During the trial mission, Ryosuke had only crossed over with his soul, so none of his true abilities could be fully brought out.
Now that his real body had descended and all restrictions were lifted, even Wonder of U was naturally no match for Ryosuke,
His thoughts were forcibly cut off.
Ryosuke frowned slightly.
No matter what kind of enemy he faced, whether strong or weak, he rarely had such arrogant thoughts.
Heroes under heaven were as numerous as carp crossing a river.
Ryosuke had climbed up step by step by crushing powerful opponents from all sides. He had never believed that true invincibility existed in this world.
He then thought of how he had suddenly spoken earlier.
'I rarely talk to enemies during a fight… Is this the guidance of calamity?'
In that brief exchange, Ryosuke had already gained a rough understanding of Wonder of U's abilities.
In the story of Part Eight, it appeared extremely mysterious.
Still the lake-surface theory.
Suppose all the calamities in the world formed a gigantic lake whose surface was frozen over.
Wonder of U was a huge fish swimming within that lake.
The moment someone developed the thought of catching the fish, they would appear barefoot on the ice. When the ice surface came into contact with their feet, calamity would begin to erode them.
If one wanted to explore more information about the fish, they would have to lie flat against the ice, touching even more calamity.
And if one wanted to catch this fish, they would have to use their body heat to melt the ice, then reach their hand into the freezing lake water, this was exactly what Ryosuke was doing.
If the action of "reaching out to catch the fish" was too fast, the ice would slice the skin, and the lake water symbolizing calamity would splash out, landing on the people the fisherman cared about.
This was why, after Ryosuke closed the distance in the instant of time stop, he suffered a wave of calamity attacks, and why Josuke and the other two were also dragged into the explosion.
To deal with Wonder of U, the best strategy was,
To walk straight over, openly and directly.
Either bear all the calamity attacks alone, step by step, under Tooru's gradually despairing gaze, walk right up to him, and kill him with one punch.
Or die on the road forward.
There was no second choice.
So all that talk about floods of calamity, about miracles descending, it all sounded flashy and fancy, just like on a battlefield, with the enemy's machine guns firing wildly and our soldiers charging forward.
In the end, it still came down to who was tougher, who was fiercer.
One side was Ryosuke.
The other side was Tooru and Yoshikage Kira.
The distance between the two sides kept shrinking. One unexpected calamity after another emerged from every corner, continuously escalating, blades falling from the sky, explosive shockwaves, the ground collapsing, magma bursting from underground.
These were true, natural-disaster-level calamities.
But they were ineffective.
This level of "natural disaster"… was far too weak.
When Ryosuke further compressed the C-Moon's gravity field down to a three-meter radius, the extremely condensed gravity caused the air itself to warp unnaturally.
A fully powered Otsutsuki Isshiki might be able to forcibly shatter this layer of gravitational barrier.
But that was an alien.
If Wonder of U could summon aliens through calamity, Ryosuke would accept it, and then,
Switch to Star Platinum.
Higashikata Joshu grabbed his sister and Josuke and ran far away.
He had originally planned to abandon Josuke, but in the end he couldn't bring himself to be that ruthless. He viciously kicked Josuke's butt twice, then hoisted him up and carried him away.
Josuke was unconscious, and his sister, Higashikata Daiya, could almost be considered blind. Looking at the scene that resembled the end of the world, Joshu kept shouting "holy shit" nonstop, but there was no one who could share his shock.
Yoshikage Kira was also utterly shaken. If Tooru hadn't been gripping his hand tightly, Kira would have already turned around and run away.
Ten meters… five meters…
Three meters.
Tooru and Yoshikage Kira stood at the edge of the gravity field.
In the next second, they would be crushed into a pile of flesh by gravity.
The two sides stared at each other.
Another step forward.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Ryosuke clutched his heart and suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood. His entire body erupted with flesh and blood splattering everywhere.
"Heh…"
The tightly tense Wonder of U finally revealed a smile again.
Borrowing the triple calamity force Ryosuke had brought over, at the moment Tooru was about to be killed, when the calamity power was compressed to its limit like a spring, Wonder of U once again "pulled the trigger."
And this time, the calamity erupted inside Ryosuke's body.
After becoming the ultimate lifeform, Ryosuke's cells were evolving every moment, constantly moving toward greater perfection.
However, this evolution also had a flaw, a one-in-a-billion chance of "pathological mutation," similar to cancerous mutations.
Pathological cells would take an entirely different evolutionary path.
If it were an ordinary mutation, Ryosuke's physical self-healing ability could erase this erroneous evolutionary route in an instant and return everything to normal.
But now…
It was Wonder of U, driven into a corner, combined with the triple calamity Ryosuke himself carried, the power produced by the fusion of the two.
Hundreds of cells throughout Ryosuke's body mutated.
And because his cellular activity was far too strong, the speed of this mutation almost instantly spread through his entire body.
Blood flowed, flesh fell away, and after hitting the ground, it turned into plant after plant.
The evolutionary path chosen by the mutated cells was, plantification.
An individual is, in the end, just an individual.
Only by becoming plants with a collective consciousness can one truly occupy a planet and achieve immortality.
From a purely evolutionary standpoint, this was indeed a viable path.
But the price was that the existence known as "Ryosuke" would be completely erased.
As flesh fell away, Ryosuke's vitality plunged to rock bottom within a single step.
"Yoshikage Kira, now's the time!"
Tooru shouted excitedly. "His body is extremely weak, and his Stand can't bring out much power either, take advantage of this and kill him!"
Yoshikage Kira frowned deeply, feeling that these words sounded extremely familiar. With the situation urgent, he didn't have time to think further. He hurriedly controlled Killer Queen to launch an attack on Ryosuke, just at that moment...
"Ora ora ora ora!"
Star Platinum's fists hammered down on Yoshikage Kira like a storm, sending him flying.
He remembered... Yoshikage Kira remembered everything...
"Tooru! You motherf... ugh!"
Thinking of how Tooru had dragged him along the whole way, then told him to attack first once they reached Ryosuke, Kira believed Tooru was treating him as cannon fodder. In a rage, he controlled Killer Queen and prepared to throw Sheer Heart Attack.
At the very instant Yoshikage Kira formed the thought of attacking Tooru... Calamity descended.
Already heavily wounded and on the brink of death from Star Platinum's barrage, Yoshikage Kira was caught around the neck by a flying kite string. His throat was slit open, and blood gushed out.
"Idiot!"
Tooru couldn't understand Yoshikage Kira's thinking.
If Ryosuke hadn't been seriously injured, how could Yoshikage Kira possibly withstand Star Platinum's punches?
Still, he couldn't really blame Kira.
Yoshikage Kira had lived his entire life cowering and hiding. Forget fighting in team battles, he had never even had teammates. He was a madman who trusted no one except himself.
When things were going smoothly, it was fine. But once things turned against him, suspecting teammates was simply Kira's instinct.
Wonder of U didn't care about Tooru's thoughts, nor did it care about whether Yoshikage Kira lived or died.
It stood right in front of Tooru, becoming the sturdiest possible "shield."
But the hand gripping its cane betrayed its tension.
Plants on the ground bloomed with brilliant flowers, releasing waves of fragrance. Amid the sea of blossoms, Ryosuke, his entire body stained with blood, took another step forward.
Between the two sides, just one step remained.
Crack!
Wonder of U's cane snapped.
Calamity had reached its limit.
But...
Ryosuke had not.
Star Platinum appeared and threw a punch at Tooru.
"Ora!"