Author's Note: I apologize for the long wait for this chapter. Some life-changing this happened in my life recently, like moving to a new place, that forced me to go on hiatus multiple times. Now, things are stable so I hope to get these chapters out faster with the same level of quality I've put into them. Thanks for sticking around and I hope this chapter was worth the wait.
Chapter 13
Josefu glided into the shadows and scaled one of the moulding residential buildings, sneaking towards one of the four combatants on the high ground. In one move, Josefu took the combatant down, ending them immediately before maneuvering to the next run-down complex. Josefu took down the next combatant, then the third fell. Yet, after sneaking around, Josefu dodged a pressurized air bubble condensed by curse energy. The fourth and final ranged combatant noticed what was happening and signaled to the combatants below before attacking Josefu head-on. Josefu kept dodging and in one strike, punched the final ranged combatant away before sensing an attack from the roof itself and jumping into the air.
When Josefu looked back, he saw the ranged curse user impaled by an enormous spike made of concrete with a rock lodged into the side of the roof. As Josefu descended, he noticed the confident fighter in the middle was covered in rocks, asphalt, and other earthy materials, implying his curse technique was related to morphing the earth around him, making him both a heavy hitter and a crowd controller. Josefu adjusted his trajectory and landed on one of the three ambush units. The impact of this action made them howl with pain before Josefu put them out of their misery and faced the remaining combatants, who were jittering unnaturally from excitement. The sounds they made sounded like distorted techno noises mixed with the auditory stimuli of a power drill removing screws from a wall.
Josefu darted around the two fighters, analyzing their movement. One fighter was faster than the others and attempted to catch Josefu with a whip. The second fighter's physique constantly changed to either chase or grab Josefu when they had an opportunity. The three lookouts had enhanced mobility, making them more unpredictable, so Josefu didn't focus on them, save for dodging. The tasks for Josefu at the top of his list, as he planned, were to weaken the fighters and defeat the remaining ambushers before they caught Josefu off guard while he was fighting the rest.
Josefu smashed one ambusher into the closest lookout, which caused the ambusher's body to be dissected into cubes, much to Josefu's surprise. After some more skittering to the third ambusher, Josefu used a fire bomb to repel the tank's earth manipulation and blasted him toward the final ambusher before ending her with a simple crushing of the trash can she was hiding in.
On instinct, Josefu began to summon a fire bomb, only for it to fizzle away. 'What?! I can't use Fire Tyrant anymore!' Josefu immediately ducked under one of the fighters, using the momentum to propel himself into the shadows as he prepared a new strategy. Are you surprised? The forces chortled. 'How is this happening?! You all shouldn't be able to affect concepts yet. The story hasn't broken either!' Oh, you, did you forget we created this body for you? Your body is no different from our puppets in terms of our manipulative traits. Granted, you've gotten so used to using curse energy and curse techniques that we can't alter how these techniques work, nor can we cut you off from curse energy now. Not to mention, the strength of your soul prevents your abilities from mutating your body, and your mind isn't controllable. However, we can prevent you from using the gifts we gave you. I'd be bored if you could solve every problem with a sledgehammer. Josefu cursed under his breath, resenting the forces' dependence on forcing everything to be a spectacle for their amusement.
Josefu snuck around the buildings, using his curse energy to search for the other combatants. When Josefu found them, he noticed that the flow of curse energy was forcefully pushed through them, making their minds only require the ability to manipulate their techniques at the cost of their bodies slowly rotting and warping due to the excessive changes made to their physical bodies. Josefu understood from this that if he could sneak around these individuals, they would be susceptible to a strike to the back of the head, which would be extra damaging due to the weaker bones that they possessed due the rotting and warping. Josefu's heartbeat remained slow and regular as his gaze focused on the environment and changes surrounding him.
Josefu rounded the corner of the building and slammed into the whip warrior before he used curse energy to crater his arms, which depowered his whip technique before he could use it. However, Josefu was surrounded in seconds, receiving a flurry of blunt attacks that compressed Josefu's muscles, slowly weakening him with physical trauma while simultaneously causing his movements to slow down. However, Josefu's survival instincts lashed out, activating the yet-to-be-named lighting technique, allowing Josefu to push the compressor away with an electrical pulse.
Afterward, Josefu had the lighting surge through his arm before striking the compressor with an attack that stopped his heart and made him perish, removing the technique's effects but still leaving the damage. Josefu glared at the four fighters, grinding his teeth through the sensations of his nerves, signaling the physical damage to his body as his legs crouched into the jumping position with lightning splurging through those legs. Once Josefu took a step, he was already behind the combatants. With one focused strike on the back of the third lookout's head, who was stretching her hand to where Josefu was, she perished instantly, which flowed into Josefu, spiking the prone warrior with his foot, making him perish as well. The last lookout who turned the ambusher into cubes dashed at Josefu, yet Josefu remained stone-faced. Josefu waved his hand and tapped into the static cling effect, leaving the lookout unable to approach Josefu. Josefu also noticed that there was a set of tiny blades forged by cursed energy set in a way that would ensure anything that came in contact with them would result in being diced into cubes without a moment spared.
Josefu defeated the lookout without hesitation while observing the final dazed warrior in the background as the cursed blades fell apart. The last warrior shook his head before altering his hands to resemble claws made of bone. Josefu dodged the incoming slash and surged a jolt of electric power through the warrior's left arm, which fell apart at the cellular level. Josefu looked at the place where he made the wound and realized the warrior's curse technique was to transform all of his cells into stem cells, which allowed him to change his cells to any cell he wished and could quickly regenerate by using biological energy and rapid cell division in place of reverse curse energy. Yet, it seemed that Josefu's lightning shocked the cells to the point where they stopped functioning, rendering them useless. After the fact, Josefu continued to shock the warrior, who attempted to divide and conquer by using two halves. Instead, he became a puddle of liquid meat and bone due to the lack of intermolecular forces holding the cells together. Josefu observed his surroundings, trying to locate the tank, but after three minutes, he left out of fear that he would run out of time to collect the portal shard.
Josefu got to the rooftops and found a glint of the shard. After Josefu zipped to the location using his reinforced limbs, he realized the shard was in the middle of the fight that Yuji and Nanami fought against the transfigured humans Mahito created. However, before Josefu proceeded, his heart rate increased, and his fingers trembled as his eyes locked onto the transfigured humans. Seeing these people twisted by idle transfiguration brought Josefu to a crashing halt in his mind as it flashed back to the mutated creatures he fought before. Then Josefu noticed an attack was coming his way and jumped out of the way, noting the tank had followed him. The tank's features and limbs were altered, much like the transfigured humans below, but with a purple glow. "YoU tHiNk I wAsN't HeRe?" The laugh the tank emitted afterward had a delayed reverb and a distorted pitch. Josefu didn't respond, feeling pity for the tank as his desperation accelerated the mutation process. "I mAy NoT bEaT YoU pHySiCaLlY, bUt I cAn StIlL bReAk YoUr PrIzE!"
Josefu immediately sidestepped the tank and leaped the portal shard, only for the tank to alter the landscape, giving Yuji and Nanami the impression an earthquake had begun, making their fight increasingly difficult due to the uneven terrain. To prevent any deviation from the fight's results in the manga, Josefu risked exposing himself by using his electricity to blast the ground under the shard to catapult it away from Yuji and Nanami. He couldn't use a static cling effect since the shard was outside his grasp, and it wasn't as if his lightning had electromagnetic properties. The tank threw three sharp rocks at the shard (though all of them missed) before Josefu recovered his footing and bolted so quickly that he ran on the walls of the nearby buildings before getting close to the shard, to which the tank, having embedded himself in the ground, launched a surprise attack that essentially took 300 pounds of rebar, dirt, and concrete and hammered Josefu in the jaw with it. Josefu absorbed the hit and only had horrid bruising with some nasty gashes on his torso, thanks to him reinforcing his body with curse energy before the impact. Josefu ended up about 10 meters away from the shard, giving the tank every opportunity to crush the shard before Josefu could reach him. Thinking quickly by taking a risk on his eyesight, Josefu focused a low voltage, focused pulse of electrical energy through his eyes to quicken their ability to process visual information, allowing Josefu to perceive events as slower than usual, which greatly enhanced his precision. Using this precise eyesight, Josefu noticed that rhubarb was stuck out of the tank's concrete defenses and aimed for it, sending an electrical current through the rebar that electrocuted the tank, making him fall over and unable to move.
Josefu removed the electrical pulse slowly and released the air he held in his lungs after realizing his eyesight was intact. Afterward, Josefu reinforced his legs with electrical energy and bolted to the area with the portal shard, absorbing the shard into his body before looking at the tank. He noticed the tank wasn't breathing and hung his head, frowning over the sight before him, though he shed no tears. Excellent performance. The forces cackled, half-congratulating Josefu.
Your fire returns. We'll speak again later. Josefu's instincts went off as he deactivated the lightning technique, unleashing Fire Tyrant again. Josefu deactivated Fire Tyrant as a new idea crossed his mind. 'Bio Bolt. That's what I'll name this lightning technique…' Josefu ran back to Jujutsu High and snuck into his room. When questioned on his wounds and where he was, Josefu made the excuse that he fought three grade two curses that got the drop on him.