One Who is Capable

Maru can barely contend with Tsurugi's transformed shape. In Tokyo, Mahoraga completes its adaptation and launches a lethal assault, and as the pressure mounts Dabura recalls Dura, finally seizing the meaning of a warrior. Fighting for the ones he hopes to shield, he decides to drive his body's power and pace to their breaking point.

Yuta Okkotsu's ring is established as a cursed tool that stores his enormous cursed energy plus Rika Orimoto's will, an item kept on record in the cursed warehouse run by the Gojo Clan. Using Chaos, Maru reverses gravity so he, Tsurugi, and the rubble drift upward, but Tsurugi grabs a slab of concrete, hops between floating debris toward him, and slams it down on his head. Rika gleefully likens the fight to a roller coaster before griping about screaming kids at amusement parks, and an irritated Tsurugi tells her to be quiet. Battered and puzzled, Maru wonders about the changed appearance and the second voice, then traces the surge of power to the ring after feeling its staggering cursed energy. His third eye fails to disorient Tsurugi, who headbutts him and lands a punch that hurls him across a pond. Maru realizes the boy is muscling through his techniques with the ring's strength, and as huge plants burst from the soil by Maru's power, Tsurugi apologizes and vows to win by whatever means, with the Simurian admitting he feels the very same.

Meanwhile Mahoraga looms atop a tower as Dabura notes a change in the shikigami. His pointed light beams pierce it, only to shatter when it flexes, and it flashes to his side, extending the Sword of Extermination. Dabura seizes its face and pours in light blasts to no effect, takes a slash across the face, then a traffic light to the head as it chases him. Grasping that it has adapted and gone immune, he reasons the wheel halting marks the adaptation complete, and blocking a fierce swing, he wonders whether defeat awaits. A flashback shows young Dura telling Dabura he prized him as his sole worthy rival and felt for his isolation, while Dabura confessed his might bred envy and that he never longed to fight. Dura laughed that Dabura's strength had kept him from a real fight, so he had never truly become a warrior, a lesson he would understand only when an opponent could make him fear losing.

Pounded by Mahoraga's punches and kicks, Dabura at last sees that a true warrior fights out of necessity, for others' sake, rather than from his own wish to. Recalling the dying wish Dura entrusted to both him and his sister, he steels himself and catches the Sword of Extermination bare-handed, crushing it and sending the shikigami leaping back in shock. He apologizes for not having fought seriously and swears to do so now. Since his frame cannot endure full light acceleration, he was never able to reach true light speed, and with his techniques neutralized he concludes raw physical force is his only path. Vowing to Dura that a warrior is exactly what he will become, Dabura pushes his strength and speed to the absolute edge and rips across the field at sub-light speed. The chapter features Light, Chaos, and the Ten Shadows Technique with Mahoraga, set in Tokyo.