Inside the sealed space, the laws of two special-grade Domains were colliding head-on, grinding against each other with violent force.
The rain and mist tried to cleanse and wash everything away, while countless giant pale hands braced themselves against the edges of the barrier, holding it together by sheer force.
Under that crushing clash of rules, the sure-hit and sure-kill effects of both Domains were forcibly canceled out.
The deadly sensation of having his technique peeled away vanished from Mahito's body. The space became the most primitive, most brutal kind of arena imaginable, a cage for pure close-quarters slaughter.
Kaede stepped forward hard, twisting from the waist and driving a heavy punch straight into Mahito's face with no wasted motion.
Bang!
The dull crack of bone breaking rang out.
Mahito's stitched face caved in and warped under the impact. Several bloodied teeth, mixed with black-red blood, sprayed from his mouth as his whole body skidded backward like a rag doll, dragging two deep furrows through the mud.
But Mahito's beastlike combat instinct did not freeze for even a second.
Even while sliding back, he forced his stance stable, his mismatched eyes darting over the trembling space around them.
His brain ran at full speed under the pressure. The stripping sensation was gone, and the rain now served only as a physical hindrance. In an instant, he grasped the core truth of this Domain battle.
Kaede's Domain existed only because it was piggybacking off the outer shell of Self-Embodiment of Perfection.
Which meant that the moment Mahito's outer shell shattered, Kaede's seemingly perfect purified land would collapse with it.
In this prison where both sides were locked together, the winner would simply be the one whose body and cursed energy broke first.
Mahito bit down hard and poured the rest of his cursed energy wildly into his right arm.
Riiip—!
His entire right arm lengthened and hardened in a nauseating flood of flesh and bone, becoming a gigantic white blade.
Using the explosive force of his legs, Mahito charged through the pouring rain in a low, oppressive stance, driving the bone blade straight toward Kaede's abdomen.
Faced with that vicious, lethal counterattack, Kaede did not panic.
He gripped the hilt of Mikazuki Munechika with both hands and snapped the blade upward.
Clang—!!
The black blade and the pale bone sword slammed together, bursting into a spray of sparks and violent cursed energy shockwaves.
Using the recoil through the blade, Kaede's right leg snapped out like a spring, crashing into Mahito's chest and kicking the frenzied special-grade curse away once again.
After forcing him back, Kaede's chest heaved as he drew deep breaths.
The strain of nonstop life-and-death combat, layered on top of the enormous cost of building such a complex Domain for the first time, had pushed his stamina close to the red line.
Worse still, the sword in his hands, the blade engraved with a special-grade curse technique, had started to change again.
The eyeball in the hilt spun frantically, and a black, muddy cursed energy carrying a thick medicinal stench crept up from the handle, gradually staining the skin of his grip hand with an ominous dead black.
This powerful cursed tool was starting to bite back against its overtaxed wielder.
Mahito, sent flying again, rolled twice through the mud before barely stopping.
He looked even worse than Kaede.
His body was covered in crescent-shaped wounds left by the blade, the flesh at their edges rotting and blackening without pause.
Every breath he took brought blood bubbling up from his lungs. The cursed energy he needed to hold the shape of his soul together was running dangerously thin.
Even so, he stared hard at Kaede's blackened hand gripping the sword and let out a hoarse, venomous laugh through bloodstained teeth.
"Cough... hahahaha... so that's it. Your Domain is just a pathetic parasite that can only exist by clinging to mine."
Shaking, Mahito forced himself upright.
Instead of rushing in again, he pulled back like a waiting viper, locking onto Kaede's condition.
"Even your weapon's chewing on you. After your first real Domain, and this much fighting... you can't have much cursed energy left, can you?"
He wiped the black blood dripping from his chin, his thoughts unnaturally cold and sharp.
Kaede's Domain was unstable. If Mahito deliberately broke the outer shell, Kaede's Domain would collapse too, and both of them would be dragged into a technique burnout vacuum.
But right now, Kaede was also dealing with the weapon's backlash and severe physical exhaustion.
In this mud pit without sure-hit effects, all Mahito had to do was stall with raw close combat.
Once that blade finally ruined Kaede's arm, or Kaede's cursed energy ran dry, the victory would still be his.
Mahito's arms slowly morphed into barbed whip-blades. He crouched lower, taking on a disturbingly fluid, unnatural stance as he prepared for the deadlock ahead.
Rainwater split between them under the pressure of killing intent.
"You're awfully concerned about me. Too bad I don't care much for your concern."
Kaede gave a cold laugh.
His right hand, blackened by the cursed backlash, clenched the hilt tighter. He kicked off the ground, mud exploding outward as he shot forward like an arrow.
Seeing the shining blade coming for him, Mahito narrowed his eyes.
The body he had already lowered into stance burst into motion. His right arm, transformed into a several-meter-long bone whip studded with white barbs, lashed out with a vicious low-angle strike aimed straight at Kaede's abdomen.
But the scene Mahito had expected, Kaede dissolving into water to evade, never came.
The instant the bone whip was about to strike his stomach, a transparent cursed-energy film, thin as cicada wings, flashed across Kaede's body.
Domain Amplification.
Bang!
A dull impact echoed through the enclosed space.
The bone whip, packed with barbs, slammed into the thin film of Amplification. The sheer force made Kaede's body shudder, his clothes at the abdomen tearing open as blood seeped through.
But he did not give up even half a step. He endured the full kinetic force, then drove Mikazuki Munechika straight forward.
Shhk—
The black blade, wrapped in baleful black energy, pierced clean through Mahito's chest, the tip punching out through his back.
But that was only the beginning.
The moment the blade punched through, the Amplification coating Kaede's body popped away like a burst bubble.
In its place, a bright circular field spread beneath his feet in an instant.
New Shadow Style: Simple Domain.
It was not for neutralizing a sure-hit effect, nor for defense.
Inside that tiny territory, the rules of the Simple Domain forcibly elevated the trajectory of his draw and the output of his cursed energy.
In an instant, the air filled with the shriek of steel tearing flesh.
Too fast for the eye to follow, the blade flashed like a storm of silver-black rain under the enhancement of the Simple Domain, pouring over Mahito's body in a frenzy.
Chest, shoulder, side, thigh... a cascade of sickening slicing sounds rang through the sealed space.
"Ghk—!"
Mahito spat out mouthful after mouthful of black blood.
Like a rag doll thrown into a meat grinder, his gray-white flesh was carved open in dozens of horrifying wounds, many deep enough to expose bone.
The crescent-shaped corruption clung to every cut from Mikazuki Munechika, festering and rotting as it spread.
Under the barrage of slashes, Mahito was sent flying backward and crashed hard into the mud, dragging a long smear of blood behind him.
He struggled to prop himself up, chest heaving, gasping for air.
Blood mixed with rainwater slid down his ruined stitched face. His mismatched eyes shrank as he stared at Kaede, who stood there with blade lowered.
"Cough... cough, ghk..."
Even through the agony, Mahito's mind spun frantically.
Madman. This was an absolute madman.
A second ago, instead of using the cheaper water-body evasion, Kaede had deliberately chosen to take the bone whip head-on with Domain Amplification, just to guarantee he could stab him at point-blank range.
And then, without the slightest gap, he had switched straight into Simple Domain to spike his burst damage.
Even while his own Domain was already unstable, he could still perform cursed-energy control this precise and this insane. His close-range suppression was monstrous.
Mahito glanced at his own body, carved so badly his organs were nearly visible.
Holding the Domain up required a massive amount of cursed energy, and now the cost of keeping his soul's shape from being fully shredded by that bizarre blade had multiplied several times over.
He could not keep trading body blows in this tiny zone.
Kaede was close to empty, and one arm was being eaten alive by the weapon's backlash, but if they kept fighting at this range, Mahito would be chopped into slurry.
A dark, decisive light flashed in Mahito's eyes.
If Kaede's Domain depended on Mahito's outer shell...
"You really think... you can win to the end on my turf?!"
Mahito roared and slammed both ruined arms into the waterlogged ground.
He made a desperate gamble, he would deliberately detonate the outer shell of Self-Embodiment of Perfection.
If the shell shattered, both Domains would collapse by force, and the resulting technique burnout would drag them both back to the same starting line.
With the body of a special-grade curse, as long as his technique came back first and he could open up the distance, he still had a chance.
As his cursed energy reversed through the barrier, the dark inner wall formed by countless giant hands began to crack with a deeply ominous sound.