Chapter Eighteen: The Third Mission, Osaka Factory Part Six
At this moment, the cursed energy was increasingly heading towards the curse without stopping.
It was a visible, terrifying phenomenon. The black and violet miasma that had filled the room was now being actively inhaled by the curse's central mass. It drew the energy in like a black hole sucking in light, creating swirling, visible currents in the air that rushed towards its pulsating core.
And the air pressure in the space was increasing unbelievably.
The very atmosphere grew thick, heavy, and difficult to breathe. It pressed down on their chests, a physical weight that made every inhalation a labor. The air crackled with static, raising the hairs on their arms and necks.
This matter made Mai, in addition to Kasumi, think quickly without stopping.
Their minds, trained for crisis, whirred at maximum capacity. Fear was a luxury; analysis was a necessity. They processed the sensory data—the rising pressure, the gathering energy, the curse's wounded but consolidating form—and reached the same, grim conclusion.
"An attack is impossible, but there's still a chance."
Kasumi's thought was a silent, razor-sharp calculation. Her voice, when it came, was a low, strained murmur meant only for herself and, perhaps, the universe.
The strike that Kasumi had made had created a gap in the core point of the Grade Two curse.
Her last, desperate upward slash had not been in vain. It had carved deep, exposing a pulsating, dark-red orb the size of a basketball nestled within the amalgamation of flesh and metal—the curse's nucleus.
Whose strength was increasing with the passage of time.
Even as they watched, the exposed core seemed to throb with a stronger, faster rhythm, drawing strength from the inhaled cursed energy. It was healing, reinforcing itself with every second.
With simple calculations in her mind, Kasumi thought that less than three to four minutes remained before the curse would heal this point.
The timer was set. They had a window. A tiny, closing window in which to act, or be crushed by the fully-powered, possibly evolving monstrosity.
She was now unable to move well after the injury to her arm and was feeling severe pain.
Her left arm hung useless at her side, a mess of torn muscle and likely fractured bone. The pain was a constant, fiery throb that threatened to drown out all other thought. Every movement sent fresh lances of agony through her shoulder.
But nevertheless, she got up and moved a little away from Mai.
She pushed herself up with her good arm, gritting her teeth so hard her jaw ached. She couldn't afford to be a stationary target, nor could she risk Mai being caught in whatever last-ditch move she was planning.
"Senpai, you can't fight!"
Mai's voice was a sharp, desperate whisper. She saw the unnatural angle of Kasumi's arm, the pallor of her face under the streaks of blood and grime.
Mai said while watching Kasumi staring at the sword that had fallen a distance away.
Kasumi's gaze was locked on her katana, which lay about ten feet away, its blade gleaming dully under a layer of dust and ectoplasm. The distance might as well have been a mile.
At the same time, the curse was in a short state of stoppage due to the injuries, in addition to the absorption of cursed energy it was doing at this moment.
It was a precious, fragile moment of respite. The curse was focusing inward, consolidating its power. Its attacks had ceased momentarily. Its giant eye was half-lidded, focused on its own internal processes. It was vulnerable, but also gathering itself for what would come next.
"We must attack. We must not stop."
Kasumi's words were a mantra, a command to her own failing body. Stopping meant death. Moving forward meant a chance, however slim.
Their group was certainly close to death, but Kasumi quickly went and grabbed the sword with her good hand and placed some cursed energy, ignoring the pain.
She moved in a stumbling, pained rush. Each step jarred her injured arm, drawing a hiss from between her clenched teeth. Her right hand closed around the familiar tsuka of her katana. A faint, sputtering blue aura flickered around the blade as she poured what little controlled energy she could muster into it.
"Not continuing at this time means only death. You must risk everything you have at this moment."
She wasn't saying this only to Mai; at the same time, she was telling herself. The words were for both of them. A final pep talk from the edge of the abyss.
"This is the right time."
She took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart. The attempt was mostly futile; her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.
The bleeding from her hand was stopping little by little through muscle tension.
She willed the muscles in her torn arm to contract, to clamp down on severed blood vessels. It was a crude, painful form of self-first-aid, but it slowed the flow of crimson dripping onto the factory floor.
Her arm was in very bad condition, but her other arm was intact.
Her right arm, the sword arm, was unbroken. It was her lifeline, her only remaining weapon.
She grabbed the sword with a strong grip that made the sword hilt bend slightly under the effect of the strength the grip carried for Kasumi at this moment.
Her knuckles were white, the leather of the hilt creaking in protest—creek. The sheer, desperate force of her will was being transmitted directly into the weapon.
—
An important realization came at the moment she was exposed to the attack; she had used her weaker hand to parry the blow at the right time.
When the curse's massive fist-spear had struck, she'd instinctively crossed her arms. Her left, weaker arm had taken the brunt, saving her life but shattering itself in the process. It had been a sacrifice, not a mistake.
Therefore, holding the sword with the hand she normally used to its maximum capabilities was something that made her calm justified.
Her right hand was uninjured. It was still a precise, deadly instrument. That was her one advantage. She focused on that, shutting out the screaming pain from her left side.
Because her cursed energy had now risen slightly due to the severe pain.
*The pain was a catalyst. A cruel, efficient one. It stripped away hesitation, refined her focus into a single, burning point: strike**. Her cursed energy, fed by adrenaline and agony, buzzed with a sharper, more desperate frequency.
She decided not to stop the pain because the negative emotions she was feeling now were pushing her cursed energy without stopping.
She embraced the pain. Let it fuel her. Let the anger at her injury, the fear of death, the frustration of the fight—let it all boil and churn and become power. It was a dangerous game, flirting with her own negativity, but it was the only game left.
"Then let's do it."
Mai sighed. The sound was one of exhausted resignation and grim determination. There was no other path.
Mai sighed. The atmosphere in this place had become heavier every moment, and the space seemed to be shrinking faster.
The air wasn't just pressurized; it felt smaller. The walls seemed to creep inward, the ceiling to lower. It was a psychological effect of the curse's condensed energy field, a domain of despair taking shape.
Mai didn't know what the reason was, but at the same time, Kasumi moved while Mai took out her pistol.
She didn't need to understand the metaphysics. She just needed to act. As Kasumi began her charge, Mai raised her trembling pistol, her vision swimming, her head a throbbing ball of pain.
She felt her head was about to explode, but "If I don't do this now, we will die for sure."
The logic was impeccable. Pain or death. Again. She chose pain.
Ignoring the pain in her head, she focused her eyes on injuring anything standing in front of Kasumi's body.
Her aim was unsteady, her hands shaking. She couldn't craft special bullets anymore; her reserves were dust. She could only fire the basic, cursed-energy-infused rounds her technique could barely sustain. It would have to be enough.
Kasumi's movement was like a pounce, where she disappeared and converted her cursed energy to the sword.
Kasumi's body became a blur. She didn't run; she lunged, pushing off with her good leg, her form a low, arrow-straight line aimed directly at the exposed core. Her katana, held in a two-handed grip (her left hand providing token support despite the agony), glowed with a concentrated, piercing blue light.
But at the same time, the curse launched an attack as if it had anticipated this attack.
The giant eye snapped open, fully alert. It hadn't been as vulnerable as it seemed. The energy absorption had been a trap, a lure to draw them into a final, overcommitted strike.
That attack was composed of many metal pieces that, thanks to the cursed energy that had turned into something like invisible hands, launched them towards Kasumi.
From the walls, the ceiling, the very floor around Kasumi, jagged pieces of metal—rusted panels, broken pipes, bolts, nails—ripped free. They didn't just fall; they were hurled with pinpoint accuracy and terrifying force, guided by strands of violet energy that lashed out like prehensile whips. SCREEEE—FWIP-FWIP-FWIP-CLANG!
(This is dangerous. I must do something.)
Mai's thought was a spark in the pain-fog. She saw the deadly net closing around Kasumi's path.
Mai intervened directly by firing scattered shots towards the flying objects.
BANG! BANG-BANG!
Her pistol barked, the shots wild, panicked. She wasn't aiming to destroy; she was aiming to disrupt. To knock the projectiles off course, to buy a fraction of a second.
She launched this attack using a larger amount of cursed energy.
Each shot was a piece of her soul, a direct withdrawal from an almost-empty account. The drain was immediate and violent.
That caused her mind to become more exhausted and deplete cursed energy faster.
A fresh wave of dizziness and nausea hit her. Dark spots danced at the edge of her vision. Her legs buckled, and she had to brace herself against a broken machine to stay upright.
However, the strikes managed to deflect 60% of the targets that were flying towards Kasumi.
It was enough. Just enough. A pipe was knocked sideways. A sheet of metal spiraled away harmlessly. A cluster of nails was vaporized. The deadly net had holes.
Who realized it was better to avoid these attacks instead of wasting her cursed energy.
Kasumi, her senses hyper-alert, saw the openings Mai had created. She didn't try to parry the remaining projectiles; that would cost energy and momentum. She flowed through the gaps.
So she tried to direct her cursed energy to her feet.
She pushed a burst of energy downwards, not for an attack, but for mobility.
That matter made her form become blurry.
It was a basic application of cursed energy reinforcement for speed—a shunshin in its crudest form. Her body became a streak of blue, darting between the raining metal.
Even at this moment, her style was graceful as she avoided the projectiles rushing towards her.
She weaved, ducked, and pivoted, a dancer in a hailstorm of razors. A piece of rebar whistled past her ear. A bolt embedded itself in the floor where her foot had been a millisecond before. Thwack! Ting!
Unfortunately, that wasn't enough.
The curse had layered its attacks. The guided projectiles were the first wave.
From above her head, something fell from above.
CRACK—GROAN—SCRAPE!
A section of the ceiling, weakened by decades of decay and the recent explosions, gave way. Not just debris—a whole chunk of concrete and metal grating, the size of a small car, plummeted directly towards Kasumi's path.
Mai wanted to shoot at that thing because she saw it first.
*Her eyes, ever scanning, caught the movement above. She tried to raise her pistol, to fire, to do anything**.
But at the same moment, she vomited blood from her mouth.
"Hurk—!"
A gout of warm, coppery-tasting liquid sprayed from her lips, splattering on the dusty floor. The backlash from overusing her technique had reached a critical point.
(Dammit. I feel like I'm going to lose consciousness.)
She thought frantically while her fingers went numb from the intensity of the thought. Her body was shutting down, system by system.
The ceiling falling from above was something she hadn't expected, and at the same time, Kasumi had frozen in the air.
It wasn't literal freezing. It was the paralysis of a calculated mind faced with an equation that had no solution.
It wasn't actual; it was her mind doing that.
Her brain, processing at lightning speed, evaluated every possible vector, every ounce of remaining energy, every angle of dodge or parry. And it came up empty.
She tried to find a way to adjust her course, to avoid it, to try to find a way to continue the attack, but she couldn't find any way.
The falling ceiling block was too large. Dodging left or right would put her into the path of the remaining guided metal projectiles. Parrying was impossible; it would crush her. Aborting her attack meant losing her momentum and her one chance at the core. All paths led to death or failure.
She was in a state suspended in the air; the attacks were coming from all directions.
It was a perfect, deadly trap. The curse had planned this. It had used its own vulnerability as bait, and her all-out attack as the trigger.
And at the same time, she felt Mai's private cursed energy.
She felt the sputtering, dying flare of Mai's energy as the girl vomited blood and slumped. The support fire had stopped. The covering fire was gone.
The girl had reached her limit and wouldn't be able to offer any help.
Mai was out of the fight. It was just Kasumi now. Alone, injured, and trapped.
—
Kasumi almost closed her eyes, accepting her fate.
A strange, cold calm washed over her. The frantic calculations stopped. The pain receded to a distant hum. This was it. The end of the line for Kasumi Miwa.
At the same moment, she remembered words from the beginning of her entry into this world, the world of Jujutsu.
A voice from her past, from a stern-faced teacher at the Tokyo school: "You must not regret. If you do, you will become what you fight."
Remembering these words, her heart, which was beating strongly at this moment, suddenly calmed down while her eyes became sharper.
The memory was an anchor. Regret led to curses. Acceptance led to clarity. Her heartbeat, which had been a frantic drum, slowed to a steady, powerful rhythm. The world snapped into hyper-focus.
She decided to focus on launching a direct attack on the curse while receiving the blow.
If she was going to die, she would die acting. She would not die cowering, or regretting. She would die striking at the heart of the enemy.
That matter meant she would remain without defense, and the blow that would come from the ceiling would be enough to kill her.
The calculus was simple. Defense = guaranteed death from the ceiling, with no gain. Attack = guaranteed death from the ceiling, but with a chance to take the curse with her.
But "I will not die in vain."
It wasn't a move of bravery from a wild desire to eliminate the despicable curse in front of her. It was a cold, professional choice: maximize damage output with the time remaining.
Therefore, Kasumi's anger reached its maximum limit.
The calm focus ignited into a white-hot fury—not a wild rage, but a controlled, directed inferno of will. Anger at the curse, at the situation, at her own limitations. She harnessed it all.
Her cursed energy turned directly to the sword, and she ignored the speed and momentum.
She stopped trying to dodge. She stopped trying to survive. All her energy, every last drop of cursed energy, every ounce of physical strength, every spark of her will, she poured into a single, final technique.
It was a long-range strike aimed at injuring the curse's core, which was still exposed.
*She didn't need to reach the core physically. She would reach it with her intent**, channeled through her blade and launched as a projectile of pure cutting force.
The scene from Mai's side, who was about to close her eyes, was terrifying.
From her slumped position, Mai saw it through a haze of pain: Kasumi, suspended in the air under the falling concrete monolith, utterly defenseless, yet twisting her body into a final, beautiful, and terrible attacking stance.
Where Kasumi's body was suspended in the air, but she changed her posture to an offensive posture.
In the split second before impact, Kasumi rotated her torso, brought her sword back in a wide, two-handed arc, ignoring the screaming protest of her shattered arm. Her form was perfect—the iaido draw for a strike that would never land physically.
The sword had turned into a saw of cursed energy prepared to be launched towards the curse in less than one second.
The katana glowed not blue, but a blinding, white-hot silver. The energy didn't just coat it; it extended from it, forming a gigantic, serrated blade of condensed cutting intent that vibrated with a high-pitched SHRIEEEEK.
The anger, terror, and iron will to eliminate the curse had directly turned into a form of destructive energy.
Her emotions, refined and focused through years of discipline, became the fuel for the technique. It was the ultimate expression of a sorcerer's power: soul made weapon.
—
But at the same moment this attack was launched, which rushed and ate the slash that pierced the curse's skin, the curse's body contracted in less than a second.
The curse, sensing the lethal intent of the final strike, did something unexpected. Instead of defending or counter-attacking, it performed an emergency evasion. Its entire, massive form imploded inward with shocking speed, like a grotesque turtle pulling into its shell. The exposed core was sucked deeper into the protective layers of flesh and metal.
The injury that Kasumi wanted to cause had been 60% avoided thanks to this rapid contraction.
The brilliant, silver slash of energy tore through the space where the core had been, shearing off a huge chunk of the curse's outer mass and carving a deep trench in the factory wall behind it. SHLIIING—CRASH-BOOM! But it missed the nucleus. It was a grievous wound, but not a fatal one.
"Dammit! It seems I have failed."
Kasumi's thought was a flat, final acknowledgment. She had gambled everything on one shot. She had missed. There would be no second chance.
And at the same time, the wall in addition to the projectiles that the curse had sent from above had crossed the distance and were about to finish her.
The collapsing ceiling chunk was now directly above her, its shadow engulfing her. The remaining guided metal projectiles, unimpeded, converged on her stationary form. Death came from above and from all sides. There was no escape.
—
Obito could barely move, but when he entered the place, he witnessed the attack in addition to Kasumi, who was about to be hit by the falling wall and projectiles resembling iron spikes saturated with cursed energy.
Staggering into the room, his body a puppet with cut strings, his vision swimming, the first thing his exhausted brain registered was the tableau of annihilation. Kasumi, a small, defiant figure under a mountain of falling concrete. A net of glowing metal shards closing in. The curse, wounded but triumphant, gathering energy for its next move.
His mind stopped for one moment and began working in the second part.
For a single, timeless heartbeat, his consciousness simply blue-screened. ERROR. CATASTROPHIC SCENARIO DETECTED. Then, the survival override kicked in, booting his brain into a terrifying, crystal-clear hyper-drive.
—The attack will finish her. There will be no chance for her to live after receiving such an attack. Her position now is critical and she cannot change her course. What can I do?
The analysis was instantaneous, brutal. No hope. No miracle. Just physics and cursed energy about to turn a person into red mist.
He looked at Mai from the other side, who was also looking at the matter with a look of pure terror.
Mai was on her knees, one hand braced against the floor, blood dripping from her chin, her eyes wide with horror and utter helplessness. She wanted to help, and that was certain.
She wanted to offer help, and that was confirmed, as the girl's eyes turned red as if she was about to lose consciousness.
*Mai's eyes were bloodshot, the capillaries bursting from strain. But they were fixed on Kasumi, burning with a futile, desperate will. She was trying, with the last dregs of her soul, to muster something**.
Nevertheless, she was looking at that scene and trying to activate every ounce of cursed energy.
He could see it—the faint, dying flicker of blue energy around her trembling hands as she tried and failed to form even a simple bullet. She was spent. A burned-out candle.
—
Obito managed to notice this scene only because his nerves were at their maximum possible, thanks to the Sharingan that had been working shortly before.
The after-effects of the Sharingan's overclocking were still present. His neural pathways were fried, but they were also primed, sensitive to the extreme. He was perceiving the world in slow-motion, not through the eye's power, but through the lingering echo of its strain.
Obito's brain reached its maximum possible, allowing him temporarily to increase his reactions without the need to activate the Sharingan.
It was a borrowed clarity, paid for with a future of migraines and potential brain damage. But in this moment, it let him see the scene with agonizing detail: the individual chunks of concrete, the trajectories of each metal spike, the exact millisecond of impact.
Therefore, he was able to see the scene more accurately.
He saw Kasumi's resigned expression. He saw the curse's contracting form, already beginning to swell again with stolen power. He saw Mai's defeated slump. He saw it all, a perfect snapshot of failure.
"I must do something."
The thought was not heroic. It was a simple, operational command from a brain that had calculated its own survival odds and found them to be zero if Kasumi died here.
Obito's cursed energy exploded in less than a fraction of a second.
He had nothing left. His reserves were ash. His body was broken. But somewhere, in the deepest, most stubborn core of his will to live—a will now paradoxically tied to Kasumi living—he found a spark. He didn't summon it; he detonated it.
The matter was very short, but his body, which had reached its limits, had decided to reach the maximum it could reach at this moment.
It was a final, biological revolt. Every cell screamed in protest, then complied, offering up the last vestiges of stamina, adrenaline, and life force in a single, suicidal burst.
"If this girl dies, this means I will be the only one who can fight. We will die if that happens."
His logic was bleakly pragmatic. Kasumi was the leader, the skilled one. Without her, he and the exhausted Mai were just two snacks for the freshly empowered curse. Saving her wasn't altruism; it was the only tactical move left on a board with only losing squares.
He didn't believe in himself or his experience. He knew Kasumi had the upper hand in terms of experience, style, and technique, while he possessed none of this.
He was under no illusions. He was a fraud with a stolen eye and borrowed skills. Kasumi was the real thing. The team needed the real thing, not the cheap imitation.
And regarding Mai, the matter was very similar.
Mai was a specialist, now out of ammunition. She couldn't carry a fight either.
Therefore, without hesitation, his body had decided to exert its full potential at this moment to ensure her survival.
His mind gave the order. His broken, rebellious body, in a final act of defiance against its own limitations, obeyed.
"I must save her."
The command was absolute.
Perhaps due to the extreme pressure that almost destroyed his mind, his eyes turned red.
SNAP.
A sound like a rubber band breaking inside his skull. A vessel bursting? A neural connection forging under impossible strain?
The Sharingan was activated. His cursed technique.
The crimson hue flooded his vision once more. But this was different. This wasn't the clean, analytical red of before. This was a bloody, painful, desperate red. The tomoe in his eyes spun erratically, jaggedly, as if the technique itself was tearing apart from the inside.
And that didn't happen due to luck. Due to the extreme pressure, time slowed down while his mastery rate of cursed energy greatly increased.
*The pressure-cooker of imminent death, the absolute need, had forced a quantum leap in his subconscious understanding of the energy flowing through him. It was ugly, brutal, and inefficient, but it was power**.
The air was compressed under his feet in one moment.
BOOM.
A small crater formed in the concrete where he stood as he pushed off, not with muscle, but with a violent expulsion of cursed energy.
He turned into a black flash while his eyes pierced the red scene in one moment.
To Mai's blurred vision, he vanished from his spot near the entrance and reappeared as a streaking afterimage of black uniform and red light, cutting across the room like a jagged bolt of lightning.
—
Kasumi was about to die. This is what she was sure of. Her body was defenseless.
She had accepted it. She felt the wind of the falling concrete on her face, saw the glowing spikes inches from her skin. She began the mental process of letting go.
Mai on the other side was unable to form any cursed energy in this short time or create anything using the creation technique.
Mai's hands fell to her sides, the last flicker of blue energy dying. A single tear of frustration and despair traced a clean line through the grime on her cheek.
But before Kasumi closed her eyes, accepting her fate, something crazy happened at the same moment.
The world didn't go dark. Instead, it was painted in streaks of black and red.
A black light with red passed by her and was directly in front of her.
A shape materialized between her and the descending doom. It was Obito, but he was moving with a speed and grace she had never seen from him. His form was a blur, his eyes two burning crimson coals.
After that, the shape moved while carrying the Butcher Knife in a rotating manner in the air.
He didn't stand still. He was a whirlwind. The Butcher Knife, a mundane tool, became the center of a micro-cyclone of slashes.
The knife moved faster than the blink of an eye.
Shink-shink-shink-shink-shink-SHINK!
A staccato burst of cutting sounds, too fast to count.
In one moment, several slashes were launched at the same time.
He didn't attack the curse. He attacked the environment. He attacked the very things about to kill Kasumi.
The wall that was falling a moment ago was hit by several attacks towards it.
His slashes, empowered by the last dregs of his Sharingan-enhanced precision and his explosive cursed energy, weren't aimed to destroy the massive concrete chunk. They were aimed to alter its trajectory and fragment the lethal projectiles within it.
It was dismantled; most of the spikes were removed, and the rest were pushed away at the same moment.
The Butcher Knife flashed, striking not the concrete itself, but the embedded rebar, the structural weak points. CRACK-TING-PING! Chunks of concrete were sheared off, deflected. Metal spikes were sliced in half or batted aside with precise, glancing blows.
At the same moment, Obito grabbed Kasumi's body in the air and used one of the falling rocks and pushed himself towards the ground in the direction of Mai.
Even as he finished his defensive flurry, his other arm shot out and wrapped around Kasumi's waist. He didn't try to land gracefully; he used the momentum of a deflected concrete chunk, planting a foot on it and kicking off, launching both of them in a spinning, uncontrolled arc towards where Mai was struggling to rise.
Who realized at this moment what Obito wanted to do.
Mai's eyes, hazy with pain, focused on the tumbling duo coming towards her. She saw Obito's red eyes, wide and pained, meeting hers for a split second. The message was clear: MOVE.*
She prepared herself directly and rushed towards the exit.
Adrenaline, the last dregs of it, surged. She forced her legs to work, stumbling towards the archway leading to the corridor—their only escape route.
"We have to escape quickly! We can't fight anymore!"
Mai's voice was a raw, ragged shout, torn from a bruised throat. It was the voice of reason, of survival.
The curse behind them was gathering cursed energy at this moment.
The curse, having contracted and absorbed the remnants of its minions, was now swelling again. Its form pulsed with a new, terrifying density of power. The giant eye was fixed on them, glowing with a furious, intelligent light.
In addition to that, it was clear that it was in a state of intense concentration, so much so that its attack should be faster given the amount of cursed energy it possessed.
It was powering up for a final, arena-clearing attack. A blast of concentrated hatred that would fill the room and leave nothing alive.
Yet, it did not attack them directly.
It was still consolidating, perhaps momentarily stunned by Kasumi's near-miss and Obito's sudden intervention, or perhaps the process of absorbing so much energy required a brief channeling time.
Therefore, without hesitation, Obito said while rushing beside Mai, holding Kasumi, who had regained her balance and did the same thing:
They hit the ground in a tangled heap near Mai. Kasumi, grimacing in pain, shoved herself upright with her good arm, her sword still clutched in her other hand. Obito rolled to his feet, his Sharingan flickering and dying for the final time, leaving his vision blurry and his head feeling like it had been split with an axe.
"We must escape quickly before this curse becomes much stronger!"
His voice was a hoarse, desperate croak. He didn't wait for agreement. He just turned and ran, half-dragging, half-supporting Kasumi, who matched his stumbling pace.
Mai was already ahead, vanishing into the dark corridor.
Obito took one last look over his shoulder.
The curse's form was now a swirling vortex of black and violet energy, its giant eye a blazing sun of malice at the center. The air hummed with a power that promised annihilation.
He didn't see an attack. He saw a bomb in its final second before detonation.
He turned back to the darkness of the corridor and ran, his only thought a frantic, repeated prayer:
Don't blow up yet don't blow up yet don't blow up yet—
The sound of their frantic, stumbling footsteps—slap-slide-stumble—and ragged breathing was the only sound in the corridor.
Behind them, the factory room began to glow with an unholy, gathering light.
They had survived the strike.
Now, they just had to outrun the explosion.
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End of Chapter.
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