Chapter 188

Bent on defeating a foe who cannot die, Kashimo measures his timeless technique against Hakari's streaks of luck. Those wagers have come up winners so far, but the chapter rests on the notion that every run eventually dries up.

The pair tear around the container yard at full tilt. Hakari punches a freight crate toward Kashimo, who slams it back with matching force, and they volley the box between them until their superhuman strength flattens it entirely. As Hakari knocks the wreckage aside, Kashimo leaps over it gripping a ripped piece of container door, lashes Hakari twice across the face, strips the skin away, and cracks his head open. Kashimo grasps that cursed energy issues from the abdomen while positive, healing energy comes from the brain, so one crushing blow to the head could decide it no matter how automatic the regeneration is. Hakari's face mends, and Kashimo answers with a bolt of lightning to the skull. Pushed painfully near death, Hakari heals and breaks in the same instant, repairing his brain while expelling the foreign energy through his nose, then jeers at the opponent who nearly killed him.

Down to the round's final eight seconds, Hakari ramps up his speed and lands every strike, reasoning that the lightning blast has conditions and will not fire again at once. He throws everything into burying Kashimo under raw pace and force. His error lies in how he reads the electricity functions, because Kashimo had also banked a charge on his staff, still parked clear across the yard where the duel began.

Kashimo pulls that stored energy back as feedback routed through Hakari's lower belly, ruining the left side of his gut just as the deathless round runs out. Sure of victory, Kashimo is thrown when Hakari pours every scrap of remaining power into expanding the domain again, astonished his opponent can still call on jujutsu. The bout is part of the Culling Game Arc, set in the Tokyo No. 2 Colony, with Hakari and Kashimo sharing the cover.