The two Simple Domains scraped against each other for all of two seconds.

That was enough for Touma.

The wounds carved into him, the kind of ugly, bone-deep cuts that would have ended most sorcerers’ careers right there, closed under a flood of dense positive cursed energy. It was fast enough to watch in real time. Flesh stitched itself back together with wet little cracks. New tissue crawled over the gaps and sealed them shut.

By the time it stopped, there was not even a scar.

Kusakabe stared at him.

The kid was fine. Completely fine. Not a nick on him.

And now he was using a perfect copy of the technique Kusakabe had spent his whole life beating into his body.

His will to fight just dropped dead on the spot.

What’s the point?!

The thought came out like a scream.

No, seriously. What is the point? I cut him up, he heals back to full like I was swinging a practice stick. And now this lunatic watched me for a few minutes, got hit a few times, and copied my Simple Domain? Mine? The thing I trained for years? Is this even a person?

Kusakabe did not hesitate.

He slid backward in one smooth retreat. Cowardly? Sure. Also extremely reasonable. In a single motion, he opened five full meters between them.

His Simple Domain vanished the instant he moved. The katana that had been carving Touma apart moments earlier clicked back into its sheath.

Clack.

His whole posture said, I’m done. It was the body language of a man backing away from a poisonous snake while trying very hard not to look tasty.

Touma stayed where he was.

His eyes drifted shut.

Inside his body, every newly forced cursed energy pathway settled into place. The circuits for New Shadow Style, built through five minutes of controlled suffering, stabilized one by one. Only after that did he open his eyes again and look at Kusakabe.

Continue? Like hell I’m continuing.

Kusakabe’s cheek twitched. His thoughts were already a nonstop stream of profanity.

Even in a normal spar, fighting someone with that level of regeneration was garbage. You could win every exchange and still lose the match, because the other guy simply kept coming back fresh.

But that was not even the worst part.

The worst part was that Touma had cracked the core of New Shadow Style’s Simple Domain in five minutes.

Kusakabe knew his school rules better than anyone. If he drew his sword again and kept feeding techniques to this kid, Mei Mei’s clever little contractual loophole might not save him anymore. The school’s binding covenant could easily decide this counted as actual instruction.

And Kusakabe had absolutely no interest in taking the backlash from a New Shadow Style contract violation over a middleman’s fee.

"Tch..."

He raked a hand through his hair. His face was a messy mix of irritation and something annoyingly close to fear. When he spoke, his voice came out dry and rough.

"Kid, since you’ve already managed that, let’s..."

Let’s call it here.

That was what he meant to say.

The words died halfway up his throat.

Because Touma was not stopping.

His arm snapped out of its relaxed position. His center of gravity dropped. His right hand closed around Asakirimaru’s grip in a reverse hold while his left steadied the scabbard. Both feet rooted into the ground like stakes driven into stone.

It was an iai drawing stance.

Textbook. No, worse than textbook. Flawless.

The kind of form that looked like it had been drilled ten thousand times.

Cursed energy burst through Touma’s body.

New Shadow Style: Simple Domain: Evening Moon.

A crescent of cursed energy appeared beneath his feet, spreading across the stone without the slightest drag or resistance. The pale half-moon glow, the deployment speed, the texture of the barrier, all of it was identical to Kusakabe’s.

A perfect mirror.

"Glk..."

The sentence Kusakabe had been trying to finish jammed in his throat and came out as a strangled noise instead. His half-lidded eyes snapped wide enough that they looked ready to fall out of his skull.

No.

Absolutely not.

Touma had not just decoded the basic Simple Domain during those five cursed minutes of getting sliced open. He had seen Evening Moon once. Once, at the very start of the second round.

And once had been enough.

The advanced fusion of domain and iai technique was now sitting in front of him, reproduced on the spot with casual perfection.

This has to be a joke. What is he?

The tiny delay caused by that shock cost him.

Because Touma did something that made even less sense.

He moved.

He did not plant himself and wait for Kusakabe to enter range, which was how New Shadow Style practitioners were supposed to use the technique. Deploy the domain. Hold position. Counter the moment the opponent stepped in. That was the doctrine. Defensive, stable, reliable.

Touma kept the drawing stance and rushed forward.

The pale blue crescent under his feet slid with him across the ground as he accelerated straight at Kusakabe.

He’s moving with the domain active?!

Cold shot through Kusakabe’s veins.

Within New Shadow Style, even prodigies raised on the art could not all use Simple Domain properly. Plenty of practitioners needed self-imposed restrictions in their early and middle years just to keep it from collapsing. Things like, feet must stay planted, harsh little rules that traded freedom for stability.

Maintaining a Simple Domain during high-speed movement? Expanding its radius explosively in an instant?

Those were not beginner tricks. Those belonged to masters who had spent decades soaking in the style.

Then Kusakabe realized the problem.

Touma did not know any of that.

He had only watched Kusakabe do it. He had no idea supplementary restrictions were supposed to exist.

Kusakabe was not being vain when he thought of himself as one of the finest living New Shadow Style users in Japan. By any sane standard, he was.

And yet here was this lunatic, sprinting at him with an active domain after stealing the whole thing in five minutes.

His veteran eye did catch one flaw. The edge of Touma’s moving domain flickered a little as he advanced. The barrier was not perfectly locked down.

Big comfort.

A first-timer had forced the technique into existence mid-fight without blowing his own cursed energy control apart. That alone was already the kind of nonsense that should have been written down, framed, and filed under "things that should not happen."

Before Kusakabe could finish processing it, the domain swallowed him.

The roles flipped in an instant.

The hunter became the one trapped inside the circle.

CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG!

The moment Touma entered striking range, Asakirimaru turned into a sphere of silver light. The slashes came so densely and from so close that Kusakabe felt the displaced air brush his eyelashes.

At this distance, drawing his katana was suicide.

He knew that much immediately. The long blade would only get in the way. The second it cleared the scabbard, Touma’s short sword would take his wrist off.

So Kusakabe clenched his teeth, packed cursed energy into his sheathed katana, grabbed it by both ends, and used the whole thing like a shield.

It worked.

Barely.

His arms screamed under the impacts. Numbness crawled from his wrists up into his shoulders. Every strike rang through his bones. Still, the defense held.

For a moment, he thought he could ride it out.

The tempo changed.

Touma’s already stupidly fast chain of attacks sped up with no warning at all.

No wind-up. No shift in posture. Nothing.

The speed jumped past normal human movement and straight into something wrong. The blade left afterimages hanging in the air.

Kusakabe’s brain could not keep up.

His arms, shoulders, and chest opened at the same time. Half a dozen brutal cuts bloomed across him in one beat. Cold steel parted dense muscle, and the blood dragged out by each slash hung between them in red streaks before falling.

What... that instant acceleration. No buildup. This is... a Cursed Technique?!

Pain ripped through him, and with it came the last, worst realization.

Touma was not only pressing him with a stolen Evening Moon.

In that burst of speed, the kid had finally used his own Innate Technique.

The real one.

The one he had kept hidden this whole time.

Everything stopped.

Kusakabe’s breath came in ragged pulls. He stared at the short blade hovering less than a centimeter from his right eye. A warm drop of his own blood gathered on the edge, trembled, and fell.

His instincts screamed at him to move. Raise a hand. Push the blade away. Do something.

His arms did not answer.

Somewhere in that blur of slashes, Touma had cut the exact muscle groups needed to lift them. Not hacked. Not mangled. Severed, clean and precise.

Both arms hung useless at Kusakabe’s sides.

Blood soaked into his brown trench coat, spreading until the familiar color disappeared under wet crimson.

A blade slid back into its sheath.

Click.

Touma’s voice followed, quiet and warm, with real regret in it.

"Much obliged, Mr. Kusakabe. Sorry about that last part. Lost control for a moment."

Only then did Kusakabe remember how breathing worked.

His mouth fell open and he dragged in air in greedy, shaking gulps.

A chill crawled down his spine and settled deep. Cold sweat had already soaked his undershirt. He knew it with perfect clarity. If this had not been a sparring match with a no-kill rule, if this had been a real fight, the moment that Cursed Technique acceleration kicked in, his head would have been gone before he even noticed the cut.

No.

It was worse than that.

Looking back now, with his panic clearing just enough to hurt, Kusakabe understood something else.

Touma had been holding back from the start.

Everything, including those five minutes of standing there and getting carved up, had served one purpose. He had wanted to observe New Shadow Style’s Simple Domain from the inside and learn how it worked.

If Touma had opened with his real physical ability, that replication, and Reverse Cursed Technique all at once, Kusakabe’s first-round confidence would have lasted about two seconds. Maybe less. The match would have been over before he knew what was happening.

The more Kusakabe replayed it, the worse it became.

He could not even cling to his earlier excuse anymore. That nice, comforting lie that Touma must have been using some kind of enhancement technique the whole time.

No.

During those five minutes, aside from Reverse Cursed Technique, Touma had not activated a single Innate Technique.

Nothing.

A battle-tested Grade 1 sorcerer had been beaten face-to-face by a first-year transfer student who was not even using offensive abilities. And in the span of a few minutes, that same student had stolen the school’s guarded secrets, Simple Domain and Evening Moon.

If Kusakabe tried to report this to the higher-ups, nobody with a working brain would believe him.

He could already hear the response.

"Kusakabe, are you drunk? Why would you pick a fight with the Gojo Clan’s divine child, the one with the Six Eyes? What? It wasn’t Gojo? Some kid named Touma Hayase? Where did that monster come from?"

Can’t win. This isn’t even the same species...

And because the universe apparently enjoyed kicking him while he was down, Kusakabe’s stalled brain finally circled back to what Touma had said before the match.

Back when someone had suggested sending the Panda Cursed Corpse into the fight with him.

"You’re fine. Just stay there and watch. This is only a simple sparring match between Mr. Kusakabe and me. It’s nowhere near the level where I’d need to bring you in."

A bitter smile twisted Kusakabe’s mouth.

He got it now.

That had not been the arrogant brag of some cocky teenager who did not know his own limits.

In Touma’s eyes, it had just been the truth.

Handling Kusakabe really had not required showing a single card from his real hand.

While Kusakabe was busy drowning in humiliation, a low hum brushed against the air.

Hummm.

A warm current of positive cursed energy washed over his bleeding arms and chest.

The effect was immediate. Rich vitality spread through the torn muscle, precise and powerful enough to make Kusakabe’s scalp prickle.

Touma had stepped closer without a trace of hostility and started applying Reverse Cursed Technique like it was the most natural thing in the world. The warmth dragged Kusakabe out of the wreckage of his own thoughts.

Unfortunately, the comedown hit right after.

His nerves, wound tight enough to snap, loosened all at once. Every wound adrenaline had been hiding roared to life together.

"Hsss...! Ow ow ow ow..."

He sucked air through clenched teeth, face twisting. Under Touma’s frankly ridiculous healing speed, the pain was already fading, but the first wave still made him want to curse out several generations of somebody’s family.

He endured it with gritted teeth.

When Kusakabe spoke again, the lazy drawl was gone. So was the casual disregard. The proud Grade 1 swordsman looked at the dark-haired boy healing him and, against his own dignity, sounded almost deferential.

"Kid... Mr. Hayase. If you don’t mind me asking, what grade are you classified as right now? As a jujutsu sorcerer."

Touma kept his head slightly bowed, eyes focused on the flow of positive cursed energy. He sealed the last wound on Kusakabe’s body and smoothed the skin shut without leaving a mark.

His answer came lightly, like it was not worth making a fuss over.

"Me? Should still be Grade 2, I think. Since I can replicate and use Reverse Cursed Technique, they gave me an accelerated initial assessment. Started me at Grade 2 right away."