"Stay there. If you keep coming over, you're going to give me a headache. Wouldn't it be better to just stay there quietly and watch the Great Merger continue?"
Kenjaku pointed his index finger toward Mukuro in warning. Even now, with the endless cursed energy and near-immortality granted by the merger, the upper limit of his cursed energy output had not changed much.
He could clearly feel that compared to before the merger began, his cursed energy output had only increased by a tiny amount.
If that was all there was to it, fighting a monster on the level of a special grade sorcerer would be quite difficult.
Could it be because the merger has only just begun? Or is this simply something that evolution cannot enhance?
Kenjaku had been obsessed with completing the merger for at least five hundred years, but this was something that had never happened before. Even after living for a thousand years, he could not predict where it would lead or what the final result would be.
"Go die."
The answer was short and clear. Mukuro's knees sank slightly as a crimson aura wrapped around his entire body. He looked like a killing fiend who had stepped out of a vast sea of blood.
The Asura Path pushed his physical abilities even further on top of the already terrifying body of a Heavenly Restriction user. He had to kill Kenjaku here as quickly as possible.
Boom!
The moment his legs launched him forward, the entire stretch of ground behind him collapsed under the tremendous recoil. A huge section of earth seemed to have been violently lifted from below, sending clouds of dust surging toward Kenjaku like a wave.
'So fast?!'
Kenjaku's eyes widened in an instant. The tip of the long trident in Mukuro's hands was already growing larger and larger before his eyes.
This was no longer a question of whether he was fast or not. Judging solely by the speed Kenjaku had sensed just now, the man before him truly belonged among the ranks of the strongest.
Splurt!
Blood sprayed into the air. At the critical moment, Kenjaku turned his head, allowing the tip of the trident to graze past his eye. He immediately swung his left hand toward Mukuro.
That familiar palm, covered in stitches, transformed as it moved. Its five fingers became several sharp curved blades.
Clang!
Mukuro swung the trident sideways and used its shaft to block the attack. When the two weapons collided, sparks flew in all directions.
However, the curved blades did not stop after striking the shaft. Their shape changed again, transforming into five rapidly extending spikes that stabbed toward Mukuro.
He had no choice but to pull back sharply. The instant his toes touched the ground, he had already retreated more than ten meters away.
"What a shame. Come to think of it, can you let me touch you? I really want to know which one takes priority, the soul or the body. Or are they treated as one?"
Kenjaku sighed in disappointment. Of course, he had never expected to immediately injure someone at that level. Still, just like the result of the Great Merger, this question had troubled him for a very long time.
For an ordinary person, the answer was obvious. But with the terrifying physical body bound by the Heavenly Restriction, could it really withstand the Idle Transfiguration in his hands?
"My sexual orientation is perfectly normal."
Mukuro planted the trident upside down into the ground and mocked Kenjaku.
'That gravity technique can't seem to be used continuously for very long, and its range is limited. His left hand seems to be using Mahito's technique, while the efficiency of his Reverse Cursed Technique is extremely high...'
After only one exchange, he had already figured out several things. If that was all Kenjaku had, it might be slightly troublesome, but it was far from enough to stop him.
"Honestly, saying things like that means nothing when you're standing before an ideal. You're still just a child in the end. You've simply been alive for too little time."
Kenjaku shook his head with a smile. In order to accomplish his great plan, he had even possessed Kaori and personally given birth to Sukuna's vessel. For a kid who was only in his twenties, such a thing was indeed impossible to imagine.
"God Feeding Art—"
Kenjaku formed a hand sign before his chest and prepared to summon another shikigami into battle.
"Not happening."
Mukuro glanced around, then casually grabbed an old delivery truck nearby and threw it at him.
"That's rather crude..."
It was the first time in Kenjaku's life that he had seen someone use a delivery truck as a projectile weapon. The enormous vehicle rapidly blocked his entire field of vision as it came toward him, forcing him to interrupt his technique and dodge to the side.
But right behind it came the trident Mukuro had thrown.
The weapon flashed coldly beneath the sunlight as it transformed into a streak of light and shot toward Kenjaku.
'The truck was only a distraction?'
Faced with the faster attack, Kenjaku no longer chose to dodge.
Boom!
Just before the trident reached him, it was crushed down by tremendous gravity. It immediately slammed into the ground and sank deep into the earth.
'Just now...'
Mukuro had seen it clearly. Only the head of the trident had been affected by the gravity, creating the appearance that it had been driven diagonally into the ground.
In other words, the range of Kenjaku's gravity technique only extended roughly two or three meters around his own body.
"You probably figured it out, didn't you? But that's only natural. I never expected to hide such a detail from someone as sensitive to the flow of cursed energy as you."
Kenjaku scratched his head. He didn't care about exposing his technique. After all, the human individual known as himself would cease to exist after today.
This was the final struggle.
After a thousand years of turmoil in the world of curses, perhaps he would be the one to bring it all to an end today.
"Since this is our farewell battle, I think we should make it a little more spectacular. What are you still waiting for? Why not be a little more honest with each other?"
Kenjaku formed another hand sign.
Unlike when he had prepared to activate the summoning technique earlier, he placed his palms together in reverse and intertwined all ten fingers through the gaps between them.
The hand sign he formed was the Anti-Forked Palm.
"Domain Expansion: Womb Profusion."
Relying on the few seconds in which his gravity technique prevented Mukuro from approaching, Kenjaku expanded his domain.
Behind him, countless things that looked like vengeful spirits rose violently from the ground. They seemed to be bound to a single rotten and decaying body.
Powerful cursed energy poured out from Kenjaku's body, yet no barrier lines appeared. Instead, the domain simply spread toward Mukuro.
One hundred and forty meters.
That was the guaranteed-hit range of Kenjaku's open domain.
And the distance continued to expand outward. In the blink of an eye, it had already exceeded two hundred meters.
"The guaranteed hit of a domain doesn't work on me. You should know that, right?"
Mukuro looked somewhat surprised. Moreover, judging from the way the domain was expanding, it seemed that Kenjaku intended to give up the guaranteed-hit effect entirely.
"Of course I know. The only reason I expanded my domain was for this."
Kenjaku raised his hand and suddenly pressed it downward.
'Here?!'
Mukuro sensed something was wrong and quickly retreated. The place where he had been standing was crushed by an enormous force of gravity, leaving behind the shape of a giant palm.
"That's the answer."
Kenjaku smiled and raised his palm slightly.
If the domain's guaranteed hit could not lock onto Mukuro, then he could simply attack manually.
The purpose of expanding the domain was only to allow his originally short-ranged technique to be used at a distance.
"So what can you do in this situation? My senses become even stronger inside my domain, so don't think you can easily get close."
The only solution was to expand a domain.
Only by using a guaranteed hit to force Kenjaku to restore the guaranteed-hit effect could Mukuro prevent him from freely controlling the range and activation points of his technique like this.
But a body bound by the Heavenly Restriction could not expand a domain.
That left Mukuro with only two choices. He could either fight while enduring Kenjaku's domain, or he could stand by and watch the merger continue.
How would this man, the strongest in terms of physical combat, choose?
Kenjaku watched Mukuro from nearby with the mindset of a victor, his expression filled with amusement.
But in the next moment, Mukuro's action made his eyes widen. It was as if he had just witnessed the most unbelievable thing in the world.
Mukuro raised one hand upright in front of himself. The crimson pupil of his right eye had already turned to the number "5."
At that very moment, on the Shinjuku battlefield, Satoru and Sukuna had also just made the same decision.
Therefore, the three beings bearing the title of the strongest did the same thing at almost exactly the same time.
"Domain Expansion!" ×3
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