Mahoraga's pale, corded arm pressed against the cathedral doors. Five fingers spread wide, its palm covering the dense pile of Wakaba Mutsumi faces carved into the gate.
The muscles in its arm tightened, slowly, like a bow drawn to the limit—then it snarled, and monstrous force detonated outward.
Power surged under its skin like living dragons, crawling into shoulder, back, waist, thigh—
And, as expected…
Nothing happened.
The gate, engraved with countless indifferent faces, didn't move a hair.
Sukuna wasn't surprised in the slightest.
She stood there with her arms crossed, and with a flicker of intent—
Dismantle.
Countless invisible slashes burst out at once. Under her control they interwove into a lattice of death, tearing the air with shrill whines.
The cracking, shredding noise became a single continuous roar as the Mutsumi dolls that were still sprouting from the cathedral's surface—now that Malevolent Shrine had been dismissed—were minced instantly.
Scraps of cloth and cotton drifted down like filthy snow.
Because she was controlling them purely with intent, without hand signs to "aim" precisely, a few slashes inevitably grazed Mahoraga's back and shoulder.
But Mahoraga had already fully analyzed and adapted to the Palace's punishment damage—including slashing damage as a category.
So its body now possessed broad resistance to "slashes" as a phenomenon.
Sukuna's cuts only differed slightly in principle—cursed energy versus "rule punishment"—so they barely broke skin, leaving shallow lines that vanished a heartbeat later, fully healed.
At Sukuna's signal, Mahoraga stopped its pointless pushing.
It drew its hand back. Its huge frame sank slightly, center of gravity shifting forward; the fist clenched with a bone-grinding crack.
This time, Mahoraga suppressed its battle instinct. It didn't move to its own rhythm.
It moved to the Palace's omnipresent orchestral BGM.
Raise arm. Gather force. Throw punch.
Every movement snapped precisely into the beat.
The moment its fist drove forward, Mahoraga's whole body swelled—as if a hidden reservoir poured into its muscles.
Veins bulged like raging serpents beneath its skin. Muscle fiber stood out in brutal relief, swollen to a grotesque, explosive density.
BOOM.
A visible white shockwave expanded from the impact point. The air rippled.
Mahoraga's strike was clearly stronger.
Outside, in the void, Shinobu watched through the livestream and asked with honest confusion:
"Why are we making Mahoraga break the rule sometimes, then follow it other times? Is there a reason? I don't quite get it."
Soyo kept her eyes on Mahoraga through Sukuna's shared view and answered casually:
"Mahoraga's adaptation is strong, but it can't instantly analyze and neutralize every rule. It needs time and a process—especially for rules it rarely interacts with directly."
"So first, I had it intentionally violate the Palace rule and endure the punishment until it adapted to that damage."
"Then after it became immune to the punishment, I had it strictly follow the beat—so it could adapt to the Palace's reward mechanism."
"Once it adapts to both punishment and reward, its overall compatibility with the Palace's rule system jumps. That broader adaptation should significantly speed up how it analyzes and adapts to the cathedral's barrier."
Sakiko nodded and added:
"Soyo's right. Think of my Limitless technique. Whether it's Blue (attraction), Red (repulsion), Hollow Purple (their fusion), or the mental overload of Unlimited Void—they're all different expressions of the same source."
"But when Mahoraga adapts, it still treats them as separate 'phenomena' because their manifestations differ. Even if it fully adapts to Unlimited Void, it won't automatically be immune to Blue or Red. It still has to re-experience and parse those effects."
"However, once it has adapted to a related phenomenon, it adapts to the siblings faster. What we're doing now is building up 'general Palace-rule adaptation' to accelerate the barrier breakthrough."
Shinobu finally understood. She lightly tapped her fist into her palm.
"So it's like accumulating experience across different layers of the same rules—so it can adapt to the barrier faster…"
But before she could finish, a new worry popped up. Her brows knit again and she turned to Soyo, voice edged with alarm:
"Wait—if Mahoraga adapts to the Palace's reward mechanism… doesn't that mean even if it follows the beat perfectly afterward, it won't get the buffs anymore? Because it's immune to the buff effect too?"
Soyo paused. A brief silence.
She was using Mind Singularity to search the info stream inherited from her double.
After a moment, her voice returned—more careful.
"My double's knowledge doesn't include a direct case like this. Ten Shadows' inherited records don't explicitly mention it either, so I can't guarantee it one hundred percent."
"But according to Mind Singularity's reasoning… the answer is probably yes."
"If Mahoraga's adaptation framework classifies rule-based buffs as external interference worth adapting to, then once it fully parses the reward mechanism, it will strip away that external amplification and revert to baseline. The Palace's 'buff' should stop working on it."
Sakiko, Soyo, and Shinobu all fell briefly silent.
Their attention locked onto the livestream: the giant silhouette still punching.
Boom. Boom.
Mahoraga's fists hit like siege hammers, smashing the cathedral gate again and again.
Each impact aligned perfectly with the beat. With each beat, the Palace's "reward" inflated Mahoraga's muscles to a monstrous extremity, giving it an absurd surge of force.
But the amplification didn't last long.
After only five or six strikes—
Click.
The wheel above Mahoraga's head rotated.
The instant that rotation completed, the Palace's buff could no longer latch onto it at all.
The grotesquely swollen muscles began shrinking visibly, smoothing down as the bulging veins sank back under the skin. That violent "overflow" aura retreated like a tide.
The next punch was still heavy—still vicious—but it no longer carried that terrifying burst.
Mahoraga had returned to baseline.
Soyo nodded, eyes calm, as if confirming a calculation.
"As expected. The reward mechanism has been fully adapted and nullified."
"And because it had already adapted so much of the Palace's core rule set through punishment immunity, it sped-run the reward rule. It only took one wheel turn to finish parsing it."
Shinobu watched Mahoraga keep punching and couldn't help sighing.
"So Mahoraga's adaptation is a double-edged sword… It can negate all damage and debuffs, but it also negates buffs and returns to baseline."
Soyo shook her head.
"Not always. From the knowledge my double shared, Mahoraga can grow stronger through adaptation."
She drew deeper into the inherited data and explained:
"There are roughly two categories."
"Category one: direct damage or a special ability that directly strengthens or weakens it. Adaptation manifests as immunity—it cancels the interference and returns to baseline."
"But category two: when it faces an objective environmental constraint—a real limitation it cannot 'immune' away—adaptation manifests as evolution."
She gave a concrete example:
"If you used a theoretically unbreakable rule-level chain to bind Mahoraga to a mountain, then ordered it to attack a target it physically can't reach… that objective situation becomes a phenomenon it must adapt to."
"It can't 'immune' the fact that it's chained. So the adaptation mechanism targets the core constraints: can't move, can't reach. Two outcomes typically follow."
"Either its attack output grows violently until it reaches the level where it can break the unbreakable chain…"
"Or its body expands drastically, power multiplying geometrically—until it can drag the entire mountain and move anyway."
She concluded:
"In those situations, adaptation doesn't just cancel an effect—it changes Mahoraga to breach the limit. That can mean explosive baseline growth."
Shinobu sucked in a breath, her mind involuntarily producing an image of a mountain-sized Mahoraga dragging terrain like a toy.
"…That's absurd."
Soyo nodded, tone heavy.
"'Absurd' might still be understating it. If it keeps meeting strong enough constraints to trigger growth… its ceiling is hard to imagine."
While the three were still discussing, Mahoraga kept hammering the cathedral gate.
Then—
Click.
The wheel turned again at the instant of another punch.
Mahoraga's fist slammed down.
This time, the sound was different: a dull, heavy thud.
And at the moment of contact, Mahoraga's knuckles caved inward—then its finger bones shattered with a sharp crack, as if the impact had rebounded through its own structure.
That was normal: strike something far beyond your body's tolerance, and you get recoil damage.
But Mahoraga didn't flinch.
Its throat rolled with a beastlike growl, and its lips stretched into a wild, delighted grin.
"Finally," Sakiko's excited voice rang out in the void. All three of them smiled at the same time.
Until now, the cathedral's barrier had been pure nothingness to Mahoraga—an untouchable "wall of sighs." Every punch felt like hitting empty air, producing no meaningful feedback.
But this—
Even if it caused recoil—
the recoil itself meant contact had occurred.
The barrier was no longer intangible null. Mahoraga was truly touching it.
No damage yet, but this "from zero to one" shift was everything: it meant the barrier's nature had finally entered the wheel's analysis domain.
Seconds later—
Click.
The wheel rotated again.
Mahoraga's cracked, bleeding fist smashed down.
BOOM—! RIIIP—!
The thunderous impact came with a thin, sharp metallic tearing sound.
Mahoraga's fist withdrew—instantly healed—and a hairline crack had appeared in the gate.
The crack vanished a moment later as the door restored itself, pristine again.
But that was enough.
"Effective!" Shinobu's voice lifted.
"The barrier… was breached." Sakiko's eyes burned with sharp light.
Soyo nodded hard, face tight with anticipation.
That fleeting crack turned victory from a fantasy into something visible.
Mahoraga's grin widened further, intoxicated, and it sped up its punches as if it had tasted blood.
Then the wheel rang out with one final, clean—
Click.
Mahoraga drew its fist back, stepped, twisted its waist, drove shoulder and arm forward—every muscle locking into a single brutal line.
The cathedral door and the invisible rule barrier around it became paper.
With a wet, ugly thunk, Mahoraga's fist punched straight through.
In total, Mahoraga had adapted seven times:
Three wheel turns: hard-adapted to punishment damage for violating the beat.
One wheel turn: using that accumulated "Palace-rule literacy," it fully adapted to the reward buff mechanism.
Three wheel turns: then, on top of those core-rule adaptations, it broke the cathedral's rule barrier itself.
From Mahoraga's appearance to a clean breakthrough—
Less than one minute.
Sakiko would henceforth declare Mahoraga the harshest father of all "mechanics monsters."
Let Mahoraga crack a rules-based defense?
That was just too authoritative.
Mahoraga wasn't satisfied with a single hole.
It didn't pull its arm out. Instead it roared, drove its other arm into the opposite side of the gate, and with both arms bulging like living cables, tore outward.
Metal screamed.
The cathedral doors—along with a large chunk of surrounding wall—were ripped apart by raw violence.
Stained glass detonated into a storm of color. Shards poured down like rain, refracting light into a dreamy, grotesque kaleidoscope.
When the dust cleared, the cathedral had been split open into a huge, savage wound.
The interior finally revealed itself.
Sukuna—standing behind Mahoraga the entire time—widened all four eyes to their limit.
The inside wasn't the expected darkness.
It was… holy.
A sacred atmosphere flooded the space, violently contradicting the cathedral's grotesque exterior.
The dome ceiling was a vast arch of multicolored glass.
Even though this Palace's void had no true light source, sunlight that shouldn't exist poured down through the stained glass.
It refracted into solemn, dreamlike colored radiance—holy light spilling across the cathedral floor.
And under that light—
There were dolls.
A thick carpet of them. Countless Mutsumi dolls, different sizes, different shapes, mostly still cartoony cloth-and-cotton forms, blank faces, hollow eyes reflecting the rainbow "saintlight."
At the center—where the holy glow was brightest—something floated.
A woman.
Not human-sized.
She was several times larger than a normal person, wearing a pure white gown that looked like flowing moonlight. Long mint-green hair drifted in the air as if in slow water.
Her pose was like a fetus in the womb—arms folded, legs drawn in, head bowed.
Holy and fragile… and deeply wrong.
But what seized all attention—
was what she held.
In her arms was a doll shaped like Wakaba Mutsumi.
Yet it wasn't like the others.
It was too real.
The porcelain-perfect face. The soft mint-green hair. Even the eyelashes—every detail was exact. The clothes matched Mutsumi's precisely.
A living, full-scale replica.
It lay there in her embrace as if sleeping in eternal peace.
Through the livestream, Sakiko saw that scene with terrifying clarity.
Her pupils contracted. She spoke without thinking.
"Mori Minami…?!"
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 165)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter220)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter125)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter250)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 220
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 185
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/20
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 248
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 230
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume4/40
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 125
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 145
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 120
I Can Copy Unique Skills 115
Summoning an Evil God, but the 75
Supernatural Multiverse 110
My Harem Is Indescribable 100
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 105
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 67
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 105
Still playing traditional Honk 80
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 85
What Should I Do After Switchi - Volume2/3
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 78
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
Transmigrated as Sukuna 80
Checking In in Demon Slayer 85
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 100
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 85
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 80
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 90
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 75
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 80
Why did they assign me to Uma 75
MYGO Beauties 70
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 70
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 80
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 80
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 57
The Uma Musume Who Became 55
I'm Definitely Not the King of 60
After Maxing Out Every Class 45
Naruto: I'm Konoha's Local Men 35
Honkai: World Modulation Mode 34
I, the Elden Sword Saint 27
Dio Brando Is Challenging FGO 24
No One Knows Pokémon Better 18
I, Sakazuki, Won't Go Down Tha 20
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