Chapter 96: Divine Intervention
"Yami?!"
Inside the shattered cockpit, Kokichi Muta stared in disbelief at the figure standing on Ultimate Mechamaru's shoulder.
How?
This place was hidden behind a barrier specifically prepared to keep Jujutsu Sorcerers out. Even if someone discovered the location, they should not have been able to break in so quietly.
And more importantly...
How could he be this strong?
Mahito's arm had just been severed with a single slash. That was a Special Grade body, one that had endured Ultimate Mechamaru's full barrage without being truly destroyed.
Below, Mahito's expression had already twisted beyond recognition.
"Yami...!"
There was rage in his voice, but fear drowned it out.
His whole body was trembling.
That instinctive dread, the kind that rose straight from the soul rather than the flesh, was making it hard for him to breathe. It was the trauma left behind by their last encounter. The memory of that scorching blade. The unbearable pain that clung to his soul and refused to fade, no matter how much he evolved.
"Why are you here?!"
He roared the question, almost as if shouting louder could smother the terror in his own chest.
Yami looked down at him from above, one hand resting lightly on Shiranui. The black blade hummed softly, and molten red patterns glimmered across its surface like magma flowing beneath stone.
"Why?"
His tone was calm.
"Because this place reeks."
He slowly raised the blade and pointed it at Mahito.
"The smell of lives being toyed with. The stink of someone treating people like clay."
His red eyes narrowed.
"I could smell it from kilometers away."
Then his grip tightened.
"I let you escape once."
His voice dropped.
"This time, leave your life behind."
Boom.
The moment the words fell, Yami vanished.
No one saw the movement.
There was no blur, no warning, only the instant shift from stillness to presence. When he reappeared, he was already in front of Mahito, blade descending in a simple, ruthless vertical slash.
[Sun Breathing, First Form: Circle Dance.]
A perfect arc of fire split the darkness.
Fast.
Too fast.
So fast that even Mahito's evolved perception could not keep up.
"Damn it! [Multi Soul: Polymorphic Soul Isomer, Flesh Wall]!"
Mahito screamed and forced dozens of twisted souls together into a massive wall of flesh, thick and layered, a grotesque shield built to stop the strike.
It made no difference.
The flaming arc passed through the meat wall as if through softened wax.
Slash.
Mahito's chest split open.
A deep wound appeared from shoulder to waist, clean and merciless. The edges of the cut blackened instantly under the heat. No blood spilled. The flesh had already been carbonized.
"AAAAAHHHH!"
Mahito's scream echoed across the dam.
That pain did not belong to the body.
It was his soul burning.
Sun Breathing's suppressive effect against cursed beings revealed its true cruelty in that moment. Before that blade, even a Special Grade Cursed Spirit seemed no sturdier than paper. His flesh tried to regenerate, but each new layer was burned away almost as soon as it formed.
For the moment, regeneration was sealed.
"It's not over."
Yami's voice followed close behind him.
He had no intention of giving Mahito room to recover.
[Sun Breathing, Third Form: Blazing Universe.]
Two crimson arcs flashed from impossible angles, low and sharp, cutting toward Mahito's legs like reflections of the first strike.
Mahito twisted away in panic, half stumbling as he moved. His face had gone pale beneath the stitches.
"Damn you... damn you!"
He finally understood it.
He could not keep fighting like this. Every direct clash brought him closer to death. That sword was his natural enemy. More than that, the man wielding it had become a nightmare that refused to let him breathe.
"Then I'll use my Domain!"
Madness flared in Mahito's eyes.
If his body could not win, then he would force the battlefield itself to obey him.
His mouth split wider and wider until the corners tore almost to his ears. Four arms emerged and locked into a grotesque seal.
"Domain Expansion..."
Dark cursed energy burst outward like an ocean of ink.
"Self Embodiment of Perfection."
Hum.
The world changed.
Darkness swallowed everything within hundreds of meters. Countless pale hands stretched from every direction, weaving together into a closed space of malice and deformity. This was Mahito's innate Domain. Within it, he was absolute. Here, [Idle Transfiguration] became a guaranteed hit.
"Oh no...!"
Inside the cockpit, Kokichi's face turned white.
His Simple Domain had already been shattered by the earlier Black Flashes. Against a true Domain Expansion, he had nothing left to defend himself with.
"Yami, be careful!" he shouted. "His technique strikes the soul directly!"
At the center of the Domain, Mahito smiled.
It was ugly, relieved, desperate.
"Hehehe..."
"If this were before, I would not even dare use my Domain against you. Your soul is too dangerous."
His eyes gleamed with malice.
"But there is more than one target here."
That was his plan.
He had no intention of touching Yami's soul directly. Not after what happened last time. Inside this guaranteed hit Domain, he funneled every ounce of the sure hit effect toward a single victim.
Kokichi Muta.
[Idle Transfiguration: Guaranteed Hit.]
At the same time, Mahito poured all the Domain's cursed energy into one more attack.
"[Idle Transfiguration: Maximum Output, Multi Soul, Super Giant.]"
Rumble.
Countless souls fused into a flesh giant dozens of meters tall. It roared and lunged toward Yami, a moving mountain of malformed limbs and rotten muscle.
Hold him for one second.
That was all Mahito needed.
"Who will you save?" he laughed. "Him? Or yourself?"
His voice bounced across the Domain.
"This is your favorite kind of game, isn't it? Choosing between two lives."
Yami did not move.
Not immediately.
He stood in the heart of the Domain, red eyes silent, expression unchanging. Then, instead of raising his sword to attack, he lowered Shiranui and gripped the hilt with both hands, tip angled toward the ground.
He took one slow breath.
The violent heat around him vanished.
The brutal killing intent softened.
Everything became still.
"Who told you..."
His voice was quiet.
"That I only know Sun Breathing?"
Splash.
The sound did not belong in Mahito's Domain, yet it echoed clearly.
Like waves touching a shore.
Darkness rippled.
The ink black space filled with pale blue light, spreading outward in circles from Yami's feet.
That was not merely water.
It was serenity.
A tranquil sea broad enough to accept all things.
[Water Breathing, Eleventh Form: Dead Calm.]
Hum.
Absolute stillness expanded instantly around him, swallowing both himself and the giant body of Ultimate Mechamaru within its range.
The countless pale hands reaching for Kokichi's soul struck that invisible blue water and dissolved on contact. Every one of them was rejected, erased, pushed away before it could take form.
The guaranteed hit effect failed.
Even the towering flesh giant slowed the moment it entered the range of Dead Calm, as though the deep sea itself had wrapped around its limbs. Its movements became sluggish, heavy, powerless.
Mahito's eyes widened so far they looked ready to split.
"What?!"
His voice cracked.
"This... what is this?!"
A Domain's sure hit effect had been neutralized.
Not blocked.
Not endured.
Nullified.
And the calm had not yet broken.
"It isn't over."
Yami's voice came again.
This time, a line of red lightning flashed across the serene blue surface.
Hekishin.
"Defense is done."
His grip shifted.
The aura around him changed again.
The stillness of water receded, replaced by something colder, lonelier, and far crueler. Crescent moons began to appear around the blade, pale and mournful, countless beautiful slivers of death circling in silence.
Moon Breathing.
"Now I tear this sickening shell apart."
Boom.
Yami disappeared.
The next instant, the entire Domain was filled with slashes.
Not one.
Not ten.
A storm.
Each massive cut carried with it innumerable smaller crescent blade winds, tearing through the enclosed space from every angle. It was not just swordsmanship. It was chaos made precise. A tempest capable of cutting through the structure of space itself.
Crack.
A fracture appeared across the Domain wall.
Then another.
Then hundreds.
Mahito screamed.
"No! Impossible!"
Breaking a Domain from the inside should not have been possible like this.
But the impossible had already arrived.
A final streak of red lightning crossed the darkness.
And then the whole Domain shattered.
Boom!
The black shell broke apart like a mirror struck by a mountain. Fragments of warped space collapsed into nothingness, and the real world returned in a violent rush.
Mahito coughed up blood and dropped to one knee the moment the Domain collapsed. The backlash had struck him hard. His body was covered in fine wounds from the countless moon blades. If not for the resilience of a Special Grade, that last assault would have reduced him to scraps.
He looked up at Yami with only horror left in his eyes.
"Monster…"
His voice shook.
"You're a real monster..."
Water Breathing for defense.
Moon Breathing for destruction.
Sun Breathing for direct suppression.
This man had no weakness.
No opening.
No flaw Mahito could exploit.
"Geto! Save me!"
For the second time in his life, Mahito abandoned all pride and screamed for help.
He had completely lost the will to keep fighting.
Geto Suguru, who had been watching in silence from the edge of the battlefield, finally moved.
Mahito had disappointed him.
Badly.
But he could not afford to lose him yet.
"[Cursed Spirit Manipulation: Special Grade Imaginary Vengeful Spirit, Tamamo no Mae Incarnate.]"
Boom.
A gigantic fox cursed spirit with nine tails manifested in front of him, its presence twisting the air with a vile demonic aura. Each tail lashed out like a giant serpent, surging toward Yami in a frenzy meant to block his path.
"Another Special Grade?"
Yami stopped and looked at the massive curse with open disdain.
"A mindless beast thinks it can stop me?"
He inhaled.
The air temperature rose sharply.
The water pooled beneath the dam began to boil.
[Total Concentration Breathing: Sun Breathing.]
[Sun Breathing, Ninth Form: Setting Sun Transformation.]
Swish.
Yami's body moved in a strange, flowing arc, like the final light of sunset bending across the horizon.
It seemed slow.
It was impossibly fast.
He passed between all nine tails, slipping through the tiny seams between attacks, and appeared above Tamamo no Mae's head in the next heartbeat.
Then he struck.
Slash.
The fox curse screamed.
Its massive body was hurled dozens of meters backward by the force of the blow, smashing into the ruined ground and carving a trench through concrete and stone. A terrible wound split across its skull, deep enough to expose bone and leave even a Special Grade shaken with pain.
But that moment was enough.
Mahito had already escaped.
His body dissolved into liquid flesh and dove straight into the drainage system beneath the dam, vanishing into the darkness like a rat fleeing a burning house.
Geto retreated at once as well, leaving only a final glance behind.
His voice drifted back through the wind.
"Yami..."
There was real wariness in it now.
"A variable like you should have been erased sooner."
Then he too was gone.
Yami did not bother to chase.
He simply exhaled and slid Shiranui back into its sheath.
"Fast runners."
Then he turned and leapt lightly back onto Ultimate Mechamaru's shoulder.
Inside the ruined cockpit, Kokichi was still frozen in shock.
He looked up at Yami as though seeing some impossible divine visitation.
This man had arrived when death was already touching his forehead.
He had crushed Mahito's Domain, driven him to despair, and forced both him and Geto to retreat.
Not barely.
Not after a desperate struggle.
Overwhelmingly.
Yami looked down into the cockpit and smiled.
A small, warm smile.
"Are you all right, Gundam pilot?"
He glanced at the ruined armor plates around them.
"Your toy's pretty wrecked."
Then he looked back at Kokichi.
"But at least you're alive, right?"
Kokichi's throat tightened.
For a moment, he could not speak.
Relief surged through him. Relief, gratitude, and something else he had not let himself feel in a long time.
Hope.
"Th... thank you..."
His voice trembled.
"Yami... I have information. I need to tell Gojo sensei."
He forced the words out, eyes urgent.
"About Shibuya. About the sealing plan..."
"I know."
Yami cut him off gently.
He looked toward the distant horizon, where the sky above Tokyo remained dark and heavy.
"Don't worry."
His eyes sharpened.
"In Shibuya..."
He rested one hand on Shiranui.
"We'll settle every score at once."
.....
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