Chapter 194

Naoya's overwhelming speed leaves Maki needing time to recover. Having lost his place as the Kamo heir and watched his mother start a separate family, Noritoshi feels rootless and chooses to gamble everything to hold Naoya back for her sake.

Swollen with pride in his new strength, Naoya brags that recalling a time he was weaker than Maki is as impossible for him as an adult recalling childhood helplessness. Maki snaps that he was never an adult, and he retaliates by dragging up Mai to unsettle her. As she springs up, Noritoshi drives his last arrows into Naoya's arm. The opening lets Maki kick the curse off, and Noritoshi pours out more blood to keep him at bay. Baffled by the endless ammunition, Naoya works out that the sorcerer keeps cycling his own blood outward and back in, a tactic draining him toward death.

Shielding Maki, Noritoshi tells her to escape the colony, but she refuses, swearing she can heal quickly given five minutes. Treating his own life as worthless either way, he agrees to throw all he has left into stopping the curse. Unable to locate Maki, Naoya now fixes entirely on Noritoshi, slowed by Blood Manipulation that poisons cursed spirits yet still pounding him without mercy.

Naoya is only tough while accelerating, since curling into his shell protects his flesh, and stays soft the rest of the time. Noritoshi tries to punish that softness with bold attacks he hopes catch the curse off guard, throwing himself in with no concern for survival. He remembers stumbling on his mother beside a new husband and child, a happy household where he felt like an outsider, convinced the Kamo clan never held a spot for her and that he himself has nowhere left. Deciding his life is best burned as fuel for his allies, he fights on until, just before he gives out, two loud and peculiar strangers turn up, one sobbing over sumo and the other bellowing about katanas.