That Day When Suzuki-kun Wasn't the Mob-B! Chapter 494: Show Me All of You (Patreon)

"Be kinder to me!"

Mai complained, her cheeks flushed a deep, indignant pink after being so casually mocked. She lowered the smoking barrel of her revolver, pouting as she glared at him. 

"I have told you how to grow stronger," Suzuki sighed, his tone carrying a lazy, teasing drawl. "Come on. Show me all of you, instead of just shooting me with a tiny, useless bullet."

Mai's flush deepened, but she bit her lip, her grip on the gun tightening.

Suzuki sighed inwardly. Mai hadn't changed her core combat style much. Her attack was still simple. A pistol? Against a normal human or a low-grade cursed spirit, a bullet was a threat. But who was she facing? She was facing Suzuki Zenin. Did she honestly think a piece of lead propelled by mere gunpowder could pierce his skin?

Still, he wouldn't hurt Mai; he cared about her far too much for that. As for the deeper, more intimate rewards of 'showing him everything'—well, he would wait until she graduated first.

Crunch.

Suzuki's ears twitched. He had to admit, Aoi Todo was durable. The sound of heavy boots crushing the gravel drew his attention. Despite having his face caved in by a kick that shattered a concrete wall, Todo was already standing back up. The metallic tang of fresh blood joined the scent of gunpowder in the courtyard as Todo wiped the blood from his swollen jaw, his muscles tensing as he tried to think of a way to defeat the monster in front of him.

Unfortunately, for Todo, Suzuki noticed him moving first.

With a casual, almost lazy flick of his thumb and middle finger, Suzuki flicked the crushed bullet he had caught from Mai right back at Todo.

CRACK!

The air snapped.

Suzuki had applied Projection Sorcery to the tiny piece of lead. Forced to abide by the 24-frames-per-second rule, the bullet accelerated instantly to Mach 5. To the naked eye, it didn't even exist. It was just an invisible distortion tearing through the atmosphere.

"Eh?"

Todo, who had been stealthily circulating his cursed energy to move, was completely stunned. He barely had time to react.

CLAP!

A sharp, ringing sound echoed across the yard. In a fraction of a millisecond, the air displaced wildly around Todo.

BOOOOOM!

The Mach 5 bullet missed Todo by a mere centimeter, leaving a burning friction trail against his cheek before it cleanly penetrated three successive dormitory walls and buried itself deep into the bedrock of the mountain behind the school. 

"..."

Suzuki raised an eyebrow, a rare look of genuine approval crossing his face. "Your ability is interesting."

Boogie Woogie. The name was incredibly stupid, and the mechanic was simple, yet it was infuriatingly troublesome. By simply clapping his hands, Todo could instantly swap the positions of any two objects possessing cursed energy.

"How...?" Todo gasped, his massive chest heaving. The terror of nearly having his head chopped off caught up with him. He couldn't comprehend how Suzuki could flick a bullet fast enough to break the sound barrier with zero wind-up.

"If you can actually manage to hit me, I'll tell you," Suzuki smirked.

"..."

Could Todo defeat Suzuki? Despite his bruised, bleeding face and his unshakeable confidence, Todo's combat instincts were screaming at him. He was not Suzuki's opponent. Yet, it was an incredibly rare chance to fight an apex predator without the fear of being murdered. Why shouldn't he go all out?

"Come on, everyone! Let's attack him together!" Mai suddenly shouted, her voice breaking through the tension. She took a deep breath, pushing her chest out defiantly. "Or else... you're all just going to get beaten one by one!"

"..."

The rest of the Kyoto students stood paralyzed. How were they supposed to react? Could they even face the Lord of the Zenin Clan? The pressure radiating from Suzuki made the air feel thick, almost suffocating, like standing at the bottom of the ocean.

"Well, since you're all too nervous, let me make the first move."

Suzuki's gaze casually drifted to the towering wooden and metal puppet, Mechamaru.

Then, he moved.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

An explosion of sound and force erupted. Before Kokichi Muta could even register a threat through his monitors miles away, the heavy mechanical doll was obliterated. The sickening sound of twisting metal and snapping wood filled the courtyard. Mechamaru's headless, armless chassis was blown backward, crashing into the dirt as sparks hissed and the sharp smell of burning oil and fried circuits flooded the area.

"Your doll is too weak," Suzuki noted nonchalantly, dusting off his knuckles.

Would Suzuki ever help Kokichi build a better puppet? Probably not. Honestly, standing here on the Kyoto High training grounds, Suzuki realized that beating up a bunch of high school students wasn't nearly as entertaining as he had imagined. When a child faced an adult, the power imbalance made them tense. They couldn't give their all.

He actually pitied Kokichi. Born with a Heavenly Restriction that granted him immense cursed energy at the cost of a fragile, agonizingly painful body missing an arm and the lower half of his legs. If Suzuki had been born into that torment, he would have hated the world too. It felt like bullying to pick on him, so Suzuki figured he would just end the puppet's misery quickly.

As Kokichi's connection was severed, the remaining students snapped out of their daze.

Noritoshi Kamo took a sharp, deep breath. While Suzuki was standing over the ruined puppet, Kamo clapped his hands together, his cursed energy flaring.

"Piercing Blood!"

By fiercely compressing the blood at the tips of his fingers, Kamo unleashed a pressurized, laser-thin stream of crimson. The attack shrieked through the air at supersonic speeds, carrying the heavy, metallic stench of iron. It was sharp enough to slice cleanly through solid steel.

Yet, it was nowhere near fast enough to touch Suzuki.

Suzuki merely tilted his head. The supersonic blood stream whistled past his ear, cutting a few strands of his hair. In the very next microsecond, Suzuki materialized directly in front of Kamo and lightly tapped the heir's forehead with his index finger.

"Eh?"

Clink.

In that exact second, the world around Kamo shattered into 24 distinct frames. he suddenly froze completely solid, trapped inside a two-dimensional animation frame that looked like a pane of frosted acrylic glass suspended in mid-air.

"Projection Sorcery?!"

Momo and Miwa screamed in unison, utterly dumbfounded. They watched as Kamo, one of the most powerful students at Kyoto High, was frozen and defeated with a single, effortless tap.

The ability was practically a cheat code. Not only did it allow Suzuki to move at speeds impossible for a human to track, but if he touched an opponent and they failed to instantly abide by his 24-frames-per-second rule, they were frozen solid for one full second. In a battle between sorcerers, one second of total paralysis was a guaranteed death sentence. Suzuki could have easily punched a hole straight through Kamo's chest right then and there.

But Suzuki held back. Kamo was pitiful in his own way. Blood Manipulation was a versatile, highly destructive technique, but it was incredibly taxing. If you used too much of your own blood, you would die of anemia. Now, if Kamo could learn Reverse Cursed Technique (RCT) to endlessly replenish his red blood cells, his ability would become stronger. Suzuki already had several ideas on how to optimize it.

But enough about the boys.

Right now, Momo and Miwa were shaking like leaves. Miwa's palms were slick with cold sweat as she gripped the rough hilt of her katana, her knuckles turning white. Momo clutched her wooden broom tightly, the rough bristles scratching her hands. They had absolutely no method of attack that could even scratch this man.

Suzuki sighed, preparing to call the match.

But for the first time all day, Suzuki severely underestimated someone.

"Mai?!" Suzuki's eyes widened in genuine shock.

He felt a sudden, terrifying drop in atmospheric pressure. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He threw himself backward, dodging as fast as he physically could, breaking the sound barrier to gain distance.

Mai had used the time he spent playing with the others to condense her cursed energy to its absolute breaking point. Sweat dripped down her flushed neck, her clothes clinging to her heaving chest from the sheer exertion of the technique Suzuki had secretly been guiding her toward.

"True Sphere!" Mai screamed, her voice straining with effort.

Using her Construction technique, she had forced the liquid metal she created to form a theoretically perfect object. A true sphere. It possessed zero friction and infinite pressure. had created into a void of creation.

The air around the black, hovering orb literally warped and screamed. There was no smell, no sound near it—only the sensation of absolute deletion. Anything that touched the sphere wouldn't just be crushed; it would be completely erased from reality.