't give the curse a chance to speak, nor did he expand his domain. He simply flicked his hand, and a Red—far more powerful than any he had fired before—blasted outward, pulverizing the enemy's form.
"It's usele—" Little Boy began to gloat as it respawned, but before it could finish, it was deleted by another Red.
"You did well. A momentary slip-up on my part, and you managed to make me look quite pathetic."
"How... are you... doing this?!" Gojo punched it again, then immediately destroyed its body once more.
"Wondering how I survived that state? Simple. Unlike you curses, humans don't just need cursed energy to fix their bodies. I simply dropped all other operations and focused entirely on using RCT to heal my Burnout."
"Fixing the burnout takes time. By the time I finished, my body was already broken into pieces... however," Gojo decided he'd vented enough. As Little Boy respawned again, Gojo grabbed the curse by the shoulders and activated Limitless.
Little Boy felt the world spin. In an instant, the scenery was brand new.
The curse was surprised that Gojo hadn't killed it immediately. It looked up and saw a jet-black Curtain spanning the horizon. It could feel it—the cursed energy identical to its own was right here.
"Do you know what you're doing?"
"I know exactly what I'm doing." Gojo raised his hand, condensing cursed energy and aiming a powerful strike at the Curtain.
"Cursed Technique Reversal: Red."
"Kumo's Curtain is incredibly strong," Gojo thought. "But when it's focused entirely on internal stability, it's actually weaker against external attacks than a normal one."
The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon. The afterglow of the sunset reflected off his face, his azure Six Eyes shimmering with golden light.
In the next moment, that light flickered and became blindingly intense.
The surface of the Curtain shattered like a mirror.
An oppressive force rushed out. A beam of cursed energy, as brilliant as a star, was still pouring from the Guanyin's mouth into its palms. The mere shockwaves from the overflow had carved the surrounding ground into a bottomless crater.
Through the vast vision of the Six Eyes, Gojo could see the Fat Man's body flickering in and out of existence like a glitch in the air. Just the scattered aura from the scene gave Gojo a sense of lethal threat.
"Why'd you destroy the Curtain?"
Hasegumo was currently holding a hand seal with his fingers interlocked. His voice sounded strained, like he was trying to push through a bout of severe constipation.
For some reason, hearing that made Gojo want to laugh.
"About that... how about you take a break first?"
"Phew~" Hasegumo immediately withdrew his hands. He had been waiting for that sentence for nearly two hours. Outputting cursed energy without pause was an immense burden, especially at the intensity of Zero Hand, where every second of output was enough to kill a Special Grade of Jogo's level.
He had felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. He saw the enemy's resurrection speed slowing down and wanted to persevere, but more importantly, the continuous killing was effectively suppressing the curse's energy from spreading.
"Dammit, who's interrupting... Boy, are you okay?" The moment Hasegumo stopped, the Fat Man was finally able to move. Seeing the Little Boy, it immediately scurried over to its companion.
"For now... I am fine."
Gojo and Hasegumo didn't stop them; they needed to exchange intel.
"You still haven't answered me, Satoru. You understand the consequences of breaking the Curtain, don't you?" Hasegumo looked at him sternly.
"Relax, relax. I'll take responsibility for that. Nagasaki's already gone anyway..." Gojo dismissed the concern casually, dropping a horrific fact with a nonchalant shrug. He patted Hasegumo on the shoulder and changed the subject. "You probably noticed they can respawn infinitely. The only way to kill them for real is to exorcise them both at the exact same time."
"That's a bit of a leap, Satoru," Hasegumo said, pausing before turning serious. "When I was using Zero Hand, that guy's respawn speed was clearly slowing down. I don't believe they are truly 'Infinite.' There has to be a limit. If you hadn't broken the barrier, I might have succeeded in a bit."
Gojo was about to reply when he heard the Fat Man's mocking laughter. "Idiot! I was just baiting you! I intentionally slowed down my speed to make you think your little trick was working!"
"I thought it was some powerful move, but in the end..." The Fat Man slapped his belly, the thick fat making a thump-thump sound. "I'm completely unharmed!"
Gojo's face turned as red as a tomato as he fought back laughter. He looked at Hasegumo, threw his hands up, and said nothing, his eyes doing all the talking.
"..." Hasegumo felt a sudden surge of embarrassment. He cracked his neck, wondering why the weather had suddenly become so hot. "Is that so? You really are a crafty fat bastard..."
Before the words had even settled, Little Boy and Fat Man locked eyes and moved simultaneously.
The two curses—one massive, one small—pointed their arms outward and took small, rhythmic steps toward each other. Then, their upper bodies twisted toward the center, their arms arching over their heads until their fingertips met.
"No way..." Both Gojo and Hasegumo's brains short-circuited. The movements were all too familiar.
"This... is this actually...?"
In a burst of blinding white light, the silhouettes of the Boy and the Fat Man began to blur. Their voices merged into a single, ethereal echo.
"FUSION!"