Chapter 144 - Boundary Marker and Reinforcements

Dogenzaka. The dark alley reeked of sewage. Atsuya Kusakabe rested his hand on his sword hilt. He stepped back half a pace, melting into the shadow of a streetlamp. Three people blocked the path ahead. A bald brute with a flabby face. A shriveled old crone clutching a pill. A young man with dead, sullen eyes. All Curse Users.

Mad dogs who licked blood from their blades. If he ran into some disgusting Cursed Technique that locked damage or reflected it back, a salaried Grade 1 Sorcerer like him would take a massive loss. Atsuya Kusakabe had no intention of fighting to the death. The brainless young master up front looked excited enough, perfect cannon fodder.

"Get lost."

Naoya Zenin stood dead center in the alley. The old crone stretched her yellow-toothed mouth wide and let out a grating cackle.

"Where'd this perverted little brat crawl from? Dressed like that, what, trying to laugh us to death?"

Her grandson raised the pill, face blank, ready to swallow. Jiro Awasaka cracked his knuckles and stepped forward, his face split in a savage grin.

"Leave the little freak to me. I'm gonna crush his bones inch by inch."

Naoya Zenin didn't hear a word of it.

His mind was full of Toji Fushiguro's roar beneath the setting sun: "The reason you throw a punch is to protect, and to prove!"

Naoya lowered his center of gravity, settling into a sprinter's starting stance.

"You're blocking the path where I prove my youth to my Teacher." His voice was perfectly calm. "That's begging to die."

"Eight Gates Released Formation — Third Gate — Gate of Life! Open!"

BOOM!

A gale detonated out of nowhere in the alley. Deep green steam erupted from every pore on Naoya's body. The surrounding trash cans were launched into the air. The berserk life energy made his lean muscles swell and bulge; his bodysuit stretched to the absolute limit. Jiro Awasaka blinked. He wasn't worried.

His Innate Technique was Inverse. The heavier the force an opponent hit him with, the lighter the damage he took. He could walk away from a head-on truck collision without a scratch.

"Come on then! Hit me harder!" He spread his arms wide and laughed.

Projection Sorcery, activated. One second forcibly divided into 24 frames.

BANG!

The air physically blew apart. A deafening sonic boom cracked across the alley. Jiro Awasaka's grin was still plastered on his face. His technique had activated, but it only covered a single heavy impact. In 0.1 seconds, Naoya Zenin had dismantled one punch's worth of force into 24 consecutive strikes, each at a different frequency and weight. Strength and weakness hammered into Jiro Awasaka's chest in rapid alternation.

The technique's judgment logic completely crashed.

CRACK!

Jiro Awasaka's sternum caved in. The fabric on his back exploded outward. Blood and fragments of viscera sprayed three meters behind him. He dropped like a burst sandbag. No scream. Dead before he hit the ground. The old crone's eyes went wide. The pill in her hand still hadn't reached her grandson's mouth. Naoya Zenin was already behind her.

"The Iron Fist of Youth does not permit interruption."

A vicious downward axe kick came crashing down with a shriek of displaced air. The old woman and her grandson didn't even get their technique's name out before sheer brute force drove them straight into the earth. The sewer flagstones shattered with a thunderous crack. The Boundary Marker hidden underground, its surface carved with runes, shattered into powder alongside them. Total combat time: under three seconds.

Atsuya Kusakabe stood at the back, eyelid twitching. He found himself wondering what the Zenin Clan would think if they could see what their future head had become. Naoya Zenin stepped onto the shattered Boundary Marker and ignored the corpses on the ground entirely. He couldn't wait another second. He dug a miniature Mechamaru Cursed Corpse communicator from his waistband and pressed it to his face.

"Teacher! Toji Teacher! Can you hear me!"

His voice was shaking with excitement, cracking toward a sob. The communicator flickered twice. Connected.

"I smashed the Boundary Marker! Those three pieces of trash blocking the road couldn't even take one hit from me!"

Naoya screamed into the air, frantic and crowing with excitement. "This is the power of Youth you passed on to me! That idiot Yuji Itadori could never pull this off! I'm your greatest, most beloved first disciple!"

Silence. A few seconds passed. Then Toji Fushiguro's full-throated roar blasted out of the Cursed Corpse.

"Naoya!"

"Teacher!"

"I heard it! That beautiful sound of flesh and soul colliding at full force!"

Outside the Barrier, Toji Fushiguro clenched his fist and bellowed into the communicator. "You brat, you've actually set the Will of Fire blazing! Well done! That's what a real man looks like!"

Naoya burst into tears. He clutched the communicator to his chest and wailed. "Teacher, I will never let your bodysuit down!"

Atsuya Kusakabe pressed both hands over his face. He was fairly certain his ears had just sustained a workplace injury from the volume. What was wrong with this master and disciple? Bodies everywhere, a battlefield soaked in blood, and they were running a hot-blooded school drama in the middle of it.

"But Naoya." Toji's voice broke off. "This damn wall in front of me, it's still here."

Naoya's crying stopped instantly. He rubbed his eyes. "Huh?" he said.

"The Barrier hasn't disappeared." Toji stared at the dark red curtain of light floating before him, completely unmoved by its presence. He rapped it with his knuckles. A dull, hollow echo answered back.

"Looks like there's more than one Boundary Marker. That stitched-up bastard came prepared." His voice didn't drop a degree in intensity. "But that's fine, the trial of Youth isn't over yet! Pour every drop of your sweat onto this battlefield! Go find the next Boundary Marker, men!"

"Yes, Teacher!" Naoya Zenin snapped upright. The fire burning in his eyes grew two shades wilder.

Atsuya Kusakabe sighed. Of course those brain-damaged Curse Users wouldn't put all their eggs in one basket, he thought.

He pressed his earpiece. "Mei Mei, Geto, did you copy? The Boundary Marker on Dogenzaka is down, but the Barrier is still up."

"Find yours. Move fast."

"Copy." Suguru Geto's easy voice came through. "Looks like tonight's a workout."

The outskirts of Shibuya, high above. Toji Fushiguro sat cross-legged on a skyscraper rooftop, looking down at the dead-silent district suffocating under the Barrier below. His blood was running hot. His muscles trembled faintly from being unable to fight. It was maddening.

The Barrier rejected everything under Heavenly Restriction. The moment he tried to punch through it, every ounce of kinetic energy would rebound onto him, multiplied. He was completely locked out.

The spare Cursed Corpse communicator in his hand crackled to life. "Toji, please be patient. I'm coming at full speed."

"This body is wrecked beyond repair, but I still have seventeen years of accumulated Cursed Energy."

Kokichi Muta's voice ground through the speaker, teeth clenched. "Even if I burn through every last drop, I'm tearing those two bastards who schemed against me apart with my own hands."

The streets of Tokyo. Night shredded open by blinding searchlights.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The earth shook. A steel colossus dozens of meters tall vaulted over an overpass at a dead sprint. Every step of its massive mechanical feet cratered the asphalt. Car alarms erupted in every direction.

The ordinary people on the street had no idea what to do. Tonight had already given them cannibalism footage flooding every feed, Shibuya locked down, social order crumbling at the edges. And now a heavy combat mech straight out of a sci-fi film was charging through their city.

"Look at that! What is that thing!"

"A Gundam? Some new Self-Defense Forces weapon?"

"Get it on video, get it on video!"

Half the crowd didn't run. They raised their phones and started snapping, flash after flash lighting up the dark. Inside the cockpit. Kokichi Muta was drenched in cold sweat. Through the holographic display, he watched the civilians below still taking pictures. These idiots had no idea what kind of abyss the world was sliding toward. He coughed twice, sharp and wet. Just wait. I'm coming for you.

At the same time. Chiba Prefecture. Makuhari Beach. Dozens of kilometers from Shibuya. The beach was packed with homeless people and civilians who had fled early. Tents crammed together in dense rows. A few campfires guttered in the night wind. A man in a tattered jacket stared at his phone.

On the screen, a shaky, secretly filmed video from Shibuya played. A dense swarm of four-armed monsters had a high school girl pinned to the ground and were eating her alive. The man's hands shook. His cigarette dropped into the sand. He swallowed. The black sea churned.

Eerie white foam boiled up across the surface. A massive bubble surged up from below, then a second, then a third. The entire expanse of Tokyo Bay began to glow, a nauseating yellow-green fluorescence spreading across the water. A sharp, acrid stench hit the shoreline on the sea breeze. Strong acid. Nuclear waste. It swallowed the campfire smoke whole.

"Something's in the water!"

Someone pointed and screamed, their voice cracking apart from terror. The sea blasted open. A row of enormous bone spikes broke the surface, radiating pale blue light, and drove straight up toward the night sky. Then, from the deep-sea dark, a creature over a hundred meters long slowly rose upright. It had once been a small lizard. Kenjaku had fed it a Special Grade spore.

But deep-sea nuclear waste and the concentrated, limitless fear of humanity had done the rest. It had mutated beyond recognition. Beyond category. It had become the Heavy Industrial Pollution Beast, a creature that embodied absolute destruction. Black, rock-hard scales wept corrosive acid in steady rivulets. Where the acid dripped, seawater vaporized. The sand beneath fused instantly into a glassy, toxic slag, leaking poison into the air.

The man in the jacket dropped his phone. His legs buckled. He hit his knees in the sand. His crotch went warm.

"M, Monster!"

The beach erupted. People screamed and scrambled over each other, crawling and running and falling toward the inland dark. Cries of absolute despair tore through the night. The beast did not look at them. Those blazing red eyes swept past the dense city skyline and locked onto Shibuya.

That was where it felt them. The purest, most immense tide of negative emotions and human grudges on the planet, all of it pulling at it like gravity. The beast opened its abyssal maw, rows of fangs glistening in the dark. Deep in its throat, a light was building. Destructive. Ancient. Total.

"ROOOOAAARRR!"

The roar tore out across the water, carrying a radiation storm on its wake, and split the night sky over all of Japan wide open.

➤ Next: Prison Realm — Tears Unshed