Frieren: — Chapter 97 - The Chop-Chop Fruit! It's the Chop-Chop Fruit Alright!
BANG! BANG!
The walls cracked open. Filthy wastewater burst through in a single surge, flooding the space, soaking everything in its path.
CRASH...
The terrain was fractured, levels dropping 30 meters or more.
The subway cars had broken apart one by one, sagging down at broken angles. The entire underground space was nothing but shattered glass, bent rebar, and pulverized stone.
At the center of the chaos, two figures faced each other.
"Blech....."
Mahito's flesh churned. He pulled himself back together.
He struggled up from the ground, catching his breath, watching Himmel with that slick, hungry look on his face.
"Haha — thought I'd get to bite your head off in one go~"
".........."
Himmel said nothing.
Half a second ago, he had slashed at Mahito in Priest mode. Mahito hadn't died. He'd countered.
That brief exchange had exposed enough to force Himmel to think.
Physical attack immunity. If even Priest mode strikes were also immune, then Reverse Cursed Technique would be useless against him too.
Which left one option: keep destroying the body, drain his Cursed Energy, win through attrition.
But.....
That would take too long.
Himmel knew he was the bait. The moment he showed himself, Kenjaku would almost certainly move, and the target would be Yuta.
The deciding factor for both sides was time.
His side needed to finish early. Yuta's side needed to stall as long as possible. That gap would decide everything.
And Himmel....
"You're pretty confident, aren't you?"
Mahito opened his mouth, expression theatrically exaggerated.
"If it weren't for me, even Jogo would've gotten slaughtered, super annoying~ Why do you sorcerers always have so many convenient pieces to play?"
"But aren't you being a little too harsh on your students?" He tilted his head with a grin. "I really don't think they can hold out until you get there~"
Himmel still said nothing. That was starting to get irritating.
Mahito could more or less guess what he was thinking. But if the other party wouldn't engage, there was just no fun in it.
Mahito liked to run his mouth during a fight.
"Hey, hey, hey. My intel says you're supposed to be quite the talker too. What's this? Going through menopause?"
Himmel's response was unmistakable distaste.
"I don't really like you. So I don't really feel like talking."
In battles past, Himmel had never had anything to say to the Demon Clan either.
And the thing standing in front of him now was perhaps even worse than the Demon Clan.
But....
"If I'm only saying one thing — yes. I have confidence in my students."
Himmel slowly raised his blade.
"Cursed Spirits are different from humans."
Just like the Demon Clan...
"They judge everything by strength and talent."
"But for humans, individual power is meaningless."
"Cultivating stronger, wiser successors is the foremost duty for those of us who are their elders. Everything happening now is nothing more than a trial they must pass through."
"They'll be fine."
".....Hey~" Mahito's eyes curved at the corners, half-lidded. "You really think so?"
"Your goal is to pin me down while Kenjaku tries to reach Yuta."
"....!"
Mahito's finger twitched.
He knew their plan?
Then why was he,
"If you'd grabbed a different student, things would've gotten complicated. But since Kenjaku's target is Yuta, there's nothing to worry about."
"....You think that kid can beat Kenjaku?"
"No."
Unexpectedly, Himmel shook his head.
"Not yet. He lacks too much combat experience. Faced with a prepared trap, he'll probably stumble straight into it."
"Then~."
"But I believe he'll protect everyone around him."
",—!"
A fractional pause.
"As my student, Yuta can definitely do that." Himmel said it with certainty.
"And it seems you've underestimated Gojo."
"I don't know what you've prepared. But a hostage play only works once. Since you've decided to use it on me, Gojo will protect Yuta in my place."
Nine years had passed.
Himmel had watched those students grow up.
And so.
[He trusted in them.]
......Hmph~~
Mahito made a long, strange sound in his throat, trying to work out what Himmel's words actually meant.
He was that unconcerned about Yuta specifically. Had he left some kind of arrangement on the kid?
Kenjaku knew this and still moved anyway?
Too little information.
It seemed both Kenjaku and Himmel were watching something the Cursed Spirit side simply couldn't see.
(Really annoying.)
But regardless.
"As long as you can't leave this place, none of that matters, does it?" Mahito's voice went light. "...Can you even kill me?"
"Yes."
Himmel didn't hesitate.
In that brief exchange, he'd already worked out Mahito's trick.
"You cut your own body apart on purpose, didn't you?"
Ha!
"You noticed?" Mahito's eyes lit up immediately. "Heh... figured it out that fast~ Worthy of the Hero."
[Correct.]
[Mahito's combat method: actively tearing himself apart.]
[Due to Idle Transfiguration, all physical attacks could only cause the Cursed Energy drain that came from "physical destruction", never lethal. Only Reverse Cursed Technique, or attacks targeting the soul directly, could deal true damage to Mahito.]
[Himmel possessed Reverse Cursed Technique, but it couldn't be channeled through a blade. Or rather, his Cursed Energy output wasn't strong enough to manage that.]
[However, the purification technique inherent to Rear Guard · Priest was far more effective against Mahito.]
Unfortunately, it came with limitations.
The purification arts of the Goddess's faithful worked similarly to Reverse Cursed Technique.
Blessings, at their core, were "highly effective on the caster, with greatly diminished effect on others."
Back when he traveled with Heiter, it happened constantly, the whole party would get hit by a curse, and Heiter, a man with zero combat ability, would just stand there blinking, completely unaffected.
It was something like one person being naturally immune to a virus. If you wanted others to share that immunity, you'd need to use that person to develop a vaccine and administer it.
Previously, Himmel had been able to inflict the "illusion of death" on Rika. That didn't mean he could actually kill her.
His base magical output was still too low compared to his companions. Even with Priest mode active, it only reached C-rank.
Long-range Goddess magic wasn't efficient either. Up until now, he had always fought through Priest mode's passive effects.
Simply put,
[To kill Mahito, Himmel needed to directly shatter his flesh with blade or bare hand while in Priest mode.]
[But Mahito had cut his own flesh open the moment before impact.]
[The method was,]
(Reaction speed... abnormally fast.)
(Probably,)
Himmel narrowed his eyes slightly, said nothing, and lowered his body.
BANG!
He exploded forward.
Air coiled around him. His technique was precise and stripped of all excess, the long blade rose and fell in clean, decisive thrusts, horizontal cuts, diagonal slashes.
Sword light wove together in a continuous stream. Forget Mahito, even Gojo Satoru relying on pure taijutsu would have struggled to escape unscathed.
But Mahito reacted to every single blow.
SWISH! SWISH! SWISH!
Neck. Arm. Thigh.
Every struck surface Mahito cut open himself, the severed flesh reformed in an instant, then twisted and grew into a scythe that swept back in a counter.
Himmel's blade deflected it precisely. A dull, heavy impact.
He accelerated and closed the distance again.
He swung, Mahito tore his own flesh open, then immediately reconfigured, the skin and muscle along his back peeling back layer by layer, spreading into the shape of a rotor blade.
SWISH SWISH SWISH!
Mahito turned himself into a helicopter, pelting down bone and flesh like bullets from above.
BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG.!,,
The bone barrage cratered the ground, sending cascading clouds of pulverized debris surging in every direction.
Himmel dodged every single one. And in that exchange, he confirmed it.
Just as he'd thought.
This guy.
"Simple Domain?"
"Correct answer!"
Mahito planted both feet on a train car. The steel groaned beneath him. He spread both arms wide.
"Shin'in-ryu · Simple Domain."
Shin'in-ryu · Simple Domain.
In this era, when facing a Domain Expansion, ordinary sorcerers had one option: deploy a Simple Domain to counter it. The practitioners who had inherited that technique were the Shin'in-ryu school.
Disciples from that school appeared at the college occasionally, Kusakabe was the person among Himmel's acquaintances most skilled in it.
But Shin'in-ryu was never taught to outsiders.
Unless....
"Kenjaku...."
"Correct again! You're so smart, Himmel!"
If Kenjaku had existed in the world since the very birth of Shin'in-ryu, he would have had the chance to learn it before the school established its monopoly. Combined with his mastery of barrier techniques, his gift for instruction, and Mahito's abnormal learning capacity as a human Cursed Spirit, Mahito would quickly develop a Shin'in-ryu at a level no less than Kusakabe's.
Mahito looked absolutely delighted, face flushed.
"You know, ever since our last fight I've known it,—"
His limbs stretched and spread with theatrical extravagance, elbows snapping high when he raised his arms, fingertips deliberately tensed and curled.
"My current Idle Transfiguration can't kill you. Even at maximum output, it's still nowhere near your soul's strength... so I had to think hard about what could actually stall you."
[Every human soul has its own shape, its own nature.]
[For Mahito, touching Himmel's soul was like handling an iron ball bristling with fine, sharp needles, bare-handed, no tools.]
[Even with mutual destruction in mind, he couldn't deal a critical blow to the Hero.]
[But....]
"By using Shin'in-ryu to erect a barrier around myself, automatically severing my own flesh the moment I sense an incoming attack, I complete the disintegration before Priest's damage reaches me! That brings your damage down to almost nothing~"
Himmel deadpanned.
"That's basically the Chop-Chop Fruit."
"Hahaha! I know that one! One Piece, right?!" Mahito's eyes gleamed with genuine enthusiasm. "That's not all I've prepared, of course......"
"Get down from the train car first."
Himmel appeared before him in an instant. In that same instant, several hundred more cuts flew out.
While Mahito used Simple Domain to automatically sever incoming damage, mouths grew from the scattered pieces of his flesh and kept talking.
"Like I said — my Idle Transfiguration still can't hurt you. But that's right now."
"I am the Cursed Spirit of humanity. The mirror of mankind."
"No matter how powerful humans become, I will catch up. In the process of stalling you, I'll also complete my own evolution!"
Mahito was drunk on the fight. His tone had gone almost syrupy.
"That last battle with you.....let me grasp a deeper level of Cursed Energy. I can even use Domain Expansion now!"
"If we keep fighting! Just where will I end up?!"
His eyes flew wide open. Every muscle in his face pulled taut with manic excitement.
"Tell me! Do you cut me down first?! Or do I reach your level first?! Let's find out, Himmel!"
Himmel's expression stayed mild. His tone was ice cold.
"Is that so. But you don't have the right to continue."
He understood the principle now. There was a way to deal with it.
Simple.
[Cut him to pieces at a speed Simple Domain can't react to.]
Could he do it?
(Yes.)
He'd just need to warm up first. Build his strength.
The moment he made that decision, his presence changed.
"Hoo......."
He sank low, both feet planted firmly in the cracked rubble. The long sword hung diagonally before his body. A dead, crushing weight of pressure swept out from him and washed across Mahito's face like something solid.
"!"
A pressure wave.
The heavy aura rolling off Himmel had solidified into something tangible, a wave that rolled across Mahito's skin.
[In that instant, a fear flickered through Mahito's mind that he refused to acknowledge.]
[But even that fear, human fear of another human, was absorbed by Mahito in its entirety, taken in as nourishment.]
[The most vile Cursed Spirit bared its fangs.]
"Ha!"
His body arched. Mahito's fingertips convulsed and twisted wildly.
"There's no way it'll be that simple!"
Thud. Thud. Thud.
His words were still in the air when more screaming erupted from inside the subway. Some passengers' flesh began to swell, their human shapes collapsing.
"Aaaaaah!"
Arms stretched upward, hands grasping at nothing, and they kept bloating and writhing, shedding their human forms into grotesque, warped things.
[Transfigured Humans.]
Idle Transfiguration, reshaping ordinary human bodies into something closer to Cursed Spirits. A terminal condition that no one in this world but Himmel could cure.
It was this same ability that had once let Mahito pull Jogo out of Himmel's hands.
And now,
Inside the subway cars, the people Himmel had settled down were now mixed in with the Transfigured Humans. Leave it unattended and people would die.
The fluorescent lights strobed. Passengers screamed.
Shoving. Crying.
In this environment, deaths could come at any moment.
"Weren't you going to come kill me!"
A hideous grin tore across his face. Mahito shrieked, fear and frenzy tangled together in his eyes.
"If you can manage it, then try!"
The Hero Himmel would not abandon a single life he could still save.
Not the strongest. But the most vile.
Humanity's malice had indeed reached the Hero.
Then,
[Priest mode was required to save the hostages. He couldn't switch to another mode to boost his physical capabilities. He couldn't enter Passive Rotation.]
[He would have to keep accelerating in Priest mode throughout, but decelerate in the instant he reached a hostage, absorbing his own momentum so the aftershock didn't shatter fragile human bodies.]
[He had to track the surrounding environment, which was on the verge of total collapse. Even marginally too much force in the wrong place could trigger a cave-in, and none of the hostages would survive that.]
[Mahito would keep attacking throughout the process. He had to dodge as much as possible, protecting the civilians by cutting Mahito apart.]
[Complete the body's warm-up. Read Mahito's patterns. Cut him entirely to mincemeat at a speed that outstripped Simple Domain's automatic response.]
[Every step, repeated in sequence. Not a single error permitted.]
[All of the above. Simultaneously.]
These were the requirements for a "Hero" who intended to save everyone trapped in this subway.
Given conditions that exacting...
"Let's begin."
[Hero Himmel]
[Was certain of his victory.]
➤ Next: A Real Man Lasts Ten Minutes