Frieren: — Chapter 88 - Please, Hakari-senpai, Just Think of It as for My Sake — Use the Flame Fist o...
[Cursed Energy] + [Technique Comprehension] + [Barrier Techniques]
[These three together constitute, Domain Strength.]
Hakari had fallen half a step behind Jogo because he needed to protect Yuta, but at this moment, Okkotsu Yuta, trapped inside another's domain, deployed his own from the absolute "disadvantaged position."
It goes without saying: under these circumstances, unless the power gap between the two was enormous, a domain couldn't even be extended.
On top of that, Okkotsu Yuta had spent so little time studying Jujutsu that he had achieved nothing in Barrier Techniques.
As for Technique Comprehension, he had only just, moments ago, used his own technique to copy Hakari's.
But...
When it came to Cursed Energy,
Okkotsu Yuta would not lose to any Jujutsu Sorcerer on the face of the earth. Not here. Not now.
The pure love BGM briefly drowned out the volcanic roar, buying the boy a few precious seconds.
In those few seconds, he had to press his advantage further. Yuta's brain, running hot from the threat of death, found him the answer.
"I won't let you succeed!"
Jogo didn't know how Yuta was pulling it off, but he was already moving forward fast.
This bastard! He's trying to do what that brat Hakari Kinji did, use the "infinite overflow" of Cursed Energy to restore his own body!
Okkotsu Yuta already possessed infinite Cursed Energy, but because that energy didn't rapidly dissipate on its own, it wouldn't repair his body either.
The injuries stacked on him right now were already lethal. But if he could lean on Hakari's technique, Yuta could come back at full strength.
[DIE ALREADY!]
At the same time, the Queen of Curses, Orimoto Rika, was not about to let Jogo interrupt Yuta.
The clash between Special Grade Cursed Spirits erupted immediately. This time, even through her rage, Rika suppressed the urge to flail wildly and focused on keeping Jogo tied down.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
A train pulled into the station at speed.
"Damn it, damn it, DAMN IT!"
Trading lightning-fast blows with Rika on all fours, Jogo shot an impatient look toward Yuta, who still held the hand sign for domain activation.
This bastard, how dare he,
No. Even if he uses it, it won't matter.
The probability of hitting the jackpot on the very first draw inside Hakari's domain is,
[1/239]
Those odds. How could he possibly hit it?
Right.
Once Jogo calmed down, he almost found it funny.
One in two hundred and thirty-nine, gambling on that in the middle of a fight?
"Has your brain finally broken?"
As expected. We Cursed Spirits are the new humanity. The superior species!
"............"
.
His brain... has broken...?
Faced with Jogo's mockery, Yuta hung his head, face dark.
Inside the Private Railway Pure Love Train, the boy and girl stood separated on opposite ends of the platform.
The animation filter dyed everything a warm, soft orange-pink.
Wind from somewhere carried cherry blossoms drifting in from both sides, briefly sweeping across their faces, veiling the expressions of the leads.
A whistle sounded in the distance. The train's silhouette sharpened, its clean off-white body cutting between the two.
The animation kept playing, and for just a moment, it seemed to stutter.
Yuta had drawn the same [Transition Animation] as Hakari.
Classic Taisho Romance.
A page of youth torn straight from a boy-meets-girl story.
[Will the girl stay for the boy?]
Train windows reflected the sky full of cherry blossoms and the last light of the setting sun.
[This will determine the effect of the technique.]
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK. Wheels grinding over rails.
[Generally speaking, a technique copied for the first time can't achieve a perfect effect.]
[Hakari Kinji himself used a special "cheat method" just to draw the jackpot early, just to ensure his technique would actually run.]
[However...]
CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.
[For the irregular prodigy of this era...]
[In that instant.]
Yuta stood beside the male lead inside the animation.
And on the small neighboring platform: Rika, still tangled with Jogo, and the heroine, hands clasped tight against her chest, her face full of hope.
Time seemed to slow.
"Unfortunately."
Okkotsu Yuta spoke for the first time since copying the technique.
One in two hundred and thirty-nine. A [jackpot] that by all rights had no business appearing.
But...
"If it's me and Rika."
He turned his palm upward, fingertips leveled at the thoroughly enraged Jogo.
Cherry blossoms and wind tugged at the hem of the boy's clothes.
RUMBLE, RUMBLE, RUMBLE.
The train rolled through.
[The probability that the heroine will respond to the hero is,]
"— One hundred percent."
["Common sense" is meaningless.]
As if mirroring something, Rika and Yuta's positions aligned, for one impossible moment, with the positions of the male and female leads of the Private Railway Pure Love Train.
The hero's plea.
The heroine's answer.
The heroine came through the underground passage to the hero's side. And Rika, clutching Jogo, dropped from the sky and slammed him into the ground.
BOOM!
Fireworks burst. The animation shook.
Coins clattered into the tray, clanging and jangling.
[Three symbols aligned, Pachinko Jackpot!]
[The Train of Pure Love officially departs!]
Infinite Cursed Energy surged from the boy's core.
"This is! —"
Wild wind threw his hair back and exposed his forehead. Yuta felt the bones and muscles inside him being rapidly rebuilt.
Collapsed bone structure swelled back at a speed visible to the naked eye, producing a steady stream of crisp cracks. Cursed Energy ran like silk thread, stitching the torn organs back together.
"So this is... Cursed Energy!"
Yuta breathed.
What?! Hah?!
"DAMN ITTTTTTT!"
He'd finally used his externally-released flame technique to shove Rika back, and now Jogo's single eye snapped to a point. The volcanic crown on his head vented scalding white steam. Fury hit like a geyser.
This damn brat... how the hell did he do it?!
Damn it. Damn it. DAMN IT.
"But even if you learned that trick — what good does it do!"
Jogo wasn't bluffing.
Even if Yuta had pulled off the technique, he only had the one draw.
"Don't get cocky, brat!"
Jogo had no intention of stopping.
Strictly speaking, waiting 4 minutes and 11 seconds, catching Yuta the moment he went to redeploy the [draw], would have been the smarter play.
But,
[That is the thinking of trash.]
"I'm killing you. Right now!"
Jogo came at both of them again.
He dove in. The punch he threw vanished from naked-eye range.
"!"
Yuta jerked his head to the side. The heat still grazed his cheek, scorching a wide burn mark, but even that was instantly closed by the overflowing Cursed Energy.
It was already [infinite] Cursed Energy. Now stacked on top of [infinite] again.
His recovery speed... even outpaced Hakari's.
BOOM!
A knife-hand struck a Cursed Tool. The shockwave spread in an arc, scattering magma like wet sand on a shore.
Sparks burst. The dense screech of clashing metal cut through everything.
(This brat!)
Jogo saw it.
With an immortal body under him, Yuta was fighting completely without regard for himself, trading wound for wound, not flinching once.
And on top of that, his coordination with the female Cursed Spirit was getting sharper.
Jogo's fist was deflected by Yuta. His other hand swept a blazing wave toward Rika.
CRACK!
A massive wall of heat rolled out. Inside the domain, Jogo's technique output was amplified to over 120% of its baseline.
That amplification was enough that a casual wave could melt an entire skyscraper.
But the Special Grade Vengeful Cursed Spirit Orimoto Rika was a monster even Gojo Satoru and Himmel had designated [un-exorcisable].
[AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! —!,]
Like a little girl's voice shoved into an electronic synthesizer and processed raw, the roar ripped out of her. The Queen of Curses twisted into the gap in the flames, five fingers hooked like talons, raking toward Jogo's shoulder.
Jogo fired the ground's magma like cannonballs straight at her.
HISSSSS!
Her entire body smoked from the burns, but she bit down and tore a chunk of flesh clean off Jogo's side.
"Tch!"
This thing, she's practically a traitor to her own kind!
Jogo backhanded her across the face. Rika reeled backward, but before she lost balance entirely she clung to him, refusing to let go.
Yuta drew his blade at the same time.
The clean arc of the slash was clearly aimed at Jogo's head. Jogo had no choice but to block it, throwing his arm up in a rush, letting the blade bite into his ulna. A small spray of black blood.
"AAAAAHHH!"
Arm pinned against his neck, Yuta dug his feet in and put everything into it, clearly trying to take the head along with the arm.
"Damn brat!"
BOOM! BANG! BANG!
Like a motorcycle engine stuttering to life, Jogo's forehead spewed intermittent bursts of flame. Compressed heat erupted from his palm like a welding torch, using the force to wrench his arm and fling Yuta's blade away.
The strike whiffed. Yuta knew he'd been pushed onto the back foot and had no time to dodge, he brought his blade up horizontal in front of him.
HISSSS, BOOM!
The next moment, flames swallowed half his body. His school uniform carbonized instantly, skin curling and blistering like paper over a flame.
Half his body's flesh was burned down a full layer, exposing dark red muscle underneath.
The boy, still running hot, forced the pain down.
Cursed Energy poured from the wounds, weaving flesh back into place.
But,
If Jogo kept accelerating, kept pushing the tempo, he could destroy Yuta's brain entirely. Even an automatically running Reverse Cursed Technique would stall out if the destruction outpaced the recovery.
Before [4 minutes and 11 seconds] was up.
Okkotsu Yuta would die.
SLAP!
Another exchange. Both of them were moving so fast they left afterimages. Yuta and Jogo shot their arms out, passing each other, and each grabbed the other's face.
"It's over!" Jogo roared.
Head completely enveloped. Domain's "Sure-Hit" stacked on top of "120% technique output."
Destroy the brain. Crush the immortal body head-on.
I win!
The battered Special Grade Cursed Spirit called up his Cursed Energy, ready to blast it through Yuta's skull.
Though, strictly speaking, due to the difference in their arm lengths, Yuta's hand had actually made contact with Jogo's face first.
Not that Jogo thought it mattered.
Until,
HISSS!
When water extinguishes flame, the extreme heat flash-vaporizes it in an instant, volume expanding violently, compressing the air into a sound wave.
That sound appeared directly against Jogo's facial skin.
HISSSSSSSSSSSS!
Searing pain.
"Wh — What?!"
Jogo screamed. His grip went loose without thinking.
Why?
How was Yuta able to hurt him?!
. At this point in time, Okkotsu Yuta hadn't grown into his potential yet, not by a long shot.
With Rika restrained, his [Copy Technique] had barely functioned. He'd been dragged into the opponent's domain.
[It should have ended there.]
But Yuta hadn't copied Hakari's technique just to survive.
He had three objectives.
The first: activate his own technique. Use the process to push his brain into a heightened state and temporarily boost his output.
The second: use the domain's technique effect to reverse injuries that should have been permanent, and in doing so, actually experience what "reversal" felt like from the inside.
Yuta had always paid close attention to how Himmel used Reverse Cursed Technique on him during battles.
And Yuta's technique is [Copy].
There's no direct proof, but a person's technique is closely tied to who that person is. Hakari's technique is linked to pachinko, to gambling. It fits him down to the bone.
If Yuta's technique is "Copy," that means he himself carries characteristics that match "copying."
Translated into something more concrete... perhaps it's an abnormal capacity for analysis and mimicry.
As a Jujutsu Sorcerer, Okkotsu Yuta has talent that stands shoulder to shoulder with Gojo Satoru.
[And the brilliance that belongs to an "irregular prodigy",]
[Blooms for the second time.]
"External release of Reverse Cursed Technique?!"
Jogo's scream was raw.
That's right.
Through Himmel's repeated demonstrations, through the brain-on-fire state that came with technique activation, through the [ultra-high-efficiency reversal] he had just experienced firsthand, Okkotsu Yuta had understood how Reverse Cursed Technique worked.
And in that same moment, he had grasped how to project it outward.
Because Reverse Cursed Technique runs on [Positive Energy], the opposite of Cursed Energy, to a Cursed Spirit built entirely from Cursed Energy,
[It is, without question, a lethal poison.]
In the same moment Jogo's hand closed around his head and threatened his life.
Yuta's hand threatened Jogo's.
The instant Jogo realized this, his heart skipped a beat.
Fear. And hard on its heels, shame at having felt it.
"Who the hell do you think is going to be killed by youuuuu!"
Absolutely refusing to let his dignity as the [strongest Cursed Spirit] be defiled by a brat like this, Jogo cranked his Cursed Energy output higher.
Even Reverse Cursed Technique can't kill me in an instant!
The external release runs at one-third of normal reversal efficiency.
Time required to kill Jogo: roughly, [1 second. 2 seconds.]
Time required for Jogo's "technique effect" + "domain Sure-Hit" to fully destroy Yuta's brain against his immortal body: roughly, [1 second. 2 seconds.]
[Equal.]
"AAAAAAAHHHHH!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!."
Both of them roared and laid their killing cards on the table.
And Jogo felt it, that hairline difference between them.
I'll be faster.
Something deep in his nature as a curse told him so.
The winner of this battle would be him.
...
By all conventional logic, perhaps.
But Yuta hadn't copied Hakari's technique just to survive.
He had [three] objectives.
The first two had already played out.
And the third...
"Hey, hey, hey — looks like you two are having fun without me!"
A shadow fell over Jogo.
In that instant, the strongest Cursed Spirit's heart was swallowed by a torrent of fury and dread.
(Why?)
His teeth ground together. Jogo could not accept what was in front of him.
(Why isn't that brat Hakari Kinji dead!)
"HAH!"
A man wrapped entirely in flame launched into the air, back from hell itself.
. The answer had been buried in a conversation all along.
[During the draw phase, the animation performance begins. Different animations play based on the result. The [Pseudo-Continuation] in the preview animation can also use a single draw chance to trigger multiple animation entry effects, refreshing one's state in the process!]
This was what Hakari had tried to explain to Jogo once, before Jogo cut him off.
The contents of that explanation had long since been force-fed into Jogo's mind as part of the technique effect.
But Jogo had no patience for the specifics. He'd only held onto the general gist and ignored the rest.
[Pseudo-Continuation.]
A backup function built into Hakari's technique. An entry animation triggered through the draw, and when that animation played, his body would receive a complete restoration.
The information Jogo had tuned out. Okkotsu Yuta had not.
Even though Yuta was equally uninterested in pachinko, he was the kind of person who actually listened when someone spoke. Whether it was his first trip to [Real Vegas] or the first time he was pulled into Hakari's domain, he had absorbed every rule in full.
So he knew.
After copying Hakari's technique and deploying his own domain, Yuta briefly redirected the domain's innate "Sure-Hit", off himself, and onto [Hakari] instead.
He handed the [Animation Entry Effect: State Refresh] to Hakari, waiting unseen in Jogo's blind spot.
And Hakari, throughout the entire battle, had been keeping himself alive. Cursed Energy wrapped around his organs, heart, lower back, brain, maintaining just enough supply to keep going. The agony of burning skin had been entirely ignored, all of it spent hoarding the one moment needed to kill a Cursed Spirit.
This was how the situation came to be.
Yuta held Jogo. Hakari came from behind.
"Yuta, you bastard!"
His whole body was on fire. He was still grinning.
Not the eager anticipation of their first meeting. Not the disappointment of their second. The light in Hakari's eyes was sharp and blazing, exhilaration rising through him in uncontrollable waves, twisting his face into something wild and almost ridiculous.
Yuta mastering a technique on the fly.
His read on pachinko.
The declaration of pure love on a subway platform.
And this final, all-in gamble of a battle plan.
Everything had overturned Hakari's original read on this kid.
Gojo-sensei, you weren't wrong, were you?
Okkotsu Yuta, you...
"Aren't you — absolutely burning with it!"
BANG!.
An infinitely regenerating body. Flames wrapped around the outer layer of his skin, forging a fist that could not be defended against.
If he had to give it a name,
Flame Fist.
And this punch carried every ounce of Hakari's rising heat.
It reached something that should not have been possible.
[Miracle.]
There was an old saying that had circulated through the Jujutsu world for a long time.
[When a Jujutsu Sorcerer's physical strike and Cursed Energy impact occur within a margin of 0.000001 seconds, the spatial distortion triggered raises the attack's power to 2.5 times the original.]
Named,
"[Black Flash]!"
"Ngh!"
Flowing flame and pitch-black lightning. A man's passion, compressed into a single fist,
Drove straight through Jogo.
"OHHHHHHHHHHHHH AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"
[Crack.]
The volcanic curtain was torn apart by the force.
Massive trauma. Compounded by the Reverse Cursed Technique damage eating through him, even the strongest Cursed Spirit could not hold his domain together.
The domain collapsed. The Sure-Hit vanished with it.
Jogo had not killed Yuta in the end.
And on the other side of that ledger...
"DAMN ITTTTTTTTT!"
He had to admit it.
Even accounting for carelessness. For arrogance. Right now, you two are stronger than me.
But!
In that instant,
Splat.
Blood caught the air.
A volcanic head went sailing upward.
Jogo had cut off his own head.
"What!"
Yuta froze. Even Hakari looked surprised.
At this exact moment: Jogo's left hand was covering Yuta's face. Yuta had his head in a grip. Hakari's blow had pierced clean through his heart from behind. And his answer to all of that was,
His right hand slashed upward, severing his own neck in one motion.
Then his entire body stamped hard on the ground, leaned slightly back, and kicked straight up in a full split, connecting with the bottom of his own falling head.
Viscous blood acted as lubricant. Yuta's grip slipped. Jogo's head shot free.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
It spun at high speed through the air, and the shattered walls of the domain gave him a way out.
"Kenjaku!"
The severed head of Jogo screamed.
"Drop the Curtain — let me out!"
Asking for favors in this condition was hardly dignified, but Jogo was past caring.
Outside was the "No Exit" Curtain Kenjaku had placed, and beyond that was the ordinary Curtain Himmel had set. If Kenjaku dropped his barrier, Jogo could clear both.
Hanami and Mahito were waiting outside. Once he reached them, it would be fine.
It had to be fine. As long as he could get there, as long as he could just reach.
[BANG!]
But as Jogo's domain shattered completely.
What greeted him was not the pitch-black [Curtain].
Outside his shattered domain was another shattered domain.
Black fragments drifted through the air, suspended like winter snowflakes that had forgotten how to fall.
What Jogo's severed head saw was indeed his two companions. But "companions" wasn't the right word for what he was looking at.
Because,
"Hanami!"
His companion was also reduced to just a head.
Held in the hand of a man Jogo had only ever seen in photographs.
That man turned and looked at him.
That face,
The Hero. Himmel.
Jogo closed his eyes. His mouth fell open.
How bitter.
It's over.
➤ Next: The Usefulness of Mahito