"Form and emptiness?! The line?! What nonsense are you talking about?!" Suguru ground out between his clenched teeth as Kiniro pressed his forearm into the curse user's jugular with enough force to shatter the obsidian behind him.
"Surely those robes aren't just for show," Kiniro taunted as he plunged his knife into the stone and started to pull his arm back, aiming to slice through Suguru's neck, "Don't tell me you've spent all this time roleplaying a Buddhist and you haven't even done your research?!"
With a grunt, Suguru grabbed Kiniro's wrist just as the knife managed to nick the skin of his neck, stopping it from going any deeper, "Why would I be interested in the religion of monkeys? It's only a tool for them to try and comprehend a reality they are wandering blind!"
"And yet somehow they've managed to see so much!" Kiniro countered with a grin even as Suguru gathered himself and planted both of his feet into Kinrio's diaphragm, sending him flying away with a heavy kick, "They understand that the difference between nothing and everything is non-existent. They are one and the same, yet infinitely different!"
Suguru began to slide down the steep cliff, but before he could lose his footing and tear his flesh against the glass-like stone, a series of pus-filled tentacles emerged from a portal and wrapped around him, securing his fall, "A nonsensical statement that means nothing! It contradicts itself!"
Flipping through the air as he fell, Kiniro had an expression of pure elation as the wind howled in his ear, "Of course it does, all of existence is contradiction. It is infinitely complex and painfully rudimentary. You are only what you're not, and you're not what you are."
Suguru suppressed a groan of pain as Kiniro's words echoed in his mind, inflaming the pain and pleasure that seemed to sap away at his strength and sanity, 'How troublesome, the stacking afflictions he gains make the activation slower, but in exchange his domain can grow in strength beyond the strength he would be able to summon on his own merits.'
"Let me put it this way."
Suguru looked down as Kiniro pulled himself to the wall with Lust, only to immediately start running up the vertical surface at blistering speed. "As humans, we are only able to perceive people, objects, and sensations as they relate to others. Something can only be hot because everything else is cold, pain can only hurt if you've experienced something that feels good. So when you deprive something of comparison, it loses all meaning, as nothing can exist in a vacuum. That is the emptiness within form."
Using his summoned curse, Suguru positioned himself on the wall, ready to receive Kiniro's advance despite the turbulence in his cursed energy output.
"However," Kiniro continued, his voice seeming to come from the air itself rather than his mouth, "When something is deprived of all meaning, it has the potential to be anything. There is no one true definition; emptiness is not the lack of something; it is the presence of everything. It has infinite form."
Summoning his inventory curse, Suguru was about to equip Playful Cloud to keep Kiniro at a distance when another two incantations echoed through the air.
"Mammon"
Suguru's eyes widened as Kiniro suddenly appeared in front of him, with only a flash of light to serve as a warning. However, Suguru realized he couldn't react in time and, in an instant, abandoned all thought of countering and instead diverted all of his cursed energy to bolstering his defenses.
But even seeing his efforts, Kiniro just grinned as he drove his fist forward.
"Lucifer"
Kiniro's body suddenly surged with cursed energy as his technique took effect, filling his soul with confidence and increasing his output exponentially.
Had Suguru been of sound mind, he might have tried to mitigate Kiniro's attack by sacrificing his remaining curses as body bags. But a strange sense of self-assurance convinced him otherwise, to tank the empowered blow and instead launch a counterattack afterward.
It only took a split second for Suguru to discard that notion as absolute absurdity, but that moment of disillusionment proved fatal.
"Now you understand…pride and every other sin, the prime motivators of human behavior…are the primary culprits responsible for stripping us of our humanity. An addict would rather die than deprive himself of pleasure, a greedy man sell his conscience and soul for riches, and a visionary blinds himself to what is possible to obtain his dream. That is the nature of Sin, to turn strength into weakness, to corrupt what is pure."
Kiniro's voice was almost caring as it echoed within Suguru's mind in sharp contradiction to the menacing sparks of black and red lightning that poured off his fist as it buried itself into his gut, followed by the explosion of lightning that erupted out of his back.
For a second, the hellfire's light was drowned out by the blackflash before it faded and revealed the aftermath in all of its gruesome nature.
Suguru took a shallow breath, only to feel no pain despite the bloody fist emerging from his back, 'I can't feel anything…Am I in shock?'
"It's a shame that I couldn't fight you before you sacrificed a majority of your curses; I'd imagine that had this fight ended up in a similar situation, you'd survive all seven awakenings," Kiniro monologued as he pulled his fist from the cavity in Suguru's stomach, sending a shower of blood raining on the ground far below.
"It's not over," Suguru insisted as he tried to summon his cursed energy, only to feel a hollowness, 'Why can't I feel it…my cursed energy?'
"Your soul is overwhelmed," Kiniro explained as a lost look spread across Suguru's features, "Cursed energy is the product of emotion, produced by sensation. My domain can overwhelm the soul with stimuli derived from the seven sins until it becomes numb, thereby cutting off the production of cursed energy."
"Is that why I don't care that I'm dying?" Suguru asked in a clinically cold monotone as he stared down at the hole in his torso, "Because to feel everything is to feel nothing?"
"You're finally starting to get it," Kiniro confirmed with a patient smile as the world around them warped, and suddenly they were standing at the bottom of his domain, which had won the clash, "The more aware one is of their own soul, the greater their resistance but I'd imagine that not even Sensei would be able to maintain his sense of self for long if I managed to survive long enough to incarnate all seven Princes. I'd imagine that you'd be able to withstand six had I faced you at full strength."
Suguru was silent for a moment before he stared into Kiniro's eyes, "Did you truly mean it when I said that even if I managed to kill all nonsorcerers, I wouldn't be able to rid the world of curses?"
"To the best of my understanding, yes," Kiniro replied, "Cursed spirits are mirrors; they represent the form within emptiness as they are born from the projection of human fear and desire onto a reality that ultimately cares nothing for them. That is what gives birth to them."
"Then what about cursed energy?" Suguru questioned, his eyes regaining a spark of intensity.
In a flash, Suguru was bound as Lust encased him in its chains while the knives pierced into his body like stakes, "Cursed energy is what gives them form; what allows them to interact with the physical world and create a vessel. But the core of their being lies in the emotions they embody, which will persist in a world without cursed energy."
"But without being able to manifest what threat could they pose against us?" Suguru continued to ask even as Kiniro's knives bore through his body.
Kiniro smiled, "There are other ways for cursed spirits to manifest, and I'd imagine that if they figure it out, the fate of humanity would look far more grim than it does now."
Suguru stilled as understanding dawned upon him, "You're talking about incarnation cursed spirits using humans as vessels. But in a world free of humans no sorcerer would allow a curse to take control of their body!"
Kiniro could only smile, "You hold sorcerers in such high regard, but you forget our ability to see the world for what it truly is does not mean we can't be led astray; in fact, it often makes us the most vulnerable to the dangers it holds."
Kiniro then clasped his hands together as if in prayer, "It's a shame that I won't be able to show you what's possible, but perhaps a part of you will live on, and we'll get to meet one day."
Suguru's eyes widened as he felt something change inside of him, but before the transformation could take hold, Kiniro's voice boomed.
"Maximum: Absolution"