Ryan clenched his fists, feeling the energy vibrate in every muscle as Toji spun his chain with such speed that the steel seemed to multiply in the air, whistling like a swarm of deadly blades.
"S-Sensei! You're really going to do what I think you're doing?" Arona exclaimed in his mind, her voice trembling and full of apprehension.
Ryan sketched a discreet smile, hiding something under his arm. "Well, Arona, weren't you the one who said I needed to end this once and for all?"
He pulled his arm back, his eyes sharp as blades. "The next attack... is going to be the last."
"S-Sensei, if you miss... You'll be without energy for a few seconds! If you end up dying right after... You... You..." Arona's voice wavered, almost tearful. "...You'll be stuck in a loop, Sensei!"
Ryan kept his voice firm and resolute. "That's why I'm not going to miss, Arona."
Toji cackled, his eyes gleaming with pure enthusiasm as his chain cut through the air like a rotating guillotine. "I'm going to burst you open and then go straight to enjoy a beach!" As soon as he finished the sentence, he hurled the chain with brutal force.
Ryan propelled himself with the accumulated energy, narrowly dodging as the impact of the chain against the ground exploded the stones, throwing debris everywhere.
He used the rubble as improvised platforms, jumping from one side to the other, buying time. He needed to store even more energy in the blade hidden behind his wrist. Every second was precious.
Toji continued attacking, the chain cutting through the air like an iron dragon in fury. His eyes burned with euphoria — he was enjoying every moment of that battle.
The fight became so intense that Geto had to erect a barrier of curses to protect Riko from the shrapnel.
She peeked through the small gaps in the protection, her breathing accelerated. "R-Ryan is too fast now!"
Geto, his voice hoarse due to concentration, murmured as he followed every movement. "He's leveling up very fast, but..." He narrowed his eyes. "It's getting... unstable."
Ryan slipped between the fierce blows, seeking an opening.
"Why don't you come try to kill me, you trash?!" Toji bellowed, twisting the chain in mid-air and launching it like a predator about to strike.
The chain opened like a deadly cage, surrounding Ryan on all sides.
Toji pulled the chain with colossal force. "Use your sorcerer gifts to get out of this, muderfucker!"
The chain hissed in the air, closing in a fatal instant. Ryan widened his eyes. His heart raced. The world seemed to slow down.
"Now." The thought echoed in Ryan's mind.
He channeled all the stored energy, dodging with surgical precision. Each link of the chain passed millimeters from his body, so close that he felt his skin burn due to the friction of the incandescent metal from the friction.
Ryan spun in the air, his body upside down, seeing only metallic waves swirling around him. And then, ahead of him, the Spear of Heaven, coming straight for his eye.
He let out a last breath.
It was the moment.
Failure or—
Slash!
The sound of flesh being cut. The spear grazed his face, opening a deep gash on his cheek. Blood flew in a scarlet arc.
But at the same time, the hidden blade in his bracelet was fired.
Ryan couldn't miss. That option didn't exist, or everything he said would be just that, fallacy.
But… The worst happened
Toji leaned back, the man moved almost supernaturally, lying on the ground at an impossible angle.
The blade passed close to his chest, cutting only a strand of his hair. The smile that appeared on his face was not of relief — it was of ecstasy.
The fight he was experiencing was everything he had always wanted. The perfect moment to prove to the world that a man without cursed energy could crush even the most blessed of sorcerers.
Ryan saw his blow fail.
Toji straightened up in the same instant, spinning the chain with terrifying speed.
"It's over for you, kid!"
Ryan landed firmly, his feet digging into the cracked ground. His chest rose and fell in a heavy rhythm, but his smirk exuded confidence.
"Yeah... I missed the first attack..."
The air around seemed to contort, as if reality itself were bending under an invisible weight. A cutting cold spread through the environment.
"But the second... the second won't miss."
The atmosphere changed. The air became heavy, dense, as if the world was retracting in anticipation. Toji felt it in his skin—not a common sensation of danger, but a primal instinct, a warning engraved in the very genetic code of survival. His muscles tensed, his heart pumped a brutal adrenaline rush. He didn't know exactly what was coming, but he knew it was something that couldn't be stopped—it was the absolute certainty that something was coming, something that surpassed his understanding.
"Damn brat—"
BOOM!
The roar echoed like an apocalyptic thunder. The ground trembled violently, cracks spreading across the floor as debris fell from the rubble. The impact reverberated throughout Jujutsu School, shaking the foundations of the place as fierce gusts of wind swept across the battlefield, forcing Geto to raise his curses into an instinctive barrier to protect Riko.
Geto's lungs lost air for an instant. A sudden chill ran down his spine. This was not just raw power. This was something different.
The knife that Ryan had thrown not only returned—it recoiled with colossal force. But it wasn't just a knife being called back. It was a piece of time being ripped out and thrown back.
This was a technique that Ryan had not yet fully mastered, a gift he had acquired by absorbing divine energy in Hinamizawa. In theory, his ability allowed him to reverse the time of a single object at the cost of absurd energy consumption. But in practice... there was much more involved.
When throwing the knife, Ryan predicted that Toji would avoid it. But when he activated his ability to bring it back, not only was the object pulled.
The space around the blade was distorted, compressed, and then released like a cosmic slingshot. A storm of particles, air molecules, and atmospheric pressure were sucked into the phenomenon, creating a momentary vacuum. When the knife advanced, the compressed air around it was released with force equivalent to tons of oxygen being fired in a single direction.
The result?
An atmospheric implosion. A phenomenon rarely recorded in normal physics: the knife not only returned, but dragged with it tons of compressed oxygen, creating an air displacement equivalent to a supersonic detonation.
Toji barely had time to react before the shockwave hit him—the force of the blade did not hit him just as a piercing weapon—it swallowed him like an avalanche of devastating kinetic energy.
The impact was brutal. The air around Toji exploded, as if a meteorite had collapsed on him. His body was struck by an overwhelming force, the blade advancing at a speed multiplied dozens of times. The pressure crushed his muscles, his organs, his bones.
And then, the knife pierced through.
A silver blur tearing through space and leaving a momentary vacuum in its wake.
The blade followed its merciless trajectory, but Ryan realized the problem too late.
The temporal elastic created by the technique not only brought the knife back—it brought everything back. And that included the absurd speed that had been generated. Now, the knife was coming towards him.
Ryan widened his eyes. His body was already exhausted, the remaining energy barely enough to react. He tried to move, tried to dodge, tried at least to reduce the impact...
But the blade hit him head-on.
The impact caught him in the chest as if he had been hit by an artillery shell. The air was expelled from his lungs, his bones screamed in excruciating pain as his body was catapulted across the battlefield at an absurd speed. He barely had time to process before his fate was sealed: the cracked stone walls were waiting for him, and the collision would be fatal.
Geto realized what was about to happen.
If Ryan collided against the wall with that force, his body would be pulverized. Without hesitation, Geto activated his fastest curses and advanced.
"Damn it, if I don't cushion the impact, he's going to—!"
It was an instant.
He launched himself at the exact point where Ryan would crash. Creating an improvised barrier with his own body and his curses, Geto absorbed part of the impact.
CRASH!
The wall yielded as if a cannon had fired against it. Shards of concrete and dust flew in all directions.
Geto felt the pain throbbing in his body. His curses had absorbed part of the impact, but the force of the shock still affected him. He looked at Ryan, now fallen in the rubble, breathing heavily.
On the other side, Riko watched the scene paralyzed, her eyes widened in pure despair.
"NOOOOOO!" She screamed, her voice echoing through the chaos around.
____________________________
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