Chapter 161 - One Slap

BOOM!

The cruel smile at the corner of Sukuna's lips was the only warning. Then the Cursed Energy detonated, crushing, suffocating, absolute. No barrier. And yet more despairing than any barrier that had ever existed. Behind Sukuna, a grotesque and ominous evil shrine clawed its way out of the earth, built from countless piled bones.

"Malevolent Shrine."

Domain Expansion. With the shrine as its center, everything within two hundred meters was reset. An invisible storm of slashing attacks flooded every inch of space in an instant. This wasn't an assault. This was law. Within this Domain, being cut was the only truth.

"Dad!"

From across the distance, Megumi let out a gut-wrenching roar. He could only watch as his father's silhouette was swallowed whole by that Domain, by absolute death.

"A springtime final exam, how could I let a student stand on the sidelines and fret?"

Toji's voice cut through the storm of slashes loud and clear, still carrying that same laid-back teacher's drawl.

"Watch carefully, Megumi! This is an out-of-syllabus question! When the question itself is wrong, the way to solve it is to take out the one who wrote it!"

He was already moving before the last word landed. Facing the all-encompassing, inescapable Sure-Hit slashes with nowhere to run, Toji didn't retreat. He didn't even dodge. He simply reached into Chimera's mouth and slowly pulled out another short blade. Hmmm. What followed was deeply, profoundly wrong.

Every invisible slash flying toward him, the moment it touched the blade, vanished. Gone, like a pencil line erased from paper, without stirring a single ripple.

"That blade..." Suguru Geto's pupils snapped tight.

"Inverted Spear of Heaven."

Kenjaku's smile turned feverish. He stared at the Cursed Tool in Toji's hand with naked greed.

"A legendary Cursed Tool capable of forcibly nullifying all active techniques... it actually exists. And it's in his hands."

Nullification. Not blocking. Not dodging. On the level of law itself, Sukuna's technique had simply been erased.

"So that's it — cheating with an outside tool, are we!"

A flash of comprehension crossed all four of Sukuna's eyes. Then something far deeper and far more savage buried it.

"Then let me see whether your Cursed Tool is harder, or whether my Cursed Energy runs deeper!"

BOOM!

The frequency and intensity of the slashes surged several times over in an instant.

Countless attacks hammered the small "safe zone" in front of Toji. The blade of the Inverted Spear of Heaven let out a strained, groaning hum. The veins on Toji's gripping arm stood out like cables.

"Teacher is not cheating!" Toji laughed and stamped the ground hard. His entire body became a deep-green meteor, driving straight through the storm, charging directly at Sukuna on the shrine.

"Youth means dancing the wildest dance right at the edge of the rules!"

Sukuna roared and leapt down from the shrine. The fist wreathed in ominous red light crashed violently into Toji's charging figure.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

One green. One red. Two silhouettes moving beyond the limits of human vision collided again and again at the center of the Domain storm. Megumi could no longer make out either of their movements. All he could see was this: every collision blasted open a ring of devastating shockwaves, sending the ground, already ground to powder by the slashes, flying up all over again.

His father's green steam and Sukuna's red Cursed Energy churned against each other like two stars tearing themselves apart, setting the night sky over Shibuya flickering between light and dark. Sukuna's body absorbed heavy blow after heavy blow. His chest caved in. His arms snapped. The Reverse Cursed Technique rebuilt him in an instant every time.

And Toji, though the Inverted Spear of Heaven nullified most of the slashes, a few devious attacks always found a way to graze him, carving trails of blood across his skin. Those wounds vanished just as fast. The Gate of View's ultra-rapid regeneration saw to that. Neither could do anything to the other.

"What a splendid lesson."

Kenjaku clapped his hands, his tone saturated with genuine appreciation.

"Worthless monkey! This is all the tricks you've got!" Sukuna taunted.

A single punch sent Toji flying back dozens of meters. The wounds on Sukuna's body sealed instantly. He laughed wildly, savoring the pure destruction, the pure fight. Toji found his footing and looked at the laughing Sukuna.

A "gentle" smile settled onto his face.

"Fourth lesson. And the most important one."

"You need to learn to respect your elders."

The instant the words landed, his figure was gone. Sukuna's laughter cut off. Too fast. With the Gate of Wonder open, the Seventh Gate, his speed exceeded even the dynamic tracking of four eyes.

SMACK!

A slap. Crisp to the extreme. Loud to the point of wrongness. It rang out over every screaming slash in the Domain and carried clearly into the ears of every single person present. Time seemed to stop. Across the distance, Suguru Geto, Megumi, Naoya, even Chikage beside Kenjaku, all went still. Sukuna slowly turned his head.

On the left side of his face, a clear five-fingered handprint was rising to the surface. He had been... slapped? Toji's figure appeared behind him, palm still frozen in its follow-through, face etched with deep and weary disappointment.

"How many times have I said it, don't let your mind wander during a fight! How are you going to graduate acting like this?!"

"Pfft — cough, cough!"

Kenjaku couldn't hold it. He wrenched his head away, shoulders heaving violently, nearly losing himself entirely. That slap was more insulting than any heavy blow could ever be. It hadn't struck flesh. It had struck the absolute dignity of the King of Curses, dignity that had loomed unchallenged for a thousand years.

"You..." Sukuna's voice was quiet. Quiet as something rising from the deepest pit of hell.

"Are you... looking to die?"

RUMBLE!

A surge of Cursed Energy unlike anything before erupted from within Sukuna. No longer blood-red, it carried a tinge of ominous gold now, the kind of gold that looked like it could burn everything down to nothing. The Malevolent Shrine behind him began to shake. From the gaps between its bones, golden flames began to pour.

"Oh?" The smile on Toji's face pulled back a fraction. He could feel it: a law buried inside those flames, something entirely different from the slashing attacks.

"A compound question, is it? Now this is getting interesting."

All four of Sukuna's eyes locked onto Toji. Every trace of mockery was gone. What remained was pure fury, the kind that wanted to reduce the entire world to ash. He raised his right hand. Palm forward. Aimed directly at Toji. One cold syllable.

"Hearth."

Sure-Hit flames. Combined with the Sure-Hit slashes filling the Domain, they formed a compound annihilation network in an instant. Golden flames materialized out of nowhere on all four sides of Toji, sealing off every last space he could move into. They coiled like living serpents, intertwining with the invisible slashes, lunging at him together.

An absolute killing technique. Engineered specifically to slaughter targets with high-speed regeneration and high-speed adaptation.

"Ha... hahahahaha!"

Staring into a certain-death predicament with no way out, Toji Fushiguro threw his head back and laughed.

"Now we're talking! This is the only thing worthy of being the final question on the ultimate exam!"

The blue steam around his body surged and swelled like a boiling ocean.

"Megumi! Watch closely!"

"This is the full-marks answer of youth!"

Toji spread his legs wide. Sank low. Slammed both hands together in front of his chest in a strange opening stance. Terrifying air pressure gathered and compressed in his palms, wild and violent. He split into a grin, wider and more savage than anything Sukuna had ever put on, and roared out the name of the final technique, one word at a time.

"Daytime—Tiger!"

➤ Next: Daytime Tiger