Around the time the entire student body had safely gathered in the schoolyard and Riko Amanai had escaped the school alongside Satoru Gojo, Suguru Geto, Shoko Ieiri, and Kento Nanami.
Naoya Zen'in—the only one not wearing a suit due to a Binding Vow—was currently engaged in a violent struggle against five large men wearing paper bags over their heads like masks.
"How strange. I've already killed at least a hundred of you. Are they all the real one, I wonder?"
"Dammit, why is there a monster like this here!?"
After several minutes of slaughtering them to find the "original," Naoya tilted his head in confusion as the clones continued to sprout up no matter how many he killed. The man, meanwhile, was breaking into a cold sweat at Naoya's overwhelming capacity for carnage. This strange stalemate, however, tipped instantly in Naoya's favor the moment he had an epiphany.
"You can change the settings for the 'real' body and the 'clones' quite freely, can't you? In that case, if I just thrash all of them at once, you won't be able to use the clones anymore, right?"
"!?!"
Immediately after making that declaration, Naoya acted on his words. Striking all five simultaneously at subsonic speeds, he knocked the clone man out, stripped him completely naked, broke his legs, and proceeded to shift his focus to guarding the school.
In the midst of that, a powerful explosion suddenly roared through the air.
"What's going on?! Who's fighting over there? Is that—Toji Fushiguro?! Who's he fighting?!"
As Naoya voiced his confusion, Misato Kuroi was snatched away right before his eyes by a boy who appeared to be a curse user.
Naoya tried to give chase in a panic, but a single boy stood in his path, blocking his way.
"I am the latest combatant of the curse user group 'Q,' Bitz. It is a pleasure to meet you, Original."
"Original? If you're talking about me, you've got the wrong person. Though I wouldn't really know."
Following that brief exchange, the boy unleashed countless fireballs. Sprayed out like machine-gun fire, they exploded the moment they touched an object or cursed energy, threatening to blow Naoya away along with the school building.
Naoya wasn't so naive as to take such a blatant attack head-on, but it was also a fact that the curse user who had kidnapped Misato Kuroi was slipping away.
『ZN: Misato Kuroi has been kidnapped. I'm engaging with FT.』
『GS-1: This is GS-1. What the hell are you doing, Teach—!?』
『GS-2: This is GS-2. We received an email on Riko-chan's phone. It looks like they want a hostage exchange. The specified location is—Okinawa!?』
『GS-1: This is GS-1. I'm warping to Okinawa with GS-2, Amanai, and the 'Princess,' so handle the rest.』
『NK: This is NK. Returning to the school building to regroup with HY and provide support for FT.』
『HY: This is HY! ZN, hang in there for a bit!』
『ZN: Being trusted is a pain sometimes.』
After a quick exchange of communications, Naoya unleashed a double-handed blast of his compressed air technique. The strike blew away the boy calling himself Bitz along with the flames, but it was by no means a fatal blow.
"Disgusting. Are you some kind of cursed energy monster? Just die already..."
As Naoya spat those words, Bitz forcibly regenerated his body using surging cursed energy right before his eyes, appearing just like Kokun who had attacked them only hours ago.
However, the difference was that Bitz, unlike Kokun, maintained his sense of self.
"As expected of the Original. To think you possess such power even though your total cursed energy is less than half of mine."
"Are they still cooking things up, these guys... Q, was it? Your group is quite nasty. Using a kid as a disposable pawn."
"I am the first prototype of an artificial Heavenly Restriction body, embedded with a Binding Vow that dictates I will die within one year of birth. I am no pawn."
"That makes your existence even worse, you lunatics. Whoever is pulling the strings is quite the piece of work. I guess it's no wonder Toji Fushiguro is having a hard time."
While grumbling, Naoya focused on eliminating the enemy in front of him. The combat ability of this curse user—who had just flippantly performed a 'Disclosure of Cursed Technique' regarding his Heavenly Restriction—was high. Much like Kokun, he was a biological sorcery weapon for combat, his body forcibly strengthened by a severe Binding Vow.
If the talk of the Heavenly Restriction was true, he should be less than a year old, yet he clearly had the appearance of a young boy. It was highly likely that forced physical growth was part of his abilities.
They had likely aimed for the best of both worlds—the physical gifts of a Heavenly Restriction and the abilities of a sorcerer—but the very attempt to create such a thing made Naoya feel a sense of madness.
He was a piece of trash himself, but he still possessed enough of a human heart to think, 'How cruel, do they not have any feelings?' when faced with something like a brainwashed, evil modified human.
Now, the most solid way to deal with such a pitiful modified human would be to bring about complete annihilation that makes regeneration impossible, like Gojo, or wait for his lifespan to run out, like Geto. However, the former was impossible due to the nature of his technique, and the latter was unfeasible since this individual's remaining lifespan was unknown.
In that case.
"I'll just have to kill you before your regeneration can keep up."
"How terrifying. However, isn't the assumption that you will remain alive until then a bit optimistic? Original."
Provoked, Bitz unleashed what could be described as a whip of fire. It was a high-level fire-based technique where a long, serpentine flame thrower caused everything it touched to explode—a technique so violently murderous that Naoya gave a strained laugh, thinking, 'I'd better not tell Ogi Zen'in about this, or he'll lose face.'
The details of the technique that manipulated both flame and explosion were unknown, but since the human body is essentially a mass of protein, fire is inherently powerful.
However.
"I've got a few new moves of my own, you know?"
As he spoke, Naoya unleashed a beam of compressed cursed energy. By using his technique to apply a 'one-second pause,' the power of this Cursed Energy Cannon—which momentarily released all the cursed energy poured into it during that second—was immense. It completely vaporized the arm Bitz was using to swing the fire whip in a single shot.
He hadn't really thought of a name for the technique, settling on something simple like 'Charge Beam,' but a Cursed Energy Cannon was difficult to defend against precisely because of its simplicity. Despite the charge time, the beam itself was incredibly fast, making it a very difficult attack to deal with.
Of course, Bitz used the massive amount of cursed energy surging through his body to regenerate his missing arm, so losing a limb wasn't a major issue. However, his regeneration speed was far from instantaneous. As he tried to regenerate his arm while dealing with the successive Cursed Energy Cannons Naoya fired, Bitz's movements naturally became defensive.
'Just like he said, he really is a kid. His combat ability is high, but his experience is absolute garbage.'
Just as Naoya analyzed internally, the boy calling himself Bitz moved like a total amateur. However, given that he was gradually adapting to Naoya's movements in the middle of battle, his growth potential was likely high. It was to be expected from someone subjected to an inhuman Heavenly Restriction that compressed a lifetime into a single year.
But.
"It's not like that matters. I've seen enough of what you can do, so let's just kill you."
As he spoke, Naoya quickly formed a hand seal and activated his own Domain Expansion.
"—!"
In the next instant, Bitz was torn to shreds by Naoya, who had reached ultra-high speeds. His head and the tanden where he refined cursed energy were destroyed and severed, and he died as his limbs were blown apart.
Truth be told, even after all that, he attempted to regenerate from the pieces of flesh for a while. Fortunately, the area was currently ablaze from the flames Bitz himself had released. By casting the pieces of flesh into the fires burning in different locations, they eventually fell silent, dying out as they turned into charred coal.
"Now then, I guess it's just Toji Fushiguro left. I wonder if he's alright?"
Naoya rolled his shoulders as he spoke, having claimed victory without a scratch. He, too, was the strongest—just in a different category from Gojo and Geto.
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