"Da... Da... Dadada~"
Megumi was happily humming a random tune as he delicately placed the very last micro-circuit into the detonator assembly.
Click.
Fitting the final piece into place, he leaned back on his small heels, wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead, and let out a deeply satisfied sigh.
He stared at his creation. Resting on the workbench was a modified remote ignition mechanism attached to a high-grade military explosive payload. It had taken him a full, painstaking week of scrounging, building, and soldering to pull this off, but looking at it now? It was an absolute work of art.
He had originally thought about keeping things simple. With enough cash buying a medium-scale conventional bomb on the black market wasn't actually that hard.
The problem, however, was efficiency.
A standard bomb was designed for wide-area destruction. When a normal bomb went off, the energy expanded rapidly over a large radius, tossing around dirt, concrete, and shrapnel. Sure, it looked flashy, but a wide-blast bomb sacrificed raw, concentrated lethal force.
And against a monster like Mahoraga? Anything less than instant, total, cellular vaporisation was a massive death trap.
If Mahoraga survived the initial blast even by a fraction of a second, the wheel on its back would turn. It would adapt to explosion force, heat, and kinetic shockwaves. And if Mahoraga adapted... it would be game over. GG. Pack your bags and go home.
Not to mention, a gigantic, mushroom-cloud-level explosion would attract way too much unwanted attention. Megumi was currently a six-year-old child.
If a giant bomb went off and it did not work, what was he supposed to do when the beast started bullying him? Squeal for help?
The current "Future Strongest," Satoru Gojo, was still just a teenager right now. If Gojo rushed over to investigate the noise, Mahoraga would probably pack Gojo up right alongside Megumi!
So, after thinking it through carefully, Megumi decided that if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself.
Fortunately, Kevin Levin was a certified engineering genius who had spent years messing around with alien technology in his universe. When Megumi synced his soul in the white void, he didn't just get a tiny bump in physical stats—he inherited Kevin's entire ocean of mechanical expertise, IQ, and alien physics knowledge.
Modifying a standard explosive into a specialized weapon had been a walk in the park.
"Normal bombs are for amateurs," Megumi muttered to himself, admiring the casing.
His modified version was the complete opposite of a regular bomb. Its blast radius wasn't even one-tenth of the original size. It wouldn't blow up a city block. But within its tiny, hyper-focused blast zone—a concentrated sphere roughly one meter wide—the destructive power was mind-boggling.
We are talking about a thermal implosion core capable of spiking the internal temperature to nearly 1,000,000°C in a microsecond.
It was a mini-sun in a box. It was guaranteed to incinerate Mahoraga down to the individual atom before its brain could even register the concept of "adapting."
He had dug a pit five meters deep into the solid bedrock. Inside the pit, he placed two of his modified plasma bombs, carefully lining the wiring up to the surface before covering the hole with a sturdy wooden board platform.
And over that platform, he dropped his ultimate containment structure: a massive, bell-shaped metal dome.
The shell was a monstrosity. The outer layer consisted of five meters of solid Titanium alloy, while the inner lining was packed with three meters of dense Tungsten—a metal with one of the highest melting points in the universe.
Megumi wiped his forehead, staring at the huge metal bell resting silently in the clearing.
For a brief second, hesitation crept into his mind.
Should I test the trigger first? he thought, biting his thumb.
His preparations were solid, but what if the circuit glitched at the critical moment? If the bomb failed to go off when Mahoraga was summoned, he would be completely, utterly fucked.
On the flip side, testing one of the bombs right now would waste his backup payload, and even a successful test wouldn't 100% guarantee the second detonator wouldn't fail.
"Screw it," Megumi gritted his teeth, holding the remote detonator tightly in his small, sweaty hand. "Even if something goes wrong and the bomb duds, Mahoraga is going to need at least a few seconds to punch through eight total meters of solid Titanium and Tungsten. That gives me plenty of time to turn around, sprint into the ocean, and put enough distance between us to automatically cancel the ritual."
He took a deep, shuddering breath, centering his mind.
"Alright... fuck this shit. Let's do it."
Megumi interlaced his fingers, forming the iconic, cursed hand sign. Cursed energy flared wildly around his small body.
"With this treasure, I summon..."
A low, oppressive aura instantly crushed down upon the entire island. The shadows beneath the metal bell writhed like living snakes, and the distant, spectral howling of phantom wolves echoed through the air.
Megumi's hands began to tremble violently. The sheer density of the cursed energy being drawn out of him was staggering.
"Come on... come on..."
He forced his eyes onto a small monitor connected to a heat-resistant camera wire he had snaked inside the metal shell.
On the black-and-white feed, the liquid shadow pooling inside the dome began to surge upward. It twisted, expanded, and condensed into a towering humanoid shape. White skin. A grotesque, muscular frame. The faint, ominous outline of an eight-spoked wheel floating behind its head.
It was him. The god of suicide drops.
Megumi didn't waste a single millisecond. The moment the white figure materialized, he slammed his thumb down on the big red button.
BOOOOOOOM!
A muffled, terrifying crack echoed from deep beneath the ground. The entire island lurched violently, the earth shuddering as if an earthquake had struck off the coast.
The ground around the metal dome swelled, but the eight meters of Titanium and Tungsten held the blast locked inside, forcing every single ounce of that 1,000,000°C thermal energy to bounce internally inside a closed space.
Megumi counted the seconds in his head as the island quaked.
1... 2... 3... 15... 20... 29... 30!
Without waiting to see the final outcome, Megumi slammed the second button on his remote.
BOOOOOOOM!
A second shockwave rippled through the island, sending flocks of birds screaming into the sky for miles around.
"God please... Buddha please..."
Megumi fell to his knees on the grass, holding his breath, his eyes glued to the metal bell.
"If there's any sadistic author out there writing this fanfiction life of mine... please don't fuck me over right now..."
A minute passed. The violent shaking finally subsided into an eerie, dead silence.
The massive Titanium shell in front of him had turned a glowing, blinding tomato-red. Heat radiated off the metal in terrifying waves, hitting Megumi square in the face. It was so intense it felt like his skin was actively roasting off his cheeks.
He didn't dare move a single muscle. He didn't even dare to exhale. He just sat there, staring at the red-hot metal dome, waiting for a giant blade to cut through it.
Five seconds... ten seconds... twenty seconds...
Suddenly, a soul-binding rush of information flooded directly into his brain.
It was the fundamental feedback loop of the Ten Shadows Technique. A new shadow profile had just been forcibly engraved into his soul structure—placed right alongside his two default Divine Dogs.
Megumi's eyes widened. A second later, he threw his head back and let out a hysterical, unhinged laugh that echoed across the empty beach.
"Hahaha! HAHAHAHAHA!"
He jumped up, beating his chest like a madman.
"I'M INVINCIBLE! I'M FUCKING INVINCIBLE! THROUGH HEAVEN AND EARTH, I ALONE AM THE HONORED ONE! HAHAHAHA—cough! Cough!"
He started laughing so hard he choked on the searing hot air radiating off the shell, tumbling onto his butt while coughing violently. But even as tears leaked from his eyes, the psychotic grin never left his face.
"Cough... haha... sweet mother of God..."
The two Divine Dogs were basic freebies provided by the technique—you didn't even need a ritual to summon them. But for every other shadow, the rules stated you had to fight and tame them in sequence.
Except... there was never actually a rule saying you had to do them in order!
Why waste time taming a giant bird, a toad, or a pink elephant when you could just nuke the absolute final boss on day one? Now that Mahoraga was tamed, the rest of the Nine Shadows were basically helpless puppies waiting to be collected!
Megumi could only imagine the look on the faces of the ancient Zenin Clan ancestors if they were alive today. If those dead old bastards found out that a six-year-old kid's first official shadow subjugation was Mahoraga, they would probably resurrect themselves just to die of sheer embarrassment!
Standing up, Megumi wiped the dust off his shorts and extended his right hand, nervously pooling his cursed energy.
The vast shadow stretching out behind his boots began to churn like an oily sea.
In the blink of an eye, a towering, white humanoid figure smoothly rose out of the dark shadow, standing silently right behind the tiny six-year-old boy like an absolute cosmic bodyguard.
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