Geto Suguru's mind was a calm, focused center within the storm of clashing powers. The rebounded flames were met with a pressurized jet of water from a piscine curse, the collision filling the air with scalding steam. His response was a relentless, tactical symphony.
A gorilla-shaped curse hefted a massive chunk of debris, swinging it with earth-shattering force. Kenjaku merely flicked his wrist, and gravity redoubled, slamming the projectile into the ground and splitting the earth open.
Undeterred, Geto's hands wove a more complex seal. From the shadows behind him, a titanic humanoid curse emerged, its form blotting out the ruined skyline. It lunged, a maw like a crimson abyss aiming to swallow Kenjaku whole. The ancient curse user's eyes widened with effort as he poured power into his technique, twisting the giant's body into a grotesque, screaming knot of compressed flesh and spirit.
Seeing his heavy hitters neutralized, Geto shifted gears instantly. This was no longer about overpowering; it was about understanding and delaying. A tide of lower-grade curses—specters, beasts, misshapen horrors—poured forth from his reserves, not to kill, but to probe, distract, and map.
They surged forward in waves, only to be crushed into dissipating smoke by Kenjaku's omnipresent gravitational field. Among them, Geto subtly included a single Grade 1 curse, its destruction costing Kenjaku a noticeable fraction more energy—a data point noted in Geto's tactical mind.
He became a ghost in the chaos, using the sensory noise of his own curses to mask his movements, flitting through the rubble, never staying still. Kenjaku's roars of frustration echoed as he expanded his gravitational domain, trying to flush him out, but it had a clear limit—roughly thirty meters.
Is that his true maximum range, or is he holding back, baiting me closer? Geto wondered, but he didn't need to risk finding out. His primary objective was complete: the puppet curse Kamo Itsuki had given him had been destroyed in the initial gravity crush. The signal was sent. The trap was sprung.
Now, it was pure stalling.
"No matter how you hide, you're just a rat!" Kenjaku snarled, demolishing another wave of curses. "Face me with your true power!"
Geto remained silent, a specter commanding a spectral army. He dictated the tempo, forcing Kenjaku to constantly react, to expend energy crushing an endless, regenerating horde. The battlefield, already a hospital's corpse, was churned into a hellscape of craters and unnatural gravity wells. The fight was a brutal, grinding stalemate—exactly as planned.
Every second Kenjaku spent locked in this wasteful engagement was a second he wasn't advancing his grand design, a second he remained in the kill zone. Geto Suguru, the compassionate protector, had become the patient, immovable spider, holding the ancient fly in place until the true web closed around him.
The epiphany struck Kenjaku like a physical blow amidst the chaos of flapping wings and dissipating curses. It's the smoothness. It's all been too convenient.
The Prison Realm's sudden appearance. Geto Suguru, so elusive, walking straight into a contained location. A battle where Geto, at a clear disadvantage, didn't retreat or press a decisive attack, but danced. He wasn't fighting to win. He was fighting to occupy.
Buying time.
The realization was ice water in his veins. The prison realm, real or not, was incidental. He was the target. The curtain he'd laid over Geto's wasn't a cage—it was the walls of his own trap.
No time for fury at potential betrayals. Only for survival. With a roar of concentrated effort, Kenjaku violently expanded his gravitational field, the radius exploding past fifty meters. The swarming curses were instantly flattened into motes of cursed energy, clearing a stark path through the rubble.
He didn't look back. He shot toward the barrier's edge, a blur of desperate motion.
"Too late!" Geto barked, hurling curses in his path, but Kenjaku was a battering ram of pure intent, plowing through spiritual obstructions with brute gravitational force.
Just as his hand seemed to reach for the veil's boundary, the fabric of the barrier itself rippled. It didn't part—it solidified, then yielded to two figures stepping through as if through a parting sea.
They appeared side-by-side, one calm and analytical, the other radiating predatory glee. The air, already thick with spent energy, now crackled with a new, overwhelming pressure.
Kamo Itsuki stood with his hands in his pockets, his gaze locking onto Kenjaku with the cold focus of a surgeon. Beside him, Gojo Satoru tilted his head, a wide, unnerving smile spreading across his face as his Six Eyes drank in the scene.
"Leaving so soon?" Gojo's voice was a cheerful mockery that sliced through the tension. "The party's just getting started."
Kenjaku skidded to a halt, his path to escape now firmly blocked by the two people in the world he'd most wanted to avoid facing together. The hunter had become the surrounded prey. The grand plan had run headlong into a wall named consequence, and the architects of his ruin stood before him, cutting off all retreat.
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