The Law of Ueki, Volume 8

The Law of Ueki is a shonen manga by Tsubasa Fukuchi, serialized in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday from 2001 to 2004, in 16 volumes. In the story, one hundred candidates for the godhood each select a middle school student, grant that student a special power, and set them to battle; the candidate god represented by the final winner succeeds to the godhood, and the winning student receives the "blank material." The protagonist, Kosuke Ueki, is granted by his homeroom teacher, Mr. Kobayashi, the power to "turn garbage that fits in the palm of his hand into plants," but each time he uses the power to harm someone, one of his own "talents" disappears. To uphold the justice Kobayashi insists on, and to save those drawn into the contest, Ueki fights one power user after another. This volume is the eighth in the series and corresponds to the "Underworld Arc": to defeat Robert Haydn, Ueki and his companions arrive at the Dracula Building in the underworld, where they face one challenge after another staged as battle games. As the companions fight, they must also confront their own choices; the reason Sano Seiichiro joined Robert's group of ten is also revealed in this volume.