Within that sealed space woven from countless pallid hands, the air reeked of blood and the wailing of souls.
"So that's it. Something like the barrier technique behind a Simple Domain, maybe a more advanced application... folded into the innate technique itself?"
Kaede's cool voice rang through the enclosed domain.
He gave his opponent no room to breathe. His long leg snapped up and drove hard into Mahito's abdomen.
Using that recoil, Kaede tightened his grip and wrenched Mikazuki Munechika free from the trap of Mahito's ribcage.
Bone grated with a shrill scrape. Thick black blood sprayed out like a fountain.
As he pulled the blade free, the black edge carved another deep slash across Mahito's chest. The corrosive cursed energy clinging to it spread outward at once, rotting flesh as it went.
Mahito staggered back several yards before he caught himself.
He glanced down at the hideous cross-shaped wound in his chest, but beneath those stitched seams, his face twisted with sheer exhilaration.
His gaze locked on the ground at Kaede's feet. That once-bright ring of light was now cracking under the relentless, sure-hit pressure of Self-Embodiment of Perfection.
It was not just that. The cutting from outside the barrier was growing louder by the second. Beyond the domain's shell, that violent rain was tearing savagely at the walls from the outside.
Time was running out.
His body was collapsing, but his soul had never felt more alive.
If he let the fight drag on until the outer wall gave way, it would all be over.
He had to break that shell.
Mahito's left eye widened to its limit, and for an instant everything else seemed to fall silent.
He stripped away every stray thought and compressed all his murderous intent and cursed energy into his right fist.
Under the crushing pressure of life and death, some subtle spark flared to life in his mind.
He charged straight at the young sorcerer. His footsteps boomed through the muddy ground, his right arm drawn tight with power, then shot out at a vicious angle toward Kaede's side.
The impact and cursed energy release aligned within one millionth of a second.
"Boom!!"
Black lightning erupted with the telltale warp of space as the two crossed paths.
Black Flash.
The savage black shockwave tore through the enclosed domain.
Kaede's body flew backward like a severed kite under that force far beyond ordinary destruction. With a heavy crash, he slammed into the far wall made of countless giant hands.
The ring of Simple Domain beneath his feet, already strained to its limit against the sure-hit effect, shattered under the Black Flash's impact. Only a few faint sparks remained around him, little more than dying embers.
"Tch..."
Leaning against the black wall, Kaede clicked his tongue under his breath.
Mahito stood where he was and slowly lowered his smoking right fist. The wound through his chest was still gruesome, but he no longer seemed to feel pain.
That sense of absolute omnipotence brought on by landing a Black Flash made him break into a shriek of laughter that sent chills down the spine.
"Do you see it? Do you feel it? The spark of the soul!"
He licked the black blood from the corner of his mouth.
The domain's immense cursed energy churned with every breath he took.
Those mismatched eyes shone with pure malice and frenzy as he stared at Kaede, whose Simple Domain was all but destroyed.
"That annoying little circle is almost gone.
One more touch, and even if you turn to water, your soul will have nowhere to run inside my domain!"
Mahito stopped holding anything back. Both arms warped and lengthened into giant white bone blades.
He splashed through the mud and charged Kaede again, utterly certain after Black Flash.
He would crush the young man's soul to dust before the outer shell of the domain was cut apart from outside.
Still carrying the force of Black Flash, Mahito's bone blades tore through the heavy air and lunged for Kaede's vitals.
But what Mahito did not expect was that Kaede, cornered against that wall of hands with seemingly nowhere left to go, did not dodge. He did not melt into water and flee either.
Kaede stepped forward instead, directly into the path of those lethal blades.
"Shhk!"
A sickening wet sound split the air.
Mahito's right bone blade punched straight through Kaede's left shoulder from beneath the scapula. Blood welled along the pale bone.
But in the same instant that blade pierced him, Kaede moved in instead of backing off. He drove his body forward and seized Mahito's blade-arm with his right hand.
Veins stood out on the back of his hand. His grip was monstrously strong, locking the arm in place before Mahito could rip free and swing the second blade.
With the two pressed together at point-blank range, the last weak threads of Kaede's Simple Domain flickered out beneath his feet.
Then they vanished.
Simple Domain had fully broken.
Mahito's mouth split into an enormous grin beneath the stitched seams.
Without that irritating ring, inside Self-Embodiment of Perfection, everything should be exposed unconditionally to Idle Transfiguration.
One touch, no matter how brief, should be enough to twist the other's soul.
He had won.
But that triumph froze on Mahito's face in less than half a second.
Nothing happened.
His sure-hit technique, the strike that should have crushed Kaede's soul the moment the Simple Domain shattered, sank into silence like a stone dropped into the sea.
There was no sensation of a soul being altered at all.
Impossible.
A flash of shock and fury lit Mahito's mismatched eyes.
He tried to wrench himself out of Kaede's grip, but his gaze dropped to the hand Kaede had left free beneath the pierced shoulder.
There, Kaede's fingers had already folded into an ancient, solemn mudra, the Abhaya gesture.
"Domain Expansion, Pure Clarity Amid Five Defilements."
Kaede's low voice carried a trace of laughter as it burst through the enclosed space.
The change came instantly.
The darkness and foulness that had filled the entire space seemed to meet an irresistible force of purification.
At Kaede's feet, clear water burst upward like a spring, washing the mud from the ground in an instant.
Mahito sucked in a sharp breath. He could feel it clearly. Outside, the high-pressure water blades that had been sawing into the shell of his domain from every angle all stopped at once.
Instead, a vast watery cursed energy began seeping inward from every side, forcefully merging with the outer wall of his hand-built domain.
"This bastard..."
Mahito's mind went blank for a split second, then pieced the truth together in a frenzy.
Kaede had not abandoned his defense. He had used Mahito's shell as an egg to hatch his own.
This lunatic had taken the airtight outer shell of Self-Embodiment of Perfection as a vessel, then forced the water that had been attacking from outside to reverse course and pour in, completing his own once-incomplete domain inside a space that had never belonged to him.
That explained why the sure-hit effect had not triggered. The instant the Simple Domain broke, this new sealed domain had already expanded, and its own, purer sure-hit effect had forcibly canceled out Idle Transfiguration.
The scenery was overwritten in the violence of colliding cursed energies.
The black inner wall made of endless hands disappeared. In its place spread a vast haze of rolling cloud.
Clear, heavy rain poured down through it without end. The moment those drops struck Mahito's body, his prized soul-based cursed energy began hissing as if it were being washed away.
And high above, at the center of this strange domain, a vast eye of gold and green slowly opened and gazed coldly down on the two below.
"Damn it! This rain is washing my technique away?!"
Mahito felt, with mounting horror, the cursed energy inside him turning sluggish beneath the relentless downpour. Even the force maintaining the shape of his soul was being stripped away bit by bit.
He no longer cared that his bone blade was still embedded in Kaede's body. His left arm tensed violently as he prepared to sever his trapped right arm if that was what it took to gain distance.
He could not remain inside this domain for even one more second. If the rain fully washed his technique away, then as a being born from curses, he would face true death.