"Everyone! We're putting the Exhibition on hold! We deal with the Shuuki first!"
"Yes, Captain!"
Responding to Kyouka's order, Shushu immediately activated «Paradigm Shift». Her body expanded dramatically, transforming into a ten-meter giant that began stomping through the wave of Shuuki pouring in.
*BUZZ!*
On the other side, Tenka opened a spatial portal with a sweep of her hand.
"I'll take the non-combatants into the dormitory. Naoki-kun, keep everyone here safe."
Naoki gave a casual thumbs-up to the woman who had given her blessing to his harem.
"As long as I'm here, everyone will be fine. Trust me!"
Ignoring the couple's exchange in the middle of a battlefield, Kyouka drew her katana. With one precise slash, she split the Shuuki in front of her clean in two.
Just before Tenka disappeared into the portal, Kyouka called out. "Monitor enemy movement through Nei's intel!"
*BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!*
Shushu went to work. With one sweep of her enormous leg, she cleared five Shuuki in a single devastating horizontal kick.
"I feel a hundred times better!"
In her euphoria, she failed to notice a Shuuki leaping from her blind spot directly behind her.
"Hyaaa!"
Before the monster's claws could reach Shushu, Sahara, already running on «Crazy Sheep», shot forward like a bolt. She caved in the Shuuki's skull with a kick and landed lightly on Shushu's shoulder.
"Go wild as much as you want! I'll cover your back!"
"Got it!"
Shushu felt considerably more secure with a reliable partner watching her back, even if they had been fighting each other fiercely just minutes before.
*RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!*
The sound of rapid gunfire came from another direction. Himari had transformed her arm into a heavy machine gun using «Learning» to replicate the Peach Fruit Blessing of Tokoyama Saki from Unit Five, «Armed Belle».
The rotating barrel at the end of her arm spun and unleashed dozens of rounds in seconds, shredding through clusters of Shuuki until they burst apart.
Meanwhile, Yuuki, having shifted into his slave form under Kyouka's contract, was cutting down every Shuuki that came within reach with his exceptional physical strength.
Among everyone present, Yachiho's destructive output was by far the weakest, still heavily dependent on her modified pistol. By comparison, her younger sister was racking up considerably more kills.
And what about Naoki?
Strangely, not a single Shuuki dared to target him. In the middle of the roaring battlefield, Naoki stood in complete silence, locked in an intense stare with the enemy's leader, Rairen.
"So you're the man who awakened a Peach Fruit Blessing? Nothing special about you."
After studying Naoki for a moment, Rairen lost interest almost immediately. In her view, the man in front of her was a minor anomaly with nothing threatening about him.
"Who are you? This is the first time I've encountered a Shuuki who can speak."
Even though Naoki already knew his opponent's identity from his knowledge of the plot, he asked anyway to avoid raising suspicion about how he could possibly know such details about an enemy.
"I am Rairen, Second Pillar of the Eight Thunder Gods! And you are my target!"
"I will finish you in an instant. This fight will be over quickly."
Rairen made no effort to conceal the contempt on her face. She clearly wasn't taking her opponent seriously.
*CRACK!*
Without warning, Rairen raised her hand. From her palm erupted a thick bolt of blue-white lightning that tore through the ground and everything in its path, scorching a lethal trail directly toward Naoki's position.
"Oops, a little excessive." Rairen mocked with a grin. "Let's hope his body isn't completely destroyed so I can bring something home."
*BAM!*
But Naoki had already used «Ame-no-Mitori» to open a portal behind Rairen. Encased in a golden aura signaling active «Crazy Sheep», he materialized instantly and drove a hard kick into the side of her head.
"Hm. You're quite solid." Naoki muttered, registering the impact through his leg.
Watching Rairen only step back a few paces, Naoki had to acknowledge how durable this enemy was. A kick with that much force behind it should have leveled a five-story building.
"You should think twice before kicking someone as strong as me! This body of mine is hard as steel!" Rairen said, cracking her neck. "You won't be able to scratch me!"
She then opened her mouth wide and discharged four enormous fireballs, each the size of a car. The heat was so extreme that the air around the arena began to distort, hot enough to vaporize a human being in seconds.
Facing that oncoming fire, Naoki didn't move an inch. All four fireballs stopped dead two meters in front of him, blocked by Infinity, the absolute spatial membrane generated by his spatial manipulation, which rendered the distance between himself and any incoming attack infinite.
"Cheap tricks!"
Rairen's patience began to fray. She launched a straight punch that split the air. Naoki answered with a fist wrapped in golden aura.
*BAM!*
The collision sent a shockwave rippling through the air around them. Without another word, both of them plunged into a fierce exchange of blows.
*BAM!* *BAM!* *BAM!* *BAM!*
Rairen drove rapid combinations forward, each punch carrying the weight of something that could flatten a mountain, but Naoki deflected every one with movements that were minimalist and precise.
Each time Rairen's fist came close to connecting with Naoki's face, it was stopped cold by Infinity, leaving Naoki free to answer with a clean counter to Rairen's solar plexus.
Naoki moved fluidly, using portals to shift position instantly in the air, appearing above, beside, then behind Rairen within milliseconds, raining blows across her reinforced frame from every angle.
Rairen, recognizing that her speed was clearly outmatched, fell back on the defense her steel-like body offered. She deliberately let certain hits land so she could catch Naoki's arm, but her hand was stopped every time by Infinity.
After the barrage, Rairen jumped back, her chest heaving with barely contained fury. She spat to the side and fixed Naoki with a withering glare.
"Hah! What kind of man are you? Hiding in your shell like a turtle! If you're actually a man, face me openly without that strange wall of yours!"
Naoki remained perfectly composed, no emotion showing as he replied in a flat, indifferent tone.
"Whether I'm a real man or not isn't your call to make."
"Making excuses is what the weak do. The strong overcome every obstacle with their own power. The fact that you can't break through my Infinity is proof that you're the weak one here, Rairen."
Being called weak by a carbon-based creature was all it took to blow Rairen's temper wide open.
"DIE, ARROGANT HUMAN!"
*CRACK!* *CRACK!* *CRACK!*
Hundreds of massive lightning bolts hammered the earth exactly where Naoki stood. Explosion after explosion carved craters into the ground, dust and smoke swallowing everything.
But when the dust thinned, Naoki was still standing without a single mark on him. Infinity held absolutely still, preventing everything regardless of how destructive it was from making contact. Short of attacks based on causality, abstract concepts, or high-level spatial manipulation of its own, breaking through that absolute defense was effectively impossible.
No matter how much destructive force an enemy poured into their attacks, all of it became meaningless the moment it could never actually reach its target.
Rairen, growing increasingly frustrated, tried a different approach. "Sure, you're safe in there! But look at yourself, you can't hurt me either! This body of mine is eternal steel!"
"Who said that?" Naoki smiled faintly. "Take this."
He raised one finger. Using the spatial manipulation of «Ame-no-Mitori», he generated a miniature black hole directly above Rairen's head.
*BUZZ!*
Rairen's combat instincts were sharp, and she shot away at lightning speed the instant she registered the threat. But the gravitational pull of the miniature black hole was overwhelming. The impossible suction force tore Rairen's left arm clean off at the shoulder before she managed to clear the radius.
"AARRGH! DAMN THAT HURTS!! MY ARM!!!" Rairen howled, staring in horror at the stump where her shoulder had been.
*BUZZ!*
Giving her no moment to breathe, Naoki continued with a style of combat that called to mind The Spot from Marvel, relentless and spatial in a way that left no angle safe.
He opened dozens of small portals around Rairen in rapid succession. He no longer needed to chase her. A punch thrown into one portal emerged from a completely impossible angle at her back. When Rairen tried to counter, Naoki shifted the portal openings so that she ended up striking her own shadow, or driving her fist back into herself.
A portal opened directly in front of Rairen's face, and through it came Naoki's golden-aura kick. Rairen swung her right fist in response, but her arm entered a portal that snapped open in her path, and that same fist came out of another portal behind her own head, connecting hard with the back of her neck.
*BAM!*
Rairen staggered. She tried releasing lightning in every direction, but Naoki calmly collected each bolt through spatial portals and redirected them squarely into her back.
Every time Rairen attempted to attack, she was essentially fighting herself through the spatial gaps Naoki opened at random.
Rairen was being completely toyed with. She was thrown back and forth between portals, absorbing hits from every direction with no way to see where the next one was coming from. The Second Pillar of the Eight Thunder Gods had been reduced to nothing more than a plaything in Naoki's hands as the pressure mounted without pause or mercy.
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