The sky was thick with heavy clouds, the air so dim and oppressive it felt as if rain would break at any moment. A light breeze rustled the leaves, whispering through the trees.
Suddenly, a thunderous boom sent the birds shrieking into the air. Hasegumo felt as though he'd been slammed head-on by a freight train. The sheer force vibrated through his core, sending him skidding backward.
"What insane power..." Hasegumo flipped in mid-air and planted his feet, a thin trail of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth.
As established, Hasegumo and Toji Fushiguro had both thrown punches at the same time, each prepared to trade blow for blow.
In a standard bout, the smaller fighter—facing an opponent with a clear advantage in height and reach—should choose to close the distance. By staying at about two-thirds of their own arm's length, they can land their own strikes while simultaneously jamming the opponent's ability to generate full torque. Conversely, the taller fighter should work to keep the distance open, using their reach to intercept the approach and capitalize on any overextended lunges.
But neither of these men was "standard." With Hasegumo's current level of martial mastery, he understood his opponent's optimal striking range before they even touched. Yet, he hadn't chosen to close the distance. Instead, he had stopped and fired his punch at the exact limit of his own reach.
The current Hasegumo was capable of mobilizing his entire body's strength into a punch from any posture. This strike was aimed squarely at Toji's chest.
Logic dictated that Toji should have seen the distance. By the time Hasegumo's fist reached him, it would have been at the tail end of its arc—overextended and lacking real impact. Toji should have been able to simply tank the "itchy" hit and counter-attack to seize the rhythm of the fight.
What Hasegumo hadn't expected was that Toji—a man who had never formally trained in martial arts—possessed an instinct so refined he sensed the punch wouldn't be overextended. Rather than taking the hit, Toji leaned back and, leveraging his superior reach, swung a counter-punch aimed directly at Hasegumo's left shoulder.
Since reaching the realm of Shindigunken, Hasegumo's mental perception had far outstripped his physical durability. This meant that while he could react and formulate a counter-strategy in his mind, he was hampered by his missing left arm and the fact that he was already mid-swing. With no way to abort his momentum, he was forced to dump all his Cursed Energy into defense and eat the hit.
Despite the reinforced guard, Toji's punch landed with enough force to cause real damage.
You might wonder: why didn't he use Dissipation of Force?
Because humans are single-threaded beings. Just as you cannot easily draw a circle with your left hand while drawing a square with your right, the brain simply won't allow the body to be in a state of complete relaxation and explosive exertion at the same time. Even a martial arts master like Hasegumo couldn't bypass that biological hard-wiring.
"Double the energy reinforcement isn't enough?" Hasegumo wiped his mouth, his mind racing. At that distance, he didn't even get his full weight behind it. I need to up my defense by another thirty percent.
From that single exchange, Hasegumo had already gauged the upper limits of Toji's strength. He now knew exactly how much Cursed Energy he needed to allocate to defense to remain unscathed.
The next second, the two of them lunged at each other again.
Toji still hadn't drawn the Inverted Spear of Heaven. Based on the information from Revealing One's Hand, his opponent was merely using standard Cursed Energy reinforcement. Theoretically, the Spear wouldn't affect energy that lacked a specific technique's "trait."
Furthermore, Toji had seen Hasegumo's performance in the martial arts tournament. While a Cursed Tool would increase his reach, it would also slightly increase the recovery time between his offense and defense. Although he mocked the kid, Toji knew Hasegumo had taken the runner-up spot without using a drop of Cursed Energy. He hadn't fought the champion, Makoto Kyogoku, personally, but he knew the man wasn't some bottom-tier weakling like the ones he'd faced in the preliminaries.
Now that Hasegumo was fighting him with Cursed Energy reinforcement, Toji realized he was likely facing the most dangerous brawler he had ever encountered in the sorcerer world.
Toji unleashed a flurry of hooks and jabs, maintaining a relentless offensive. Hasegumo stayed on the defensive. Thanks to the "overclocked" processing of Shindigunken, he appeared to be scrambling, but in reality, he was as steady as a rock, using every limb to parry and block Toji's violent assault.
Observing the exchange, it was clear that Toji's physical stats were a tier above Hasegumo's. While both possessed superhuman bodies, their specializations differed. Toji's strengths were raw muscular power and god-tier motor nerves—a "brute force" build. Hasegumo was a balanced all-rounder; his equilibrium of strength and speed allowed him to minimize the gaps in his transitions. With Cursed Energy reinforcement, he didn't fall behind even in a slugfest with Toji.
If they were characters in a video game, Toji would be the boss with insane attack power and terrifying movement speed. The player wouldn't need to think; they could just press forward and mash the attack button to win. Hasegumo, meanwhile, would be the high-spec character with high attack, high defense, and rapid attack speed—played by a hacker using "bullet time." Usually, his stats would carry him, but against a top-tier opponent, he'd use his superior speed to interrupt their combos.
In a close-quarters fight against Hasegumo, expecting him to make a mistake through a standard trade of blows was unrealistic.
For Toji to win, he had to use his superior power while simultaneously predicting Hasegumo's responses, forcing the boy to fight on Toji's rhythm until he hit a situation he couldn't counter.
However, Toji wasn't a tactician. In his long career as a killer, he had never met a sorcerer who could survive ten rounds against him using nothing but physical reinforcement.
This guy... his power is incredible, but his striking speed is only average. Should I take a gamble? Hasegumo realized mid-clash that his own striking speed was faster.
He only had one arm, which was fine for defense, but counter-attacking with a punch was difficult. He considered dropping his guard slightly to bait Toji into a Defensive Black Flash, but then the man's rhythm changed.
As Hasegumo parried a right hook, Toji used the momentum to coil his arm, pivoting into an elbow strike that forced Hasegumo back. Toji immediately retreated, dropping into a slight crouch and exploding forward with his legs.
In a flash, Toji vanished from Hasegumo's front and reappeared behind him. With a roar of displaced air, he drove a vicious punch toward the center of Hasegumo's back.
Toji had realized that a direct frontal assault was taking too long. He worried that if the fight dragged on, other sorcerers from the school would join in. He didn't care about "honor," but a group fight would prevent him from finishing the job and force him to flee empty-handed.
He decided to switch tactics. The kid didn't have the Six Eyes' 360-degree vision. Launching a high-speed ambush from a blind spot was the logical play.
Toji's reasoning was sound, and his execution was flawless. At that speed, even a healthy Satoru Gojo might have struggled to react.
But, as you might expect, there is a "but." His opponent was Hasegumo, a man whose martial arts had reached a transcendent realm. Through years of fighting both humans and curses, Hasegumo could predict an attack trajectory even without Shindigunken.
By simply observing the shift in Toji's leg muscles as he prepared to leap, Hasegumo accurately predicted the maneuver. He moved before Toji did, spinning around and catching the incoming fist in his hand.
He gripped the fist for a fraction of a second, just long enough to stabilize the momentum, then diverted his energy. His right leg shot out in a low, "dirty" kick aimed straight for Toji's groin.
Toji wasn't about to let that land. He yanked his right hand back and tried to grab Hasegumo's thigh for a shoulder throw. Hasegumo immediately surged energy into his standing left leg, delivering a front kick to Toji's chest to force him back.
Both men retreated a few paces, taking a brief "mid-game" breather.
"Your instincts are sharp," Hasegumo said, staring Toji down. "But you don't actually think, do you? You just act on pure impulse."
"Huh?" Toji grunted. He'd been fighting for several minutes and, aside from that very first hit, hadn't landed a single bit of effective damage. The frustration was simmering. "So what?"
"After I turned eighteen, my physical strength and Cursed Energy hit their peak," Hasegumo said, taking two more steps back. Using "talk-no-jutsu" to stall for time was much easier than brawling. "I found that no matter the opponent, they couldn't keep up with my speed or power. Back then, I also felt that acting on instinct was enough to beat almost anyone."
Toji noticed the movement but didn't stop him. That distance could be closed in the blink of an eye. "And? Is this 'peak' state all you've got? Compared to me, you're nothing special."
He wasn't entirely wrong. In terms of pure physical specs, Toji still held the advantage. But with Hasegumo using energy reinforcement, the gap was much smaller than Toji liked. Toji was only maintaining the offensive because his reach was superior and Hasegumo was fighting one-handed. As the saying goes, two hands are better than one—or in this case, two hands are better than half of that.
"If I'm so 'nothing special,' why are you struggling so much?" Hasegumo countered. "Do you know the difference between a human and an animal?"
It was clearly a rhetorical question. Toji didn't bother answering; he wasn't going to let himself get caught in a monologue like some mid-tier villain.
"Humans think. Only beasts rely solely on instinct," Hasegumo said. He was about three meters away now, but he slowly dropped into a specific stance. "If I can do this well just on instinct... imagine if I actually used my head."
"I'd be even stronger."
In the next heartbeat, Hasegumo launched a shameless surprise attack. Toji felt an invisible, gargantuan force yank him forward, and his balance vanished instantly.
"Nani?!"
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