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CHAPTER START---
Taiyo's maniacal laughter echoes through the battlefield, only overpowered by Hakari's Jackpot music.
"What an absurd ability!" Taiyo leaps away, but to his surprise, Hakari appears in front of him.
He blocks a punch from Hakari, feeling like he'd taken a chainsaw to the forearm, but it only cuts skin deep.
'He's fast,' Taiyo thinks while countering and parrying each oncoming hit, carefully studying Hakari and the shroud of Cursed Energy coating his entire body. 'He got faster and stronger with each bonus inside the Domain Expansion.
Before that, he was definitely Grade 1. After the first bonus, his power was comparable to Mei Mei's strikes. Two more and he was matching Kusakabe physically. The last two made him comparable to Nanami's Ratio Technique. But this, Jackpot…this is a whole other league…'
Hakari's Cursed Energy surges once more, signalling that he'd activated yet another bonus to raise his fever. But Taiyo smiles and matches his fervor, surprising him.
Their fists clash, and all of Hakari's fingers shatter, but he launches a kick to Taiyo's head as if nothing happened. Taiyo leans away from the kick, and Hakari's one broken hand is already reaching out to grab his face. His eyes widen as he pivots and shoulder throws Hakari across the grass.
"Your Reversed Cursed Technique is that good?" Taiyo asks while Hakari rises to his feet.
"I actually don't have that. My Jackpot gives me Unlimited Cursed Energy, yeah, but the part the Domain Expansion doesn't tell you is how I use it. The human body can't handle this much energy, so it reflexively uses RCT to burn the excess away. Full automatic and absolute RCT."
"I see, and since Jackpot lasts until that song ends," Taiyo smiles. "For the four minutes and eleven seconds after a Jackpot, you're basically immortal."
Hakari feels the hair at the back of his neck stand up, seeing Taiyo eyeing him as a hungry dog would a large steak.
"Which means you can take a hit, and recover," Taiyo finally takes a proper combat stance. "And with that much energy flowing, I bet you don't even feel pain."
"I don't like where this is going."
"Not going, we're already here." Taiyo disappears from Hakari's vision and appears beside him, kicking him in the gut and launching him into the air.
Hakari soars about the field while Taiyo focuses on his Cursed Energy.
'I destroyed his stomach area, that's where Cursed Energy originates from. But his Jackpot is still active, so Jujutsu must be sending the energy to his Soul, which overflows to his body. If I destroyed his brain, he could likely survive it…But I won't take that chance on such a precious punching bag!'
Before Hakari could complete his arc through the air and crash into the dirt, Taiyo sprints forward and clears the hundred feet between them, kicking the already healed boy in the side to send him tumbling through the grass and dirt.
Hakari's entire arm is snapped, leaving the bone exposed, but as he's rolling through the dirt, his RCT cleans the wound and reforms it, as if there was never an injury.
"Can you do anything with that energy?" Taiyo asks before rushing in and kicking Hakari.
The boy raises his arms to block, but the kick snaps them in two before Taiyo's foot crashes into his chest, rupturing his heart.
Hakari coughs up some blood, but a second later, his heart is perfectly fine. "Can you do Jujutsu, or do you just throw that energy around?"
Hakari wipes the blood from his mouth, narrowing his eyes at Taiyo. "This much Cursed Energy can't be focused, but I more than make up for the lack of precision…with volume!"
Hakari swipes at the air, releasing a wave of neutral Cursed Energy like a shockwave at Taiyo. The ground between them is unearthed as if hit by a nuclear blast wave, but before the attack could travel even half the distance between them, Hakari is sent tumbling through the grass once more.
He settles into a skid on his knees faster than before, looking up to see Taiyo at his previous spot, untouched by the blast-wave. "You dodged that?"
"After you've fought Gojo, the entire world seems much slower," Taiyo says. "Speaking of The Strongest, he must love sparring with you, huh?"
"You'd think so, but he mostly makes me train without Jackpot. Says to him, looking at me is like staring at the sun."
Taiyo raises a brow. "Really? So that's a disadvantage of the Six Eyes, huh. I'll keep that in mind."
"Huh? What are you thinking about?"
"Victory, nothing more, nothing less." Taiyo raises a hand and spreads his fingers, pointing them at Hakari. At each fingertip, a marble-sized sphere of Immolation forms and rushes to Hakari like bullets.
Hakari smiles and charges directly at Taiyo, allowing his cloak of Cursed Energy to diminish the attacks before the punches holes through his chest and arms, exiting through his back and dissipating into the air.
Taiyo continues firing, shredding Hakari, but the boy heals absurdly fast, his automatic RCT in Jackpot surpassing the speed, volume, and accuracy of all who have come before, who are present in this era, and who shall exist in the future.
Hakari reaches Taiyo and launches a fist toward the boy's face, but to his surprise, Taiyo steps forward and headbutts him, breaking his nose. "Strong, but not Special Grade yet!" Taiyo lands a flurry of punches on Hakari, taking great care not to punch holes through the boy before shoulder throwing him through the grass again.
Hakari vomits up all the blood that flooded his stomach and lungs due to those punches before springing back onto his feet. "Don't think I'll ever really be Special Grade, I don't fit the description."
"Yeah, probably not. I don't see this Innate Technique being able to destroy Japan if other Special Grades weren't present, but that doesn't mean you can't fight with the best of us."
"Don't have to tell me twice," Hakari rushes Taiyo, using the last bonus to amplify himself once more. "Besides, if you're invincible like Gojo, the fever will stop, and that's not a life worth living!"
Taiyo smiles, placing his hands in his pockets and relaxing. "We should do this again tomorrow, you're fun."
"Who says we're done?" Hakari asks as they both hear the music fading away.
"You're not fun enough without Jackpot, I can't risk hurting you."
Hakari arrives in front of Taiyo and smiles, forming his mudra once more.
'No way…' Taiyo's mind nearly collapses as once more, someone breaks a common belief of Jujutsu.
"Domain Expansion: Idle Death Gamble!"
Taiyo is immediately back in the subway station with hologram people walking around them, bewildered by this occurrence. 'Gojo…sure, he's Gojo so he breaks the rules sometimes. But how the hell did this just happen?'
Hakari wastes no time in attacking, and Taiyo, in his stupor, allows All Combat to fully take over, reacting mechanically and punching Hakari in the gut with much more force than he'd want to.
"Shit, sorry," he says as Hakari is puking up his guts. "I'm just trying to figure out how the hell you're doing two Domain Expansions in one day. You aren't as efficient as Gojo, and Domain Expansion always takes a lot of a person's total Cursed Energy, so even I can't do two…and I have way more than Gojo. Not to mention the stress it puts on the human brain, that's why it needs to cool off between uses. So what's your deal?"
Hakari wipes his mouth and walks away from the puddle, clutching his stomach. "How the hell should I know? This is just my Innate Technique."
"In that case, get the Jackpot again, let's solve it together…"
---3 Hours Later…
Appearing beside Kirara on the sidelines, Gojo sees Taiyo and Hakari sparring while another Jackpot runs its course, almost at the time limit.
"How long have they been at this?"
"Ah!" Kirara stumbles away, taking a moment to catch her breath and notice Gojo beside her. "You scared me! Jerk!"
"Oh, that just means you need more sensory training."
"Whatever, they've been at this since morning, but we took a break for lunch."
Gojo lowers his blindfold to study their Cursed Energy, trying his best to focus on Taiyo, but gives up as Hakari is a blinding light to him. "Annoying." Gojo closes his eyes to relax them.
"That's enough for now," Taiyo grabs Hakari's hands as the Jackpot ends, preventing his mudra and Domain Expansion. "We have company."
Hakari looks to the sidelines and sees Gojo casually waving at them. "Oh, Gojo-Sensei, what's up?"
"Nothing much, just checking in on my students. But I see your upperclassman is taking good care of you."
Kirara huffs, "Hakari, yeah, he just ignored me."
"You're boring, and I'm done for the day," Taiyo says while walking away. "Can't have Gojo seeing my new tricks before the big day."
Gojo chuckles. "Maybe it'll be enough for me to cut loose a bit. I haven't done that in a real fight since I was a student."
Taiyo stops for a moment, then looks over his shoulder to cast a knowing smile at Gojo, excited to use everything he's learned today against The Strongest…
END CHAPTER---
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pat.reon: Keanu_Eugene [Read ahead & support me]
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