Frieren: Himmel — Chapter 181 - Makora vs Makora

If the battle between Mahoraga and Sukuna would raze a modern city at blinding speed,

then a battle between Mahoraga and Mahoraga would do something else entirely.

It would make the city evaporate.

Houses shattered and then launched upward.

The earth split open, its bloody maw swallowing sedans and trees whole.

CLANG, CRACK.

Half of Tokyo began to sink.

A conical crater tore open at the center of the flatland. Everything collapsed toward its heart. Buildings tilted upward along with their foundations, their angle against what had been level ground grinding steadily toward ninety degrees.

Inside supermarkets, shelves slid and crashed into each other. Snacks, drinks, and fruit scattered across the floor.

A watermelon rolled with a wet splat, then a toppling counter crushed it to pieces.

Splat.

The soft flesh ground down to pulp. The rind burst into jagged fragments, juice spraying everywhere.

The drifting watermelon juice was bright, translucent red.

The camera held on that red.

Then, cut.

BOOM!,!.! —! —! —!

Like an industrial blower running at full power, sheets of blood sprayed outward in both directions.

The two Mahoraga threw their punches in perfectly identical stances, shattering each other's arms at almost the exact same instant.

Bone jutted through skin. Crimson exploded outward and painted their pure white bodies red.

Behind them, the displaced air formed a wall and drove backward. Shattered bricks and rubble were sucked into the current, lifted from the ground, and sent spiraling at high speed along that moving wall of pressure, until they became cannonballs and carved astronomical damage into the city beyond.

BOOM! BOOM!

Two giants dropped to the ground.

Mahoraga faced Mahoraga.

The fight had lasted less than 10 minutes.

But in that time, what had started as tearing off each other's wings and hacking at heads had escalated to a point where a single punch or kick could incinerate an entire city block. Simple movement alone would send several buildings lifting off the ground.

Mahoraga's ability: adapt to the opponent's attacks and develop an attack method that defeats them.

The first summoned Mahoraga, hereafter Mahoraga Unit One, had fought Sukuna long enough to achieve near-complete adaptation to the concept of slashing.

The subsequently summoned Mahoraga Unit Two was identical to Unit One in base parameters. It lacked that adaptation to slashing.

But that didn't matter.

Because Mahoraga's own slashing output isn't enough to kill a damage-sponge monster like Mahoraga.

Add Sukuna's interference from inside the shadows, and Mahoraga Unit Two caught up to Unit One's level at extreme speed.

Equal.

And after that, nothing but continuous adaptation.

Two mirrors facing each other. Mahoraga fundamentally cannot kill Mahoraga. All it does is drive both of them higher.

Creating a natural disaster.

That was the scene Higuruma Hiromi was looking at.

"...What in the world is this..."

Even the great lawyer's face had gone a little pale. Any normal person would be shaken seeing a semi-truck blow past the tip of their nose.

Higuruma felt like two of them were drifting circles around him, the pressure hitting him full in the face.

Fortunately...

"Itadori. I'll go first. I'll stall for as long as I can. After that, it's in your hands."

"Higuruma..." Behind him, Itadori stared at Mahoraga with the same disbelief, but when he heard that Higuruma intended to walk toward those two monsters, the words died in his throat.

He'll die.

That single thought passed clearly to the man.

"Don't worry."

Higuruma Hiromi smiled.

He didn't fear death. He never had.

He didn't consider himself a good person. Mostly upright, maybe. That was the most he'd claim.

But he had let emotion take over in a courtroom that was supposed to stand for fairness, and he had killed someone there. Higuruma had already sentenced himself. He'd decided that a long time ago.

So it didn't matter.

"I will stop them. With everything I have."

He tugged his collar one last time, adjusted his black suit jacket, and jumped toward the crater the monsters had made of the city.

Both Mahoraga clocked the intruder instantly.

But,

Neither attacked. They turned their attention back to each other.

The Ten Shadows Technique is one of the strongest cursed techniques in existence. Within it, the subjugation ritual for Mahoraga is notoriously difficult to control.

It divides into Single-Person Subjugation and Multi-Person Subjugation.

The former is the valid form. The latter is technically invalid. But since no Ten Shadows user in recorded history has ever actually subjugated Mahoraga alone, the latter became standard practice.

You designate an enemy as a Multi-Person Subjugation target, summon Mahoraga to attack both of you, and achieve mutual destruction. A suicide play.

But that explanation skipped some important details.

The permitted movement range for the subjugation.

The conditions for selecting subjugation targets.

The entire Earth couldn't possibly be the subjugation field. You couldn't designate every human being on the planet as your target.

Based on Higuruma's observations:

(The subjugation targets are selected by the technique user themselves.)

(Fushiguro likely designated only Uraume and himself, the self that Sukuna was possessing. But once the possession completed, Sukuna and Fushiguro's existences blurred together, and Mahoraga began targeting Sukuna directly.)

(When Sukuna summoned Mahoraga Unit Two, he set Mahoraga Unit One and himself as the subjugation targets.)

(Then Sukuna slipped into the shadows, leaving the two Mahoraga with no one else to point their aggro at but each other.)

(So this should have been a closed system from the start. As long as no outsider initiated an attack, the two Mahoraga would just keep fighting each other. Unless...)

(Someone attacked both of them at the same time and pulled both sides' aggro onto themselves.)

THUD!

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Higuruma's gavel struck the air. The sound rolled out in all directions.

Neither Mahoraga would proactively attack an outsider before an attack was registered.

Until,

"Domain Expansion."

Which meant there was exactly enough time for Higuruma to build a domain around both of them.

The instant the black cloth finished wrapping, Mahoraga recognized the threat. Both turned on Higuruma simultaneously.

White light.

The judgment seat.

The gallery.

A sacred courtroom.

Complete.

?

?

One Mahoraga sat in the gallery. The other was placed in the defendant's seat.

"Hah."

Higuruma exhaled.

He had genuinely worried about this part. Given their movement speed, any attempt to flee and his domain almost certainly wouldn't hold them. They could have shattered it with a physical strike before the construction even finished.

(Fortunately, my read on the aggro mechanics was right.)

Two weeks. Higuruma Hiromi had been studying jujutsu for two weeks, and his understanding of it already exceeded ninety-five percent of registered sorcerers.

"Come to think of it, I've never used my domain on a shikigami before."

He settled into his seat and started talking, conversationally.

"Most shikigami don't carry criminal guilt. Even if they did, establishing that guilt is complicated. Honestly, whether my cursed technique functions on cursed spirits and shikigami at all is its own question."

Because Higuruma's cursed technique required debate. Most cursed spirits and shikigami couldn't speak, couldn't offer a rebuttal. The only move available to them would be a guilty plea.

"Not that I intend to use my cursed technique on you."

He said it plainly.

"If I'm right, your Adaptation should be able to construct vocal cords with ease — enough to debate me. Actually, worse than that. You'd probably adapt the ability to ignore everything and dismantle the domain itself."

So,

"That's why I didn't imbue this domain with immediate execution of the cursed technique."

Higuruma wasn't here just to buy time.

(If at all possible, I need to probe Mahoraga's abilities further.)

The core question:

(Is Mahoraga's adaptation governed by time? Or by attack intensity and attack frequency?)

Anyone past elementary school knows a function can have more than one variable. The weights aren't equal, either.

Higuruma intended to analyze all of it himself, then hand Itadori and the others something they could actually use.

The method:

"Trial Postponement."

His voice dropped low.

"Code of Civil Procedure, Article 93: significant circumstances permit postponement of trial proceedings."

"Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 276: the court may alter the trial date upon request."

"Grounds for request include but are not limited to: serious illness, transportation failure, natural disaster, funeral of a close relative, inability to appear, unavailability of critical evidence."

"If a shikigami is analogous to a pet, then your master Sukuna is lurking inside the shadows and cannot be called before the domain. That constitutes, inability to appear."

"Under those circumstances, supplementary clauses can be added to the domain's terms."

Higuruma Hiromi.

A man who had studied jujutsu for two weeks, and was already rewriting his own cursed technique's rules mid-session.

A genius, by any measure.

(Even under a Delayed Trial, Mahoraga would be barred from violent acts. If I can string it along this way... maybe Mahoraga won't even classify what I'm doing as an attack.)

(If that holds, Mahoraga won't try to adapt. I can last until my cursed energy runs dry.)

(And then,)

CLANG!

"...Heh. Of course it's not that easy."

After a beat of silence, Higuruma smiled despite himself, the corner of his mouth twitching.

He saw it. He heard it.

Above Mahoraga's head, the Dharma Wheel, turning.

His guess wasn't wrong.

By removing any obvious attack intent, adaptation efficiency dropped. That part was accurate.

But even so.

Simply by existing in the same space.

Mahoraga raised its hand.

And performed the same motion Higuruma had made moments ago, that small, absent tug at its collar.

Those two rows of teeth spread into a brilliant smile.

It was still adapting.

➤ Next: I Know I'll Die, But I'm Still Going to Stall Them!