Chapter 247

The clash spills across the gaming floor. Oki's naginata cleaves a table in two as Nagumo leaps clear, and a fan of thrown playing cards is swatted aside. Nagumo blocks a heavy thrust with his daggers, gets launched, and lands before melting into the crowd, disguising himself so fast that Oki takes note. A woman lunges at Oki's back, but he wheels and parries, exposing Nagumo behind the mask. Oki chides that his opponent still runs on raw instinct and has not fought in earnest since Sakamoto quit the association; Nagumo insists his old classmate has nothing to do with it.

Spinning his naginata to amplify its force, Oki snaps the daggers apart and buries the blade in the wall. Nagumo draws a second six-function weapon, screens himself with a smoke bomb, and lashes out with an all but transparent ceramic blade aimed at Oki's throat. Oki simply catches it barehanded, having tracked the motion, then shatters the weapon, flinging a shard into the wall and opening a slash across Nagumo's chest. Nagumo drops, coughing blood, and Oki calls the match finished. A flash of Sakamoto reading a paper and asking whether that is all he has drifts through Nagumo's mind.

As the killing swing falls, Nagumo parries the blade with his wrist and grins, saying not yet. He slides out of his jacket and feints a stab with his left hand; when Oki shifts to guard it, Nagumo drives a punch into his throat, hurling him back onto the shard still lodged in the wall. The ceramic fragment runs clean through Oki's chest. Every angle, he realizes, was measured from the start. Nagumo admits deception was all he had left. Refusing to let a subordinate settle the tab, a mortally wounded Oki rises, plucks the bill from Nagumo's hand, and finally collapses as Nagumo murmurs that he must be tired.

Oki plucks Nagumo's invisible ceramic blade out of the air with his bare hand and destroys both of Nagumo's weapons while wounding his chest. On the brink of death, Nagumo baits a feint with his left hand, punches Oki's throat, and impales him on the wall-lodged shard, a sequence he plotted in advance. Oki concedes the skill, then stands one last time to snatch the coffee bill before dropping for good.

The Japanese title, Ogori, means to treat someone or foot the bill, mirroring Oki's final act of paying. The nineteen-page chapter published on February 9, 2026 in the 11, 2026 issue, tied to Volume 28. Nagumo alone fronts the cover, and Sakamoto returns only within Nagumo's flashback. It comes after Chapter 246 and leads into Chapter 248.