"You are great in tactics for sure."
Gojo exclaimed, patting Hojo on the shoulder. But he didn't know that it was just mere luck.
Still, whatever had happened, he had achieved what he was supposed to.
The next duel was with Izumi. In Hojo's eyes, he was kind of an arrogant rich brat. However he was a six eye user also. So maybe arrogance always comes with six eyes.
The best example of this is Satoru Gojo of course.
"We don't have much time remaining. I'm teleporting you now."
As he finished speaking, Izumi and Hojo vanished from there, materialising inside the arena which was covered with a large barrier.
The barrier was very large and could withstand extreme fights. But the previous fight which happened here wasn't that huge. So, no attacks had ever reached the barrier to test its true strength.
Hojo found himself at the same place he had teleported before. He was the same Hojo with no techniques.
But there was a tiny but significant difference now—he had 10x more raw power.
If he could somehow find a way to spend his cursed energy output into his speed, maybe he could overwhelm Izumi with just that.
"Michizane sama didn't use his innate abilities like thunder. He could easily overpower you. But I'm not that kind. I will use his technique against you."
Izumi announced loudly, sparks of lightning already flickering around his arm.
'I had expected something like this. He never used all of his abilities. Whatever, the result would be the same.'
Hojo thought as he positioned himself in a fighting stance, remembering Dodo and other special grade sorcerers, like how they used the cursed energy output in their favour.
Hojo was a prodigy in learning new things, especially those which seemed nonsense at first.
Because of ten times more cursed energy and more cursed output, he could fight with even a low efficiency rate.
A thick layer of blue cursed energy with a tint of dark red slowly emerged, wrapping around his body to enhance the physical powers to the maximum potential.
"Nice. He learnt cursed energy transmission in body through his first duel. Let's see what he will learn by the second duel."
Yahaech commented as he glanced at the coating of cursed energy around Hojo's body.
There was also an increase in Hojo's aura.
There, inside the barrier, Izumi attacked first. He slowly raised his hand into the air and lightning around him continued to intensify with it.
He pointed his index finger toward Hojo. On the tip of his finger, all lighting compressed into a tiny orb, which further decreased to the size of a marble.
It was radiating intense light, enough to blind someone.
"I—I need to put all my strength in defense."
Seeing the frightening orb of lightning, he quickly dropped the idea to attack. He focused all his strength to defend.
Izumi shooted the orb at an unimaginable speed toward Hojo. For a normal human, it would be no less than teleportation.
But for Hojo, he could see the trajectory of the orb clearly. He had two options— to sidestep or defend physically.
Boom!!
Intense heat surged around Hojo's body as he felt every tissue inside his body screaming in pain.
What he saw before his death was a blinding white light or just pure whiteness.
The exploration that occurred was comparable to a small nuclear bomb, the only difference was it focused on a little area with zero radiation.
[Death : 356(+1)]
He resurrected again, only to see the molten red earth below him with cracks running through it everywhere.
The temperature was still extremely hot, enough to evaporate any drop of sweat in the air instantly.
Hojo was stunned not by the extremity of the explosion, but how the speed of orb toward him had increased suddenly. Like Izumi deliberately shooted it at low speed to fool him.
"Ahh!"
He felt that same heat beneath his feet because his shoes were already burned. He instantly released the cursed energy to create a layer of it around him.
'I need to be careful.'
Izumi took a glimpse of the pitiful condition of Hojo before creating several other same tiny orbs on his five fingers.
"How are you going to defend against this? Or plans—"
He was saying this to Hojo but Hojo clearly understood that he had no chance in defending against these orbs. So he needed to attack first, before Izumi could realise.
So he put all his cursed energy output in his speed, making him appear before Izumi instantly, ready to strike with a deadly enhanced fist.
Smash!
Hojo not only touched him but struck him with a solid punch directly into his face, His speed was doubled which made this possible.
From Hojo's perspective, the world has stopped moving. His hand was slowly pushing into Izumi's head.
First, a huge amount of blood came out of Izumi's nose and eyes, then the bone of his nose shattered into multiple fragments.
Everything looked like a slow movie to Hojo.
Moving at normal pace, Hojo had crushed his head into the depth of the ground almost instantaneously.
Several large cracks appeared into the ground.
[Strength: 1025%]
Hojo took out his hand from the ground which was drenched in crimson blood.
"I think he's dead. Will I be resurrect like me?"
Hojo muttered under his breath and instantly a reply got registered into his ear, a whisper.
"Nah, I have Reversed Cursed Technique."
His eyes widened in shock and his eyes immediately landed on the small crater that he had just created.
There was no one there. Izumi was gone.
Hojo rotated his head behind as fast as possible to see nothing like he had expected.
He turned around and looked in every direction, but there was no clue of Izumi. But a voice was still whispering into his ear.
"Ever wondered what my real technique is?"
He again looked behind but he could clearly not find the source of voice that whispered into his ear.
"Don't struggle too much. A three dimensional being like you can't see a fourth dimension like me."
That same voice whispered into his ear.
"DOMAIN EXPANSION: OMNISCIENT VOID"
In a blink of an eye, Hojo was left inside a four dimensional void. The ground below him vanished and multiple reflections of his life appeared before his eyes.
His present, his past, and his future, everything flooded into his mind to the such extent that he was no longer able to process any of it.
In a thousandth part of a second, his body collapsed into a singularity due to the exposure of a 3D being to a 4D void.
Instant death.
[Death : 357]
He again resurrected and instantaneously his body collapsed into the singularity.
[Death : 358]
[Death : 359]
[Death : 360]
[Death : 361]
…
[Death : 1356]
In just a second, Hojo was already dead about a thousand times. Unlike Michizane's domain, death was inevitable here.
Suddenly, everything vanished into nothingness and both Hojo and Izumi teleported back to the second barrier where Yahaech and others were watching the duel.
"You had no way to get out of Izumi's domain. Next, it's Hojo vs Gojo."