Chapter 65: Transparent World · Awakening
Hanami roared.
It no longer sounded like the cold, detached voice that had spoken for the forest. The sound that tore out of it now was raw, ugly, and furious, like a beast that had finally realized it could bleed.
The hole in its chest still smoked.
The damage from Hekishin had not closed. Cursed Energy kept gathering at the wound, trying to force flesh and bark back together, but the scorching remnants left by Yami's strike were still eating through it from the inside. Every second dragged the pain deeper.
If this keeps going...
It will die.
That realization struck harder than any blade.
This human was wrong.
Wrong in a way Hanami could not accept.
No Cursed Energy. No cursed technique. No inherited sorcery. Yet the sword in his hand and the breathing that drove his body were more dangerous to cursed spirits than most Special Grade sorcerers. More than that, they felt like the opposite of its existence. Like the world itself had produced a weapon specifically to deny it.
Hanami raised its remaining hand.
The white wrappings around its shoulder squirmed. Beneath them, flesh and wood pulsed together. Cursed Energy flooded outward, thick and oppressive, warping the air until it felt heavy in the lungs.
"Domain Expansion..."
The words came out rough.
Because of the incomplete Curtain, it could not manifest a true Innate Domain. But it did not need perfection. Not now. What it needed was one opening. One moment to drag all of them down.
"...Sea of Flowers."
The world bloomed.
A violent surge of flowers burst from the ground in every direction. Crimson, yellow, violet, blue. A hundred colors swallowing the dead forest in an instant. Grass vanished beneath petals. Trees disappeared behind thick walls of blossoms. Even the air itself seemed to turn sweet.
Too sweet.
Todo's eyes sharpened at once. "Don't breathe!"
But it was already in them.
The scent wasn't poison in the normal sense. It didn't burn. It didn't choke. It slipped past the body's defenses with terrifying gentleness, smoothing out fear, softening resistance, dulling the mind. Muscles loosened. Thoughts slowed. The will to fight began to melt.
Yuji blinked hard and staggered.
Todo bit his tongue so hard blood filled his mouth. Pain snapped through his skull and kept him upright for another second, but even he felt it. His cursed energy rhythm faltered. Boogie Woogie, so effortless a moment ago, suddenly seemed farther away.
Hanami didn't waste the chance.
The flowers swayed.
Life drained from everything around them. The grass yellowed. Leaves curled. Even the trunks of nearby trees lost color as their vitality was ripped free and drawn into Hanami's body. Green motes poured into its torso and shoulders. The wound in its chest began to tighten. The severed arm twitched, thickened, and started growing back.
"Die," Hanami said.
This time there was no pretense of calm.
Vines burst from the sea of flowers and came screaming through the air. They were denser than before, faster too, barbed and writhing like a storm of spears. Mixed into them were black seeds the size of fists, each one pulsing with vicious cursed power.
Todo's expression changed.
Those were not simple projectiles.
If they touched flesh, they would root inside the body and devour cursed energy until nothing remained.
Troublesome was too mild a word.
He tried to clap. Tried to force Boogie Woogie back into motion and switch them out of the kill zone.
His hand froze halfway.
The floral scent had slowed him just enough.
Yuji braced himself, jaw tight, but he knew it too. There was nowhere clean to move. Even if Todo could switch them, every direction was full of thorns, seeds, and death.
And then Todo noticed something stranger than the flowers.
Yami had gone quiet.
Not physically. He was still standing there, one hand on his sword. His breathing still rose and fell. His heart still beat.
But in Todo's battle sense, his presence had thinned to almost nothing.
It was like looking at a man and finding only air.
"Yami!"
No answer.
For an instant Todo thought he had been caught by the mental interference after all.
He was wrong.
Inside Yami's mind, the world had shifted.
The system's chime rang out clean and cold.
[Ding.]
[Host mental focus has reached a critical threshold.]
[Synchronization with the template has deepened.]
[Current synchronization: 20%.]
[New ability unlocked: Transparent World.]
Yami closed his eyes.
Then he opened them again.
Everything became clear.
Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Literally clear.
The trunks around him lost their surface meaning and became layered channels of sap and moisture. The soil beneath his feet opened into root networks, stones, pressure lines, the hidden flow of the earth. The petals in the air no longer drifted at random. He could see the currents guiding them.
And Hanami...
Hanami was the clearest thing of all.
Its movements opened like a diagram before him. The contraction in its shoulders. The transfer of force through bark and muscle. The pattern of cursed energy circulating under the skin. The exact path each vine would take before it moved. The weak pulse hidden deep in its torso. The blind spot. The place where everything connected.
So this is the Transparent World.
A faint smile tugged at the corner of Yami's mouth.
Hanami's killing field, which had looked overwhelming a second ago, no longer felt chaotic. It felt clumsy. Overbuilt. Full of noise. All those vines, all those seeds, all that cursed energy...
Too much waste.
A vine shot toward his forehead.
Yami tilted his head.
It passed by his ear.
Another came for his ribs. He shifted half a step. A third swept low. He lifted his foot and let it skim beneath him. The seeds came next, spraying through the air in erratic arcs, but each one followed a line he had already seen before it was born.
Todo stared.
Yuji forgot to breathe.
Yami walked through the attack.
There was no frantic dodging, no sharp burst of speed. He moved like a man strolling through rain he'd already measured, every step placed in the only open space before it formed. Vines lashed past his shoulders. Seeds brushed his sleeves. Petals spun around him. Nothing touched him.
Hanami saw him coming and felt something close to horror.
"How...?"
Yami was already in front of it.
Close enough to hear the rough churn of cursed energy inside its chest. Close enough to see the smallest twitch in the newly regrown arm. Close enough to kill.
"Your movements are full of waste," he said.
His voice was quiet.
That frightened Hanami more than a shout would have.
Golden sparks crawled over Yami's body. Threaded through them was a deeper red, brilliant and heavy, like sunlight seen through blood. Thunder Breathing and Sun Breathing moved together inside him now without friction, each feeding the other.
Hanami took a step back.
Its instincts screamed at it to retreat farther, to abandon the flowers, abandon the forest, abandon everything and run.
It did not get the chance.
Yami raised Shiranui and pointed the tip toward Hanami's chest.
Not the center of its body.
Not the wound.
A little off from there.
Directly at the hidden line he had found in the Transparent World.
Hanami's pulse stuttered.
That point...
That was the one place it had instinctively protected without even realizing it.
The place its body treated as the absolute last line.
Its core.
Yami inhaled.
The air around him grew hotter.
Todo spat blood to clear the sweetness from his throat and grinned despite himself. He still felt slow, still felt drugged, but even through that haze he could tell something had changed. Yami wasn't merely stronger than before.
He was seeing differently.
Yuji clenched his fists.
Hanami's flowers still filled the field, but the despair from a moment ago had cracked. Just cracked. Yet that was enough. Because when Yami stood like that, blade leveled and eyes fixed, it became easy to believe that monsters could be cut down after all.
Hanami's mind raced.
Attack first.
That was the only answer left.
The sea of flowers convulsed. Vines tightened. Seeds trembled, ready to burst.
But Yami did not even blink.
"Next," he said, "it ends."
And for the first time since it was born, Hanami truly understood what it meant to be hunted.
.....
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