Nobara Kugisaki had been knocked unconscious by the cursed seal's electric shock, and so she missed the exchange between Mahiko and Kenjaku.
In truth, waking Nobara back up would have taken nothing more than a single touch from Mahiko.
Sharp people always grasp a situation in an instant.
Nobara didn't understand why the blue-haired Cursed Spirit had thrown herself into danger to save her. It made no sense. It was true that this Cursed Spirit had never killed anyone — but that part was easy enough to explain away.
What she couldn't wrap her head around was why the spirit would risk her life to save her. That part defied all reason.
When Nobara realized the blue-haired Cursed Spirit was fighting desperately to protect her, she was genuinely baffled — but if someone was going to go that far for her, she sure as hell wasn't going to let that sacrifice go to waste.
"Straw Doll Technique — Resonance!!!"
Whether Mahiko had blown off Ishiryuu's hair on purpose or by accident no longer mattered. Mahiko had quietly instructed Nobara to play dead beforehand — precisely so she could blindside Ishiryuu at this critical moment.
Using his hair as the cursed medium, with a straw doll standing in as the surrogate target, Nobara's Resonance technique detonated — right at the instant Mahiko and Ishiryuu were about to unleash a direct clash of Cursed Energy — and drove a soul-shattering strike deep into Ishiryuu's body.
Thwump —
Phantom cursed spikes burst through from inside Ishiryuu's flesh.
His pupils snapped shut. Blood sprayed from his mouth.
And because of that, Ishiryuu's fist and his Cursed Energy output were both delayed — just by a heartbeat.
In truth, Nobara's Resonance strike hadn't inflicted any tremendous damage on the current Ishiryuu in isolation. But the timing was everything.
Every single one of Ishiryuu's movements was half a beat behind.
And so Mahiko's attack landed before his fist could reach her.
"[Remains]."
Blue-white light erupted from Mahiko's fingertips in a concentrated blast. Ishiryuu's defenses were formidable and his body was dense as iron — but he wasn't completely invulnerable.
The shot hit him dead-on, full force, and drove him straight into the wall. The entire bounded field shuddered. There was no question about it — Ishiryuu had taken serious damage this time.
Mahiko let out a slow breath.
That [Remains] had cost her enormously.
But there was no time for a second breath.
She immediately condensed a pool of golden-yellow liquid in her palm. Pressing her hands together, she sealed the luminous mass between them, then shifted into the Piercing Blood stance —
Her fingertips pointed upward, toward Rime, who had healed her wounds and was up above, forming hand seals once more.
"Damn it."
Rime, too, understood she had been played.
The wound was mended — but the poison woven into the blood through Blood Manipulation had already begun to take hold in her body.
That massive wave of rabbits Mahiko had unleashed, plus the armored Shikigami, had pinned her down for the better part of the fight. It was that opening which had allowed Mahiko to face Ishiryuu in a true one-on-one.
Just moments ago, Rime had shattered Mahiko's summoned rabbit swarm with her ice Jujutsu Technique, knocked back the armored Darting Hare, and trained her attacks on Mahiko herself.
She should have been faster than this. But right now, the paralytic effect of the poison was growing worse by the second.
So when Mahiko raised her hand — that liquid shaped and compressed by her Hundred-Fold Condensation — the release speed was clearly a notch faster than Rime's attack, firing before Rime could strike.
Now that Mahiko had inherited Blood Manipulation, her "compressed resin" was no longer a pale imitation — it was a genuine attack with the same degree of compression as Piercing Blood, every bit as lethal.
Faced with an attack like this, Rime didn't dare be careless. She pivoted her strategy immediately, weaving seals for defense.
Rime's physical body was fragile — but her ice shields carried tremendous defensive strength.
Rime assumed the liquid in Mahiko's hand was still the same Piercing Blood as before. If she could weather the initial burst with the ice shield for a few seconds, evading the rest would be trivial.
"That isn't Piercing Blood."
But Kenjaku's voice sounded in Rime's ear: "I told you about Mahiko's capabilities before, if you'll recall... that liquid is flammable."
Rime blinked.
Then frantically scrambled to change tactics — but it was already too late.
The golden liquid in Mahiko's hands had already become a beam, punching straight through Rime.
The instant it made contact with the ice shield, it ignited — an explosive conflagration that melted the thick ice shield in a flash.
Against an ice shield, a flammable oil tore through far more effectively than Piercing Blood — more penetrating power, and far faster penetration speed.
A golden streak of burning flame punched through the ice shield and through Rime's chest in a single instant.
Rime had been hit again — and this time, the wound ignited the moment it was made, fire scorching through her body.
"Damn it all! How many abilities does she have?!" Rime snarled through gritted teeth.
Piercing Blood. Poison. Swapping the compressed liquid out for oil. Commanding the armored Shikigami. And that wasn't even counting Idle Transfiguration and the Ten Shadows Technique rabbits.
The sheer variety of gambits and the flexibility of her tactics were especially punishing against an opponent like Rime, who had limited close-combat experience.
"You're simply not very good at fighting," Kenjaku replied.
Rime's raw power still outclassed Mahiko by a wide margin — but Rime was genuinely not a skilled fighter.
In ages past, Rime had served at Sukuna's side, sheltered beneath his wing. Back then, most battles had been resolved by Sukuna raising his hand and suppressing everything in sight. Rime had spent her existence inside a gilded cage, and her actual combat experience was thin.
Faced with Mahiko's constantly shifting, endlessly cunning tactics, the rhythm of the entire fight had been dictated by Mahiko from the very start.
"Curse you—" Rime wanted to keep cursing, but blood was flooding her throat now, and the words dissolved into a gurgle.
The damage from that last strike was genuinely serious.
Left with no choice, Rime fell back further — jumping upward, retreating to the floors above, pulling distance between herself and Mahiko, hurling ice picks downward as she went, while simultaneously using her ice to stanch the bleeding and smother the flames, and channeling the Reverse Cursed Technique to begin repairing the wound.
Mahiko summoned the armored mini-rabbit to shield herself and Nobara from the ice picks.
Mahiko's gaze dropped to the floor beneath her.
This space had been restructured by Kenjaku — but the fundamental nature of any bounded field never changed. Beneath this floor was the bottom of the bounded field. If she could break through the floor, she could get out.
Judging by the solidity of this inner Curtain layer — even if there were other layers of Curtain outside, none of them could be harder than this one.
Break through this one layer, and she'd be halfway free.
On top of that, she had already left her alarm outside.
All she had to do was stall long enough, and the people from Jujutsu High should be able to get here. Once Jujutsu High inserted themselves into the equation, she could use the chaos to slip away — and hand Nobara off to them in the process.
So no matter what — breaking the bounded field was the top priority.
And to break this layer of the bounded field, she needed one massive, high-powered attack.
By conservative estimate: one fully charged [Remains], with a fairly high level of buildup.
And in truth, Mahiko had been sitting on a hidden ace all along — stored inside her shadow-space were several Cursed Spirit souls she hadn't consumed during the earlier part of the fight.
By devouring those souls, she could complete somewhere between one-third to one-half of the charge in an extremely short time — allowing her to fire off a sufficiently powerful [Remains] far faster than Ishiryuu or Rime would ever anticipate.
Breaking the bounded field... the moment was now.
Rime and Ishiryuu had both been beaten back, at least for the moment.
None of them had anticipated that she still had a hidden trump card — a rapid-charge, high-powered attack held in reserve.
Mahiko herself was already running on fumes. Her Cursed Energy reserves were dwindling. She had to end this fast.
But just as Mahiko was about to draw on those Cursed Spirit souls hidden in her shadow —
BOOM —!
The howling roar of an explosion erupted beside her ear.
Mahiko's head snapped around — and her eyes went wide.
Ishiryuu — the very man she had just blasted into the wall with a full-power [Remains] — was charging at her again.
His body was covered in vast patches of charred black, his hair hanging loose and wild, half his face drenched in blood — and he was still laughing, throwing another punch at Mahiko with every ounce of power he'd had before.
BOOM!! —
"I acknowledge you, blue-haired Cursed Spirit! Now this is what a two-on-two ought to look like!" Ishiryuu roared, wild-haired and blood-soaked, laughing like a madman. "Your attacks — they feel absolutely sweet!!!"
Damn it!! How was this man still moving?!
Mahiko bit down hard.
She had known Ishiryuu was durable — but fighting him in practice, his sheer endurance and physical toughness had blown clean past anything she'd estimated.
She had already hit him with a full-power [Remains].
She had already used Piercing Blood combined with Blood Manipulation to poison him.
And yet this man was still coming at her with the same output level and the same speed as if none of it had touched him.
And this was Ishiryuu with his power already diminished...
Damn it. This guy was an absolute monster.
Mahiko swept her hand — summoning the armored Darting Hare to throw itself at Ishiryuu.
But Ishiryuu caught the armored Shikigami with his bare hands — and tore it in two down the middle.
Schreek —
The wreckage scattered in every direction.
"Come on! What else have you got?!" Ishiryuu raised both arms, gathering his hair tightly between his hands and crushing it into the shape of a cannon barrel. At the muzzle's opening, an overwhelming concentration of Cursed Energy began to build — the unmistakable preamble to an all-out strike. "Unknown girl and blue-haired Cursed Spirit — let me pay you my respects!!!"
The hairs on the back of Mahiko's neck stood straight up.
She recognized that stance. This was the windup for Ishiryuu's "Overloaded Glacial Shockwave." A direct hit right now would obliterate her.
But then — the girl smiled.
Because she had just noticed something.
"You... can't use your hands anymore, can you?"
Perhaps Kenjaku had assumed the power gap between Mahiko and his allies was too vast for Cursed Speech to turn the tide — not once, not twice. Or perhaps Rime and Ishiryuu had been confident they could plug their ears in time once they saw Mahiko drawing on her Cursed Energy to activate it.
Either way — Ishiryuu wasn't wearing any specialized earplugs or anti-Cursed-Speech equipment.
And that was their fatal miscalculation.
"In that case..."
Mahiko seized the moment. She opened her mouth. Every trace of Cursed Energy in her body focused into her throat. The cursed seal manifested on the tip of her tongue.
"—[Bow your head]!"
The Cursed Speech poured into his ears.
Ishiryuu's pupils constricted. His body shuddered.
And then — he bowed his head.
At that precise moment, the Glacial Shockwave released.
BOOM!! —
A blue beam of light fired straight downward — and punched clean through the entire floor.
____
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