The bone spikes tore through the air like a storm of needles, letting out shrill screeches that set the teeth on edge.
Even though that small figure moved through the rain with incredible agility, there was still no way to come through unscathed against a fan-shaped barrage this dense, one that nearly blanketed the entire sky.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Several heavy sounds of flesh being pierced exploded through the rainy night one after another.
The thick white bone spikes tore effortlessly through that frail, pale back, punching through his narrow shoulders and thighs.
The sheer force sent the body, now no bigger than a twelve- or thirteen-year-old's, flying through the air before it slammed hard into the mud several yards away.
"Cough... cough... still couldn't dodge it, huh? Mahito's Idle Transfiguration is way too broken."
Mud and rainwater splashed everywhere. The shirtless figure lay twisted in a puddle, one shredded pant leg half-submerged in the muck.
No bright red blood flowed from the holes punched through him. Instead, the wounds shimmered with transparent ripples like disturbed water.
The rain around him and the puddles on the ground seemed to feel some invisible pull, slowly gathering toward those puncture wounds, filling them in, struggling to rebuild that battered body.
"Everything inside my domain is made from my cursed energy. If I can control water... then I can control the water formed inside the domain too!"
At the exact moment those dark red eyes locked on the depths of the storm and his body rose and fell weakly in the mud, the rain across the whole space seemed to freeze for an instant.
Not because it had stopped, but because every drop hanging in the air and every puddle splashed across the ground suddenly defied gravity and every normal law of physics.
In a fraction of a second, the clear liquid stretched and compressed, turning into hundreds, then thousands, of razor-sharp transparent blades.
Shhk!
Without any warning, the countless water blades moved as if they had minds of their own, rushing Mahito from all directions, a full three hundred and sixty degrees with no blind spots.
The cruel smile on Mahito's face had not even faded yet when he sensed the lethal shift in the environment around him.
The muscles in his legs swelled instantly, and his whole body sprang backward into the air like a loaded spring. At the same time, he crossed both arms in front of himself, the pale flesh on them rapidly hardening into a shield of bone and meat, trying to block the sudden counterattack with something impenetrable.
"Too naive. For such a wide attack, the trajectories are way too obviou..."
Mahito's voice cut off mid-sentence.
The transparent water blades that he had already avoided with his movement, the ones that should have flown harmlessly into empty space, all bent sharply in midair at angles that completely defied inertia.
No matter how Mahito twisted in the air, no matter how he covered his vital points with that bone shield, the blades slipped through the blind spots in his defense as if they were weapons governed by cause and effect, already locked onto the result.
Shk-shk-shk-shk!
The water blades sliced into Mahito's flesh without the slightest suspense, burying themselves in his back, his side, and his thigh.
The cuts were not deep, but the intense neutralizing property carried in the rain immediately made large amounts of white smoke, mixed with black cursed energy, hiss from the wounds as though they were being scorched by fire.
"Ghk!"
Mahito let out a muffled grunt and crashed heavily back to the ground, carving a deep trench through the mud.
He grabbed one of the water blades lodged in his shoulder and used Idle Transfiguration to forcibly maintain the shape of his soul, violently squeezing the water inside his body back out.
"So I can't dodge them... and physical defense means nothing. I get it now. This is the guaranteed-hit rule of this rain!"
Mahito's expression twisted from the burning sensation gnawing at his soul, but the excitement in those mismatched eyes only blazed brighter.
Even while enduring the pain of his cursed energy being violently neutralized, he was already analyzing the situation from the depth and spread of the wounds.
"In this domain you control, every drop of rain is your blade, and being struck is absolute truth.
What terrifying potential..."
Mahito surged back to his feet, letting the next wave of water blades slice across his cheek without even flinching.
He no longer bothered with useless attempts to dodge. Instead, he unleashed his cursed energy without restraint.
His entire upper body began swelling grotesquely, turning into a monstrous bulk made from layers upon layers of ugly fat and armored bone.
If he could not evade a guaranteed hit, then he would simply tank it with overwhelming mass.
"The attacks are working... looks like my ability does suppress his Idle Transfiguration to some extent," Kaede thought as his body continued reconstructing itself, his mind racing without pause.
"But! Your domain hasn't formed a sealed barrier, and your output still has a limit!
Cuts at this level are nowhere near enough to grind down someone with Idle Transfiguration!"
The enormous monster pushed forward through the rain of unavoidable blades, each step leaving a deep footprint in the mud.
The bone armor covering his body was constantly being sliced open by the guaranteed-hit water blades, his cursed energy evaporating away, only to be instantly reshaped again by the support of Idle Transfiguration.
He advanced through the unavoidable storm like an unstoppable tank of flesh, crushing through the mire one step at a time toward the frail figure sprawled ahead.
"Is this guy even huma... no, right, obviously not..."
That panting curse had barely left Kaede's mouth in the cold rain when the monstrous mass of flesh charged like a heavy war machine.
Mahito's right arm, transformed into a gigantic spiked hammer, came crashing down with a roar that split the air apart, smashing toward the muddy ground where Kaede lay.
"Idle Transfiguration is way too ridiculous. I have no advantage in a direct clash.
But it looks like Mahito still can't use Domain Expansion yet, and I have a domain. That's my edge!"
At the very last instant, the frail body on the ground dragged its not-yet-fully-reformed torso sideways and forced itself into an incredibly dangerous roll through the standing water.
Boom!
Mud and broken stone blasted into the air. The place where he had been lying was smashed into a crater nearly two feet deep, and the spray of filthy water even punched through the trunk of a dead tree nearby.
"If I can create water and control water... then I should be able to strip everything back to its origin and become water too!"
And in the same instant that he rolled clear of the fatal blow, that body, still shaped like a young boy of twelve or thirteen, did not try to stand again. In Mahito's top-down view, ripples suddenly spread violently across Kaede's pale skin.
Then the edges of that human body collapsed like a bubble losing its surface tension. In the blink of an eye, flesh and even the tattered remains of cloth melted down completely into a puddle of clear liquid, merging perfectly with the rainwater pooled across the ground.
At the same time, the heavy storm cloud that had been hanging over the entire sanatorium seemed to receive some invisible command. At a speed that completely defied any natural weather pattern, it began drifting toward the iron fence at the edge of the grounds.
The pouring curtain of guaranteed-hit rain shifted with it, taking some of the oppressive dampness away.
Mahito's huge body stopped dead. The gigantic flesh hammer of his right arm rapidly shrank and degenerated back into an ordinary arm.
He stared at the puddle on the ground as it spread and slithered rapidly toward the outer pools of water, his mismatched pupils contracting sharply.
"You erased the physical concept of your body completely and turned yourself into a flowing natural phenomenon?"
Mahito did not blindly chase after the dark cloud moving away overhead. Instead, he calmly dropped into a crouch and stabbed both hands like lightning into the puddle under his feet before it had fully receded.
"But if this water makes up your 'body,' then the outline of your soul must also be hiding somewhere inside it!"
In the depths of his palms, violent black cursed energy erupted, twisted and savage. Idle Transfiguration.
Mahito tried to make contact with the "rain" itself, aiming to touch and directly alter the other boy's soul through the water.
But the instant that warped cursed energy entered the liquid, the surrounding raindrops burst into sharp hissing sounds as if a branding iron had been plunged into them.
Pure rainwater and malice-filled cursed energy violently repelled one another.
Large clouds of white steam rose around Mahito's hands.
The puddle on the ground reacted as if it had the instinct of a lizard shedding its tail to survive. In an instant, it severed its connection to the part touched by cursed energy.
That section of water was left behind to be corroded and evaporated by the black energy, while the rest slipped deeper into the dark mud and grass at even greater speed, fleeing outward after the moving storm cloud.
Mahito slowly stood back up. Looking at the red marks the rain's neutralizing property had burned across his palm, he casually flicked the remaining water from his hand.
The heavy bone armor over his body receded as well, returning him to the form of a young man in loose robes, conserving the cursed energy the rain was steadily eating away.
"So even the connection to any touched part can be cut in microseconds. Even if I touch the water, I still can't catch hold of the flowing soul.
What a maddening way to run."
He tilted his head back and let the last drifting strands of rain strike his face as he watched the storm front in the distance cross over the abandoned iron fence and move toward the forest beyond.
The fanatic gleam in Mahito's eyes had not dimmed just because his prey had escaped. If anything, his calm analysis only made it settle into something deeper.
"A mobile domain... with an extremely strong self-protection and severance mechanism.
Still, moving through the night sky with a rain cloud that obvious over your head is about as subtle as carrying a torch in the dark."
Mahito turned and looked at the torn remains of the discarded pants lying on the ground, the corners of his mouth stretching into a grin that could make anyone's skin crawl.
His prey had escaped this enclosed hunting ground, but this was only the beginning of a much grander chase.