Yes, that's right—at this very moment, Mahiru had summoned Mahoraga as well.
Five minutes—that was all the time Mahiru needed to open her Domain, imprint Fushiguro's Technique, and then guide every assimilated member within the Domain to summon Mahoraga together.
It was also the countdown this girl had set for her own near-suicidal operation.
Unlike the first Mahoraga to manifest—pure white from head to toe—this second Divergent Sila Divine General, rising slowly from behind Mahiru, was identical in form to the first, yet its color leaned more toward gray-white.
The gray Mahoraga had been summoned behind Mahiru.
And the strike of the pure-white Mahoraga was perceived by the gray one as an attack against itself.
So it raised its hand and blocked it.
With two thunderous booms, two colossal surges of Cursed Energy crashed together.
And Mahiru, at the very center of that collision, had her body eroded almost to the point of collapse in a single instant by the Positive Energy carried within the Cursed Energy.
The pure-white Mahoraga was in a panic.
The gray Mahoraga was enraged.
The blue-haired girl, her body torn apart in the storm, was laughing—her laughter echoing across the sky.
"Next!" She gazed at the pure-white Shikigami before her, her eyes blazing and full of contempt. "It's time for your death countdown!"
As her voice fell, the girl's body vanished completely into that torrent of Positive Energy.
"Mahiru!" Itadori shouted in disbelief, stepping forward to rush over.
"Don't go, you idiot!" Jogo grabbed hold of him with an iron grip and snarled harshly, "Do you want to throw your life away?!"
Besides, Mahiru wasn't dead.
In that split second just now, Jogo's eyes had seen that Mahiru's disappearance was her wrapping herself in shadow, hiding her body within it.
None of those present knew it… but in truth, in the original work's future arc, a Ten Shadows Technique sorcerer, after summoning Mahoraga, could hold their breath and feign death, hiding within the shadow space of the Ten Shadows Technique—that way they could evade Mahoraga's pursuit.
Mahiru had dragged both herself and the pure-white Mahoraga into the gray Mahoraga's Exorcism Ritual.
In theory, the gray Mahoraga would strike at both Mahiru and the pure-white Mahoraga at once.
But Mahiru had hidden in the shadows.
So for now, the gray Mahoraga's only remaining target was this white counterpart before it.
"ROAR!!—"
The battle erupted in an instant.
With almost no gap at all.
The gray Mahoraga let out a mighty roar and reached out to seize the pure-white Mahoraga by the throat.
The latter, unwilling to be outdone, threw a straight punch.
BOOM! BOOM! The collision alone raised terrifying shockwaves of air.
The Cursed Energy soaring from both sides nearly set the night sky ablaze.
Mahoraga is a natural disaster.
And now, it was two natural disasters brawling with each other, crashing into each other.
The sum of two disasters was no simple one-plus-one-equals-two.
The storm of Cursed Energy grew wilder and wilder, and the city's buildings were reduced to ash and smoke, one after another, in the aftershocks of the two monsters' brawl.
Had Mahiru not, at the very instant her Domain ended, already sent all the assimilated people to a relatively safe distance—the entire district would likely have been laid to waste in a heartbeat, everything turned to rubble.
"This is way too insane!" Miwa was nearly swept away by the storm; it was Maki grabbing her that saved her life.
Even a brawl between sky-piercing giants probably wouldn't be this outrageous!
Just what kind of monster was Mahoraga?… What on earth had they been fighting just now…
Mahiru… was this the kind of thing she had faced alone just now?
"Hmm… doesn't seem to be doing much good." In the storm, Toji Fushiguro, sitting steadily atop a rooftop electrical box, rubbed his chin. "She's still going to lose."
"What?" Itadori didn't understand what Toji meant, and turned his head. "You mean…"
"There's a gap—still a clear gap." Maki cut in from the side, unbearable pain and anger flashing in her eyes. "…Mahiru might still lose."
Because the white Mahoraga had already completed its Adaptation many times over.
Yes—the Mahoraga Mahiru summoned and the Mahoraga Kenjaku had summoned by borrowing some unknown person's body were, in essence, no different. Apart from differences in appearance, they were actually one and the same.
But the white Mahoraga had come out long ago, and its wheel had already turned.
Do you know what a single turn of the wheel signifies?
It signifies Mahoraga's Adaptation to "a certain thing"—crossing from quantitative change into qualitative change!
Between a zero-turn Mahoraga and a one-turn Mahoraga lay a vast chasm; the moment the wheel turned even once, the two became fundamentally different!
The white Mahoraga's wheel had already turned a full nine times.
These nine turns corresponded to Mahoraga's Adaptation to different things—Blood Manipulation, flame Techniques… and among them, that one Adaptation to "physical attacks" would grant the white Mahoraga an enormous advantage.
Because in a civil war between Mahoragas, the means by which the two attacked each other were mostly punches.
White was one turn; gray was zero turns.
Between their powers already lay an unbridgeable divide!
BAM! The white Mahoraga roared and, with a single punch, smashed the gray Mahoraga down out of the sky, driving it hard into the earth.
Pressing its advantage, it turned into a white meteor, the Blade of Extermination in its hand aimed straight at the gray Mahoraga's chest, thrusting down with the force of thunder.
"ROAR!!"
The gray Mahoraga roared in fury, its Cursed Energy erupting as it dodged the attack.
The two twisted around and traded punches head-on; the air surged in waves, and the entire district shattered apart under the impact.
It was now zero turns against one turn!
Click. Click.
The wheels of both Mahoragas turned at the same time.
And then, now, it was one turn against two turns!
Was the gap shrinking? No! The gap was widening!
The gray Mahoraga was sent flying hard, punching through several skyscrapers in a row.
There was no helping it.
Precisely because the two Mahoragas were exactly alike, the chasm opened by that head start in Adaptation was almost impossible to bridge!
The gray one rose again, gathered its strength, and traded punches once more—yet the gray side remained at a disadvantage.
In a battle of frenzied roars, all-out effort, and life-or-death struggle, the gray one tore off the white one's arm, while the white one nearly cut the gray one in half at the waist.
The youths watching the battle from afar all fell into a silence born of an inability to accept the reality before their eyes.
Mahiru's use of Mahoraga—whether from the standpoint of the Exorcism Ritual or from that of her bathing in Positive Energy—meant she had already offered up her own life.
This was the final strike the girl had launched in a fight to the death.
And yet, even so, this last gamble of hers seemed destined to fail.
They couldn't accept it. Itadori, Miwa, and the others truly couldn't accept it.
In their eyes, Mahiru had always been omnipotent.
They could never have imagined that even the last resort the girl had traded her very life for would end in failure.
For a moment, everyone sank into the utmost grief. Miwa even burst into tears on the spot.
People had become utterly convinced of the fact that Mahiru would not win.
But one person alone, at this moment, noticed something.
"Ha… haha… hahahaha…"
Kenjaku was indeed dead.
But his dissipating remnant soul, because of Mahiru's Domain, had momentarily reassembled and regained consciousness—and it was precisely for this reason that, in the lingering final moments after death, he was able to look down upon this entire battlefield from a third party's perspective.
And so, he saw it. After an expression of disbelief surfaced on his face, he finally, utterly, broke into loud laughter.
"Hahahaha…"
Because he had grasped Mahiru's intent.
He had seen through to the girl's true purpose!
"ROAR!" "ROAR!!—"
The two Mahoragas roared at each other once more.
Once again, they turned their wheels simultaneously, performing Adaptation.
Two turns fighting three turns.
The gray Mahoraga was still on the losing end.
But Jogo and Toji Fushiguro had already sensed something was off.
"If they keep adapting to each other like this…" Toji frowned.
"Could it be…" Jogo's mouth fell open, his eyes flickering.
Another few seconds of brawling.
And once again came the time for mutual Adaptation.
But this time, at this moment, the two Mahoragas did not turn their own wheels—instead they closed in on each other and, astonishingly, seized hold of each other's wheels!
"What is that?!" Hakari Kinji was stunned.
The two Mahoragas began to twist each other's wheels backward!!
Yes—the result of a Mahoraga adapting to another Mahoraga's Technique was that they would be able to reverse the other's "Adaptation"!
Because so-called [Adaptation] was, in truth, [cracking]!
It was rendering the opponent's Technique ineffective against oneself, while at the same time finding the means to crack the opponent's Technique!
It was exactly so when Sukuna dealt with Satoru Gojo in the original work: "Adaptation" could both reduce the damage of Satoru Gojo's Technique and help Sukuna comprehend the move known as "World-Cutting Slash."
Now, in the Mahoraga civil war, a Mahoraga's [cracking] of another self's Technique was to "reverse the other's [Adaptation]"!
And from beginning to end, this was the very moment Mahiru had been waiting for when she activated Mahoraga!
The two Mahoragas grabbed each other's wheels and twisted them backward.
With this [cracking], each would reverse one of the other's "turns," nullifying one of its "Adaptations."
They had each performed two "Adaptations" against the other simultaneously.
Their first mutual Adaptation—they simultaneously adapted to each other's existence, adapting to each other's Cursed Energy, attack, and defense.
And the second mutual Adaptation was adapting to the other's Technique—seeing through and cracking the mystery behind the other's "Adaptation" Technique, while learning how to reverse what the other had already adapted to.
And just now was the third—they began to wrench each other's wheels.
Both sides had to pick one Adaptation the other had once performed and erase it.
And without a doubt, the white Mahoraga would choose to erase the other's "Adaptation to Technique."
Because that was the optimal solution.
Click. Click.
The wheels of the two Mahoragas were each twisted back one notch by the other.
White successfully erased gray's second "Adaptation to Technique."
But what gave it pause was—the gray Mahoraga had not moved to erase its own second Technique Adaptation; instead it chose to erase its earlier "Adaptation to Mahiru's Technique and Domain."
…What was that supposed to mean? Haha. Could it be you're a fool?
The white Mahoraga laughed mockingly, thinking this gray fellow across from it was simply absurdly stupid.
Of all Adaptations, "Adaptation to Technique" was the most important.
As long as gray still retained that second "Adaptation to Technique," white could wrench its wheel back time and again, countless times—and thus gray's Technique would lose all meaning!
Just like now!!
Laughing loudly, the white Mahoraga continued to wrench gray's wheel, forcibly turning it back another half-notch. And when gray tried again to wrench white's wheel, it couldn't budge it in the slightest—because it had long since lost its "Adaptation to Technique."
White laughed aloud, certain that victory was in its grasp.
But the next second, that laughter came to an abrupt halt.
Because it saw that on the gray Mahoraga's face there had likewise surfaced the exact same sneering smile.
Then, the gray Mahoraga's body began to twist and flow, kneaded flat and absorbed by some unknown force like a lump of dough, gathering into a single mass, until at last it became a chaotic yet dazzling gray speck of light—coming to rest in the palm of the blue-haired girl's hand.
Mahiru had appeared! Yes.
By rights, since the two Mahoragas' Techniques were exactly the same, under such matched gains and losses, gray could never hope to surpass white.
But there was one thing, precisely, that became the variable that reversed it all.
—[Gray and white had different goals].
White's goal was "to kill everyone in all of Tokyo," and Mahiru was merely one of them.
But gray's goal was "to kill white and Mahiru"—it only needed the white Mahoraga before it and the Mahiru hidden in the shadows to die; everything else was irrelevant.
So Mahiru could bargain with the gray Mahoraga using her own life.
[I promise you: I will come out to meet the attack of the Positive Energy, and thereby be killed.]
[And you, in turn, are to obey my command—adapt to the other's defense, erase the other's Adaptation to my Technique and Domain, and then…]
—become my [Husk].
BOOM—
In that instant, a brilliant gray-white light pierced the veil of night, and the speck of light at Mahiru's fingertip became the anchor point of the entire world.
The gray Mahoraga willingly became Mahiru's bullet, so all of its Cursed Energy was condensed, compressed, and absorbed, its destructive power instantly far surpassing Jogo's [Ultimate Form].
The gray Mahoraga still carried within it the Adaptation to "the white Mahoraga's attack and defense," so this [Husk] held an extremely severe counter-property against the white Mahoraga—and at the same time, the white Mahoraga had by now lost its "Adaptation to Mahiru's Technique and Domain," making it all the more impossible for it to block this earth-shattering [Husk].
This was the girl's most meticulous plan.
This was the girl's most self-sacrificing feat.
As Mahiru absorbed Mahoraga's Cursed Energy, the thick Positive Energy within the [Husk] also surged in an instant into every meridian of Mahiru's body, obliterating everything in a flash.
A white, transparent flame ignited across Mahiru's body. That flame devoured her body like a demon, burning away everything, rendering the girl's body transparent, near complete annihilation.
She was dissipating.
Drawing ever closer to vanishing.
But at the same time, the light at her fingertip grew ever brighter.
The Mahoraga let out a final panicked roar, hurrying to try to evade.
It understood that if it were struck, it would surely die.
It wanted to flee, because of course it did not want to die. It still had a mission to complete!
Damn it!
This accursed blue-haired Cursed Spirit! Why did she have to drag it down with her in her suicide?! She was doomed to die anyway!
I just need to escape! Flee! Flee now! Her speed can't catch up to me! I can get away!
But there was no escape—for the very moment the Mahoraga tried to turn around, it was seized by the Singularity of an imaginary Black Hole that had suddenly appeared behind it.
"!!!"
Mahiru's Domain expansion just now had likewise employed the Anti-Gravity Technique—she had long since left her Technique within the Black Hole, waiting for this very final moment.
The Mahoraga screamed in terror, wanting to run, but it could not. It had adapted to the Black Hole's gravity, but not completely—it would still be affected, its speed slowed, and this determined that it could not escape from beneath Mahiru's [Husk].
And so the girl smiled. This time it was a soft laugh.
In her eyes was reflected the Mahoraga's wretched figure, and her gaze seemed to see straight through it into the distance—to the civilians far off who were watching the battlefield and crying out for her, and to the tops of the skyscrapers, to the friends and companions who watched in despair as she went to her death.
She was about to die. She had thought she would feel some earth-shaking, spirit-moving surge of emotion.
But it seemed there was none; instead she was terrifyingly calm.
She only felt that there were still many things she had wanted to do but hadn't… a slight regret.
But at the same time, the girl also felt that this time she truly had… indeed done something she had very much wanted to do.
She felt happy.
"Yo." Mahiru started, and turned her head.
To her astonishment, she saw Kenjaku's remnant soul greeting her.
"How very rude of me—I apologize to you… Before I died, I actually thought that you, as a [collection of human evil], might just be a kindred spirit to me, might even be more terrifying…"
Kenjaku met Mahiru's gaze and, smiling, lowered his eyes.
"I never imagined… that you truly love humanity from the bottom of your heart… even to the point of… sacrificing yourself. Haha, hahahaha…"
Truly wondrous. Truly fascinating.
A Cursed Spirit born from human evil, loving humanity more than any being in existence… when by all rights it should be a natural disaster that would recklessly destroy all humankind, it instead became a guardian spirit protecting all humanity…
Mahiru—can not even humanity's endless malice shake your soul?
Kenjaku's remnant soul faced Mahiru, bowed slightly, and made a gentleman's salute: "Mahiru, I lose."
Seeing Kenjaku's gesture, the blue-haired girl's brow twitched, and then she rolled her eyes: "Get lost."
Then, before the eyes of Itadori and the others, before the eyes of countless Tokyo residents, the girl was utterly swallowed by the Positive Energy. Vanished completely.
Leaving only that gray-white star.
Piercing, utterly, all the darkness of the night sky.
"On the th of , —that is, seven days ago—Tokyo underwent a colossal upheaval that shook, and reverberated across, nearly the entire world."
"On that day, Mahiru—the [Blue-Haired Angel]—burned away her own life and, with an all-out strike, killed the [Mahoraga], stopping the disaster from happening…"
"Countless people were saved from despair…"
"Countless people were thus able to go on living…"
"Yes, we all know that we ought to thank her directly…"
"But—but…" "…but she can never come back again…"
...…
"Pwah!" Mahiru jolted awake, shot bolt upright, and gasped in great heaving breaths.
The girl touched her face, touched her head, touched her little belly… Holy shit! I'm still alive, aren't I?!
Which son of a bitch said I was dead??
(It's the end of the month! Pleeease, monthly tickets! The monthly ticket bounty is still going!)
____
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