.
A dark glow flickers to life instantly.
Across the Sorcerer Killer's body, there is an erratic shadow that rises and coalesces into a veil of darkness, enshrouding him fully. But the eerie umbral shine only lasts for all of a single heartbeat, before promptly winking out as if it had never existed in the first place…
… without anything to show for it.
Zenin Toji remains well and unharmed, completely unaffected by Shiki's reversal technique.
In fact, the man himself barely even pauses as he registers this fact as well. He catches his balance and shifts, movements unhampered, then swiftly closes in on her once more–
And Shiki raises her blade and cuts.
…
It misses, unsurprisingly. Shiki is fast, but Zenin Toji is faster. Throughout their entire altercation so far, she'd been unable to land a solid blow on the man. So it's not surprising that the Sorcerer Killer is able to avoid this strike just as he had all the others.
Except–
Except even though her strike clearly misses, even though her blade does not so much as even graze the man's skin–
Blood splatters through the air all the same. The gory display is accompanied by the sound of wet, weighted flesh striking the ground, as Zenin's arm abruptly detaches at the elbow in a spray of red. The surface of the wound is smooth –as if it had been cleanly sliced through by a sharp blade in a single stroke.
… It worked.
Shiki lets out a light exhale, and raises her bloodthirsty sword once more.
Cursed technique reversal is difficult to use. Not just in terms of its execution, or owing to the fact that it's powered by positive energy rather than regular cursed energy. In terms of energy consumption, the cost of a reversal technique is far higher than what's required by a lapse technique.
And White had already given Shiki enough trouble with its high cost in terms of cursed energy, which didn't exactly make things any easier in this respect.
… Her cursed technique, Nihility, is one that revolves around 'nothingness.' White, as the strengthened lapse technique, 'maximizes' a target's concept of 'nothingness.' This results in 'nothing' affecting the chosen target once Shiki activates her lapse technique.
Black is her reversal technique. Rather than 'maximizing' a target's concept of 'nothingness,' it instead… 'minimizes' it. In other words, Black reduces a target's concept of 'nothingness.' And the removal of a target's concept of 'nothing' means that it becomes impossible for it to be 'affected by nothing.'
A slightly convoluted way of explaining things, perhaps, but essentially–
White maximizes 'nothingness.' When a target's concept of 'nothing' is pushed to the limits, its state will not change no matter what external factors affect it.
Black, minimizes 'nothingness.' When a target's concept of 'nothing' is removed, this means that its state will change in accordance to external factors. Therefore, anything that can affect the target will affect the target.
To paraphrase this even further using Satoru-niichan's words:
It's almost like the sure-hit effect of a Domain Expansion! … Except, y'know, minus the domain and barrier. And a few other things.
…
Shiki's blade curves and whistles through the air, missing its mark as Zenin dodges once more. But a deep crimson gouge is carved into the side of his body all the same, blood scattering messily behind the line of the cut.
Shiki surges forward, pressing her advantage. Zenin's long dagger parries her strike, but this does not stop another wound from appearing on his skin.
If Shiki were more proficient with her reversal technique, then perhaps she would've been able to end things in a single blow, as soon as she activated the technique. Unfortunately, that's not the case here. Right now, while Black does guarantee that her attacks will land on Zenin Toji, it doesn't guarantee that she will cut the lines that she's aiming for. And issues with accuracy aside, the strength and speed of her strikes are also off. With more practice, things might be different on this front, but…
But there's a reason why Black is still an incomplete technique at the moment. The theory is there, and Shiki is able to put the technique into practice, but even so there are still numerous drawbacks to it. And that's not even touching on the staggering drain it is on her cursed energy reserves.
If Shiki had known ahead of time that she would find herself utilizing Black in a fight like this, she would've devoted more attention to properly developing and refining her reversal technique. But White had seemed like the more practical option to focus on first, and so the majority of Shiki's attention had been placed towards restructuring and improving White for better usability first. In comparison, Black was a lower priority.
Yet ironically enough, it's not White but Black that's the technique that she's relying on right now against the Sorcerer Killer. In order to kill him, she'll need to–
Zenin suddenly lifts his arm, and throws his dagger. Not at Shiki, but instead towards the ceiling above her.
What is he–?
She glances up, just in time to see the cracked lines overhead deepen and expand from the epicenter of where Zenin's dagger is embedded deep into the crumbling structure.
A minuscule shard falls, lightly tumbling off harmlessly from her shoulder.
Then, almost like it's a signal of sorts, the entire ceiling comes crashing down with a low, rumbling groan.
Shiki is forced to turn and defend herself. Maintaining Black means that she's unable to use White for protection or reverse cursed technique for healing while she's still holding the reversal technique active. If she doesn't want to be crushed beneath falling debris, then she'll have to do something about it.
With three long strokes of her sword, Shiki slices through the larger pieces of rubble that would've crushed her otherwise. As for the other falling pieces, those can be overlooked. Minor, noncritical injuries can be ignored; right now, her priority is eliminating Zenin. The energy consumption for Black is intense, and she doubts that she can hold it for much longer, so she needs to–
–Zenin is missing.
In the scant few moments that it had taken for Shiki to deal with the imminent danger to her person, Zenin Toji had disappeared.
Had he run? Was collapsing the ceiling just a distraction? If he decided to go after Ken-jichan, then–
A faint disturbance stirs in the air.
It's the only warning that Shiki receives.
Her head snaps back immediately on instinct; a sharp wooden splinter pierces through the empty space that she'd occupied like a bullet.
If she hadn't moved, she would've been dead.
It didn't matter that this was only a normal piece of wood and not one enhanced by cursed energy. Shiki doesn't have White protecting her right now, and nothing would've stopped it from blowing a hole through her head had it struck her. Such a grievous injury might be recoverable with reverse cursed technique, but it's not something that Shiki is inclined to put to the test in her current situation.
… And that was to say nothing of the fact that she'd have to release Black first, in order to operate reverse cursed technique on herself. There's no way that the Sorcerer Killer wouldn't take advantage of an opportunity like that.
Was this his plan? Had he already pinpointed the shortcomings to her reversal technique? Zenin had probably realized that Shiki was no longer using White once she'd activated Black, which made her vulnerable. But Black made him vulnerable to her attacks as well, and–
Oh. Perhaps this was his answer? Distance. Even though Black makes it so that there is no chance of 'nothing' happening to him when Shiki attacks him, Shiki still needs to actually attack the Sorcerer Killer in order for her technique to register it as something affecting the chosen target. If Zenin was hoping that putting distance between them and hiding from her was an answer…
… he wouldn't be wrong. Currently, this was an issue for Shiki. But it wasn't a major one.
It was impossible to track Zenin Toji according to the signature of his cursed energy, because his Heavenly Restriction meant that there was not even a single drop of cursed energy in his body to begin with. However, since Shiki had used Black on him, that was something that she could track down and follow. Zenin was–
–to the left–
–no, on the right–
–above her–
Shiki twists, and dodges. Because all of a sudden, there are many more pieces of smaller debris hurtling towards her from what seems like every direction. And it might as well be, from how fast Zenin is circling around her behind the crumbling walls of the half-destroyed home that they're standing in.
The resulting effect is not unlike experiencing a dense rain of arrows.
Shiki weathers the fierce onslaught as best as she is able to, deflecting anything that would otherwise pierce vital areas while ignoring minor injuries. But it's not enough. One long shard lodges into her shoulder, while another pierces cleanly through her leg, and–
It's hard to imagine that Zenin is doing all of this with only one arm and a long gash bleeding in his side, but clearly Shiki had once again underestimated the physical constitution that the Sorcerer Killer's Heavenly Restriction grants him.
Zenin is trying to wear her down. He's keeping his distance, and whittling her down bit by bit.
… Should she release her reversal technique?
Keeping Black up is a significant drain on her cursed energy. If she releases the reversal technique and switches to using White instead, she would be able to defend herself from these incessant, irritating ranged attacks… but it would leave her no way of tracking the Sorcerer Killer's position. Supposing that Zenin decided to stay at range and continue launching attacks from afar, Shiki could very well end up being pinned in place until she ran out of cursed energy, or made a fatal mistake.
Now that Zenin was aware that Shiki could use Black to bypass his defenses and strike directly at him anyways, it was unlikely that he would engage her in close combat again.
That meant her best option was maintaining the reversal technique, and finding some way to strike back at the Sorcerer Killer before she was turned into a pincushion.
Sweat drips down from her brow from exertion, but Shiki forces her movements to remain steady. She slices through a piece of rebar and ducks into a roll, taking a brief reprieve behind a sturdy section of the wall that has yet to be destroyed completely.
How can you accomplish your goal? How can you kill Zenin Toji? … At most, you only have enough cursed energy to hold Black for a few more minutes.
Think fast.
She tightens her grip on her sword.
The only way for Shiki to land any solid hits on Zenin… is by way of using Black. But in order for Black to take effect, any attacks aimed towards Zenin need to at least be in his general vicinity. Only then would the reversal technique actually register attacks targeting Zenin as something that could affect him, and thereby ensure that they would affect him. The man's countermeasure of staying away from her is a crude and simple but admittedly effective way of negating the effects Black, incomplete as it is–
… As it is.
Black allows her to strike back at Zenin Toji. But it's incomplete, which makes his current distance a problem. Shiki can't exactly experiment and refine her reversal technique in the middle of heated battle like this, but–
If she makes it less incomplete, then isn't that a viable solution as well?
White strengthens a target's concept of 'nothing,' so that all external factors that might affect the chosen target will fail to affect said target.
Black reduces a target's concept of 'nothing,' so that all external factors capable of affecting the chosen target will affect said target.
A sword cutting into their flesh will cut them. A rock falling down on them will leave bruises on them. An arrow trained on them will pierce them. For the event becomes inevitable from the moment that the arrow is loosened from the bow, and it is determined that 'an arrow will strike the target' and its effect on the target will not be 'nothing.'
… That is, in theory. Added to how Black was currently an incomplete and unstable technique, Shiki suspects that there's actually a good chance that her sword will just miss if she decides to throw it at the Sorcerer Killer.
But Shiki knows how to resolve this.
It's quite a simple solution, really. In exchange for limiting and restricting oneself, there is strength to be gained from the act.
Such a thing is known as a binding vow.
The creaking, crackling sounds of the tattered rubble scattered across the ground sharpen in the night. Asymmetrical shadows cast upon broken floorboards almost seem to lengthen and deepen for a timeless moment, as the air stills and holds its breath.
"My reversal technique will only permit my chosen target to be affected by myself," Shiki states.
And lifts her sword, driving it forward into the empty air in front of herself.
She ignores the sharp debris flying towards her as she does this. One leaves a jagged cut on her cheek, while another pierces deep into her thigh. There's another sharp piece that digs into her side–
But all of this is inconsequential, now. Shiki grips her hand around the pointed spire of wood, and yanks it out unhesitatingly.
Blood wells up from the injury, dribbling down her hip. Shiki wipes it aside. Beneath her fingertips, the wound has already closed into a pale scar. Reverse cursed technique. The pale line continues steadily disappearing until nothing but smooth, unblemished skin remains.
There are no longer any projectiles flying towards her. Instead, only silence reigns in the surrounding space, sparsely interrupted by faint, intermittent sounds in the background from crumbling debris.
Shiki begins walking forward. The floorboards creak dangerously under her feet, and what remains of the haphazard staircase in the corner nearly falls on top of her as she approaches it. Shiki pauses and allows it to fall in front of her, then lifts her gaze.
Behind the rubble, Zenin Toji lies slumped on the ground. The injuries that she had inflicted on him before he'd retreated to a distance are still present. Blood spills from the stump left of his arm, and the entire side of his body has been stained a deep crimson color.
… But neither of those injuries, as grievous as they appeared, had been the one to put him down. After all, Zenin had attacked her from a distance while bearing those wounds without any apparent issues.
Yet now, the man shows no signs of struggling to his feet, even though Shiki is standing right in front of him.
It has nothing to do with exhaustion or blood loss, and everything to do with the stab wound situated squarely in his chest. One that drives deep into a crisscross of gleaming red lines that glow ever brighter beneath her gaze.
He's not dead yet, though. There's still a faint rise and fall of his chest that indicates he is breathing. And though he no longer possesses the strength to rise to his feet, his mouth parts and moves, blood dripping down from his lips.
"… That cousin of yours. Did he… ever show up with a 'Fushiguro' kid?"
Shiki is vaguely surprised by the question. The Sorcerer Killer's sense of self and awareness had deteriorated severely over the course of their fight, and aside from the few verbal barbs they'd traded in the beginning, there hadn't been any other words exchanged between them. For him to speak up now like this…
What possessed him to suddenly ask this sort of question, without any rhyme or reason? … Well, not entirely without reason. The man was Megumi's birth father. But from what little Megumi had shared of his memory of the man, he hadn't seemed like a particularly caring or attentive parent back when he'd lived.
But Seance copies a deceased individual's memories and disposition as they are. It doesn't change anything in the individual from when they had been alive… does it?
Did he ever show up with a Fushiguro kid? Zenin had asked her, in a gesture of apparent concern for his son in his last moments. And if Shiki were to answer this, then she'd inform him that Satoru-niichan showed up with two of them.
But Zenin Toji does not deserve to receive any answers from her.
Shiki's only response to him is to swing her sword.
The first slash follows the red line cutting diagonally across the man's body from shoulder to hip, and the second slice splits his torso right above his rib cage. Another cut easily detaches his legs at the knees, and her blade draws back up to slice his head in two.
Blood gushes out onto the ground, an unending scarlet tide that bursts out in a rush. It's mixed with bits of bone and internal organs, flashes of white amid the overwhelming spillage of red-black viscera painting the floor beneath her feet.
The coppery scent of blood in the air thickens.
… Idly, Shiki notes that the man's face has changed. It's no longer Zenin Toji who stares back at her, but instead the sightless features of a man whom Shiki does not recognize. Ogami's grandson, most likely. The one who Ken-jichan had named as the vessel for Ogami's Seance Technique when the woman had called upon Zenin Toji.
…
Bluntly speaking, had the woman summoned anyone but Zenin Toji, then Shiki would've had an alternative course of action open to her: Cutting the lines of the active Seance Technique, instead of killing the person.
In the case of Zenin Toji here…
Throughout the entire course of their altercation, the lines that Shiki had observed on the Sorcerer Killer's body had not revealed any hint of a cursed technique at all.
Which is something that should've rightfully been impossible. It was the Seance Technique that bound Zenin Toji to the flesh of a living person, so there should've been some trace of the active technique on him. That there were no indications of this at all should've been impossible –unless one took into consideration the matter of the man's Heavenly Restriction.
When Ogami Shiho had summoned the 'information' pertaining to Zenin Toji's body into her grandson, this included his Heavenly Restriction. A Heavenly Restriction which made it so that his body did not –and was unable to– possess any cursed energy.
Yet at the same time, Seance was a cursed technique that could only be operated by using cursed energy.
A paradox. Zenin Toji had been summoned and bound to a living person by cursed energy imbued into their flesh through the Seance Technique, yet his body was one that was unable to retain or manipulate cursed energy.
… Which begged the question of how Ogami had even managed to accomplish summoning Zenin Toji like this to begin with.
But there's only so much that Shiki can guess or extrapolate about it on her own, especially knowing as little about the particulars of the technique as she does. Interrogating Ogami for specifics may yield more answers, perhaps.
Had Ken-jichan managed to catch Ogami by now? Given that Shiki had been fighting the Sorcerer Killer all this time, Ogami clearly hadn't released her technique. If her uncle hadn't apprehended Ogami yet, or if Ogami had summoned another dead man like Zenin Toji to fight in her stead…
Shiki needed to find Ken-jichan.
She raises her hand and slides her sword back into its sheath. The blade is almost warm against her side, rattling faintly for a moment before falling still obediently when she tightens her grip on its hilt.
… There's nothing that hurts in her body anymore. Only a vestigial echo of the injuries she'd suffered, and nothing more. Using reverse cursed technique after killing Zenin Toji meant that she'd been able to heal the worst of her wounds, if not all of them. Shiki would save that until after the situation here was fully resolved –which meant finding and reuniting with Ken-jichan and the others, and ascertaining what was going on with Ogami.
But even though there's no pain that afflicts her, she's still tired. Exhaustion isn't something that Shiki knows how to heal through reverse cursed technique, and it also doesn't help that she's currently extremely low on cursed energy. If she tries to use Black again in her current state, she'll only be able to hold it for a few seconds at best.
Hopefully, she wouldn't need to use it. Fighting Zenin Toji had been a lot more difficult than she'd expected it to be, even though she'd eventually prevailed in the end. If Shiki needs to run headfirst into another fight directly on the heels of this one…
It wouldn't be easy. But, if another fight becomes necessary, then it's not something that she'll shy away from.
Shiki is a sorcerer. Fighting is what she's raised for.
She turns away from the dismembered corpse scattered across the ground behind her, and walks away with bloodied footsteps.
.
.
"Oh my god," is the first thing that Kobayashi Aoma says upon seeing her again. "Did you get run over by a truck in there or something?"
Kobayashi Tamotsu promptly elbows in the stomach without even looking, ignoring the small 'oof' that his brother lets out. "Have some tact. Gojo-san, what…?"
Ken-jichan does not say anything, but the way that he immediately rushes towards her is probably indicative of how concerning he currently finds her appearance to be.
"I'm fine," Shiki says automatically as her uncle crouches down in front of her, as if to ascertain for himself the severity of her condition. He won't be finding any injuries that are too serious, though; Shiki had already healed the worst of it using reverse cursed technique earlier. "Really. Is that Ogami Shiho?"
There's an unconscious old lady tied up with sealing ropes beside Choki, ones that limit and disrupt a person's flow of cursed energy. So Ken-jichan had managed to catch and subdue her, then.
"It is," her uncle responds succinctly, frowning deeply as he looks at her. "Your injuries…"
He'd likely already noticed it. The discrepancy between the tears and bloodstains in her clothes, and the unmarred skin beneath them.
"I'm fine," Shiki repeats herself patiently, and it's the truth. "Zenin Toji is dead. Again. For good, this time."
Ken-jichan purses his lips. "… Ogami refused to terminate the technique, and it didn't terminate on its own after she fell unconscious, either. Did you–"
"Yes. I killed him."
… This time, hopefully her uncle wouldn't hold it against her. Zenin Toji had been aiming to kill her, after all, so in a way it was self-defense. And did it really count as 'killing someone' when the person in question was already a dead man to begin with?
Ah, no. It might've been the Sorcerer Killer that she'd been fighting, but Shiki had also killed Ogami's grandson when she'd driven her sword through his chest.
"… I killed both of them," Shiki amends herself. "I couldn't perceive the lines of the Seance Technique on Zenin Toji, so I couldn't distinguish the border between him and his vessel. I ended up killing his host along with him. Ogami's grandson is also dead."
"Who cares about that?"
Kobayashi Tamotsu sighs, and reaches over to whack his brother on the back of his head for his flippancy, reprimanding.
Ken-jichan's hands tighten from where they rest upon her shoulders, "I see."
… That's it?
Shiki tilts her head questioningly.
"He allowed himself to be used as Zenin Toji's vessel, and his aim was to kill Ogami's opponent, no matter who they might be," Ken-jichan explains. "He would've fought to kill. It would be foolish to expect you to hold yourself back in light of the circumstances."
Shiki… really hadn't held back against the Sorcerer Killer during her fight against the man. Had been intensely pushed in the fight, more like, to the point where she'd made the call to strengthen her incomplete cursed technique reversal through a binding vow in order for her blade to reach Zenin.
Preoccupied as she'd been by dealing with the Sorcerer Killer, she hadn't given much thought to the wellbeing of Ogami's grandson throughout the battle. Shiki would've expected her uncle to be more upset over it, since he doesn't like it when she kills, necessity or otherwise.
But… she's glad that he doesn't seem too upset about Ogami's grandson. Maybe because he himself had been fighting the man as Zenin Toji's vessel before Shiki arrived on the scene?
A faint groan draws their collective attention to the side. By Choki's feet, Ogami appears to be stirring back into wakefulness.
"Oh, to treat these old bones so roughly…" The curse user's voice is raspy in the manner that older people tend to speak with, a clear indicator of her age even putting aside her wrinkled appearance. But there is no mistaking her for harmless, not with what she'd done this night. "… Had I known that Irifune was so dear to Naniwa Torikai's heart that he would expend such effort to protect him even on his deathbed, I would not have accepted this assignment."
"It's a bit too late for regrets, old hag," Kobayashi Tamotsu bites out. "And we're not here because of Irifune."
Shiki leans towards Ken-jichan, "Irifune is still alive?"
"Yes," her uncle mutters back to her. "I found him hiding from Ogami in the bushes, and he volunteered to act as bait in order to draw her out."
Shiki nods in understanding.
Ogami, on the other hand, is not so understanding. "You're… not here because of Irifune? But the only way that sorcerers would be here with this sort of timing is if the Naniwa–"
Kobayashi Aoma jerks a hand, pointing in Shiki's direction, "Does that look like a Naniwa to you?"
Ogami turns towards Shiki… and blanches.
"Gojo Shiki?" Her shock is obvious, squinted eyes flying wide. "Why… why are you here? The Naniwas… they shouldn't have…"
"I'm not here because of the Naniwas." Considering that they showed up while Ogami was in the midst of murdering Irifune, an illegitimate child of the Naniwa Clan, it makes sense that Ogami would think that the two matters are related, even though it couldn't be further from the truth. "I'm here because of Kon Shiu."
If possible, the old woman's eyebrows shoot even higher in incredulity. "Kon Shiu? What does he have to do with anything?"
"What do you mean, 'what does he have to do with anything?'" Kobayashi Tamotsu hisses hotly. "You killed him!"
"I did," Ogami admits, "But that was just a business transaction–"
"You murdered him right as we went looking for him!"
"I think you need to calm down for a moment, Bro," Kobayashi Aoma tugs gently at his brother's shoulder. "C'mon, easy."
Kobayashi Tamotsu glares at Ogami for a moment longer, then closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath, visibly forcing himself to subside and regain control over his temper after the emotional outburst.
"… As he mentioned," Ken-jichan speaks up, taking over the conversation, "We were looking for Kon Shiu so he could answer a few questions for us. However, when we arrived, we were immediately attacked by Inoue, who was used as a vessel for the curse user Emoto by your cursed technique."
"Ah." Ogami nods slowly. "I… see. So, you were the ones who…"
The old woman trails off before finishing her sentence, falling silent as she becomes consumed by her thoughts.
"You know something about what's going on." There's no question in Ken-jichan's voice. "Speak. Why did you kill Kon Shiu?"
"For money, of course," the curse user answers.
Ken-jichan's eyes narrow. "And drawing us into a fight with Inoue in order to implicate us as the possible perpetrators of his murder?"
"Also for money," Ogami replies. "… It was part of my client's request. But I didn't realize that the blessed child would be one of the sorcerers getting caught up in this! In retrospect, I should've suspected that there was something more to the request, especially with what was offered in payment, but…"
Once again, the elderly woman falters.
"But?" Ken-jichan prompts.
"But… I thought it was understandable," the curse user shrugs. "Not many people are aware of it, but Kon Shiu was the one who recommended the Time Vessel Association to hire Zenin Toji to kill the Star Plasma Vessel a decade ago, endangering the lives of both Special Grade sorcerers who were assigned to the mission in a stunning upset. A grudge like that… is something that can be held for a long time."
Shiki blinks. Was Ogami insinuating that her act of killing Kon Shiu had something to do with Satoru-niichan's mission to protect the Star Plasma Vessel so long ago? If she was saying that there was someone out there who held a grudge against Kon Shiu for this, for liaising between the Sorcerer Killer and the Time Vessel Association…
The implications of such a thing–
"Speak plainly. Who hired you, Ogami Shiho?"
"… Gojo."
Kobayashi Tamotsu's head snaps up, utterly aghast. "What in the world did you just say?"
Even Ken-jichan sucks in a short, sharp breath. "You're lying. Why would Gojo–?"
"It's not a lie! I-I can swear a binding vow right here and now that I am not lying," Ogami croaks out urgently, doing her level best to lean back from Ken-jichan when he rests his hand on the hilt of his cleaver in blatant warning. Unfortunately for her, Choki is still standing right beside her with a cold look in his eyes, leaving her no room to retreat.
Ogami swallows roughly.
"T-the one who hired me to kill Kon Shiu… was another Gojo."
.
.
…
.