Chapter 5: Kumagawa's Infinite Hate
In a fight against Kumagawa, you don't have to think too much because the answer is simple: don't let him do anything!.
My body was enveloped in this scarlet energy that moved at a speed that defies logic. Before today, it would have been impossible for me to imagine this.
Although I used my free time to read comics because it was impossible for me to form close friendships, I never imagined being something more than a normal person. But now, I feel like the rules, laws, and even principles of existence are optional for me.
My desire was simple: let me manifest my will. It's strange; I can feel this power naturally, and it's so comfortable that I feel like there's no difference between my own arm and this power.
I don't need to train this because I already know how to use it. I don't need to get used to it because it has been with me since birth.
No, calling it power or something else is wrong. It's not a power, not a concept or universal law like in Chinese cultivation, not an attribute, ability, or parameter like in a video game. It's nothing that any normal person or even animal doesn't have... it's willpower.
A person's will is themselves; everything is willpower. You advance, you stop, you hit, you run, you cry, even if you give up, it's still your will. Basically, every action independent of a person is their will, whether it's good or bad, positive or negative, it's a desire, a conviction. Even following someone else's orders is your will. Only robots and dolls don't have it, although I suppose people who have undergone lobotomies and have their minds controlled are the exception.
So why did I choose something as common as my initial desire and not become Reed Richard or Adam Warlock?
It was just instinct... as if something inside me was screaming for me to do it... something that had only been able to defend itself since birth and never counterattack.
That's right, I was frustrated... frustrated that I couldn't land a single blow... frustrated that I only had defensive victories.
I looked at the boy in front of me. The psychopathic look was gone, and his will indicated that he didn't want to face me, but... "I'm sorry, Kumagawa... I don't think I can hold back anymore."
I appeared in front of Kumagawa, my hand about to grab his face. I don't know how fast I was moving, but even now, as I look around, neither Kumagawa nor Kurokami Medaka has moved an inch from their spot.
I took Kumagawa's face and pushed him against the wall, and before I knew it, I was crashing into the final wall of the building, having gone through a dozen reinforced walls with Kumagawa's body without even feeling it.
It's strange, it was as if I already knew that there was no one who could die from my actions. It must be my will emulating observation haki. I say emulating because, as I said before, I based it on haki, but I don't have haki as such.
The next moment, I was dragging Kumagawa through the city, leaving a trail of destruction in the streets, but I didn't worry because I don't feel any living person in front of me.
*Boom*
I could feel the friction of the air with my body, at this rate, I'll catch on fire, so I used my will to cancel out the friction.
Kumagawa was hurt as he broke the ground with his body. Although his body is superhuman, it has a limit and now Kumagawa is surpassing it, but at the same time he was healing instantly.
"Even though he is a child, I have no mercy for him. I know what kind of person he is and what power he has. I have no intention of giving him a chance to eliminate the world," I thought to myself.
When we reached the seashore, I threw Kumagawa into the sky and extended my hand towards him. I could see Kumagawa's wounds disappearing. This guy is virtually immortal thanks to his All Fiction.
"No matter..." I muttered.
I have no guarantees, but I feel that if I do this, I won't have to worry about him again.
In my hand, a scarlet energy sphere began to emerge and grow. I have no idea how it happened, but according to my wishes and my will, this energy began to manifest, dyeing the sky scarlet. It was incredible.
My eyes met Kumagawa's in the sky. He was afraid, which was normal. He is the type of person who will play with people and existence in the future, treating them as worthless objects. Kumagawa is a child who can do anything, but at the same time he is as he is. I'll leave the topic of his twisted personality; I'm tired of it.
"No!" Kumagawa shouted as his eyes filled with blood and desperation.
"Are you scared? You shouldn't have experienced feeling helpless, but I am used to it," I replied calmly, feeling my body filled with energy.
Kumagawa pointed his hands at me, trying to do something, but nothing happened. I had felt the frustration of facing something impossible to beat thousands of times. It's true that I won my fights in the end, but they were miserable victories. While my enemies suffered no wounds, I dragged myself agonizingly across the ground so many times.
"Didn't you think I would kill you, Kumagawa?"
"I have nothing against you, but I cannot live in the same world as someone like you. You are too dangerous... So disappear... Kumagawa Misogi."
"I don't want to die!" Kumagawa pleaded.
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*Third Person POV*
(Let's go back a moment in time and see the perspective of Kumagawa Misogi.)
Kumagawa froze the first time he looked Jiren in the eyes. Jiren's eyes showed no weakness, fear, or confusion. They were not the eyes of everyone who knew him. Within Kumagawa began to emerge a feeling of fear began to arise, but he did not realize it.
"What is this? My legs won't move, my mouth won't move. I want to respond to the arrogant child in front of me, but the words won't come out of my mouth," Kumagawa's thoughts could not focus or figure out what was happening to his body.
"Is this some kind of power? Then I'll erase it! It doesn't work... Why?!" Originally, Kumagawa is almost omnipotent at a universal level, but his defeatist mentality caused him to lose unconsciously, but this time it was not the case.
"Huh? Why do I see the sky? Why does my body hurt? Am I injured? When did I get hurt?" Kumagawa was dragged for several dozen kilometers before realizing that Jiren was holding him.
Kumagawa is a monster. He has been aware of that since he was born.
Kumagawa used his superhuman physical abilities to break free from Jiren, but his strength seemed insignificant against Jiren
Upon realizing that he couldn't win, Kumagawa attempted to alter reality to a version where he could win with his subjective reality manipulation ability, which allows him to turn his imagination into reality. He may have tried to manipulate the outcome of the battle, but this required him to imagine his own victory.
Kumagawa attempted to manifest his screws, as he has the power to create and manipulate metal, but no screws appeared.
In a fit of rage, Kumagawa attempted to free himself from Jiren by collapsing space, as he has the power to manipulate space and destroy everything within it.
He then attempted to use his memory manipulation ability to confuse Jiren, but it didn't work.
Kumagawa began to feel desperate, never felt so powerless before. He tried using his existential erasure ability, vacuum manipulation, causality manipulation, temporal manipulation, conceptual manipulation, memory manipulation, perception manipulation, heat manipulation, and zero absolute, but none of them worked. In fact, it seemed like they weren't even activating. Kumagawa could only be dragged along while suffering constant injuries. He can manipulate pain to make it non-existent and heal any wound, and since these two abilities were still working, he was sure he could use his All Fiction.
But why wasn't any of this working on Jiren?
Kumagawa can make aspects of reality disappear, allowing him to erase people, senses, temperature, events, his own aura, wounds, memories, death, laws, the colors of the universe, and even the concept of time itself. However, he can't affect Jiren.
He couldn't even escape, despite his ability to use pseudo-time stop and pseudo-teleportation, which allow him to make his own time non-existent, making his movements effectively instantaneous. His hand seemed to be fused to Jiren's face, and he couldn't even loosen his grip.
Kumagawa attempted to weaken Jiren with stat reduction and damage transfer, which allow him to reduce all of his opponent's stats until they are equal to his own, thereby equalizing the damage received throughout the fight, but it didn't work either.
During the few seconds he could react to Jiren, Kumagawa observed that his gaze was serious but bright, as if he were a child discovering the sun for the first time. There was a strong joy in his eyes, and Kumagawa was consumed with intense hatred. This little Jiren didn't even pay attention to him; he seemed to be looking at something else.
-Humiliation-
Kumagawa Misogi felt a tremendous sense of humiliation, feeling more miserable than ever before. He felt so bad that a new twisted emotion called hatred was born within him, directed at Jiren.
All Fiction seemed to respond to this twisted feeling, increasing its power, and finally he was able to use it against Jiren.
Limited Willpower Manipulation and Limited Empathic Manipulation (Kumagawa, with just a few words, is capable of destroying will and hearts thanks to his negative mentality). This ability, if you can call it that, is not something that he should have obtained at such a young age, but he has it now. Then Kumagawa understood that this scarlet energy was Jiren's will and he tried to destroy it with his enhanced power, but... his All Fiction was repelled by the energy when he tried. Was his own boundless hatred no match for the will of a child? Kumagawa could not accept this.
Furious, he grabbed Jiren's energy with his hands with the intention of destroying it. Kumagawa has Non-Physical Interaction (he can see and affect incorporeal things) in addition to System Manipulation (he can generate illogical systems, such as a sword that must be wielded by someone worthy).
Kumagawa used his All Fiction at full capacity to generate a system capable of destroying the Will of the world and used it on Jiren.
"Disappear, you bastard!" Kumagawa grabbed Jiren's will. At that moment, the world turned white, or rather, the world turned white for Kumagawa.
Then he was standing in an unknown place, only mountains and mountains could be seen in the distance.
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What is Jiren?
He is just a human, it is not a figure of speech to minimize his existence, it is a fact. Jiren has no hidden characteristics beyond being human. He is not a chosen one with absurd power, he is not an original God, or something from stories before existence, he is not a superpowerful entity that has reincarnated into a human body. He was never special beyond being the only possibility of victory. If you think in that sense, he is special, the only variant of himself that survived. But outside of that, he is just a human. So why was Kumagawa unable to affect him?
Well, it is easy to imagine that Kumagawa's abilities did not affect Jiren because he felt fear and helplessness towards him. In fact, this is how the original author nerfed Kumagawa so that he would not be so omnipotent, but this did not happen with Jiren. Every power or ability that Kumagawa used was against Jiren without any convenient plot armor or hidden power preventing it.
Everything, absolutely everything, collided against Jiren's will... and he lost?
Yes...
That's right, he lost because Jiren is terrifying...
Jiren is just a human. I know that both Kumagawa and Kurokami Medaka are also humans, but Jiren is a human from a common world where supernatural and mysterious powers do not exist. So why is he so terrifying?
The answer is so simple that it's boring: statistically, it is easier to become a rock star than to win the lottery, it's true. But seen from another point of view, that means that someone in the world won the lottery.
The same applies here...
If someone told you that the world would try to kill you one day, and you had no way to defend yourself, without powers, luck, allies, absolutely no help, and everything would be on the world's side to kill you, do you think you could overcome the world by yourself and live? The answer is no, no normal person could, and in fact, our MC is no exception, he could not do it infinitely many times.
The possibility of victory in that situation was so minuscule that it was easier to become an absolute god than to achieve something like that. But seen from another perspective, in the infinite where there were infinite possibilities and infinite variants of the MC now called Jiren, was there anyone who achieved it? The answer is yes, in fact, there were many. Thousands of them succeeded, but unfortunately, even overcoming death once was not enough to survive in that world.
Some took two attempts, others took a hundred attempts, but not a single one could survive thousands of times, except Jiren...
Jiren is a human, but he is also that infinitesimal possibility of victory, and he is the one who was reincarnated for being the only one among all the variants to win until the end.
He is a boy who survived more than five thousand unfair and desperate fights against the world, destiny, and death without even the slightest amount of superhuman power or luck.
He is terrifying...
He must be terrifying...
For anyone who faces him, he is, and without showing anything far from a normal human, Jiren is absurdly terrifying.
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Kumagawa was confused but soon noticed signs of movement in the distance and quickly approached. But upon arriving at the mountains, he discovered that they were mountains, but not of rocks and earth, but of corpses.
Thousands, millions, trillions of mountains stretched away in the horizon filled with corpses, even someone as insensitive as him felt the need not to look too much at that image. Still, he noticed that all the corpses had the same face.
But before Kumagawa could even react, he was paralyzed, his legs trembling. Something terrifying that he had never known was standing behind him.
The air stood still, the ground cooled, the atmosphere lost its color, the coldness of something approached, freezing the world itself.
Kumagawa felt the urge to run desperately from this place...
Fuu FuFuu Fuu~
A cold and terrifying whistle seemed to carve his insides like claws on a chalkboard.
Kumagawa did not turn around immediately, but the presence approached slowly. Fear turned into despair, not even his twisted and chaotic mentality could protect him from that thing.
Ahhhh!
With a scream that seemed more like a screech, Kumagawa turned desperately, trying to summon anything to protect himself... and he saw it... he saw a red-eyed wolf standing a few meters away, looking at him.
Kumagawa is an omnipotent monster at a universal level, but for some reason, he felt that nothing he did could hurt the wolf.
The wolf smiled and whispered a number, then Kumagawa felt chills, and he tried to erase that memory immediately, but he couldn't...
"No... it's not possible... I am immortal... I can erase death as such from existence... I will never die..." Kumagawa lowered his head and, as if making an excuse, began to try to convince himself that what he heard was a lie.
"That's what everyone thinks..." - The wolf ignored him and passed by him without paying him any more attention - "Now, how many times is it, boy?... 232? I think I'll change my hunting method again hehe..."
Kumagawa felt another presence near him, it was so small that he had not noticed it until that moment. It was a boy of perhaps twelve years old, with the face of the kid called Jiren.
"What are you doing?" - Kumagawa didn't understand what the boy was doing - "Are you trying to confront that thing?"
Kumagawa observed something impossible, a child with such an insignificant presence that he could be mistaken for an ant, facing that unimaginable thing that pretended to be a wolf.
Without fear, without remorse, without looking away, a common child against...
"Death!" - the wolf finished Kumagawa's thoughts and smiled with joy, pointing his claws at the boy. "You are the last one! It took me COUNTLESS eternities to hunt them all down, you little one, you are the last one, hehe~ resist as much as you can, your last variations showed that if something they have is willpower."
(Entity: The death of the real world)
(Level... Boundless)
If anyone here doesn't know what a Boundless is, well... it's everything you can imagine and what you can't imagine.
Among the three enemies that Jiren faced, death was the only Boundless one, it was death as such, without adornments or anything that makes it look more impressive, it's just inevitable death.
Jiren knew that the wolf was just playing with him, unlike the world and destiny that if they tried to kill him, death just had fun with him, unlike the destiny and the world that are from only one world, this death is... literally death.
Jiren felt like giving up many times every time he felt the presence of the wolf, but something inside him kept pushing him to fight again and again.
Death was so sure of its victory that it never tried to really kill Jiren, it can pretend to defeat them to please your ego, it can pretend to be destroyed to play with your reality, but you never really defeat it, the wolf always exists and always will be waiting to take you in any of its forms.
Jiren, even knowing this, clenched his fists and looked at the wolf in the face again and again, for more than a thousand times.
Kumagawa observed all this... and understood why he couldn't erase the will of this boy, a monster, something like that tried thousands of times and couldn't do it...
Kumagawa's consciousness returned while he was in the air, he saw Jiren pointing at him with his hand.
No...
I don't want to die!...
If Jiren's will is strong enough, he could nullify Kumagawa's immortality and that terrified Misogi.
NOOOO!
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
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