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CHAPTER START---
'Yaga, you fucking liar!' Mei Mei thinks as she rushes toward Taiyo.
Within two steps, she realizes that he's moving only slightly slower than her.
Swinging her battleaxe at him, the boy suddenly stops, expecting her swing to continue and the momentum to spin her around, but instead, she leaps into a flip and brings her foot down onto his head.
In response, he raises his arm, taking the hit with his forearm and punching out at her face, only for her to block with the wooden handle of the battleaxe.
Feeling the impact, she was now sure that Principal Yaga had lied to the higher-ups.
The force sends her back for a few meters, causing her to slide across the grass while he charges at her.
With each punch, kick, and slash, Mei Mei notices how problematic this mission has become.
And wishes more than anything that she charged much, much more.
She's been asked to kill this boy, and with the information from Principal Yaga, they were led to believe that he was capable of fighting at the level of a Semi Grade 2. After all, the man wasn't comfortable sending Taiyo to anything above Grade 3 without Kusakabe.
But now she realizes that they must have been onto the higher-ups and purposely withheld the boy's true strength.
After all, being a Special Grade means that you're a national threat, assuming there are no other Special Grade Sorcerers to stop you.
However, that potential, even for those with the rank, is not instant.
Taiyo has massive reserves of Cursed Energy, but he needs time to learn and adjust, so in combat, while his power is impressive, he's no Special Grade quite yet, and he's certainly no Satoru Gojo.
This, however, doesn't change the growing concern Mei Mei feels as she notices his speed and power increasing with each passing second.
She's only managed to land a dozen shallow cuts and gashes along his chest, legs, and arms, unable to hit his neck or head yet.
And thanks to her superior experience, he hasn't been able to land a clean hit, and those he does land, she easily intercepts with the handle of her battleaxe.
A Grade 1 Cursed Tool that she's mastered after years of use, soaking it with energy and causing it to become even stronger, especially strong when she actively reinforces it.
After almost a minute of close combat, Mei Mei sees her opening, smacking his right hand to the side with a kick and knocking his left hand upward so she can bury the head of her battleaxe into his gut, cleaving him upward.
But in response to this, his eyes widen, he opens his mouth, and Mei Mei sees blood-red Cursed Energy gathering in a flash.
'Shit!' she barely leaps back in time for the beam of heat to punch a hole into the ground at her previous location.
"Why didn't you use that sooner?" she asks, not seeing him closing the distance, and taking this moment to catch her breath.
"Because I'm learning a lot from you, and I don't want to ruin that," Taiyo says.
"Are you so sure that you'll survive this?" Mei Mei asks. "I am aiming to kill you, after all."
"Are you stupid or something? If I die here, how the hell am I supposed to fight Gojo?" Taiyo asks. "All beauty and no brains…"
Mei Mei narrows her eyes at him and immediately rushes forward.
Taiyo feels her Cursed Energy spike for a moment, then the signature moves upward.
'The birds, she's using one,' he notices before meeting her charge.
'He's even faster,' Mei Mei realizes as they continue training blows, noticing her shallow cuts and the kicks that barely touched him, were now missing by a few millimeters.
Before she can properly contemplate this, he launches a strong right to her face, and she raises her battleaxe to block with the handle.
'Heavy, like Kusakabe, his enhancement is on that level already,' she thinks while using the momentum to spin and launch a kick at the side of his head.
Taiyo grabs her leg and slams her into the cobblestone pathway, dragging her through the ground before throwing her back toward the apartment building.
Mei Mei gets up as if it were nothing and dusts herself off, and once again, he allows her to do so without interruption.
'Ok, I can't kill him in an honest fight, at least not this way,' she realizes.
Taiyo sees her smile and grins in response, raising his hands as he rushes toward her.
'He won't use his Innate Technique until I use mine, but this doesn't feel like the cocky attitude of Gojo, this boy is simply trying to keep things fair, and learn all he can,' Mei Mei realizes as she finds herself now evenly matched in speed, destroying her main close combat advantage.
"You hit hard, and you're fast," she says. "But can you handle changes on the battlefield?"
Taiyo lowers his head to dodge the blade before kicking forward, which she takes advantage of to put some space between them.
"A battle of Jujutsu isn't a simple MMA fight," Mei Mei says as she jumps upward, keeping her eyes on him as she leaps five stories into the air.
Taiyo smiles, excited by the sudden change, and then he gets even more excited as a Crow, charged with Cursed Energy, intercepts her and acts as a stepping stone for her to leap up to the 10th floor.
Now, standing on the railing of a balcony, she smiles and calls him toward her with one finger.
'If she thinks I'll hold back inside because of collateral damage, she's got me all wrong,' Taiyo thinks as he takes one leap, launching himself directly at her.
Seeing him soaring toward her, Mei Mei flashes him a vicious smile.
'He took the bait, using a stepping stone to get up here instead of jumping here in one leap caused him to want to show me up, and in the air, he's helpless…'
Taiyo senses it while he's only a dozen or so meters from her, ascending toward the woman.
From his left, a Crow, overflowing with Cursed Energy, dives directly toward him, giving up its life and any control of its body in exchange for becoming a missile of Cursed Energy.
Mei Mei notices the concern on his face as she snaps her fingers.
BIRD STRIKE!
The bird is only a few meters away as Taiyo aims his palms downward.
Activating his Innate Technique, Immolation, he forms a blood-red pool of Cursed Energy in his palms, gathering the air around his hand and super-heating it, then using it like a thruster to rocket himself directly upward.
Mei Mei's bird misses as he dodges it mid-air, and slams into the ground below, leaving a deep crater in the lawn.
'Oh, he can fly?' Mei Mei thinks as she sees him rocket past her directly upward. 'But he can't control it. Must have been improvised since I can feel his Cursed Energy being consumed at an absurd rate.'
Mei Mei wonders what he's doing, and for a moment shares vision with the three crows on the rooftop, only to see him reach the roof and point both his arms toward them.
High above her, Taiyo blasts the entire roof of this 15-story building with concentrated heat, instantly melting the entire thing and killing her Crows.
'He's just as careless as Gojo used to be,' Mei Mei smiles as she leaps forward, intercepting him as he falls back toward the lawn below.
Taiyo sees her moving toward him and smiles, overjoyed by the discovery that he may be able to fly someday, and meets her slash with a kick.
Reinforcing his foot and shoe to meet the blade, and to Mei Mei, it feels like she was a regular person slamming into a stone wall.
"Gotcha," she says while pulling away and snapping her fingers.
Taiyo is confused for a moment, then twists his body to look behind him, seeing her final Crow performing a Bird Strike directly toward him.
It was less than an arm's length away, and because he'd been so focused on Mei Mei, he was blind to it.
He releases a massive amount of Cursed Energy, so much so that it pours out of him as blood-red flames due to its heat-based nature.
Mei Mei reinforces her body, still feeling the heat drying out her skin, but the heat only lasts a moment before impact.
The bird slams into him and explodes with Cursed Energy, splattering its guts and feathers around and sending him hurtling toward the ground like a meteor.
Mei Mei lands a moment later and can sense his Cursed Energy. Keeping her guard up, she slowly walks over to the molten crater in the ground.
'He released so much Cursed Energy, more than I even have, that softened the impact of Bird Strike by burning away the body,' Mei Mei realizes as she stops a few meters from the crater. 'He then has his Reinforcement stop what was left of the Crow.
His skills and experience leave much to be desired. But on reflex, he can throw around that Special Grade power to save his own ass. Animals like him are too dangerous in a fight, but I see why he's so confident in using a deathmatch like a classroom lesson…'
"No wonder Kusakabe hates you," Taiyo says as he gets up from the crater, most of his clothes completely burnt away, leaving him barefoot and in a pair of shorts -the remains of his track pants-. "No respect for other people's clothes!"
Mei Mei raised a brow at this, then looked at him as if he were the biggest idiot she'd ever met.
The second biggest idiot she'd ever met.
Taiyo looks at his destroyed clothes, while Mei Mei looks at the stump on his left shoulder.
"Your clothes are a bigger concern than your arm?"
"Well, Shoko said I should be able to heal limbs," he says, casually, while patting the stump. "But RCT can't fix my clothes."
Mei Mei sighed. "One day, there will be a normal Special Grade, one day."
"But not today," Taiyo says as they both rush forward once more.
'He shouldn't be able to use his Innate Technique right now. He's actively using his Cursed Energy to stop his bleeding and dull his pain. That's already a lot. Taking into account his lack of refined Cursed Energy control, he's already dead.' She flashes a sinister smile while swinging at his left shoulder.
"Predictable!" Taiyo yells as he pushes his Cursed Energy Reinforcement to the limit and tanks the blade to his left side, only allowing it to go one inch deep.
He launches a kick to her left side, and Mei Mei is only able to raise her leg to defend, feeling her bones quake and noticing how much stronger he'd already gotten over these past few minutes.
'Ok, this is quickly becoming more trouble than the pay is worth,' Mei Mei realizes as her entire leg goes numb.
However, taking advantage of his missing limb, she steps to his left and prepares to take advantage of this opening.
But then he says them, the last words she ever wanted to hear from a Special Grade opponent.
With his hand raised in the same hand sign as Satoru Gojo, the Mudra of Indra, the strongest god.
His words genuinely terrify her.
"Domain Expansion…" he says confidently, and she feels Cursed Energy building in his body.
Mei Mei instantly takes one step back and crouches, holding the battleaxe horizontally in front of her.
"New Shadow Style: Simple Domain!" she cries out, not having used this in years since she stole it from the New Shadow Style school.
Seeing this, Taiyo smiles and kicks forward, and Mei Mei instantly realizes she's been tricked.
And a split second later, her arms go numb, almost breaking as she blocks the kick with the battleaxe, and the black sparks take him to new heights.
BLACK FLASH!
He spartan kicks her so hard that she intentionally raises herself off the floor to be pushed away, knowing if she stood her ground, her arms would break.
And in the next few seconds, she's launched through the ground floor of the building and is rolling across the backyard.
While Mei Mei is groaning in pain, trying to stand on the other side of the building, Taiyo feels invigorated.
A high like never before as the black sparks flow through his body, jolting his Cursed Energy network.
And carried by the black sparks, his Cursed Energy flows better than before, deepening his understanding of Jujutsu and himself.
"This feeling, yeah…I need more," Taiyo says as he walks forward, marching through the destroyed building to find his new 'teacher'...
END CHAPTER---
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pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene [Read ahead & support me]
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