3rd Person POV
Uro sighed as she felt Shinji start to move towards Yuta. 'Blind idiot…' she thought, a small, barely noticeable pout on her lips. 'I don't want to fight with that overcompensating loser. He may be more useful than I thought, but he's not…'
She took another glance over her shoulder at Shinji before closing her eyes and sighing again. She sensed where Ryu was, and reluctantly, used her reversal to 'pop' over to where he was.
She appeared to his left a couple of centimeters above the ground, landing with a soft thud to signify her arrival. Ryu tilted his head at her in question, and she answered his unasked question before he could ask it.
"…Shinji wants us to work together to hold off that sorcerer's shikigami, while he fights him." She drawled, and he looked at her a moment longer.
He sighed and looked down while scratching the back of his head, "…Why is he the only one to get to fight the strongest one…" He grumbled, and Uro hid her agreement. "All right, what's the plan?" He asked.
Uro blinked, "What?" She asked him, confused.
Ryu furrowed his eyebrows, "'Boss didn't tell you a plan?" He asked, equal parts confused. Uro shook her head, and Ryu sighed while pulling out a cigarette. He placed the but of the cigarette into his mouth, lighting it with a small flare of cursed energy on his finger.
"I figured he'd at least tell you…" Ryu's face turned cheshire, "Seeing how… close you two are." He said smugly while taking a drag from his cigarette.
Uro's face gained a slightly pink hue, "…What are you blabbering about?" She grumbled, feigning anger, but her slight flush betrayed her real emotions.
Ryu turned his attention back to the shikigami that was trying desperately to reach her master, "Oh, nothing…" He said as he took a step forward, "Word of advice, don't wait to tell him."
He took another drag of his cigarette, "Waiting never works…" He noticed Rika was getting a little far. "Let's get to work..." He said as he started to charge another beam of cursed energy.
Uro sighed, deciding to put the issue out of her mind for now. She faced her palm towards Rika, channeling RCE into her technique.
Uro teleported by Rika's side, slapping a palm to Rika's chest and shattering space. Rika was sent meters back, howling in frustration.
She was sent flipping back, only to be met head-on with a pink beam of cursed energy. The beam detonated, stopping her momentum and leaving her wide open to Uro as she pulled herself towards her.
Rika swung a wild back fist at Uro, only for her to pull the blow up and over her head with her left hand, and using Rika's broken guard, lashed out a right straight to Rika's gut.
Space shattered, but unlike previously, the shards did not disperse. Rika let out a shuddering grunt, trying to land a sloppy right hook with her healing right arm. Uro, however, grabbed the blow, spinning on the balls of her feet and bending the blow back at Rika's head.
The shikigami's head snapped back, and Uro grabbed one of the falling shards of space, "Thin Ice Severance." She invoked and sliced at Rika's right arm again.
'Uro's technique was perhaps the greatest in terms of pure defense, with the sole exception of Satoru Gojo, of course. But as a result, her technique is incredibly limited offensively.
To counteract this, Uro and Shinji had spent the past couple of days training and brainstorming offensive uses of her technique.'
The shard of broken sky cleaved straight through the limb with no resistance, not even a blood splatter coming off it. Rika shrieked, moving back only to leave the part of her arm that Uro had cut off.
'By using a thin Ice breaker to create a plane of space and fracturing it like glass, but maintaining its plain form, Uro creates a blade that is effectively infinitely sharp.'
A pink beam of cursed energy shot not at Rika, but at Uro, and she grabbed the beam, positioning it on the back of her hand as Rika swung her left fist down at Uro.
'Unfortunately, such a feat requires intense concentration and cannot last long.'
The sky blade dissipated as she pivoted and punched the falling blow with her hand, bending the cursed energy blast. The beam ruptured as the two blows connected, and Rika's arm was blasted back with explosive force.
Rika started to form a blast of dark pink, almost purple, cursed energy, and Uro threw her palms against Rika's chest, cracking space. Rika was forced back a couple of meters before blasting the beam of cursed energy at Uro.
Uro's left hand stretched forward, grabbing the sky in front of her and flicking her wrist to the right. The beam made a sharp 90-degree turn along Uro's reach.
The blast leveled a series of buildings, and Uro pulled herself over the blast in a cartwheel.
Just in time to catch a high Granite Blast from Ryu and slam it on the top of her head.
Rika slammed into the ground in a thunderous crash, a plume of dust erupting from the impact. Uro stayed hovering over Rika's downed form as the smoke cleared, idly waiting for Ryu, who she felt closing in. She figured he probably got bored with sitting back and sniping.
The smoke suddenly cleared in an instant as Rika let out a shriek as her arm grew back and she yelled to the heavens, "YYyyUUuUuutTTAAaaAa!"
She suddenly gripped her chest and ripped it open. There was no visera or spray of blood, only the opening of a bottomless pit of storage. She grabbed a charred arm from the well and bit it off at the elbow from the rest of the burnt corpse now visible.
Uro watched, shell-shocked, as Rika finished off the arm and let out a low belch. Rika moved her head to stare at Uro as her head parted into a wide, bulging eye, and she grinned a devious grin.
'Something's off.'
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1st Person POV (Shinji)
I wasn't given any more time to contemplate the vibrations from Yuta, as the barrier formed instantly. We were in a veritable battlefield of katanas and destroyed stone crosses, and the sky was littered with stars and ropes tying knots together.
I formed a simple domain around my feet and let my cursed energy flood the domain to start analyzing its frequency. I clicked my tongue, as I felt Yuta's sure hit wear on my simple domain, but I–
What the fuck?
'Is–is his barrier's frequency changing?' I gulped as I thought, 'How the fuck–'
I stared at him as he reached down and picked up a katana by his side. Tattoos formed on the edge of his lips, and I reinforced my ears and forced another film of vibrations over my ears. He opened his mouth, but I still couldn't hear him.
'Something's off…' I thought to myself. Whatever vibrations were coming off Yuta felt like they were trying to tell me something… That Yuta was… hiding something.
I vibrated my leg and vanished forward, forming the hand sign for pulse perception. While I learned how to feel those vibrations from Yuta from those black flashes, I wasn't able to learn how to do Pulse Perception without a handsign yet.
He anticipated my charge and tried to bisect me with his new katana, and I blocked it with an offensive swipe of my cleaver.
Our blades rang out against each other, and both of our blades recoiled back from the impact. I swiped downwards and across his chest with my cleaver, but he blocked the blow with an overhead block.
Our blades locked, and he used the superior leverage of his katana to force Fester down and away from my body. He rotated his wrists and tried to bisect me again, but I dropped the handsign, activating my technique and enshrouding my fist in a white sphere as I punched the slash.
Space cracked, and the sword was ripped from his grasp as the blade disintegrated. I tried to slash him across his chest, but he jumped back, leaving only a thin cut across his chest. But a thin slash was all I needed.
I sent a wave of cursed energy out, and his chest exploded like it was shot with shotgun blasts. I clicked my tongue as his domain's frequency was still shifting; it was like it was trying to be like mine–
'Oh god damned it,' I thought, cursing Yuta's broken fucking technique, the domain was trying to copy my cursed energy's vibration. And it was fucking it up; that was the problem, because it could never settle on one frequency, just guessing and checking, which I was 90% sure was a side effect of his whole Rika crutch.
I vanished forward again, taping my foot with a quick aerostep as I pivoted on my foot. I spun around him as he picked up another Katana. I tried to bisect him as he did me, but he parried the strike with a slice of his own, knocking the blade high.
And that's when I noticed the biggest issue: despite picking up another katana, there were no tattoos on the sides of his mouth. 'Something's off…'
He moved to counter with a downwards strike, but I aerostepped backwards, and out of his range. 'Given that Dhruv tried to sneak-attack Yuta, the only technique Yuta should have copied should be cursed speech.'
I clicked my tongue as I felt my simple domain start to crumble under the weight of Yuta's sure hit. It was so much stronger than Ryu's. So I decided to be the biggest bitch in the world, putting Fester in my mouth and forming the Hollow Wicker Basket seal with my hands.
The vibrations from Yuta started to positively scream, but the words were constantly shifting, from left to right, to forward, and finally to behind–
A katana embedded itself in my chest right through my heart. I coughed up blood and started to pump my blood with cursed energy, dashing to the side, 'Is that fucking Jiki's technique!' I screamed in my mind.
'Why?! If he had that, then WHY NOT USE THAT SOONER!' God, I was so FUCKED. I aerostepped up, 'Now or never, right?'
I forced my cursed energy coallessing into a barrier around me. It took shape as a barrier, and I activated pulse perception across its entirety. Sweat formed on my forehead, and it wasn't as strong as the handsign version, but…
Damn…
I could feel my brain working overtime, split between so much that I could feel a migraine–
DODGE!
I threw my body to the side and dodged a katana ripping through the air where my throat just was.
'No sense whining about it… Let's FIGHT!' I grinned and aerostepped straight at Yuta, who had just pointed a finger at me.
Another katana entered my perception, this time trying to skewer me through the lung, and I barrel rolled, the blade slightly cutting my chest as it passed. He dashed for another katana, having spent that one, and I seized the chance to close the distance as best I could.
I blurred forward, landing on a platform of cracked space the height of Yuta's torso. Yuta grabbed a katana from his side and tried to cut my leg clean off. But I jumped and flipped over Yuta, kicking him in the back of the head with my foot as it cracked space.
He flew away, and I took that brief moment to pull the katana from my heart. I dropped pulse perception for half a second to heal the damage, because manually pumping my blood was taking way too much mental focus.
Pulse perception slammed into place after the half-second it took to heal the damage. I vibrated my leg and dashed to my left, watching as Yuta moved to block a strike that wasn't coming. I focused on vibrating my leg until it let out a high-pitched squeal and charged at Yuta full speed.
I vibrated Fester in my mouth, and I appeared behind Yuta, a deep cut in Yuta's side appearing alongside me. Pulse perception snapped back into place from the movement, the lack of handsign making it impossible for me to maintain it along my momentum as I was–
But just before it fully snapped into place, a katana by my right twitched, and my vision flashed silver.
"You can't keep up that sensing technique at those speeds, can you? Or you could with the hand sign, maybe? Either way, it doesn't matter." Yuta's cold voice reverberated from where he stood as his RCT worked to recover the gash in his side.
A streak of blood came from my arms, and they fell off at the elbow. The first thing to happen was another katana cut my leg off at the knee, the next was my Hollow Wicker Basket crumbling.
And then, a flash of lightning, continuous lightning flowing in and through me. A scream ripped itself from my throat as I howled out in pain. The damage was unlike anything I have ever experienced, save for maybe what Jogo did to me.
I tried to form a healing pod to regrow my hands to reform a hollow wicker basket, because I need the most protection I could get at the moment. And with the sure hit already hitting me, a simple domain was just no longer an option. But every time I tried to form the barrier, it was instantly broken by the domain's sure hit.
"You must recognize this technique, right? I do admit the person who had this technique was quite impressive to be able to move so many things at once." He said calmly as my body arced with pain.
"I can copy other people's techniques, but only if my shikigami, Rika, consumes a part of them first." He took a deep breath, an action I was very envious of seeing, as all of my oxygen was used to scream out in pain. "At first, I had her keep the body because I wanted to track your residuals—and, because I wanted to ensure he got a proper burial later—but desperate times…"
"So…" He said calmly, "This is your final chance, surrender your points or I will kill you." He asked without flinching.
I glared at him, rage bubbling in my veins, 'You…' But he was right, all I had to do was just surrender my points, and all this could be over.
My glare turned into a snarl, 'But that's the mindset of those who live weak and die weak.' I focused my cursed energy to create another barrier, 'And I WILL be the strongest!' But instead of a normal barrier, I decided to push beyond what I thought was possible, envisioning a stronger version of myself.
'I'm sure if this were a domain, it would be infinitely harder, but for something like this, I'm sure it will be far easier.' I let the framework of the barrier form, but didn't 'fill' it like I did a normal barrier. Instead, I funneled cursed energy into the framework while letting the world itself fill the barrier.
It was beyond difficult, like trying to hold a sphere of water with my will alone, but as I felt the 'world' fill my cursed energy frame, I realized something.
Everything in existence vibrated to some extent.
Even the world itself.
So what if I shifted my focus…
'To vibrating with the world itself!'
Everything went silent for a moment, and a sound reverberated from my vocal cords, totally separate from any words I would willingly say, "Om."
I suddenly understood.
Before, my barriers were forming against the 'tune' of the world, but now…
Now they were harmonizing perfectly. 'This… is this… true jujutsu?'
My cursed energy drain doubled, and while I was still struck by lightning, the bones of my arms grew back, then the muscles, clasping into the sign for hollow wicker basket, despite the lack of skin on my limbs.
The lightning stopped all at once, and the rest of my injuries healed in short order. I was panting, my shirt had evaporated off my chest, and my pants were torn to shreds, more shorts than pants.
I glared at Yuta and giggled. There was a high chance I was delirious, but that didn't really matter to me at the moment. I could hear the vibrations from Yuta stronger and clearer than before.
He pointed his katana at me, and as it disintegrated, two katana's tried to skewer me, but he and Jiki suffered the same negatives of the technique. I formed a simple domain at my feet and caught both katanas. Only to be surprised by what I felt.
These two were vibrating at the same, consistent frequency. A grin split my face in two, 'Ahh… I see, even as the domain tries and fails to copy my frequency, it has one underlying parent frequency. The only reason I couldn't feel it was because my own vibrations were too strong.
With that in mind, "Extension Technique: Resonance Cascade."
The domain shattered around us instantly, and we were thrust back onto the destroyed road we had just fought on. Yuta stared at me, horrified. I guess it was only natural, considering what I did was basically unprecedented.
I could rush at him, but my scope was so much bigger now.
I reached my hands upward and out like a big human 'X.' I grabbed the air with both hands, using my technique to alter the vibrations of the earth. "Supreme art: Continental Divide."
I pulled my hands down and together, and the ground started to tremble violently. A crack formed and spread out from under me and to Yuta.
Then the ground split, well, it was more accurate to say that the ground on both sides tilted and dropped from under him. The ground for 50 meters to my right and left tilted at a 45-degree angle, and a fissure 5 meters wide opened under Yuta and me.
I remained standing on a platform of cracked space, watching as he fell. I smirked and dashed to the tilting 'shelf' of the city. I placed my palm against it, activating ground break and whipping the ground into Yuta's side.
The whip of the road shattered the second it impacted him, and he was sent flying to the other side.
The side I had already dashed to, to touch.
Another tendril of the city batted at him. He blocked this time with crossed arms, but he was still sent flying downwards and to the other wall.
I smirked, 'Now that he's trained to block…' I shot two bursts of barely perceptible eggs, letting them fly slowly through the air.
I dashed at the other wall, sending another tendril of ground at Yuta. He blocked again, but at this moment, he had already fallen for my trap. Another tendril shot out, this time exploding into dust around Yuta.
I sent out a pulse, triggering the eggs behind the first set of eggs to explode. The first line of eggs catapulted forward, blowing through the dust where Yuta could not sense at all.
I vibrated my leg to kick off the wall by my side and straight at Yuta.
I detonated the next set of eggs, clearing the dust and knocking Yuta's block wide. I sliced down at him, but he grabbed my wrist before I could fully swing at him.
He used his grip on my wrist to twist his body into a left round house kick to my head.
I blocked the blow with my raised forearm, and he used the moment to send a rising kick to my lower chin. I barely rocked back in time, before using his grip on my wrist to slam him against the wall beside me.
His mouth opened, and I swung him in front of me again and into my descending left overhand, surrounded in a white sphere.
Space shattered and he was sent flipping down, ricocheting off the side walls three times before crashing into the bottom of the ravine I had made.
I landed on the ground a good two meters in front of him in a textbook superhero landing that rippled the ground around me.
"How'd-" he stopped to cough out a glob of blood, "How'd you break my domain?" He asked breathlessly while getting to his feet.
I stopped, thinking whether I should answer that. I realized there was no harm in explaining this, and this might build some rapport with him, so why not? "...Imagine shattering glass with a yell; it works something similar to that."
Yuta didn't respond for a second, "...I don't exactly follow," he said dryly.
I sweatdropped, "I didn't really expect that you would." I said as I scratched the back of my head. I stared at him a second longer before sighing and shaking my head. "You know I really tried to de-escalate earlier, but then you had to go and cut my arms off…"
I took a step forward, "Then I realized that you planned to do that same thing to Ryu, to Uro…" I trailed off as my resolve and fury compounded, "So I'm gonna beat the shit out of you now; try not to die, 'kay?"
Yuta got into a stance before replying, "And what is your relationship to those two? It is not usual for strong sorcerers like you to group up; I would have thought you would all be fighting each other."
Guess it was time for the pitch then? "We're building a… faction of sorts, the kind built on mutual benefit and absolute freedom within it. We all help each other with fights and training, and in exchange, all orders are voluntary. As for our relationship…"
I smiled. There was only one word that summed it up: "They're my family." Metaphorically, of course, and while I definitely didn't view Uro as 'family' per se, they were still the closest thing I had to it.
"I see…" Yuta said softly, "Then forgive me, I believe I might have misjudged you. And forgive me for—"
I tuned whatever Yuta said out in favor of dodging the scimtar I felt rocket at me from behind. I took a side step and pivoted, letting the scimtar fly harmlessly past me and into Yuta's awaiting hand.
'This fucker wasn't interested in talking.' I thought, fuming, 'He was just buying time for his burnout to fade.' I saw Yuta point his scimitar at me like a gun.
But, I decided that I had had enough of being on the receiving end of the blade throws and threw a vibrating Fester at him.
It whirled through the air like a humming blade of death. Yuta deflected the cleaver with a strike of his scimitar, being pushed back slightly in the process.
But in that fraction of a second, Yuta took his attention off me. I appeared in his guard back parallel to the ground, and rotating with absurd speeds.
My fist slammed into his jaw in a devastating upper cut.
BANG
Space cracked into a frightening explosion of sound. Yuta cleared the top of the tilted cityscape in a second. I tapped my foot on the ground, using a low-powered ground break to shoot Fester back toward me from where it had landed.
I grabbed it from out of the air and leaped upwards. I surrounded my fist with white spheres and threw them out to my sides. Space cracked, and the ground exploded on both of my sides into 5-meter-wide chunks of rubble.
I tossed Fester back into my mouth, reaching over and grabbing two rather large chunks with both hands. I hurled the right one, using the other to counterbalance, before catapulting the second one at Yuta as well.
The first one shattered against and broke his subsequent block, and the second one shattered against his exposed chest. I jumped to another chunk of ground, this time lightly chucking it upwards, clearing about half the distance between us before arcing back down.
I took the chance to hurl Fester around the rock, its path curving to dodge the rock before arcing back at Yuta.
Yuta deflected the spinning blade with a swipe of his scimitar, and the blade sent just over his head. I aerostepped onto the rock I had just thrown, before kicking off it with a vibrating leg.
I vanished and reappeared behind Yuta, grabbing Fester as it passed just behind and above him. Yuta threw himself around in a hasty block, expecting a downward cleave, but I kicked off part of the shattered rock from earlier, dashing to his exposed left side.
A streak of black passed through where Yuta's left elbow was, and the arm was severed along the path Fester had just cleaved through. I moved to follow it up with a downwards swipe, but Yuta's scimitar shot from his hand.
There was a crimson spray of blood as the sword sank into my shoulder, jamming the joint and stopping my attack. Yuta's fingers flicked up, and the scimitar cut straight through my shoulder, nearly cutting it off again before returning to Yuta's hand.
He moved to decapitate me with his blade, but I surrounded my hand in the signature sphere of my technique and caught the sword. I smirked at him and squeezed, letting my technique detonate.
His scimitar shattered into tiny segments, and my fist continued slamming into his face.
BLACK FLASH
The sparks of black blessed me once more, and Yuta was sent downwards through a tilted building, crashing through floor after floor.
Dust exploded out of the ground floor as he smashed through the building. One by one, stakes of rebar shot through the smoke at supersonic speeds as Yuta regained his footing and healed his arm.
I shot downwards off a platform of cracked space, rolling right to dodge the first, before rolling left to dodge the next. I clicked my tongue, kicking off the air to my right, and narrowly avoiding the next rebar beam.
I blurred sideways, hearing the spears of metal pierce through the air where I had been not a tenth of a second before.
A series of eight spears shot towards me, each better accounting for my speed and getting closer to spearing me. I stopped myself abruptly on another platform of cracked space, juking the 9th spear.
'Jiki's projectiles got slower the more he used…' I thought before shooting down towards the ground, hoping to use the city space as cover, 'He's working around that by just flinging them and letting go of all control when he does so, he can refire again with no speed loss.'
I landed on the road with the signature rippling of ground break, but I pushed it a step further, instead pulverizing the road for 15 meters in all directions and kicking up a huge storm of charged dust. 'Guess I'll just make him waste his ammo.'
I felt more spears shoot randomly into the dust, but I lowered myself to all fours. I dug my fingers into the road, taking a deep breath before vibrating every one of my limbs.
I really hope there was no one in between Yuta and me, because I really don't think I'm going to be able to stop.
The vibrations reached a fever pitch, a howling noise that cracked the windows of all the buildings around me. I took a deep breath and threw myself forward.
I felt the g-forces first, my body feeling like it was ripping at the seams from the speed of my acceleration. And then the buildings and the distance between Yuta and me were unmade.
I caught him in a crippling shoulder tackle, forcing him along my acceleration. We crashed through building after building after building before He slammed a double hammer fist into my back.
I grunted from pain, using another aerostep to force us closer to the road. I forced him against the road as we flew, carving a path of destruction and giving Yuta the world's worst carpet burn as we cleared the section of tilted ground.
Yuta screamed out, pounding on my back until I dug a foot into the ground, revolving on it, and throwing Yuta skywards.
I jumped at him with a vibrating leg, but as I crossed three-quarters of the distance between us, he suddenly pointed one hand to the sky, and the other finger at me.
His cursed energy pulsed, and the sky flashed. Lightning arced downwards, striking his finger, and his face twisted in pain. I saw it crawl down his arm, down his chest, and down the arm pointing at me.
A bolt of lightning twice as big as the one that struck him shot from his finger and down at me.
The bolt slammed into my chest, and I slammed against the ground, writhing in pain. The lightning pinned me to the ground, before I channeled all of my vibrations into the palm of my hands. I compressed the vibrations as much as I could along my palm.
I gripped the bolt with both hands before slowly tilting the bolt until it struck the road sign to my left.
I breathed heavily on the ground, 'I can't believe that worked...'
By using hypersonic vibrations, I altered the air density to carve a path for the lightning to travel.
The lightning stopped, and I clambered to my feet as a healing pod formed around me. Yuta landed in front of me right as I finished healing in a low crouch.
He reached his hand out to the side, and a piece of rebar the length of a standard katana broke from the wall and landed in his hand. He twirled the rebar, spinning it on the back of his hand as a bead of sweat fell from his brow.
"Why do you keep fighting?" He asked slightly breathless, "If—" He stopped to pant, "If you would just surrender your points—"
"WHY are you so insistent on my points?" I interrupted him, spitting Fester into my hand and throwing my arms to my sides, "I'm willing to talk but," I stopped to pant too, "But my points are off the table."
Yuta glared, "Then give me information on Kenjaku and his plans."
I want to pull my hair out.
"I DON'T HAVE ANY INFORMATION ON KENJAKU AND HIS PLANS!" I lied through my teeth.
Something almost like amusement crossed his face before it settled back into neutral. He let out a slow breath through his nose. "...You're really not going to give me your points, are you?"
It wasn't really a question anymore.
"No," I said simply.
He nodded once, like he'd already known and was just confirming it. "And Kenjaku."
"I told you, I don't know anything," I said, and this time I kept my voice steady. "Believe that or don't."
He looked at me for a long moment, deciding something. When he spoke, the interrogation again was mostly gone from it, replaced with something quieter. "Then use them yourself. You have enough to add an exit rule right now. You could start pulling people out of this game."
I felt something tighten in my chest.
'He's not wrong.' I thought, and the irritating truth of it settled in my gut like a stone. But the sadder truth was that someone would add that rule eventually. And when they did, it still wouldn't end this. The game was designed to be bigger than any one rule.
But that wasn't what I said.
"No," I said flatly.
Yuta frowned slightly, "Why not? If your goal is really to—"
"Because I don't owe you a concession." I cut him off, and I heard the edge in my own voice and didn't bother softening it. "You came here, you demanded my points, you cut my arms off."
I gestured loosely at the destruction around us, "If I add that rule right now, it looks like you beat it out of me. And I won't do that to them."
I glanced back in the direction I'd last felt Uro and Ryu, just for a second.
"They believed in me enough to follow me into this." I said quietly, "I owe them more than rolling over the second someone stronger shows up and tells me to."
Yuta sighed dejectedly, "...So it's pride then."
I scoffed, sure right that off as pride, "...You also cut my fucking arms off."
He started forward, "You'll die." He stated matter-of-factly while walking forward.
I smirked and took a step forward as well, "Nah, got too many movies to see." I stated matter-of-factly as well. 'Plus I know something he knows too...' I trailed off in thought.
I grinned devilishly as a bead of sweat dribbled down my neck and pointed at the ground twice, '10 seconds left.'
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3rd Person POV Uro
Uro was tired.
She didn't think she'd ever been this tired, except for when she was up late watching movies with Shinji.
But even then, it didn't come close to this level of exhaustion.
She and Ryu had thrown everything they could at the shikigami, and it was working. They won every single exchange they entered.
But the damn thing would never stay down for long, and it took only fractions of seconds before Rika would heal in full from the attacks they leveled at it.
Uro and Ryu stood panting while facing the cursed apparition. The cityscape around them was in shambles, buildings in rubble and ruin.
The only infrastructure left standing in a 50-meter-wide area was a single market, which was only half standing, its entire upper left section obliterated.
Rika, by contrast, seemed entirely unaffected by the conflict, still hovering just down the decimated road.
"Hey, Uro," Ryu suddenly intoned, "I got a plan." He said in a dry voice.
Uro sent an uneasy glance at him, "And that is?" She asked doubtfully.
Ryu dropped into a stance, "I'm gonna rush in and hold it down. You're gonna make sure that I don't get hit while doing it, sound good?"
Uro sighed while dropping into a stance herself. "...Yeah, sure."
Ryu grinned before running forward full speed. Rika shrieked at the charge, matching it with one of her own with outstretched clawed hands. Ryu slid under the shikigami's charge, and Rika tried to swipe downwards.
Only for Uro to pop next to them, pulling the arm up and forcing it to miss. Rika's attention snapped onto Uro, and it speared a clawed hand at Uro's chest.
Uro pulled the blow wide, as Ryu stopped his slide with a small blast of cursed energy from his foot. He dashed behind Rika, whose attention was solely fixated on Uro, and wrapped an arm around her left arm to pull her back.
Rika shrieked, flailing wildly as Ryu held on before sending a swipe behind her back. Only for Uro to pull the swipe around the front of the cursed spirit. Ryu wrapped another arm under Rika's and pulled back as hard as he could.
Rika started to flail even harder, whipping her tail at Uro. Uro let the tail snake around her arm, wincing at the pressure while grabbing onto the base of it to hold it in place.
Ryu's face broke into a smile, "I'm feeling hungry, ya know?"
Ryu started to groan from the strain, as light pink translucent trails of energy wafted off Rika and into Ryu. "The boss said my technique represented absolute output. And a reversal is the exact opposite, so we figured that had to be absolute input."
Ryu grinned as he felt the effects of revealing one's hand take effect, and the rate at which energy wafted off Rika increased dramatically. Rika shrieked as her cursed energy was robbed from her. "We figured right..."
Uro noticed Rika starting to break free, despite Ryu's rampant absorption of her cursed energy, and started to lay into the cursed apparition's head.
Blow after blow leveled into the curse's body as Ryu held on. That was until he grunted, "...It's too much." He said exhaustedly.
Suddenly, a light flickered in his eyes, and his grin turned positively devilish. A pink granite blast started to form at the helm of his pompadour.
Uro noticed the huge buildup of energy and pushed harder, striking the shikigami with even greater vitriol. Between the constant drain on her output and brutal pummeling, Rika was helpless.
Uro held back from using a thin ice breaker and, by extension, a thin ice severance because she didn't want to break Ryu's hold on Rika.
Ryu's cursed energy blast kept radically increasing in size, 'Compress...' the ancient sorcerer thought, trying to keep funneling energy into the blow. The blast reached the size of a basketball, and Ryu finally reached his limit.
"Uro..." He groaned out, locking eyes with her, "UP!" He screamed, rotating on his feet and throwing the shikigami up into the air. Uro pulled herself up to Rika, sending a rising kick to the back of the shikigami.
Space cracked, and she flew even higher still into the air. "DODGE!" Ryu screamed, and Uro hastily popped away with a quick use of her reversal.
Ryu stared up at Rika with a soft smile while pointing at her, winds billowing off the charged blast, and throwing his jacket around wildly. "Maximum Output: Granite Blast."
For an instant, all was quiet, then a beam the size of an apartment complex erupted from Ryu. Rika was instantly swept up in the beam, completely invisible to the two ancient sorcerers.
Uro stared awestruck as the blast tore through the sky, and she gulped, 'So that's why Shinji wanted him...' She watched as the beam continued for an entire 8 seconds before dissipating. 'How terrifying.'
She shook her shock off, noticing the lack of any trace of the shikigami remaining. 'Guess that settles it...' She thought before pulling herself towards Ryu.
She landed softly next to him on the road, noticing the crater the recoil of the blast had made under him. She put a hand on her hip, "...You couldn't have done that sooner?" She asked with faux annoyance.
He grinned at her, "Dunno, can't you tell Shinji how you feel sooner?"
Her face flashed scarlet for a moment before simmering down into a light pink as she turned her head away, "...I'm sure I have no idea what you are talking about."
He scoffed as he turned his head back to the endless sky, "Yeah, sure, whatever you say, princess."
His gaze suddenly refocused. "We should probably go help the boss, right?"
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1st Person POV Shinji 13 seconds ago
'10 Seconds left.' I thought while dashing at Yuta.
Yuta swung the piece of rebar down in a diagonal slash, which I met with a rising slash from the opposite direction.
I narrowed my eyes at the speed of that strike, 'Is he using Jiki's technique to speed up his attacks?' I thought as our blades recoiled back.
Yuta followed with a quick jab of his rebar, which I parried with a horizontal swipe that knocked the blow to the side. I flipped my wrist and flowed into another horizontal swipe at his chest.
He swayed back, taking advantage of my limited reach while dragging his piece of rebar back to cut across my neck with its sharp tip. I noticed instantly redirecting the blow by knocking it up with my elbow before it cut me.
I lifted my back heel, vibrating the sole of my foot and slamming down to propel myself within his guard before he could react. I used my momentum to transition into a right elbow as I dashed forward.
His head snapped back, and he sent a rising knee to my chest in response, but I caught the knee with my left palm, using it to jump into a right vibrating roundhouse to his side.
Yuta vomited blood, as he was sent bouncing and skidding along the ground before he pointed at me and made a 'come here' motion. I felt a road sign behind me shot straight for me in an attempt to decapitate me.
I tapped my heel on the ground using ground break to ripple the ground up and stop the sign from connecting. The sign clanged against the ground as it ruptured, and I grabbed a chunk of debris from behind me.
I threw it at Yuta full speed as he righted himself, and he was forced to jump to the left to dodge it.
But I had already predicted his jump, and met him to his landing spot with a vibrostep. His eyes widened as I leveled a diagonal slash upwards that he narrowly blocked with his shard of rebar.
The blow sent him flying upwards, carving through the building beside him. He flipped through the air, staring down at me, before his head snapped to the side, where a huge pink beam of cursed energy tore through the air.
"RIKA!" He screamed, and in that small moment of distraction, I won.
I jumped up at him, ripping my shirt off and charging it with cursed energy before throwing it to the opposite side of where I was jumping at Yuta.
In his shock, he turned to the wrong side and batted my shirt, leaving him wide open to my diagonal slash across his chest, and my follow-up left hand, enveloped in my technique.
Space cracked and—
'Time's up.'
Yuta flew, crashing through buildings and landing in a heap, and I stood on a platform of cracked space while staring down at him. I sent a pulse, and his chest exploded from the eggs I injected into him. I smirked, and something caught my eye at the edge of my vision.
'This is gonna be fun.'
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Yuta clambered to his feet as he healed to full. 'This is bad...' he thought while panting, 'At this rate I'm gonna run out of cursed energy even before his family shows up...'
True to his words, Yuta's unfortunate lack of cursed energy efficiency meant that even in spite of his absurd reserves, RCT's extreme drain was sapping his reserves.
He scanned the sky, trying desperately to spot Shinji, but was entirely unsuccessful. That was until something caught his eye, and a shadow started to form in the middle of the sun.
He squinted to make out its form, only to see—
"ROAD ROLLER!" Shinji screamed as he punched a road roller straight at Yuta with his technique. Yuta's pupils shrank, and his eyes reached the size of a saucer, and he crossed his arms in front of his chest.
The heavy machinery crashed straight through his arms, shattering them before caving in his chest, pinning him to the ground as an explosion of dust erupted around him.
Shinji landed next to Yuta's crushed form, noting thankfully that the boy was still alive. "Do you surrender?" The grey-haired boy asked him, but Yuta was no longer conscious, the shock of the injury too severe.
Shinji smiled, walked over, and pulled the road roller off him. He held his palm over him, making a healing pod over Yuta and slowly healing the boy.
Yuta's chest reinflated first, ribs and organs mending back to form. His arms followed their crushed bones, reverting back to shape.
Shinji collapsed to his knees, panting as he finished healing the boy, adrenaline wearing off as he took in his current state. Drenched in sweat from head to toe, and covered in dried and wet blood.
Shinji had only one reaction to this new turn of events.
He laughed, a loud joyous boom, as he fell onto his back and lay staring at the sky.
The clouds passed overhead, and Shinji's laughter calmed to a soft chuckle. "Kogane," he suddenly intoned, and the game master popped next to him a cloud of smoke, "Add a new rule." He said, suddenly interrupting the game master.
"Make it so that players can move from colony to colony freely." He said with absolute certainty. "It's time the sovereigns get their name out there."
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A/N:
Aaaaand done wow that took a long time so sorry for the wait, but I was having a lot of difficulty writing this chapter and also with some mental health things, but I'm so back now anyways I hope you guys enjoyed I'm gonna go write some chapters for force and jackpot now, let me know how you liked it, and I hope that the Jiki thing didn't feel too out of place or out of character, but that's the only way I see the fight being pretty interesting seeing as how Shinji has a direct counter to cursed speech.
But thank you for reading have a great day.