Chapter 66: Hekishin, Sunflower Thrust
Death hung over the battlefield.
Hanami had never felt anything like this.
It had fought sorcerers before. It had stood in front of fear, despair, and violence and remained unmoved. But the boy before it was different. The one holding that black blade did not feel like a human at all.
He felt like extinction.
The fear running through Hanami now had nothing to do with logic. It was older than that. It was the same terror that made small animals freeze when a predator's shadow passed over them. A raw, instinctive certainty.
There was no escape.
Those crimson eyes had already seen through everything.
Every twitch of muscle, every shift in stance, every route it could take to retreat. Even the flow of Cursed Energy inside its body had nowhere to hide. In front of Yami's awakened Transparent World, Hanami felt stripped bare.
It had only one thought left.
Block it.
Hanami roared and gathered every scrap of Cursed Energy in its body toward its chest. Bark burst from its flesh in layer after layer, thickening in an instant into a massive wooden shield. It did not stop there. The surrounding plants answered its will, twisting together into dense vines that wrapped around its body again and again until it looked less like a curse and more like a fortress grown out of the forest itself.
This was its strongest defensive state.
A cocoon of wood, roots, and cursed energy packed so tightly that even a Special Grade cursed tool would struggle to break through it.
Across from it, Yami did not react.
No mockery. No arrogance. No wasted emotion.
Only focus.
Absolute focus.
Under the gaze of the Transparent World, that defense was not absolute. It was full of seams. Full of tiny fractures in force and structure. Gaps too small for ordinary eyes to notice, but to him they were enough.
One strike would be enough.
Yami drew in a slow breath.
Longer than any before.
The air filled his lungs until they burned. His heartbeat slammed through his chest, harder and harder, driving heat through every vein in his body.
Total Concentration Breathing.
Thunder Breathing, Seventh Form.
Honoikazuchi no Kami.
Golden lightning began to crawl along his body, racing down his arm and into the blade.
Even so, it was not enough.
Speed alone would not punch through that wall. Not against something like Hanami. Not against a Special Grade Cursed Spirit that had turned its body into a living fortress.
He needed more.
He needed the sun.
The rhythm of his breathing shifted.
Thunder was still there, sharp and violent, but another force rose beneath it, deeper, hotter, older. Sun Breathing answered his call. Crimson heat flowed into the blade and tangled itself with the gold, the two currents clashing and merging until the sword itself seemed to awaken.
Shiranui trembled in his hand.
A piercing hum spread through the air. The blade vibrated at such terrifying speed that the space around it began to ripple. Heat distortion bent the light. The ground at Yami's feet cracked.
That was the sign of Hekishin.
A strike born from pure physical force, using supersonic speed and the shockwave trailing behind it to create a moment of spatial distortion. A physical imitation of Black Flash, forged not through Cursed Energy, but through insane control of breathing, muscle, and motion.
And if Black Flash multiplied a sorcerer's power, then Hekishin did the same to the body that launched it.
The price would be severe.
Yami knew that.
He did it anyway.
He lowered his stance.
"Sun Breathing, Seventh Form."
His voice was soft, but it carried across the ruined battlefield.
"Sunflower Thrust."
Then he moved.
No one saw it clearly.
Even Todo, with all his battle instincts, only caught a flash. Yuji saw a streak of red light and nothing else. Megumi did not even manage that much. One moment Yami was standing there with the sword poised. The next, a crimson line had already crossed the space between him and Hanami.
The sound came after.
A blast like thunder ripping apart the sky.
Hanami's shield was pierced clean through.
Not chipped. Not split. Not broken bit by bit.
Pierced.
The thick wooden barrier gave way in an instant. The countless vine layers behind it followed. All that mass, all that cursed energy, all that desperate reinforcement meant nothing before the focused violence of that thrust.
And then it drove straight through Hanami's body.
A shriek tore from the cursed spirit's throat. Its eyes widened so far they looked ready to split. It looked down at its chest and saw a clean hole running through it.
Its core had been hit.
Not grazed. Not damaged.
Destroyed.
The force inside Hekishin was not only heat. The vibration born from the overlapping shockwave had traveled through the strike and torn apart everything at the point of contact. Hanami's cursed energy core, hidden deep within layers of protection, had been smashed apart before it could even begin to regenerate.
Its body started to fail at once.
The massive cursed energy within it deflated like a punctured balloon, spilling out in violent waves. The plants it controlled trembled and withered. The roots sank back into the ground. The reconstructed arm and the bark armor started to crack.
Hanami staggered, unable to understand what had just happened.
"How..." it rasped, the words breaking apart in its throat. "How is this... possible..."
Yami stood behind it in the finishing posture of the thrust. Shiranui still smoked faintly in his hand.
Then he straightened.
The moment he relaxed, pain ripped through his right arm.
It was immediate and vicious. From shoulder to wrist, every muscle screamed. His hand trembled once before he forced it still. That was the cost of Hekishin. Black Flash gave a sorcerer a moment of perfect alignment. Hekishin did not grant anything. It only demanded.
And his body had paid.
A mortal frame forcing out a strike capable of killing a natural disaster among Special Grade Cursed Spirits was never going to escape unscathed.
Yami breathed out slowly.
A bead of sweat slipped down his temple.
"So even this much still puts a strain on me," he murmured, more to himself than anyone else.
Hanami swayed in place.
Its presence was collapsing. Not fading slowly, but falling apart in front of them. The forest around them seemed to realize it at the same time. The unnatural pressure that had smothered the battlefield finally loosened.
Then the Veil above began to crack.
Everyone looked up.
The black barrier that had swallowed the sky trembled violently, ripples running through it from end to end. Light pushed through the fractures. A heartbeat later, the entire Veil shattered like glass.
Sunlight poured down.
Warm, blinding, real.
For a moment nobody moved.
The battlefield was a wreck. The forest had been torn apart. Trees lay broken and burned. The ground was cratered and split. The remains of Hanami's power still lingered in the air, mixed with smoke, blood, and the sharp scent of scorched wood.
And in the center of it stood Yami.
He slid Shiranui back into its sheath with a quiet click and turned toward his stunned teammates.
Megumi stared at him in silence, hands still half raised from the seal he had almost completed earlier. Maki's grip tightened around Cloud Gouge, but not out of tension anymore. Kamo Noritoshi looked like a man whose understanding of the world had just been rewritten. Even Todo, who had been roaring and grinning through the whole fight, stood still for once.
No one spoke.
Yami's shirt was torn. His breathing was heavier than usual. His sword arm still ached badly enough to make his fingers numb.
Even so, standing there under the sun with Hanami dying behind him, he looked impossibly steady.
Tall enough to make the others feel small.
Not because he was trying to.
Not because he wanted to stand above them.
But because that was simply how it was.
For that brief, silent moment, with the Veil gone and sunlight falling over the ruins, he really did look like something beyond human.
Not a god.
Just a man who had become strong enough to stand where everyone else could not.
.....
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