Chapter 401: The Lunatic

Bloodcurdle has All For One frozen. Stain traces how he got here: overhearing Shoto and Ingenium talk, piecing the situation together, then following the wreckage until he found blood dried on rubble. A sniff told him it was not All Might's, so he licked it. With the villain immobile, he dives on his glider with his katana drawn, silently answering All Might's old question about why he would leave the shadows and reveal himself. The reason, which All Might himself recognizes, is that he has to live.

An instant before the two connect, All For One turns Forced Quirk Activation on Bloodlet and drives every drop of blood out of his own body. He rages that he kept the Quirk in reserve precisely for this, having sensed Stain would act, since he was the only one from the Assault on Tartarus who broke away instead of following him. Stain lunges for the spilled blood regardless, and All For One reveals Antigen Swap, a Quirk that rewrites his blood type, the trick that has kept him from ever leaving anything of himself behind.

An arm erupts from the villain's back, seizes Stain and crushes him, while All For One remarks that bleeding out has restored his composure. All Might rushes in and is hurled through a row of buildings by the same fist. Standing over Stain's failing body, All For One declares the Quirk his and grants that the man did feed what Tomura and the League became, but that his usefulness stopped there.

All Might scrambles back toward them, shouting. Stain coughs that nothing has ended and that all of it was process. He reflects that school never gave him anything, and that his understanding of what a hero is came from All Might alone. Arms spread wide, willing his hero to survive and win, he is destroyed. All For One turns a point-blank attack on All Might, and the last fragments of Hercules interpose to shield him once more, still insisting that he survive, as the blast throws them both through more buildings.

Coming to, All Might sees Nana Shimura urging him on and recognizes the pep talk as his own hallucination. Sir Nighteye follows, laying out the arithmetic: the support gear is spent, the legs are gone, everything he was given is used up, so fighting is finished. Even so, he is not dead. All Might braces himself and dares All For One to try his worst, while the floating U.A. drifts downward in the distance and a voice warns that the villain is almost close enough to reach Tomura with Warping.

Stain joins All Might against All For One after tracking the fight by scent and blood.

All For One counters Bloodcurdle by force-activating Bloodlet to expel his blood and using Antigen Swap to rewrite his blood type.

Stain is killed and his Bloodcurdle Quirk is stolen, his final words demanding that All Might live on.

The last remnants of Hercules shield All Might from a point-blank strike.

The fight reaches the airspace beneath the floating U.A., putting All For One within Warping range of Tomura.

Horikoshi's four hundred and first installment fills 15 pages of the fortieth collected volume, placed within the Final War arc.

It ran in issue 43 of 2023, published on September 25, and was adapted as Episode 161 of the anime.

Nana Shimura and Sir Nighteye appear as hallucinations, and All For One and Stain share the cover.