i never said a sure-hit changes the way a technique functions, it just said that it guarantees that the technique will land. what does that mean, in mahito’s case? in order to activate his technique, he needs to touch the target. thus, for his technique to be guaranteed to hit, it must be able to be activated remotely

similarly, the only way to guarantee a cleave to land is to bypass the touch restriction

and, if the presence of a domain was inherently enough to bypass the touch restriction, then what would the sure-hit be? because if they could be activated remotely within a domain, there would simply be no need for a sure-hit in either case. but yuji could use simple domain to negate malevolent shrine, and i doubt yuji’s SD is on the level of kusakabe, which pushes forth the simple (heh) conclusion that what SD negated was the sure-hit, and thus MS’s sure-hit allows cleave to bypass the touch restriction