Mahito had never known true fear.
He'd known pain, curiosity, malice, and a gleeful fascination with the fragility of human souls. But fear? Fear was an emotion for the things he twisted and broke. It wasn't for him. He was the fear.
But watching this bald man, a being utterly devoid of the cursed energy that defined his entire existence, erase six of his extensions with the casual disinterest of someone swatting flies… that planted a seed. A cold, alien seed of dread in the core of his patchwork soul.
"Impossible," Mahito whispered, his form flickering. "You can't touch my soul. You don't have the—"
Saitama appeared in front of him. There was no sound, no burst of speed. The space between them just ceased to be a relevant factor. One moment he was thirty feet away, the next he was invading Mahito's personal space.
"You guys keep saying that," Saitama said, his voice flat. His fist was already drawn back. "Blah, blah, blah, soul this, concept that."
He looked Mahito dead in its mismatched eyes.
"If it has a face," he stated, as if explaining a universal, unwritten law, "I can punch it."
Then came the punch. It wasn't a Consecutive Normal Punch. It wasn't even a punch that looked particularly fast. It was just a fist, moving forward.
But this time, everyone could feel it.
Tanjiro could smell it. An overwhelming, suffocating scent of pure, unadulterated finality. It was the smell of a book being slammed shut. The story was over.
Gojo, through his Six Eyes, saw a phenomenon that broke every rule of jujutsu he'd ever known. He saw Saitama's fist, a purely physical object, connect with the physical shell of Mahito's cursed form. But he also saw the intent behind it. The sheer, overwhelming, stupidly simple willpower. It was so potent, so absolute, that it generated its own metaphysical reality. It was a force that said "I am going to hit this thing," and the universe had no choice but to agree, regardless of any high-concept spiritual defenses. He wasn't bypassing Mahito's soul defense. He was punching it anyway because he didn't care that it existed.
Anos Voldigoad actually laughed. A single, sharp bark of genuine amusement. "Of course. He's not attacking the soul. He's hitting the body with such totality that the soul has no vessel left to inhabit. He's treating the symptom so catastrophically that the disease has nowhere to live. It's the logic of a child, applied with the force of a god. Utterly, beautifully insane."
For Mahito, the world became a white noise of pain and confusion. The fist connected with his face. And he felt it. Not just in his cursed flesh. He felt it in the very core of his being. The punch wasn't just physical. It carried the conceptual weight of being hit. His Idle Transfiguration, his awareness of his own soul, his ability to reshape his body at will—all of it screamed a single, panicked message: ERROR. DOES NOT COMPUTE.
He was sent flying backward, not as a coherent body, but as a spray of disintegrating cursed energy. His regeneration, which should have been instantaneous, stuttered. It tried to pull him back together, but the data was corrupted. The sheer impact had scrambled his soul's information. He flickered in and out of existence, his form a mess of glitching limbs and horrified faces.
"He's destabilized!" Gojo shouted, recognizing the opportunity. He formed a hand sign, Cursed Energy beginning to pool around him.
But on the other side of the battlefield, the fight of gods had reached a crescendo.
Goku, now in Super Saiyan Blue, slammed the Broly echo into the ground, creating a crater the size of a city block. "You have to stop! This rage isn't you!" he yelled, trying to reason with a being made of pure data.
The Broly echo responded by erupting in a blast of green ki that sent Goku flying. It rose from the crater, its eyes white with rage, its muscles bulging. Legendary Super Saiyan. The power output was astronomical. It opened its mouth and began charging a massive Gigantic Roar, a sphere of world-breaking energy aimed at the entire group of heroes.
"Crap!" Goku said, righting himself in mid-air. He cupped his hands at his side. Blue light gathered. "Kaaa… meee… haaa… meee…"
Two planet-destroying attacks were about to collide. It would incinerate what was left of their unstable battlefield.
But from the crowd of heroes, two others moved. One, a man who believed only in the undeniable power of his muscles. The other, a king who believed only in the undeniable power of his will.
Mash Burnedead, who had been quietly observing the fights while munching on a cream puff he'd somehow kept intact, finished his snack. He looked at the gargantuan sphere of ki. A magic spell of incredible power. The solution, as always, was simple. He took a running start, his legs pistons of pure, unnaturally developed muscle.
Anos Voldigoad simply raised a hand towards the oncoming ki blast. It was such a small gesture for such a cataclysmic attack. He didn't even look concerned.
Broly's roar unleashed. A wave of emerald destruction tore through the sky.
Simultaneously, Goku unleashed his. "HAAAAA!" A beam of pure blue divine energy met the green storm. The two beams clashed, a supernova of light and power erupting at the center, the reality around it screaming under the strain.
Then, two more things happened.
Anos's palm pulsed with a soft, crimson light. He activated a spell so ancient and profound it predated the concept of magic itself in most worlds. It wasn't a barrier. It wasn't a counter-spell. It was called [Jirasudo]. A simple spell that taught other spells the sheer arrogance of existing in his presence. The green energy from Broly's blast that washed over Anos's side of the battlefield simply… turned into a gentle shower of harmless, glittering green particles. It fell like magical snow.
On the other side, Mash arrived at the focal point of the two warring Kamehamehas. He was airborne now, having jumped with enough force to crack the bedrock miles below. He cocked his fist back. No magic. No ki. Just the absurd, physics-defying result of a billion push-ups.
"Finishing move," he said quietly to himself. "Hurricane Rush."
He threw a flurry of punches so fast they created a vacuum. His fists didn't just hit the clashing energy. They hit the air, creating a pressurized wall that slammed into the beams, disrupting their flow. It was like trying to stop a tidal wave with a fan, and somehow, the fan was winning.
The combined attacks, disrupted and robbed of their power, imploded. The resulting shockwave was still immense, but it was survivable.
Everyone stared. Asta looked at Mash, his eyes shining with pure admiration. Another muscle-brained hero! He wasn't alone!
The Broly echo, its ultimate attack spent, was panting, momentarily depleted.
The Mahito echo, still glitching from Saitama's punch, was vulnerable.
"NOW!" Gojo roared.
Tanjiro had been waiting for this moment. He'd seen Mahito's flicker of fear. He'd smelled the corruption of its soul. Anos's words echoed in his mind. Cut the regret. He took a deep breath, the air hissing as it entered his lungs. He felt the warmth spread through his body. Sun Breathing.
He moved, a dance of fire and grace, flowing around the monster's panicked attempts to reform. Hinokami Kagura, The Setting Sun.
His blade, wreathed in roaring flame, did not aim for the neck or the heart. It passed cleanly through Mahito's spiritual core. It was a gentle cut, a merciful release. For that one moment, Mahito wasn't a monster. It was a soul, born of hatred and fear, and it felt a warmth it had never known. The fire burned away not its body, but its reason for being. It looked at Tanjiro, a flicker of genuine confusion in its eyes. Then, it faded away into ash, like a demon greeting the dawn.
Gojo, meanwhile, wasn't feeling merciful. His blindfold slipped down, revealing two eyes the color of a newborn universe. "It's time to teach this copy a lesson." Cursed energy, both positive and negative, swirled around him. His hands came together.
"[Imaginary Technique: Hollow Purple]."
A small, chaotic sphere of impossible gravity and repulsion appeared between his palms. He unleashed it. A wave of absolute erasure shot across the battlefield, striking the stunned Broly echo.
It didn't explode. There was no sound. The Legendary Super Saiyan echo, and a two-hundred-meter-long strip of reality behind it, was simply… gone. Unmade. Deleted.
The system's voice returned, its tone still infuriatingly neutral.
[HARMONIZATION COMPLETE.]
[LAW OF 'KI' AND LAW OF 'CURSED ENERGY' SUCCESSFULLY INTEGRATED.]
[CALIBRATING NEW LOCAL REALITY... PLEASE STAND BY.]
A wave of shimmering energy washed over them all. The ground stitched itself together. The air felt… thicker. Heavier. More real.
Tanjiro suddenly felt the negative emotions of the people around him as a cold weight in the air. Asta felt a strange, humming energy in his body that wasn't his anti-magic. Goku felt a prickle on the back of his neck that felt like someone was watching him with ill intent.
[INTEGRATION SUCCESSFUL. KI-BASED BEINGS CAN NOW PERCEIVE AND INTERACT WITH CURSED SPIRITS. CURSED-ENERGY-BASED BEINGS CAN NOW SENSE POWER LEVELS.]
[THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION IN PHASE ONE.]
Gojo slid his blindfold back up, a tired smirk on his face. "Great. So the world just got twice as dangerous for everyone." He looked around at the assembled chaos of heroes. "Welcome," he said, "to the Jujutsu Ball Z era."