The next moment, Izumi felt something heavy pressing down on his neck.
Thud!
The world before his eyes faded into darkness as his body crashed into the ground from a single kick, forming a tiny crater beneath him.
The sound of this thunderous crash reached Michizane's ears a moment later and he instinctively looked into that direction.
There was no one there except Izumi who just stood up and wiped off the blood that continuously flowed out from his nose and corners of mouth.
Immediately, Michizane changed into the defensive stance and augmented his body with cursed energy while focusing more on his fists for offence.
"He's very fast. Be careful."
He said while forming an orb of condensed lightning in his palm. His focused eyes tracked every minute movement as he waited for Dabura to appear before him.
Meanwhile, Hojo used the technique blue to swallow the entire tentacles in the vortex of Cursed energy.
If not for the flames of contradiction that provided the tentacles with ability to bypass his Eternif, he would have never considered even the existence of these petty tentacles.
Realising the missing tentacles from his body, Dabura appeared before Hojo. At the same time, his tentacles regenerated at a terrifying speed.
"As expected, you aren't weak as those fools. But unfortunately, you'll have to sacrifice yourself here at this place for nothing at all."
Dabura laughed coldly in his heart as he tried to drag the time as much as possible.
'I've to do something.' Hojo thought as he swept his gaze around.
He spotted the Gojo pinned by the pillars in a fixed place.
Everytime, he freed himself, more and more pillars would descend, again restraining his body immediately.
'I'm regretting that I don't have my own Domain. At such a high level of battle, most of the techniques except Domain Expansion are useless.'
Frustration was clearly visible on Hojo's face when he realized he didn't have any special trump card.
All he had was an enormous amount of cursed energy and many basic spatial techniques that he inherited by his awakening.
Enormous amount of cursed energy… Thinking about this, an idea struck him!
Looking at Dabura, he raised both of his hands and locked them together, his fingers intertwining into each other..
He then used the knowledge of his available techniques to feel that same sequence of actions and flow of cursed energy in his body and released his massive amount of cursed energy all at once.
With a low booming sound, Cursed energy swallowed his whole body and blazed in the form of massive flames that raged with fierce intensity.
Immediately after engulfing him, his cursed energy spreaded even more, tinting the air with transparent blue.
He became a moving inferno of cursed energy.
"Let's see if it works…"
Space began distorting around him as he concentrated a huge amount of cursed energy in a small area which made a defensive layer on his body.
At the same time, many orbs of technique red and blue formed around him which was the main reason behind holding his hands together that acted as a stability sign.
Red and blue turned blinding purple upon merging with each other.
Five orbs of hollow purple revolved around him, consuming more and more cursed energy to grow larger and more intense.
Each one of the orbs held the potential to erase a district from existence and obliterate the largest of the cities that existed on earth without so much as a speck of ash leaving behind.
And five of such orbs were prepared only to destroy a single entity.
A sinister and crazed grin slowly formed on his face which exuded pure madness into the surroundings.
Hojo raised his hand high into the air and the orbs started circling his wrist instead of drifting randomly.
These enhanced and much larger orbs of hollow purple were fundamentally unstable and moved randomly on their own as they continuously crushed the space into their core which also acted like their food to remain concentrated and stable.
"Hahaha…I wonder how will you defend against these tiny nuclears above my hand. My barrier can protect me and as for the other sorcerers there, they are literally immortal for some time. But you—You will be erased because the destruction that this technique will cause."
After handing the death sentence to Dabura, he simultaneously launched all five orbs of hollow purple at him.
From the perspective of Hojo who could see the world multiple times slower with his eyes, the air became void in the path of orbs and the space collapsed under the gravity as they moved.
Tiny rifts continuously appeared and closed because of this 'space-time fracture'.
***
Dabura saw his death approaching him second time in form of five blinding purple orbs.
He himself could cancel one of these orbs with his own hollow purple, but how was he supposed to deal with remaining four.
This was somewhat unexpected action that Hojo took.
Immediately after Hojo released all his cursed energy, Dabura's skin had begun crawling under its sheer pressure.
He never thought that Hojo could posses such impossibly enormous amount of cursed energy. So logically, he also never anticipated that he would form five orbs of hollow purple at the same time.
And now his eyes simply couldn't believe this spectacle before him.
In this brief moment, his mind reached its maximum thinking capacity and he started to find what he should do to keep his body in one peice.
He couldn't run because of the gigantic difference in speed.
He couldn't defend because he simply didn't have anything to do that against those orbs.
He couldn't attack, there was a little probability that Domain Expansion might help him in this condition but opening it would take a lot of time and until then even his soul would have perished.
So he did what he thought was the best option for him.
Using his all cursed energy to create flames of contradiction, he wrapped himself in its protection.
This was the only technique that could nullify or erase the hollow purple itself.
In that instant, five orbs simultaneously hit him.
For both Dabura and Hojo, the light that was being emitted by the impact was so intense that the word "blinding" might not be enough to represent it.
For that impossibly tiny fragment of a second, everything visible turned into the purest possible form of white.
All the buildings, ground, air, water, even tiny carbon and sulphur particles—everything was breaking down at the atomic level in real time.
Before the sound could be heard and the aftereffct could take place, everything vanished along with the thing called "air" and "atmosphere".
If one could see this from space, it would look like a white flash which didn't last even a second, but perished an entire city.
No sound came as air was replaced with vacuum.
Light also disappeared, leaving behind a dozens of metre deep crater with frightening diameter of 90 km.
It might be better to call it "hole" instead of a crater.
In that range, a tiny big bang happened.
Hojo who stood on ground a moment ago seemed to hover in the air as ground no longer existed beneath him.
Air violently rushed in from all direction due to the immense pressure difference between vaccum and air outside.
***
Deep below in the darkness of depth of creater, someone laid unconscious there.
All his body looked crushed and charred, blackened by the explosion. His limbs no longer existed and face was entirely twisted and distorted with his skull visible and eyes hanging from their sockets.
Apparently, the man should have died. But suddenly, his body started shaking as two hands formed from two opposite directions of his body.
Dabura wasn't in one piece as he had expected but was still breathing without oxygen.