Domain Expansion vs. Time Stop

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"Ice Wyrm. My name is Ice Wyrm."

Grand "flowers" bloomed across the ice field. These ice flowers, each nearly the size of a house, were deadly. Their petals were crowded ice crystals crushing against one another, sharp enough to cut the falling sunlight into golden motes.

Yet all that beautiful, lethal scenery was useless. Ice Wyrm had lost sight of the little human. Its attack failed. As it prepared to take to the air and gain a high-altitude view, a wave of pain knocked it back down.

Ren's first target was naturally the pair of wings on the cursed spirit calling itself Ice Wyrm. After approaching in the Timeless State, Dojikiri and Onikiri slashed repeatedly at its right wing. To his surprise, the wing was extremely hard. Only after rotating both blades through several cuts did he barely sever that half.

As the half-wing fell to the ground at the root, Ice Wyrm let out a piercing scream. A visible current of air spiraled around it and, in the next instant, became a gale that could tear everything apart.

When Ren activated his technique again and approached Ice Wyrm, he discovered an almost solid "shell" isolating it from him. It was not merely a protective layer formed by the storm. Ice Wyrm's cursed energy supported it from within.

"Arrow of Time."

After driving both cursed blades into the ground, Ren took out Annihilation. The cursed energy he poured into it almost reached the cursed tool's limit. Then a tightly condensed light erupted.

The storm wrapped around Ice Wyrm was violently torn open. Because Ren could not see the curse's exact position, the attack only left a crescent-shaped gap in its massive body. The wound was clean and even, flesh and blood simply erased.

Ice Wyrm had realized something was wrong when the first attack landed. The surrounding wind and snow, under its control, could be called its eyes and ears. Yet the attack that had cut off its right wing had left no trace to follow.

Against its opponent's unknown technique, the cursed spirit's next movements were swift and deliberate, but the arrow it could not detect still pierced through its defense. The wound it left was strange as well. Compared to the wing that had already begun to recover with difficulty, this injury was extremely slow to heal.

"Grrraah!"

The wound looked large, but on a body like Ice Wyrm's, it was not fatal. As its winding body instantly coiled around an ice pillar and rose into the air, Ren was preparing to remove its other wing as well, but a sound not far away suddenly drew his attention.

A hole roughly the thickness of a finger had appeared in the ice. Its edge was smooth and round. It looked extremely deep, and there were no cracks around it. Something incredibly sharp and fast must have caused it. Ren soon knew what that something was.

Rain.

Rain falling from the sky, sparkling under the sun. When it landed on ice that had existed for who knew how long, it punched straight through. Without question, Ice Wyrm had caused it. In Ren's perception, the "rain" covered an area with a radius of about three hundred meters around him.

The killing power of these raindrops lay in penetration, and they carried Ice Wyrm's freezing attribute. Ren could probably withstand one or two hits for a while, but this was a sky full of ice rain. Trying to endure it head-on with Reverse Cursed Technique or by reversing himself would be a little stupid.

Several solutions flashed through his mind one after another. Ren chose the most direct method. He raised Annihilation again.

Timewheel: Reverse.

Heaven and earth suddenly inverted. The downpour fell toward the sky and vanished into endless darkness. That scene lasted only an instant in Ren's senses.

Timewheel: Forward.

Five trails, so faint under the sunlight they were almost invisible, appeared in the air. They connected three points in succession: Ice Wyrm's humanoid upper body, its left wing, and the middle section of its dragon-serpent body. In an instant, five savage wounds appeared across it.

The ice pillar beneath it cracked as well and began to collapse. Only then did Ice Wyrm's scream echo in every direction.

"Domain Expansion: Unmelting Ice Prison."

The great sun hanging in the sky vanished. The vast blue sky disappeared with it. In every direction, a prison of freezing ice sealed the space shut. This place was now an icy hell from which even wings could not escape.

The space within the domain was also abnormal. It was unexpectedly vast. Ice Wyrm hovered in the air, its severed right wing now rebuilt from transparent ice crystals. The wounds across its body had vanished as well.

A blizzard rose again and began raging through the space. The bone-piercing cold ignored Ren's cursed-energy defense, and only after he expanded Simple Domain did it become less unrestrained.

But this domain...

'It is not just the environmental boost. There is that abnormal feeling too. This cursed spirit, the surrounding blizzard, and this domain have fused into one. Is that why its recovery speed is so strange? Try again.'

In Ren's eyes, Ice Wyrm, which was beating its wings and trying to dodge, froze in the air once more. Annihilation, pushed to its limit, reflected large swaths of cursed-energy light through the Ice Prison. Arrows shot through the air one after another, tearing open the defense around Ice Wyrm's body and leaving large holes behind.

The instant the technique ended, Ren focused and saw Ice Wyrm's body fill in beneath the surging wind and snow, like an incomplete oil painting suddenly restored by fresh pigment poured over it. Its body no longer seemed like flesh and blood. It was closer to the blizzard itself, released from the shackles of a physical form.

"This domain effect is a problem..."

A few arrows cleared paths through the ice spikes flooding toward him. Ren put away Annihilation and drew Dojikiri and Onikiri. In one flash, he appeared near Ice Wyrm. Behind him, the countless frozen spikes shattered into ice dust. Looking up, he saw Ice Wyrm circling and dancing high above. From the blizzard, many beasts formed of ice and snow rushed toward him.

Attacks formed from cursed energy like these were not worth worrying about. Their defense was the sort of thing Ren could shatter with one slash. The cold released after they broke was the irritating part. After clearing the area in an instant, Ren, still in the Timeless State, stepped onto a giant ice serpent diving down from the air.

He drove both blades into its frozen body in turns. As he climbed, the only thing left behind him was the cracking body of the ice serpent. Amid the piercing scrape of blades against ice, Ren pulled his swords free, planted his feet on the serpent, and leapt with gathered force. Cracks spread beneath him as his whole body shot upward toward Ice Wyrm's strange posture in the air.

Godspeed Slash.

Kumokiri appeared within the fierce blade light as well. Three cursed blades shattered ice chips into glittering sparks, like a rain of light. Stepping across Ice Wyrm's coiling body, Ren cut it into multiple pieces in the blink of an eye.

Ren crashed back to the ground and left a large crater. Then he saw the broken pieces of Ice Wyrm fall with him, only for the cursed spirit to coil again and rise from the ground as if the previous injuries had been nothing but a reflection in water.

"Asura!"

The cursed blade's technique erupted. A strange phantom appeared in the sky behind Ice Wyrm. The decayed sword in its hand ignored the wind, snow, and cursed energy wrapped around the curse. As Ice Wyrm tried to twist and defend, the vertical slash landed dead center and cut most of its body open.

For the first time within the domain, Ice Wyrm cried out in pain. Then, under Ren's speechless stare, its body healed again. Its presence even grew stronger beneath the increasingly violent blizzard.

'It specializes in strengthening the link between itself and the environment. Its own existence has even become part of the snowstorm inside this domain. As long as the domain is intact, the blizzard will not stop. As long as the blizzard remains, Ice Wyrm is almost immortal. And this domain is specialized for defense.'

While Ren was thinking, pain suddenly pierced his chest and abdomen. A forearm-length ice spike drilled out from within. He could even clearly see it rotating and condensing, steaming blood clinging to its surface.

The spike vanished in the next instant. The wound and damaged clothing were perfectly restored as well. Even so, Ren frowned. This was not a sudden attack. It was the cold that had entered his body during his constant battle with Ice Wyrm, then erupted under the control of its technique. Although his reversal had recovered the injury, it had not reversed far enough back to a time before the cold entered him. Which meant...

"Damn it."

An ice spike drilled out from Ren's chest and abdomen again. This time, he actively canceled the reversal and used Reverse Cursed Technique to heal instead. But as long as he kept fighting Ice Wyrm, that cold would only accumulate further. Neither side could truly deal with the other. It was becoming an endless battle.

Relying on the properties it had inside its domain, Ice Wyrm began close combat in addition to technique-based attacks. It could not inflict much effective damage on Ren that way. Instead, his rising blade light tore its body apart whenever it came close. But that was exactly what Ice Wyrm wanted. Unafraid of injury, it released large amounts of cold whenever its body broke, trading wounds for wounds.

Ren activated the cursed blade's technique again. It was more effective than ordinary attacks, but...

'Do not tell me that inside this domain, not only is its body fused with the storm, but even its soul cannot be killed.'

Ice Wyrm returned to the air. Ice and snow gathered over its body, forming a dazzling layer of armor. The howling blizzard converged around it. Spreading both wings, Ice Wyrm looked down at Ren on the ground.

"Human! You are indeed strong. I will remember you. When I return again, it will be with a storm capable of sweeping everything away..."

'It wants to escape. If this keeps going, the one who cannot hold out first is the one maintaining the domain. Since it realizes it cannot kill me, it is choosing to run. The sky would still be manageable. I could shoot it down with Annihilation and Arrow of Time. But there is another escape route here...'

The sea.

Beneath this endless ice field lay an even deeper ocean. If it broke a thinner section and slipped into the water, it really could escape. He also could not gamble on whether he would be able to kill it the moment it removed the domain. Judging by the way it looked, it was still charging some kind of major move.

"I can only try the move I am still conceptualizing. If it fails, I will have to wait until it drops the domain and try again..."

Timewheel: Forward. Timewheel: Reverse.

What kind of phenomenon would be born when the technique's lapse and reversal collided, when acceleration and reversal of time unfolded at once?

As Ren's technique expanded, the time of everything beneath its range began accelerating together. At the same time, it was being reversed and dragged backward. The contradictory effects collided, then began to fuse.

Time became chaotic in that instant.

Then everything stopped.

It was not the same "stop" as Ren's Timeless State. Ren could feel the storm raised by cursed energy and Ice Wyrm in midair, and their cursed energy had stopped flowing too. The Unmelting Ice Prison around him had become very strange. Although the domain still existed in appearance, in Ren's perception it had lost its connection to Ice Wyrm.

Maintaining this miraculous phenomenon left Ren able to drive only part of his cursed energy. The moment the technique took effect, he almost immediately drew Annihilation, nocked, and released. But the cursed-energy arrow froze in the air the instant it left him. Ren had no time to think further. The burden of this move was horrifying.

Holding Dojikiri, he rushed toward Ice Wyrm. After leaping onto its body, Ren's slashes felt almost effortless. Even without Dojikiri's defense-breaking ability, he doubted it would have been much different. In the blink of an eye, Ice Wyrm's body was carved apart again.

Feeling himself nearly reach his limit, Ren delivered the final slash, cutting diagonally through the face of Ice Wyrm's humanoid upper body. Then he canceled the technique.

Time resumed.

Warm sunlight fell gently. Ice Wyrm's Unmelting Ice Prison had silently shattered. Cut into several sections, the cursed spirit seemed not to notice anything unusual. It was still continuing its earlier words, but before the first syllable could fully leave its mouth, the life and death that had been reversed in a nonexistent span of time caught up to it.

"You..."

With its domain gone and its cursed energy and technique unable to defend it, Ice Wyrm had already reached the end of death during time that did not exist. Its massive dragon-serpent body, tall enough to block the sunlight, crashed down.

"Cough."

Blood spilled from Ren's mouth and nose. He looked at his left hand, now stained from covering them, and tried to activate his technique reversal. But... it only half-succeeded?

"My technique cannot be fully used for the moment... and the effect is limited. Did something go wrong because of the collision just now? Still... at least it worked."

Ren switched to Reverse Cursed Technique and healed the inside of his body. The injuries were not fatal to him, but they had spread through nearly every internal part of him, which made them troublesome. On the ground, Ice Wyrm's corpse had begun to dissipate. The Special Grade cursed spirit that had stirred a blizzard to ravage this place, Ice Wyrm, was confirmed exorcised.

The wind and snow dispersed. The boundless ice field revealed itself again beneath the blue sky. At the far horizon, a veil of blue-green light suddenly climbed upward. In the blink of an eye, it spread unbelievably far, covering the entire sky within his view.

The slow-changing light seemed to flow gently, like the hem of a goddess's dress dancing in the air. It was a miracle of nature, a masterful stroke capable of shaking the heart of anyone who saw it.

Ren stood still and admired it for a while. Only after that "dress" shifted and swept outward again did he return to himself and step onto the snowy path he had come from. He took out the satellite phone Aykut had given him. The other side must have noticed the weather clearing too, because they were so excited they could barely speak.

Ren strolled across the ice field, enjoying a rare, breathtaking view while waiting for support to arrive.

"Time stop... I cannot believe that idea actually succeeded on the first try. I will have to practice it further once I get back. I know. I will trouble Gojo-sensei for help again. Haha!"

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