The system's announcement was still echoing in their minds when Mahito smiled.
It was a wide, boyish, utterly psychopathic smile. It was the smile of a child pulling the wings off a fly, curious to see what would happen. His patchwork face crinkled with unholy glee. He looked at the assembled heroes—at the gods, the singularities, the paragons of hope—and dismissed them all. He was drawn to a much simpler target.
"Yo!" Magna Swing yelled from the back of the Black Bulls' group, conjuring a baseball bat of swirling flame. "Looks like we got some real ugly customers! Let's show 'em how we do things in Hage village!"
Mahito's eyes lit up. Such a simple soul. So full of fire and straightforward conviction. So easy to reshape.
He moved. Not fast. It wasn't a blitz. It was a casual, loping stride that was somehow faster than it should have been.
"Magna, wait!" Noelle shouted, sensing the wrongness of the creature.
But it was too late. Mahito's hand, unnaturally large and pale, reached out and gently patted Magna on the shoulder.
"Tag," he giggled.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then Magna screamed.
It was a sound that didn't belong in this or any other universe. It was the sound of a soul being turned inside out. His body convulsed, his bones snapping and rearranging themselves with sickening, wet cracks. His head swelled, his eyes melting and merging into one giant, weeping orb. His arms twisted into fleshy, useless pretzels. His legs bloated into grotesque, pulsating sacs of fluid. He didn't even look human anymore. He looked like an art project made by a blind and hateful god.
His soul screamed. Trapped inside the new, monstrous form.
"MAGNA!" Asta's roar was pure, unadulterated fury.
The other Black Bulls were frozen in horror. Charmy's fluffy sheep dissolved. Luck's manic grin vanished, replaced by a cold knot of dread. This wasn't a fight. This was a violation.
Gojo's face, for the first time, was not a mask of lazy confidence but a portrait of glacial, unforgiving rage. "You damn patchwork… Even as a copy, you're the absolute worst."
Kazuma vomited behind the rock.
The Broly echo, meanwhile, let out a guttural roar, its power level skyrocketing. Its focus wasn't on the weak, but the strong. A mountain of green ki erupted around it, and it charged, its sights set on the only other being here who shared its power signature. It charged Goku.
Goku met the charge, his expression grim. "He's not the Broly I know," he said, catching the echo's monstrous fist with his own. The ground for a mile around them shattered into a crater. "He's just rage. No heart at all."
Two fronts had opened in an instant. The battle of pure, overwhelming power, and the battle against a walking, talking war crime.
Asta didn't wait for a plan. He was a creature of pure reaction and boundless loyalty. He saw his friend twisted into an abomination. The only answer was to hit the thing that did it.
"I'LL KILL YOU!" he screamed, black anti-magic trailing behind him like a funeral shroud. He swung the Demon-Slayer Sword, a blow meant to cleave Mahito in two.
Mahito didn't dodge. He just laughed as the sword passed straight through his torso as if he were a ghost. The anti-magic didn't even connect. "Oops! Can't touch what you can't touch!"
"He's a Cursed Spirit, you moron!" Gojo shouted, a vein throbbing in his temple. "Normal attacks won't work unless you—"
He was cut off as Mahito's transfigured arm, now a wicked, sharp blade, lashed out at Asta's side. But this time, Asta reacted. He twisted, bringing the flat of his other sword, the Demon-Dweller, up to block.
SKREEEEEE—
The sound was like a thousand nails on a chalkboard. Mahito's blade made contact with the anti-magic sword, and for the first time, his attack was stopped. His blade sizzled, the part that touched the sword dissolving into black smoke.
Mahito's eyes widened. "What's this? You're… different." He could feel it. The very nature of this boy's energy was anathema to his own. It didn't just negate the curse technique; it denied its very right to exist.
Asta saw it. A chance. He didn't understand the rules. He didn't know what a "Cursed Spirit" was. But he knew one thing: his swords could hit this monster. And if he could hit it, he could save Magna.
"Give him back!" he roared, lunging forward again, this time leading with the Demon-Dweller.
He ignored Mahito's attacks, letting them score shallow cuts on his arms and side. He had one goal. He stabbed the rust-colored blade not at Mahito, but at the grotesque, whimpering lump of flesh that used to be his friend.
Noelle screamed, thinking he was putting Magna out of his misery.
But as the blade made contact with Magna's warped form, something incredible happened. The anti-magic flowed, not destroying, but… purifying. The twisted flesh began to shrink. The snapped bones began to reset. The monstrous form was being un-written, the curse on Magna's soul being forcefully canceled. It was agonizing, but it was working.
Mahito's smile finally vanished. He saw his art, his masterpiece of suffering, being undone by this loud, idiotic boy with no special powers at all. It was an insult to his entire philosophy.
"No," he whispered, a genuine malevolence entering his voice. "You don't get to fix my toys." He reformed his arm into a multi-bladed whip and lashed it at Asta, forcing him to disengage from Magna.
Anos watched this exchange with keen interest. "So, the boy's anti-magic works on the soul itself, not just the energy source. A conceptual counter. How crude, yet perfectly effective." He looked at the system screen only he seemed to still be studying. "This test… 'Idle Transfiguration' against the worlds. They are checking for soul-based defenses."
"A soul is a soul," a deep, calming voice said. Tanjiro turned to see Anos had spoken to him. The demon king's gaze was locked on Tanjiro's sword. "And will is will. What happens, swordsman, when you cut not the body, but the regret that binds a soul to its form?" It wasn't a suggestion. It was a lecture. Anos was teaching a class in the middle of a war for reality.
Tanjiro's eyes widened. He understood. His Sun Breathing wasn't just about heat and power. It was about severing the ties of regret, a technique designed to grant demons a peaceful end. Against a creature made of spiritual suffering…
Meanwhile, the fight between ki and cursed energy had become a spectacle. Goku, now a Super Saiyan, was trading blows with the Broly echo, their fists creating shockwaves that ripped through the very air. But as he fought, Gojo was right beside him, a blur of motion.
"Don't just punch it, muscle-head!" Gojo yelled, appearing behind the Mahito echo as it lunged for Asta again. "[Cursed Technique Reversal: Red]."
A small, impossibly dense sphere of crimson light appeared at his fingertip. It shot out, warping space as it traveled, slamming into Mahito's back. The explosion wasn't large, but it was absolute. Mahito's entire upper body was vaporized.
For about two seconds. Then it flowed back together from his legs, a smug grin already re-forming on his face. "That tickled! My turn!"
"He just keeps coming back!" Goku grunted, deflecting another punch from Broly.
"He's a concept given form!" Gojo explained, frustration clear in his voice. "His body doesn't matter! The only way to truly kill him is to attack his soul directly, and he's aware of every soul here!"
Saitama watched the chaos. He watched a boy get turned into a fleshy lump, then get slowly turned back by a screaming kid with swords. He watched the spiky-haired guy and the blindfolded guy fight monsters that just wouldn't stay dead. It was all so inefficient. So needlessly complicated.
The echo of Mahito, tired of being foiled by Asta, suddenly changed tactics. Its form blurred, creating a half-dozen copies of itself. They all scurried out, not towards the fighters, but towards the most vulnerable targets.
One headed straight for the terrified Mob. Another for Kazuma's party. Another for the injured Black Bulls.
"You can't save them all," the Mahitos giggled in unison.
That's when Saitama moved.
He didn't run. He didn't even look like he was trying. He was just… there. And there. And there.
The Mahito clone lunging at Mob suddenly found its path blocked by a man in a cape.
POP.
A single, dismissive punch turned it into a puff of black smoke.
The one headed for Kazuma tripped over a casually extended red boot.
POP.
Another punch. Another puff of smoke.
The one attacking the Black Bulls was obliterated mid-stride.
POP.
He took out all six copies in the time it took for Gojo to blink. He returned to his original spot, a bored look on his face. The smoke cleared.
"But… how?" Gojo stammered, his Six Eyes feeding him impossible data. "You don't have any cursed energy. You shouldn't even be able to touch him."
Saitama cracked his knuckles.
"You're right," he said. "He keeps coming back." He looked at the original Mahito, who was staring at him, its smug smile finally gone, replaced by a flicker of genuine fear.
"So," Saitama continued, "I guess I just have to hit him hard enough that there's nothing left to come back."