Frieren: — Chapter 84 - All My People~All My People~
Jogo's intelligence on the two brats before him came entirely from Kenjaku.
[Okkotsu Yuta is a modern-day anomaly, host to the Special Grade Vengeful Cursed Spirit Orimoto Rika, wielder of infinite Cursed Energy, and possessor of the Copy Cursed Technique.]
[Be careful, Jogo. If that child goes berserk, even as he is now, he could kill you.]
Ha?
Jogo looked at the photograph Kenjaku had handed him. A surge of pure irritation rolled through him.
Kill me?
Who could kill me?
This sorry-looking little brat in the photo?
Veins bulged. And, in the most literal sense of the phrase, he saw red.
Jogo was born from humanity's fear of volcanoes. Japan sits atop restless tectonic ground, dotted with peaks like Mount Fuji, groaning and waiting. The people of this cramped island nation had spent centuries quietly terrified of the eruptions and earthquakes they couldn't fight or flee.
That fear built him.
So Jogo is immensely powerful.
Intelligent Cursed Spirits are a rarity among their kind. Nearly a myth. And among that rare few, Jogo was. in a class entirely his own.
Power beyond reason. Even in Kyoto, where Jujutsu Sorcerers clustered like soldiers in a garrison, he could rule unopposed.
As for Kenjaku's warning: not only did Jogo have no intention of heeding it, he went further.
[Forget this brat!]
[By your own logic, as long as I pull it off, even Gojo Satoru is mine to deal with, right~]
An arrogant grin. Absolute confidence.
The strongest Cursed Spirit, even standing before the modern Special Grades, still bared his killing intent without a second thought.
---
Back to the present.
"What Queen of Curses!"
Locked in a stalemate just moments before, Jogo swung his arm and roared.
BOOM!.
Another wave of fire erupted and blasted Rika backward. Jogo seized the opening and stomped the ground beneath him apart.
CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK!—
Murals. Hanging scrolls. Red carpet.
Beds from the surrounding guest rooms. Shredded bathtub cotton. Porcelain shards. Wood splinters.
All of it spiraled into the air and danced in a wild flurry as both sides charged each other at once.
Jogo went for Yuta. Hakari stepped into his path before he could close the distance.
A flame-wrapped fist roared forward. Hakari raised his arm and blocked it head-on.
"Out of the way!"
BAM!
A muffled impact. The force shuddered straight through Hakari's shoulder.
"Ha! Well, I can't let you through either!"
Hakari hooked a hand onto the broken beam behind him, launched a thundering kick off his size-45 feet, and Jogo swatted it aside without a second glance.
Bodies reinforced by Cursed Energy, both of them started using the scattered debris as footholds, trading an assault that laughed at gravity itself.
In a manga, it'd be nothing but intersecting speed lines and formless black silhouettes, with the scenery constantly detonating around them. Even Yuta, standing right there in the middle of it, couldn't track them.
(Hakari-senpai... he's so strong....)
Rika had returned to the battlefield at some point, now airborne, Yuta pulled tight against her chest. The fight barely registered to her. She just kept tilting her head and asking about Yuta's condition in that sharp, pitifully sweet voice of hers.
"I'm fine, Rika."
Yuta pushed down the swell of awe in his chest and shook his head.
"We have to help Hakari-senpai, or else—"
BOOM! BOOM!
Both combatants stopped their freefall and landed.
Beds, floor tiles, and fragments that bore no resemblance to anything they'd once been piled together into something like a demolition site after the charges went off.
Yuta landed on a slope of rubble and kept his eyes locked forward.
The instant before they hit the ground, Hakari and Jogo exchanged one final punch.
Hakari wore that wide, healthy grin of his, every tooth out, and pulled his right arm back for a full-power swing. Heavy. Devastating,
Slap.
Despite every physical advantage, his speed was completely overwhelmed.
One palm, simply pressing down on Hakari's fist. Then Jogo reversed and, in a single frame, landed at least four blows directly into Hakari's face.
PFFT!
Noseblood and other unidentified fluids burst free and traced a wet arc through the air. Hakari sailed over Yuta in a glorious boomerang arc and cratered into the wreckage behind him.
"Senpai!"
Yuta wanted to check on him. He couldn't bring himself to look away from Jogo.
The group had fallen from roughly the seventh floor to the fourth. Everything between had been obliterated by the earlier shockwaves, hollowing out a wide cavity in the middle.
The whole space had collapsed into a rough cone, wider at the top, dipping down toward the center, nothing level anywhere.
Jogo and Yuta now stood near opposite ends of that cone's diameter.
That distance, though.
Jogo didn't need half a second to cross it.
And he was already in a lunging stance, that single massive eye full of nothing but killing intent.
Yuta snapped into a defensive posture, blade angled low, letting Rika cover half his body.
But,
"Hey, hey, hey! I'm not done with you yet!"
BAM!
A hairy leg in shredded jeans kicked through the debris heaped on top of him. Hakari Kinji scratched the back of his head and stepped back into the fight.
Jogo dropped his combat stance. Shifted to observation.
(This guy...)
Their exchange had given Jogo two conclusions.
(That Special Grade brat called Okkotsu Yuta isn't even worth a thought. Orimoto Rika doesn't have an ounce of the oppressive presence Kenjaku described. That bastard was lying.)
(But this human called Hakari, on the other hand....)
Jogo glanced at his own arm.
Barely noticeable. But he knew. There was a slight tremor.
(His Cursed Energy form is rough. Throws off the feel when we trade hits. But that's not a problem.)
(Decent hand-to-hand. Decent combat instincts. What he's missing is experience, and pure power.)
He clenched his fist. Let it go.
(But something is off. And I know exactly what it is.)
His Cursed Technique.
Through their entire fight, the opponent hadn't used it once.
Even Jogo had opened with his basic flame technique the moment combat started, for extra damage. Yet this man, clearly born to fight, hadn't touched his. Activation condition? Non-combat type?
Or was it,
Jogo, surprisingly, was the type who kept thinking even in the heat of battle. Arrogant as he was, he didn't make the mistake of underestimating a live opponent.
And in stark contrast to that quiet analysis:
"Hmm... I hit that hard just now, and I still didn't punch through the wall." Hakari laughed, wild and unguarded. "That means your Veil is special — not a plain sphere, but a double-layer Veil wrapped tight around the whole hotel, right?"
Dead on.
Every bit of him radiated untamed wildness in that moment. Exhilarated down to his bones.
Hakari Kinji.
Highly praised by Gojo Satoru himself, this kid carried a tactician's brain where you least expected it. But in actual combat, he also had something else entirely: a madness that made him completely, utterly impossible to predict.
Specifically:
"Domain Expansion."
"What?!"
[Sudden Action]
[Hakari Kinji's Madness, Outrunning Jogo's Reasoning]
[And, ]
Jogo's eyes flew wide.
(That Domain, so fast!)
Before he could react.
[Idle Death Gamble]
Right palm facing upward, fingers loosely cupped, thumb resting light. Left hand settling beneath in near-perfect symmetry.
In that instant.
[The evening breeze drifts gently across the streets]
[Your faint voice trembles in the wind]
A completely inexplicable BGM.
A blinding flash of high-bright light saturated the entire physical space.
The scene reset. Everyone dropped together onto a brilliantly lit train station platform.
Right after,
The Domain's effect hit. Forced Cursed Technique disclosure. For every person present.
Yuta processed the flood of information almost the instant it arrived.
Because he'd been here before. Hakari had taken him once. He'd never actually played, but he roughly knew the rules.
Right,
Hakari's Domain was a lottery game, modeled on pachinko.
Its full operational mechanics alone, rendered in manga form, would have filled at least three pages with nothing but text boxes.
"YOU LITTLE BRAT!"
Jogo's expression twisted into something ugly.
"STOP FLOODING MY BRAIN WITH THIS GARBAGE!"
➤ Next: That Is to Say, Jogo Wins!