CH 259

December 24, 2022

After Sukuna and Kohaku finished their preparations, they went to the training hall, where they discovered a massive gate.

The gate was over 100 meters high and nearly 70 meters wide, woven with shadow.

“What is this ……?”

Melty chuckled as she stared at Sukuna, who looked up at her in amazement.

“Oh, Kohaku’s here, too?”

“Yes, pardon my intrusion. Is that the famous shadow gate that is used to travel?”

“Yes, it is. I cannot risk destroying the village after all.”

Kohaku and Melty exchanged words, and it appeared from their conversation that this was a gate that would transport the user somewhere.

<It’s huge!>

<It was already big from a distance, but now I see it again. It’s huge!>

<Is this the Rashomon?>

<It looks bigger than the Arc de Triomphe.>

<It looks out of place.>

“It is really huge… Did you spend two hours preparing for this?”

“The building process itself only took a few minutes. The permit was a different story.”

“Permit?”

“I’m not supposed to use any kind of offensive magic. That was my agreement with Iris.”

“I suppose that’s the price you had to pay for authority?”

Melty was asked this question by Kohaku, who was listening in on the conversation.

Sukuna believed that the [Price] was referring to the [Arbiter of Reason – Code: Ruler] in nine out of ten cases.

Because this was the only authority Melty had explicitly stated was directly created by Iris.

In fact, she had said that the [Arbiter of Reason] was a power to create. Its trade-off was that the ability itself could not be used for combat.

“Well, technically, the authority itself is the price, but…. enough with the details. In short, I just needed time to get permission to fight and build the battlefield. Sukuna needed to be prepared anyway, right?”

“Yeah… I prepared as well as I could.”

Hearing Sukuna’s answer, Melty nodded in satisfaction.

“Then there’s no point in slacking off at this point. Follow me, and I will invite you to the Land of Shadows.”

She snapped her fingers, and the massive gate started to open. Melty vanished through a gate of swirling, jet-black darkness.

Kohaku and Sukuka exchanged a brief glance before following Melty through the gate.

☆

Sukuna and Kohaku found themselves standing in the middle of nowhere.

The ground was gray, and the trees were completely dark. It was a completely different place that was simple to grasp because it truly reflected its name, [land of shadows].

A quick glance around revealed that this was a location “carved out of a large forest.”

Sukuna estimated it to be a two-kilometer-diameter circle. It may have been burned down rather than cut open, based on the faint smell of burning emanating from the ground.

You could almost call this a simple colosseum, and at the very least, it was a large enough battlefield for Melty to use her magic.

An old castle can be seen to the south if you look around. It was difficult to tell from a distance, but it was indeed a massive castle.

“Kohaku, do you have the ring?”

Sukuna tilted his head at Melty’s question, and Kohaku nodded. It seemed that the question had nothing to do with Sukuna.

“Yes, I always have three rings on hand.”

“Good. I can’t let you die in an accident.”

“What do you mean by rings?”

“It’s like a substitute doll, just a bit more convenient than that. The function was for preventing death.”

Sukuna had seen a substitute doll before when I fought Hisui in the Oni village. It was supposed to be a kind of damage proxy that could only be used in mock battles.

Sukuna imagined it as an increase to one virtual HP gauge, with the substitute damage going there.

Judging by their conversation, it seems that the ring could be used even outside the training ground.

“Sukuna will come back to life even if she dies, so I won’t give her a ring.”

“Understood.”

“Then let’s begin. The victory condition is, well, let’s make it to [if you can get me a blow land on me].”

That was a clear handicap. But even so, Sukuna remains calm.   

Because she recognized that the opposing party was superior in every way. Even now, when faced against her with this handicap, Sukuna has no vision of victory in her mind.

It was probably the same as the way Sukuna looked at ordinary people in the real world.

If you want to fight on an equal footing with someone who has an unbelievable difference in ability, it is a prerequisite to put a handicap on them.

And in this case, Sukuna was the inferior one.

“You can use your skills and items as you like. As for me, I will not use any of my abilities, including my [Heaven’s Eye] ability. I will not use any weapons, either. This time, I will fight you with only magic and skills.”

The condition for victory is to land a blow.

And there are no restrictions on Sukuna’s side.

Melty’s restrictions include the prohibition of weapons and the right to use them. Because the battle will end when Sukuna move a single finger blow, and there are no armor restriction, there’s no need to, because Melty’s defense is absurd. Sukuna would do no harm, with or without armor.

The conditions of the battle were set.

Sukuna organized her items just in case, and after making sure that Kohaku, a spectator, was far enough away, she stood in front of Melty once again.

She had already taken the secret medicine given to him by Kohaku. She also took the pills left over from the battle against the moon wolves. The buff had an effective time of 30 minutes, so it would almost certainly last until the end of the battle.

Without even having to think about it, Sukuna had everything ready to go.

Not too close, not too far, about 15 meters between the two of them.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes, I’m ready.”

“Yes, let’s get started. From now on, you must not lose focus, even in a blink of an eye. Otherwise–“

Melty’s words were broken only a moment later.

In a moment so fleeting that there was not even time to blink, Melty was in Sukuna’s bosom before she knew it.

“–It’ll be over, okay?”

A red light flashes in Melty’s hand. It a slight lag in before the activation of magic.

And before Sukuna could think of any answer, she was moving.

“[Fire]!”

Sukuna jumped up just in time, and a scorching fire passed by her feet.

(Dangerous… huh?!)

Sukuna’s eyes widened at the phenomenon that occurred below her.

[Fire] is essentially an elementary magic that produces a small seed fire in the palm of the hand and you can throw it to use it as an attack.

The attack range is, at best, the size of a volleyball. It is smaller than a fireball and has a slower projectile speed.

Elementary magic, rather than being used for attacks, it’s usually a convenient magic used only used when a fire is needed, such as for igniting or burning.

She did indeed chant [Fire].

However, the phenomenon that occurred was not the level of a small fire in the palm of her hand.

The spell Melty launched, which was supposed to be the weakest, produced a fan-shaped burning area of 200 meters.

“I didn’t think you’d jump and avoid that one, I thought it would cost you an arm… honestly, I’m surprised you could react.”

Melty crackled a smile and gave a compliment.

Sukuna was thankful that she made small talk since if there had been an immediate follow-up attack, her decision to go upward would prove to be fatal.

(That attack just now… almost forcing me to show my hand.)

Still, that one move hand sent Sukuna’s alert meter to full.

It was not the skill or talent, it was simply an overwhelming ability parameter.

As a result of her confidence that she had sharpened her concentration to the maximum, she made a poor move that did not lead to her next move.

And even now, Sukuna was still deeply surprised that she had misjudged the order of magnitude of Melty’s existence.

(It was her whim that she didn’t die. I can’t see the upper limit at all.)

If this is the scale of elementary-level magic. All the magic that will pour down from here on will exceed that.

If Sukuna doesn’t continue to find the best solution, she will die instantly. No, it depends on luck whether she can survive or not, even after she has come up with the optimum solution.

This battle will be such an unreasonable battle.

(No, no good… I’m getting excited….)

Feeling a total hair-raising feeling at the difference in ability and, at the same time, a thrill at the hopelessness of the situation.

The result of using all the power Sukuna could muster at the moment is the feeling of despair that she only managed to avoid the weakest magic by a hair’s breadth.

That despair is the ultimate spice for Sukuna.

“Fu.. fufufu.”

A laugh that would have been unpleasant to listen to from the side leaked out unintentionally.

Sukuna was happy. What she ever hoped for was this kind of battle that she could not possibly win.

Sukuna’s body has a tendency to improve itself in order to overcome any obstacle it encounters, adapting quickly and finding a way through. It is not always flawless in doing so, but it compensates for its flaws and strives for perfection.

This limitless capacity for growth is the reason why ‘Futayado Nanaka’ is a monster.

And just like in RPG, when we wanted to raise this most powerful creature in the most efficient way, it was very effective to keep hitting it with opponents of the same or slightly higher rank.

Similar to that situation, the current polished Sukuna has finally reached her limit, forcing her to take one more step before she could break through.

From now on, she needs to prepare for that level of situation constantly. And once she adapts, she needs to find a new stimulant to raise her level further.

Before, she was doing it with Rin’s guidance, simple chance, and good fortune.

And, whether she wished it or not, Sukuna was in an ideal environment from the start of her WLO career.

Her fighting instincts, which had completely rusted from her part-time life, were awakened by Aria the Red Wolf.

An attack by Rou forced her to fight against another human for the first time in several years.

She challenged to a deadly barrage of projectiles just to give a punch to the true dragon Apocalypse.

She persevered through the monster traps in the Devil’s Forest until the very last minute.

And in the battle against Kohaku, she was reminded of the absolute difference in status unique to the game.

The dungeon event loosened the key to her sealed emotions.

In the battle against the golden knight Gold, she became aware of the unconscious limitations of her five senses.

In the battle to destroy the apostles, she unlocked her sealed memory and emotion.

She refined her sense of killing at the Takajou’s house.

In the battle against the moon wolves, she defeated a far superior enemy together with her friends with the biggest cards in her hand that she had at the moment.

Based on the experience she gained through the WLO, she was able to take full control of the [current Futayado Nanaka] throughout the entire period of her time in BATTLER.

Steady and surely, Sukuna has become stronger, even though sometimes mixed with unrelenting setbacks.

(I don’t think “getting stronger” is quite accurate, my physical ability itself has not changed much in the past few months.)

Yes, not exactly getting stronger or growing.

All these specs lay dormant in her body from the beginning.

It could be said that she had finally polished her own talents to perfection, which were so rusted that they were of little use to her when she started WLO.

In other words, this is the time of her true [growth] in the truest sense of the word.

This is a battle to improve oneself, not to rehabilitate her idle phase.

Now that she has reached 100%, Sukuna can finally hold a thought in her heart that she had never even wished for due to her excessive talent.

[I want to be stronger.]

This is a thirst for growth that naturally everyone has.

What she wanted was to challenge herself to do something that she could never do with her current abilities.

Not a battle to test her strength but a challenge to overcome despair.

Sukuna wants the walls to be as high as they can go as long as it is a challenge to know how far one can go to become stronger.

That is why even though Sukuna knew that she could not win, she still went and challenged herself and asked for this fight in order to know how close she was to the world’s strongest, Melty.

(And, to my surprise, she is many orders of magnitude stronger than I had anticipated.)

Sukuna knew Melty was strong, but she didn’t expect that the difference would be this much.

The range of Fire’s attack earlier is still burned into Sukuna’s mind, and her instincts continue to ring tremendous alarm bells.

(If the all-out effort I have now isn’t enough, I’ll just have to push myself. I hope this time they don’t force me to log out again.)

If Sukuna can’t catch Melty’s actions even with all her senses’ maximum output, then all she can do was to go beyond the maximum.

The only issue is that if she puts too much strain on herself, she may be forced to log out, as was the case with [Furious Rage] and MHKS.

The moment when she switched her consciousness, Sukuna’s atmosphere changed drastically.

The vision was the first thing she focused on, to the point that it made her focus uncontrollable. But she knew that if her eyes didn’t catch up first, nothing would get done.

Melty was the only one here who noticed the change.

She saw that the quality of the information in Sukuna’s red eyes had exploded.

“….. You’ve really got a good eye. Now that you’re feeling motivated, I’ll test you with a little stronger magic.”

Melty snapped her fingers, and over a hundred shadows formed on the ground.

It is, of course, a magic shadow floating in the air.

It was [Ranbu – Freezing Pillar Icicle], which is advanced magic with the Annihilation Ice{Hyoumetsu} Attribute.

Normally, this magic would only shoot out 15 icicles at most, but with Melty’s power, even without chanting, it could easily produce 20 times that amount.

“Now, let me see you go through this first, shall we?”

If the change is what Melty thinks it is, she should be able to easily handle this much.

As if to say, “This is where the real work begins,” 300 ice spears struck toward Sukuna.

===*

Sukuna’s desire to become stronger is similar to Frieza-sama training for the first time to become Golden Frieza-sama.