Sukuna's claw, sharp enough to punch through steel, tore forward, but the instant it touched its target, all real resistance vanished.
There was no dull rip of flesh, no burst of warm blood.
Only a string of soft, bubbling splashes.
Kaede's body, along with the long blade braced against Sukuna's knuckles, collapsed at the moment of contact like a water film losing all tension, dissolving completely into the torrential rain.
Sukuna's movement paused for the slightest instant. The second pair of eyes beneath his own spun rapidly, his sharp gaze sweeping across the dense rain all around him.
All that remained in his palm was the icy feel of rainwater.
"So he liquefied his body completely and melted into the environment of the domain..."
A feverish grin spread across Sukuna's face. His battle instincts flared to their peak in an instant.
At the same time, several hundred yards away, on the outer edge of the juvenile detention center grounds:
Megumi hit the muddy grass hard, rolling several times under the force before finally stopping.
He coughed violently, spitting out a mouthful of blood mixed with rainwater, then raised his head in a dazed state.
One second earlier he had been at the center of the ruins, staring straight into the pressure of death. The next, the entire landscape around him had changed.
And it was not just him. Not far away, several unconscious civilians were sprawled across the ground in disarray, the survivors who had been trapped inside the detention center.
Megumi wiped mud and rain from his face and forced his blood-loss-fogged mind to calm down.
He turned toward the center of the ruins, now completely swallowed by heavy storm clouds and pouring rain.
"That was... spatial displacement?"
Megumi clenched his teeth and forced himself up onto one knee with both hands braced against the ground.
"No. That's not it. There was no sign of a spatial technique activating.
It's the rain... Within that unknown domain, anything marked by the rain can have its position freely manipulated by the caster."
He understood the tactical purpose at once.
Kaede's sudden appearance had been meant to strip away all burdens from the battlefield so he could fight without restraint.
Megumi fixed his gaze on the center of the storm and dragged his injured body toward the unconscious civilians.
"I have to get these people out beyond the edge of the domain as fast as possible. I can't let him split his focus..."
At the center of the ruins, the killing intent had already arrived.
Only one second after Sukuna grasped the nature of Kaede's liquefaction, the rain behind him twisted violently.
The dense drops gathered and reformed in midair, completely ignoring physics.
"I need to do enough damage to force him to use reverse cursed technique and heal Yuji... or at least keep him occupied!"
The hem of a deep blue uniform snapped through the wind and rain as Kaede's figure formed without warning behind Sukuna.
The blade of Mikazuki Munechika tore through the downpour with a shrill scream of wind, slashing straight for the back of Sukuna's unguarded neck.
But Sukuna, once the king who ruled over all curses, had battle instincts far beyond human understanding.
He did not even turn around. Instead, he folded his upper body sharply to the right at an inhuman angle, bending backward through the joints.
The decapitating strike that should have killed him instead came down hard across his left shoulder blade.
Shk!
The blade cut through Sukuna's tough flesh, and bright red blood burst out instantly.
A crescent-shaped wound, deep enough to expose bone, formed at once on his shoulder, and the edges immediately began curling outward and multiplying, trying to consume more flesh.
"Interesting cursed tool!"
Sukuna laughed wildly.
He paid no attention to the bizarre wound worsening across his shoulder. In an instant, an enormous surge of cursed energy poured into it like a tidal wave, brutally suppressing the spread of the crescent wound by force alone.
Using the instantary pause created by the blade biting into bone and flesh, Sukuna's right leg coiled like a spring compressed to the limit, then snapped backward in a vicious scorpion-tail kick straight into Kaede's abdomen with a screaming sonic crack.
And that was not all.
At the same moment he kicked, Sukuna brought together the index and middle fingers of his right hand, hanging at his side, and casually flicked them.
Dismantle.
Several invisible slashes, impossible for the eye to follow, mixed with the dense rain and came at Kaede from both sides at cruel angles, cutting for his throat and the backs of his knees at the same time.
The entire combination came without the slightest pause, a perfect counterattack executed at the exact moment he was struck.
Midair, the invisible slashes of Dismantle struck Kaede's body.
But instead of the instant dismemberment one would expect, a tangible film of cursed energy covered the boy's body. It was Domain Amplification.
The cutting force of Dismantle was forcibly neutralized and weakened by the amplification, only managing to split his flesh.
Bright blood had only just begun to spill before the torrential rain washed it clean again, and the torn wounds started visibly healing under the nourishment of the water.
"During amplification, I can't use my own technique to liquefy. The domain's effect only works because I've deposited my technique into the domain itself.
Now that Sukuna is outside the technique-burnout effect, the only reason I can hold out this much is because of the domain's properties... which means I absolutely cannot let him open his own domain against mine."
Kaede did not stop for even an instant. Protected by amplification, he clung to Sukuna's close range like glue that could not be shaken loose, preventing him from creating distance.
The second pair of Sukuna's eyes narrowed slightly, instantly seeing through the basic logic of the tactic.
"So you're using amplification to neutralize my technique and deliberately maintaining zero-range entanglement... You're trying to deny me the space to form hand signs and stop me from opening my domain?"
A wild, cold grin spread across Sukuna's face. He shattered the pooled water underfoot with one vicious stomp and used the recoil to spring backward.
The instant he opened distance, his fingers flicked three times through the rain.
Three Dismantles, far sharper than the previous ones, tore through the downpour in a triangular pattern.
But at the very instant those three slashes were about to hit, the guaranteed-hit rule of Kaede's domain forcibly activated.
The very concept of space seemed to be erased.
Sukuna, who had already retreated over a dozen yards away and had not felt the slightest physical sensation of being dragged, was abruptly yanked back to the original point and thrown once more right in front of the boy.
Mikazuki Munechika's blade flashed with freezing light and thrust straight for Sukuna's heart.
Faced with this unavoidable, guaranteed killing strike, the King of Curses did not even blink.
He thrust out his left hand and, without dodging, grabbed the incoming blade with his bare palm.
A harsh metallic screech rang out. Wild cursed energy erupted from Sukuna's palm as his five fingers clenched shut.
With a sharp crack, the imitation Mikazuki snapped cleanly in two.
The instant Kaede lost his weapon, Sukuna's right leg was already swinging like a battle axe. With a shrill rush of air, it smashed into the side of the boy's ribs.
With a sickening sound of cracking bone, Kaede's body flew like a kite with its string cut, slamming hard into the collapsed concrete rubble behind him and blasting up mud, water, and dust.
The rain poured over him without stopping, trying to repair his damaged body.
The moment he braced against the ground to rise, Sukuna's cold voice was already there.
"Too slow."
Two more Dismantles struck both of Kaede's shoulders precisely, pinning him back down.
Sukuna's figure appeared over him like a specter. His broad hand clamped onto the boy's head and smashed him into the flooded crater with devastating force.
The ground exploded into cracks, spiderweb fractures spreading outward.
And yet the sensation beneath Sukuna's hand made his brow twitch.
There was no warm flesh. No real feel of bones breaking.
The "boy" pinned at the bottom of the crater turned to cold water in an instant. Not far away, the broken blade dissolved into the rain as well.
"...A water clone? And that blade was fake too?"
Sukuna's response was flawless. The instant he realized he had been deceived, he was already beginning to turn and defend.
But the real killing blow had already arrived.
Kaede appeared silently directly behind Sukuna. In his hand was the true specially made cursed tool, and the blade drove forward without mercy, piercing straight through Sukuna's abdomen from behind.
The blood-red tip emerged from Sukuna's chest, and the flesh around the wound immediately began collapsing into a crescent shape under the cursed tool's effect.
The fatal backstab had been completed. By all rights, the scales of battle should have tilted toward victory.
But Sukuna only lowered his eyes to the blade protruding through his stomach.
He did not use reverse cursed technique to heal the otherwise fatal wound, nor did his expression change in the slightest. In those eyes filled with malice, there was only pure madness.
"A nice trick... but did you really think this would kill me?"
Sukuna completely ignored the sword lodged through him. Ignoring the tearing pain of the wound, he twisted his upper body at an impossible angle and caught Kaede by the chest.
Cleave.
A lethal attack whose power automatically adjusts itself according to the gap in cursed energy and the target's physical toughness.
A burst of glaring blood blossomed in the rain. Kaede's chest was torn wide open by the point-blank slash, a gaping wound almost splitting him apart to the bone.
"It didn't liquefy in time. Why...?"
Kaede's thoughts raced, and then the answer struck him.
"Every technique has a carrying limit, and Cleave automatically scales itself into a killing blow based on the difference in cursed energy.
Even if this attack can't actually kill me, then in sharpness and lethality it's already adjusted itself to a level my liquefaction response can't keep up with!"
He collapsed backward helplessly into the standing water.
Even under the continuous washing and healing of the rain, that horrific wound could only reassemble itself at an agonizingly slow pace.
Sukuna casually pulled the blade out of his abdomen and tossed it aside, blood spraying freely.
Then he turned and looked down on Kaede lying in the bloodied water, both hands slowly rising as he began to form the death-bearing sign of Malevolent Shrine.
"For an insect, you struggled well enough. Now, disappear in ashes."
Just as the fingers of the hand sign touched, Sukuna's voice cut off.
In astonishment, he realized that the cold rainwater soaking his skin and clothing had become like countless unbreakable steel cables, locking down his joints, muscles, even each individual finger.
That strange restraint, imposed from the outside inward, forcibly interrupted the formation of his sign.
And in that brief instant, not even a full second long, Kaede forced his battered body up from the bloodied ground, kicked off hard, and drove forward.
A heavy straight punch, wrapped in water and the last of his remaining cursed energy, slammed into Sukuna's jaw.
Bam!
The impact lifted the unguarded King of Curses completely off the ground and sent him flying back over a dozen yards, smashing through a load-bearing pillar before finally stopping.
The rain kept falling.
Kaede stood where he was, the mortal wound in his chest still healing slowly. His breathing was violent and uneven, and the abundant glow of cursed energy that had once surrounded him was now visibly dimming.