"Let's play a game."
I'm in a truly foul mood right now. I need a punching bag, or I won't be able to keep my composure.
"Maintaining a calm state of mind is very important. Don't you think so, dear Mr. Mahito?"
Mahito's pupils contracted. Nanami Kira had already vanished from sight.
A staggering blast of air pressure tore through the auditorium.
Black Cursed Energy connected into a single line—
"Guess which part of you I'll blow up first."
Mahito stumbled back several steps, plunged his hand down his own throat, and kept pushing deeper, gagging and probing as though inducing vomit, until his fingers found a small lump of flesh.
He wrenched it out—trailing strings of viscous saliva—and hurled it forward.
BOOM.
The lump inflated, ballooned, exploding outward like a detonating bomb until it filled half of Mahito's vision, forming a wall of raw flesh.
Nanami Kira's attack struck the barrier in the same instant. Lines formed in his vision. The lethal point flared with black light—
"Collapse."
Blood everywhere. The massive wall of flesh was cleaved clean in two, and simultaneously Killer Queen had already launched from Nanami Kira's body, streaking straight toward Mahito.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
"Idle Transfiguration."
Mahito slapped his right hand onto Ueno's shoulder and drew a massive shield of flesh from the desiccated corpse, raising it before himself.
The explosions kept spreading. Blood kept flying. Mahito retreated several steps, a delighted smile blooming across his face:
"How interesting. How very interesting..."
"Interesting? I'll take your head off first."
The meat shield detonated. Nanami Kira's pale-blue eyes closed in at point-blank range, his right hand rising. Jet-black Cursed Energy pooled at his fingertips, his neatly trimmed nails extending just slightly—like a row of keen blades—and swept toward the 7:3 point on Mahito's neck.
Fingertips stained with blood. Mahito's head launched skyward. Arterial spray erupted.
Mahito's severed head laughed cheerfully in the air. His ears stretched and grew, joints cracking and elongating into enormous wings.
His tongue lolled out grotesquely. Chunks of nauseating flesh slid off it one by one, wrapped in mucus, plummeting to the ground.
Crash. Like bombs dropped from thin air.
A tidal wave of meat surged outward. Pale, greasy fat flowed like a flooding river, smashing through the front row of seats, still growing—like a tree shooting up in time-lapse—until it punched clean through the screen.
Nanami Kira couldn't dodge in time. The wave of flesh swallowed him whole.
Countless tiny mouths split open across the flesh-tree. Heads hung from its branches like ripe fruit, faces contorted in agony, features crushed together.
Mahito's head dropped back onto his neck. A small adjustment with both hands, and tendrils of new flesh sprouted from the gap, burrowing into his scalp to anchor it in place.
"How interesting. Hee hee."
Mahito cocked his head. That smile was so sincere, so guileless—genuinely happy, from the bottom of his heart.
The next instant, the towering flesh-tree exploded. Black Cursed Energy speared through from the outermost branch tips, and every hanging head along its path shrieked and wailed, letting out wretched cries as blood poured like a river.
Rrrip. Nanami Kira tore the tree in half.
A pivot of his foot, momentum carried over, right arm sweeping horizontal—he drove all his momentum into the slash, whipping up a tremendous blast of pressure, and hacked at Mahito's torso.
From the shoulder blade, spreading to the abdomen, exiting at the hip—a single wound traced its way across Mahito's body before he could so much as react.
Nanami Kira's right hand turned over, clenching into a fist. Cursed Energy tangled with blood, coalescing around it, carrying a pressure that froze the marrow. In Mahito's eyes, it grew larger. And larger.
Black sparks gathered. Black Flash.
"Is this game fun?"
The punch cratered his face, snapping his neck halfway around. Cursed Energy detonated on impact.
His face bloomed like a flower—layer upon layer of flesh rippling outward, tearing away eyes, nose, mouth, ears, grinding them smooth, stripping them clean.
BOOM. The sound of air being cut only now caught up.
"Is this game fun?"
BOOM. Another punch.
This one followed the last one's trajectory, slamming into Mahito's right cheek. Monstrous Cursed Energy radiated outward, devouring his flesh without restraint.
In a single instant, half of Mahito's face disintegrated into a cloud of blood.
Another punch.
A relentless barrage hammered Mahito's face. His skull regenerated and shattered, regenerated and shattered. Dense fist-shadows laced with black Cursed Energy churned like a dark hurricane—obliterating everything, annihilating everything.
His eyeball burst and reformed. His teeth shattered and regrew. His ear was pulverized by Cursed Energy into paste—and grew back again almost instantly.
"Say it's fun."
A straight kick.
Planted square in Mahito's gut. He crumpled inward. Saliva erupted from his mouth on impact.
The next instant, Mahito's body became a blur, hurtling backward.
Every seat in his path was sent flying. He crashed into the rear wall of the theater.
The wall caved in around him. Cracks spiderwebbed outward from the point of impact. Dust drifted down, grain by grain.
Mahito was dripping with blood from head to toe. Every bone in his body had been pulverized. A large section of his skull had caved in.
His head hung low.
Nanami Kira emerged from the dust, his expression unchanged. Killer Queen followed at his back, its deep crimson cat-eyes gleaming with cold light.
"Say it's fun."
"F... fun."
BOOM. Another sweeping kick, riding a wave of Cursed Energy.
Mahito's head dropped. His pupils trembled. Even for him, once his Cursed Energy ran dry, death was inevitable.
For the first time, death had come this close—and it was vivid. Visceral.
And exhilarating beyond measure.
"Domain Expansion."
—"Self-Embodiment of Perfection."
He opened his mouth. Pair after pair of tiny hands pressed together inside his throat, trailing down his esophagus into what seemed an endless procession of clasped palms.
Frigid Cursed Energy erupted from his body. Everything around them began to warp—seats, aisles, ceiling—all of it plunging into boundless darkness.
"Thank you, Nanami Kira!"
His head retracted, his neck shortened. Nanami Kira's kick grazed his scalp and struck empty air, the sheer pressure shearing through Mahito's hair.
And Mahito watched him with a joyful grin, hands forming a mudra before his chest:
"Idle Transfiguration."
Inside the Domain, Idle Transfiguration directly altered the target's soul to reshape their body—and within the Domain, it was guaranteed to hit.
Only by shielding one's soul with Cursed Energy could it be resisted. Vanishingly few sorcerers could manage that, and Nanami Kira happened to be one of them.
But the effort cost him a beat. Mahito seized the opening, retreating at blinding speed until a considerable distance yawned between them.
"The tables have turned."
He tilted his head, clapped his hands, and grinned:
"You can perceive your own soul and wrap it in Cursed Energy. Impressive."
"But how many rounds can you keep that up, Kira-san~?"
Mahito was beside himself with joy. From the moment of his birth until now, he had never been this happy. Lips splitting wide, eyes drooping, pupils dilating—he laughed with wild abandon:
"Originally, keeping you alive still had a purpose. Geto specifically said so."
"But I can't help it." He scratched his head, looked at Nanami Kira with an earnest, apologetic expression: "I think I'll just kill you after all. Because killing is fun—Geto will understand. You think so too, right, Kira-kun?"
Indeed, the situation appeared dire for Nanami Kira. As long as Mahito kept his distance and avoided close combat, the Domain's passive effect would steadily wear him down to death.
But what surprised Mahito was that the man before him showed no trace of fear. Instead, he raised his head and smiled:
"Thank you. I feel much better now."
Nanami Kira looked into Mahito's eyes with genuine gratitude:
"You know, there really is nothing quite like watching someone struggle through hell, convinced they're about to win—pride swelling in their chest, joy breaking across their face—and then ripping it all away."
"Watching the despair fill their eyes. Watching them break apart, piece by piece. It really is the ultimate stress relief."
Click.
Nanami Kira pressed the switch.
Killer Queen.
Silent explosions rippled across Mahito's body. He fractured, bit by bit, like shattering porcelain—cracks spreading across every inch of him.
An explosion born from the soul. A lethal explosion.
From the moment Mahito's head had separated from his body, Killer Queen had already touched the torso—had already turned it into a bomb.
That headless body had been bait all along.
This fight had been decided from the very beginning.
Just as Nanami Kira said: everything that came after was nothing more than stress relief.
A breeze drifted in through the window and touched Mahito's body.
He crumbled, slowly, into drifting fragments—like grey butterflies peeling away from his skin, one by one, taking flight.
Mahito was dead.
Calm settled over Nanami Kira's mind. It was going to be a good day after all.
Sunlight poured through the gaping hole in the wall, flooding the theater, banishing the gloom and the cold, laying a gentle hand on every corner.
The air was crisp, carrying the scent of sunshine. The afternoon ahead promised to be a quiet one.
Nanami Kira stood amid the wreckage, feeling the bomb buried deep within his soul.
A brand-new bomb.
He knew, then, that no one would ever disturb his peaceful life again.