Pov Narrator.
Isagi slowly turned around to face his last, but still unpurified, shikigami. The Divine General Mahoraga, who had just been summoned, now stood completely free and awake before him.
Mahoraga, having only just been summoned, lowered his head slightly—even though he had no eyes—to direct his attention toward Isagi. Silence completely took over the area as both of them remained motionless, staring at each other. Neither made the first move. The pressure radiating from the Divine General was overwhelming.
Isagi didn't let his guard down for even a second. His eyes took on a faint electric glow as he activated Quicksilver. He didn't stop there; he also activated Flowing Red Scale, and the characteristic markings spread beneath his eyes as his body was enhanced through the manipulation of his own blood. He felt every muscle respond with greater speed and strength. He had activated every enhancement ability available to him. He had no intention of holding anything back from the very beginning.
Then, in an instant, it began. Isagi sensed the tension building in Mahoraga's right arm a fraction of a second before it moved. Thanks to his enhanced processing speed, his body reacted almost on instinct. Both Isagi and Mahoraga vanished from their positions at almost the exact same time.
Mahoraga threw a powerful punch straight at him. Isagi responded by blocking it. The impact was brutal. A violent gust of wind exploded in every direction, shaking the ground and forcing the grass to bend as though it had been struck by a storm. The thunderous collision echoed across the entire field as the clash of their strength made the air itself tremble.
The ground beneath Isagi's feet shattered instantly, unable to withstand the weight and force passing through his body. Massive cracks spread around him like a spiderweb, yet Isagi himself remained firmly planted, gripping Mahoraga's arm with one hand as the two pushed against each other, each trying to force the other backward.
"(I have to do this fast. The simpler the attack, the faster he adapts to it.)" Isagi thought with absolute seriousness, never taking his eyes off Mahoraga for even a single instant.
He would attack with the absolute intent to kill. No trying to look cool or pull off flashy moves like he had during his fight with Katana-Man. Against Mahoraga, there was no luxury of fooling around or improvising for fun. Isagi deflected the Divine General's arm with a precise movement and stepped inside his guard, taking advantage of the tiny opening he had created. He clenched his right fist so tightly that the veins along his arm bulged.
"Black Flash!"
When he said he was going all out... he meant all out.
In a blur of speed, Isagi's fist slammed directly into Mahoraga's face. For a fraction of a second, space itself began to distort around the impact, and an explosion of black energy laced with dark flashes enveloped both of them. Blood sprayed in every direction like crimson rain as the 2.5x strength multiplier granted by Black Flash elevated that blow to a monstrous level.
Mahoraga's head exploded completely.
Clank!
The metallic sound of the wheel rang out loudly. Almost immediately, the wheel above the Divine General's head rotated once and, at the same time, in the blink of an eye, Mahoraga's head regenerated completely. His adaptation to Black Flash had just begun.
But Isagi didn't waste that brief instant while the wheel was turning. Taking advantage of that tiny window of opportunity, he unleashed a brutal kick into Mahoraga's side. The impact was so violent that the air exploded with a deafening roar.
With a sonic boom, Mahoraga was launched to the left like a projectile. His gigantic body tore through tree after tree without losing speed, blowing them apart into thousands of splinters while carving a massive trench through the earth, sending tons of dirt flying into the sky. The entire forest seemed to shudder from the force of that strike.
Isagi clenched his fists as he watched Mahoraga disappear into the cloud of dust in the distance. He didn't smile. He knew perfectly well that it wasn't over.
He would come back. And when he did... he'd be a little harder to kill.
That was what happened when Isagi stopped holding back and attacked without any restraint. The amount of destruction and damage his blows could unleash was terrifying.
Heavy footsteps began echoing through the dust cloud, and little by little, an enormous figure advanced through it. Mahoraga returned walking, as if the brutal blow he had received moments earlier had never happened. He didn't bear a single wound; every trace of damage had vanished. The moment the wheel turned, the injuries simply ceased to exist, regenerating instantly. It was a recovery ability even faster than Isagi's.
Without warning, the ground beneath Mahoraga exploded into pieces. In the blink of an eye, the Divine General was already above Isagi. But Isagi had moved as well.
Mahoraga's gigantic fist descended with monstrous force and collided head-on with Isagi's much smaller fist. The difference in size between them was ridiculous, yet neither gave up even a single inch. The clash was brutal; a deafening explosion shook the area as a powerful shockwave swept across everything around them.
Then came another punch. And another. Isagi and Mahoraga began exchanging a true barrage of blows at such absurd speed that, to the naked eye, it looked as though both of them had more than two arms. Every impact made the air tremble, creating explosions of pressure that rippled across the battlefield one after another. Neither of them retreated. It was a relentless clash between raw power and absolute endurance, where every passing second became more violent than the last.
With a swift movement, Isagi darted to the right just before another blow landed. His katana was already in his hand, and taking advantage of his momentum, he executed a clean, fluid, and lethal slash.
A compressed blade of wind shot forward with a sharp whistle.
The attack sliced completely through Mahoraga's body, cutting from one side to the other, before continuing its path and carving a massive scar across the ground behind him. The earth split apart for dozens of meters as rocks and debris were hurled into the air.
Mahoraga staggered slightly but reacted immediately. He grabbed both sides of his torso with his hands to keep the upper half of his body from completely separating from the lower half.
Clank!
Once again, the wheel rotated. Adaptation activated once more. The deep wound vanished.
Mahoraga, now armed with the information gained through his adaptation, attacked again. This time, he did so far more efficiently. Isagi's eyes widened slightly as he noticed the Divine General's movements had become much more precise than before. It was no longer just raw strength; every strike seemed calculated to force him into defending in the worst possible way.
"(Did he just improve his fighting style?)" Isagi thought in surprise, though he continued responding to the exchange of blows without stopping.
His fists and legs kept moving almost on instinct as he blocked, deflected, and counterattacked at incredible speed. However, he realized he was beginning to lose focus.
No. That wasn't the plan. He already had a strategy to defeat Mahoraga, and although it wouldn't rely solely on the strength of his own blows, it would make use of all of his abilities together. He hadn't spent entire days preparing just to end up brawling head-on until one of them finally dropped.
So Isagi closed his hand and pressed his thumb against one of his fingers, imitating the gesture of pressing an invisible detonator.
At that very instant... The ground beneath Mahoraga flashed for a fraction of a second and exploded. Multiple detonations erupted almost simultaneously around the Divine General. During the hours of preparation, Isagi had covered different points of the battlefield with his cursed energy, turning them into bombs using his ability to transform anything his cursed energy touched into an explosive. From the very beginning, he had prepared that battlefield with this exact moment in mind.
Mahoraga lost his balance for an instant, though the damage was practically nonexistent. And that was exactly what Isagi had expected.
The amount of cursed energy used in those traps had never been intended to injure Mahoraga. He had only placed enough to create a distraction, throw off his stance, and force him to lose his rhythm for a brief moment.
-(Second phase of the plan... immobilize Mahoraga long enough for the Ox to arrive and ram him). -Isagi thought as he lunged forward without wasting a second.
He needed to lead the battle precisely to the route the Piercing Ox had been running along for the past seven hours.
"One."
Isagi summoned one of the rabbits he had been preparing for weeks, charged with one hundred percent of his cursed energy. He had invested an enormous amount of time and resources into it specifically for this moment. If his plan worked, each of those tiny shikigami would be worth far more than any direct attack he could unleash.
Isagi's right palm began to bleed, though not because of a wound. He was using Convergence to force blood out through the pores of his hand. The crimson liquid quickly gathered and, under the control of his Blood Manipulation, refined itself into a sturdy blood rope.
Taking advantage of the fact that Mahoraga was still slightly off balance from the previous explosions, he threw the rabbit. At the same time, he launched the blood rope. The small shikigami struck Mahoraga square in the chest, though the result was practically the same as throwing a pillow against a brick wall.
The blood rope arrived immediately afterward. Under Isagi's control, it rapidly expanded and wrapped itself around Mahoraga's body, firmly securing the rabbit against his torso and keeping it as close to him as possible. The closer the shikigami remained to the Divine General, the smaller the chance that he could remove it before the detonation.
Even so, Isagi suffered the first serious injury of the battle. Mahoraga reacted with terrifying speed. He spun around and slammed his enormous fist directly into Isagi's body.
Isagi felt multiple bones shatter at the same time as intense pain shot through his entire body. Blood burst from his mouth as he was violently launched backward, flying through the air like a projectile.
However, he had accomplished his objective. Still airborne, he performed a flip to regain his balance and landed on both feet in a crouched position. He spat some blood onto the ground while breathing heavily, but only a few seconds later his monstrous regeneration began to take effect. In less than five seconds, his fractured bones snapped back into place and every injury vanished as though it had never existed.
Isagi raised his hand once again. Without taking his eyes off Mahoraga, he made the same gesture of pressing an invisible button. The rabbit began to glow intensely. And an instant later... the explosion was deafening.
A massive fireball completely engulfed Mahoraga's figure as a violent shockwave swept through the forest. The light was so intense that it illuminated half the forest for several seconds, making the ground tremble and uprooting trees due to the sheer magnitude of the blast.
Isagi didn't wait for the dust to clear. The moment the explosion ended, he shot forward and charged straight into the enormous cloud of smoke and debris. He tore through it in an instant and reached the center of the gigantic crater left behind by the detonation.
Mahoraga was missing several parts of his body: one arm, one leg, and part of his tail had completely disappeared. Much of his skin was covered in deep burns, and smoke rose from his body due to the intense heat of the explosion.
"Nue!"
From Isagi's shadow, his flying shikigami immediately emerged, spreading its wings and soaring powerfully into the sky. At the same time, Isagi firmly grabbed what remained of Mahoraga's tail, while Nue seized him with its talons and began ascending at tremendous speed. By dragging Isagi, it was also lifting the Divine General off the ground.
He needed to carry Mahoraga directly into the path the Piercing Ox had been charging along for hours.
Clank!
The unmistakable sound of the wheel echoed once again, and a gigantic hand suddenly appeared in front of his face. Mahoraga had already regenerated. Without wasting an instant, Isagi dismissed Nue. The bird dissolved into shadows before Mahoraga could reach it. He wasn't willing to risk one of his main shikigami for an attack he could avoid.
Using the Governor's Hand, Isagi violently propelled himself backward in midair to evade Mahoraga's grasp, the giant hand passing mere inches from his face.
Both of them began to fall. Without Nue supporting them, neither had any way of staying in the air. But neither of them seemed to care in the slightest. The moment the fall began, Isagi and Mahoraga threw themselves at each other once again, exchanging a relentless barrage of blows in midair. Every collision made the air thunder as they plummeted toward the ground at incredible speed.
Mahoraga's fighting technique had improved once again. Every strike was faster. More precise. More solid. He was no longer just adapting to the attacks... He was also adapting to Isagi himself.
---
End of the chapter.