Chapter 178

With no plays left against the joined power of Uro and Ryu, Yuta finally turns to Rika and asks her for everything. The curse stayed tethered to him even after Orimoto's death, and the way the two fight as one has only grown stronger since.

The moment his ring goes on, Rika manifests in full at Yuta's side, which stuns Uro into realizing he had been holding back and leaves Ryu unable to explain how Yuta's cursed energy keeps replenishing. Rika rips her chest open to present an arsenal of cursed tools, and the narration notes she stayed after Orimoto passed as an expression of her will to guard him. Bound to Yuta's technique by the ring, she banks cursed energy and tools while letting him wield his abilities, draw on her supply, and keep her manifested for as long as five minutes. She clamps a metal arm casing onto him to sharpen his striking power.

Sending Rika hurtling at Uro, Yuta brands his mouth with the Inumaki clan's Snake Eyes and Fangs mark, then triggers Cursed Speech with a command to halt; Uro reaches for her ears a beat too late and takes a hammering from both Yuta and Rika. When Ryu cuts in with a beam, Rika stops it one-handed and then knocks him aside, drawing his praise for her toughness. Alone with Uro, Yuta grows small flying shikigami from strands of his hair and listens as she rages that the Fujiwara feared her potential. She had led the nameless, shadow-dwelling Sun, Moon, and Stars Squad, and a Fujiwara sorcerer handed her the name Takako Uro purely so she could be executed as his scapegoat for a killing he committed inside the clan.

The shikigami abruptly slash across Uro's chest and hips, their orbits shaping a domain she identifies as Dhruv Lakdawalla's, which tells her Yuta is no cursed speech user wielding shikigami but a sorcerer able to Copy other techniques. He knocks her toward Ryu and Rika and tries a straight punch, but she catches it and splits his armored shell with her ice-breaker effect; unhurt, he tells her that living solely for herself will only take her so far, which deepens her fury. A spike in Ryu's cursed energy cuts them off, and dismissing talk as useless at this point, all three sorcerers fire Domain Expansion at the same instant. Akutami's note apologizes for the week before, vows greater efficiency, and grumbles about hay fever.