A faint curve touched Kaede's lips in midair.
Just before he crashed into the shield of screaming faces, his body dissolved without warning into a sheet of clear water, vanishing completely into the torrential downpour.
At the bottom of the mud-filled crater, Mahito's pupils shrank.
His legs, coiled tight for a backward launch, suddenly lost their target, but his animal instinct was already screaming at him.
"Slash—!"
On Mahito's right, Kaede's figure abruptly took shape out of converging water.
The sinister Mikazuki Munechika moved without a pause, driving cleanly into Mahito's side.
The crimson eye set into the hilt spun wildly as foul black blood seeped down the blade and into Mahito's body.
A corrosive force, thick with the stink of medicine gone bad, burrowed into his soul like rot that clung to the bone.
"Kh—!"
Mahito coughed up a mouthful of dark red blood, mixed with mud and rain.
He did not try to tank it. The muscles around the wound stretched and warped at once, his flesh bending like rubber.
Using that grotesque distortion, he unleashed the spring-loaded power in his legs and shot backward like an arrow, carving two deep trenches through the mud before skidding to a stop over thirty feet away.
"Looks like your technique doesn't work so well inside my domain. You're coughing up blood now."
Kaede stood calmly in the rain, resting the blood-dripping blade over one shoulder.
"Even if you can still force it to run at full output, you have to keep burning cursed energy just to fight off that wound. So? How's the dessert?"
Mahito crouched in the distance, breathing hard. Rain struck his pale skin, cold and relentless, carrying a constant neutralizing pressure.
He looked down at the wound in his side. It had not sealed the way it normally would. The edges had taken on that warped crescent shape, and the flesh around it was still decaying outward.
There was something wrong with that sword. He had to keep pouring cursed energy into the wound just to stop it from spreading.
And on top of that, there was this endless rain.
Mahito finally understood.
Within this range, the rain was steadily degrading the efficiency of his cursed energy. Compared to the crude imitation Kaede had used before, this technique now carried the character of a real domain. It was turning the entire field into a giant drain.
"What a miserable, infuriating little treat."
Mahito wiped the blood from his mouth, his mind racing. If he stayed defensive, the blade's lingering corrosion and the rain itself would bleed him dry.
He had to shatter the rules of this domain, or force Kaede into a straight clash where liquid evasion would no longer save him.
In that instant of calculation, Kaede seemed to come to a decision.
He raised his free left hand and pointed straight at the crouching curse.
"Whsssh—!"
A blade of rainwater, compressed under enormous pressure, screamed through the air like a rifle round.
Mahito's mismatched eyes flew open. It was too fast, and the density of cursed energy packed into it was absurd.
He crossed both arms in front of his chest at once, compacting and calcifying the bones in them in the same motion.
"Boom!"
The water blade smashed into his guard with a thunderous impact.
The force shoved Mahito backward several more yards. Deep cuts split the surface of both forearms, exposing flashes of white bone beneath.
He could not keep giving ground. This bastard's long-range attacks were just as lethal. If he stayed reactive, he would be worn down and killed.
"If your rain can neutralize my technique, then all I have to do is create a kind of evil your rain can't wash away!"
Driving through the aftershock of the blast, Mahito slammed his foot down and launched forward. He abandoned any attempt to fully heal the wound in his side and poured all his cursed energy into his legs and left arm instead.
A huge mouth split open in his left palm, greedily devouring the mud, rainwater, and black blood around him. A mass of violent, chaotic cursed energy began compressing inside him at terrifying speed.
Then Mahito charged. He plunged straight into the downpour with the reckless fury of someone ready to bet everything, intent on detonating that compressed soul-force the instant he got close enough, blasting the surrounding water apart.
The muddy field beneath them roared like a floodplain. Rain hammered down in sheets.
Kaede had barely steadied himself, his blade lifting for the killing cut.
Then the situation changed.
Mahito stopped dead in his tracks. On that stitched face appeared a look poised somewhere between delirium and revelation.
He opened his mouth wide, and two pale hands suddenly emerged from the depths of his throat, folding together in a complex, grotesque sign.
The moment the seal formed, a vast mass of pitch-black cursed energy erupted outward from Mahito's body.
"Domain Expansion... Self-Embodiment of Perfection."
His voice rang out like something echoing from the bottom of a grave.
"Damn it!"
Kaede felt the danger immediately.
His own domain was a domain, yes, but not yet a fully finished one.
That meant it could neutralize techniques, but it could not cancel the sure-hit effect attached to another domain. In a true domain clash, he would need a Simple Domain to offset that sure-hit effect.
Reality twisted.
Countless massive gray-white hands burst up from the mud. Like the petals of some obscene lotus, they closed in at blinding speed and swallowed the entire field.
Every direction became darkness woven from overlapping hands of every size. The air itself reeked of souls rotting alive.
At the very center of that warped space, Kaede twisted sharply.
He did not hesitate. He stamped his right foot into the void.
A circular zone of cursed energy, about six feet across, spread instantly from beneath him, faint but steady.
New Shadow Style: Simple Domain.
Mahito stood high above, balanced atop the piled hands, looking down at Kaede.
His mismatched eyes glittered dangerously as he analyzed the scene in an instant.
This domain was the killing move he had grasped under the pressure of death itself.
Inside it, he did not even need to touch his target. His Idle Transfiguration would automatically strike the soul.
But it was not working.
Mahito's gaze locked onto the dim circle beneath Kaede's feet.
That simple barrier was like a reef standing against the tide, forcefully neutralizing the sure-hit effect pouring toward him.
As long as that circle held, his technique could not reach Kaede's body.
At the same time, an ugly grinding noise echoed from high overhead.
Mahito snapped his head up, a frown tightening beneath the stitching.
He could feel it clearly. Outside his domain, beyond the outer shell, the rain had never stopped.
On the contrary, those raindrops had turned into countless high-pressure water blades, sawing furiously at the fragile exterior of his barrier.
A domain was overwhelmingly durable from within, but vulnerable from outside.
If the shell broke, he would lose this perfect chance to kill Kaede, and the inevitable technique burnout afterward would put him in a true death spiral.
He was out of time.
"You're not hiding in that shell forever!"
Mahito shouted and abandoned the idea of waiting for the sure-hit to slowly grind Kaede's Simple Domain down.
His legs exploded with force. Boosted by the domain itself, he became a gray blur diving from above, his right fist swelling and hardening as it crashed downward with storm-breaking force.
Kaede did not meet it head-on.
His shoulder dipped. With one smooth step along the edge of the Simple Domain, he slipped sideways, letting the blow pass his nose by inches.
Then his wrist turned.
That black blade carved upward in a beautiful, deadly arc and struck Mahito square in the chest.
"Slash—!"
The edge cut through flesh and bone. Black blood burst out instantly, and the wound took on that familiar crescent-tainted corruption at once.
But this time, Mahito did not retreat.
Not only did he not retreat, he smiled.
Ignoring the pain of his chest being split open, he hurled himself forward instead, using the shattered bones of his rib cage to clamp down on the blade and lock it in place.
And in that tiny window, his left arm, which had hung limp a moment before, morphed into several sharp bone talons and shot toward Kaede's sword arm with a tearing howl.
He did not need to beat Kaede outright. He only needed to pin his movements inside the domain for a moment longer.
Even a single instant, even the briefest crack in that Simple Domain, would be enough.
The moment it broke, Idle Transfiguration would end the fight.