Frieren: — Chapter 103 - Straight-Eight-Man
Mahito.
A life-form born from human malice. His singularity surpassed every other cursed spirit in existence.
His capacity for learning was extraordinary, extraordinary enough that he repeatedly grasped advanced techniques in the razor-thin space between life and death. And by cornering Himmel, he had done it again: triggered a resonance deep within his own soul.
Mahito understood the situation clearly.
(Domain Expansion involves a clear surge of Cursed Energy. Himmel will absolutely detect the moment I move. Even if I restructure my body to shift the hand-sign positions somewhere else, if he tears my entire body apart before I finish, none of it matters.)
(He'll attack the instant I begin.)
(But, then let's just try it!)
Even without predicting the effect of Himmel's Purification Arts, Mahito had suspected the man might launch a full assault at precisely this moment.
And for that suspicion alone, he was willing to bet his life.
It was a losing hand either way.
If you don't gamble, how could you possibly win!
Fortune or doom, let's find out!
Riding that surge of burning conviction, Mahito, at the very instant of near-death, landed a Black Flash.
A full-force punch saturated with Cursed Energy. Amplified by the Black Flash, it finally managed to deflect Himmel's slash.
Even though the slash had been delivered in [Priest] mode. Even though it had already pierced through the Simple Domain.
The damage Mahito took from eating that strike head-on was no different from what any ordinary cursed spirit would suffer being cleaved apart from the fist inward.
But.
[Not Fatal.]
Dodging the killing blow mattered. What mattered even more was,
[Mahito's Soul Awakening.]
Cursed Energy surged, wild and uncontrolled.
Mahito and Himmel stood less than half a meter apart. Then, all at once, pale tumorous flesh erupted across Mahito's body.
Himmel frowned and slashed.
A dense web of cuts shredded the mass into thousands of strips in an instant.
Still, the blade could not reach the core.
Mahito compressed his soul, shrinking its volume, discarding the bulk of his physical form like waste Cursed Energy shed from the skin.
Swelling grotesquely in distortion, then slamming shut with violent contraction.
Reshape. Strip away.
It looked exactly like a boss's second-phase transition, the cutscene where the enemy becomes temporarily immune to all stagger.
Finally.
The heaving flesh receded from the surface. In its place: a pale, ridged, hardened body.
"Happy birthday — that's the right thing to say, isn't it?"
A ferocious faceplate formed in the distortion. Spike-like blade-limbs bloomed from the ends of his elbows, cold and murderous. Mahito raised one arm to cover his face, grinning with something close to ecstasy.
[Instant Spirit Body of Distorted Killing.]
Abandoning the ability to physically transform, this was the ceiling of what the cursed spirit Mahito could reach. His physical strength and raw power received an unprecedented boost. At this moment, he existed on a higher plane entirely.
And more importantly, right here, right now, this was Mahito's domain.
The amplification of his Cursed Technique. The manic high of landing a Black Flash.
"COME ON! HIMMEL!"
Mahito, at this moment, was operating at two hundred percent of his peak.
"TIME TO KILL EACH OTHER!"
He attacked first.
BOOM!
Explosive shadows tore through the pitch-black domain. Collisions that pulverized matter chain-detonated across the space. Himmel angled his blade and braced.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
Steel met Mahito's exoskeleton dead-on. The force made Himmel's eyes shift by a fraction.
Before he could process the next move, Mahito was already airborne.
Both elbows pulled back. Chest thrust forward. Biceps and triceps swelling simultaneously on both arms.
Coiling storms raged through the domain. Endless attacks closed in from every direction.
Himmel dodged. And thought.
[The Domain.]
Inside this domain layered with Idle Transfiguration, Himmel's [Priest] Purification Arts and the domain were locked in a continuous grinding war. Idle Transfiguration couldn't reach Himmel's soul, but the arms generated within the domain had physical mass. They could affect his movement through pure force.
Both feet shoved off the ground. His waist torqued and drove his torso clear of the hands erupting from behind him, a swarm of pythons lunging at his back.
"Hey!"
Face-to-face with Mahito in his Instant Spirit Body.
"TRY THIS!"
"—!"
Himmel's eyes, still. Mahito's expression, savage.
One above, one below. Both struck at once.
Like a thunderclap. Like a downpour.
Arms and blade-edge scraped and sparked, and when those sparks found each other and merged in a chain reaction, they became something destructive, pure light and violence.
Mahito laughed, wild and unhinged, his elbow-scythes swinging in brutal arcs. Shockwaves rolled outward in rings, kicking up reversed cascades of debris.
Then,
Black light detonated again.
[Black Flash.]
Land one Black Flash, and the euphoric state that follows makes the next one easier to reach.
And Mahito's instinct for Black Flash, it was perhaps unmatched among all sorcerers who had ever lived.
[The domain amplifying his Cursed Technique.]
[The euphoria of a freshly awakened Cursed Technique.]
[The catalyzing effect of back-to-back Black Flashes.]
[The accumulated toll of grinding Himmel down over an extended fight.]
I can win.
I can win!
Mahito knew it. This was his last chance.
In a real fight, to frame it in gaming terms, what decided the outcome was the numbers each side brought, and how well they used them. Even if his fully-released stats still fell short of Himmel's on paper, it didn't matter.
The arena was his domain. Himmel was at a structural disadvantage. And Mahito himself was in a condition he had never reached before.
WOOOOOM!
Space stretched and warped under arcing light. The air was filled with the high-pitched shriek of shattering glass.
Collision. Impact.
For the first time, Mahito danced with Himmel on something resembling equal ground.
(I can win! I can win! Keep this up, I can WIN!)
Mahito's rhythm accelerated with his excitement.
(Jogo.)
(Dagon...)
(How are you two doing right now...)
The voice inside Mahito's chest was nothing like the cold savagery he wore in front of enemies. It was clean and soft, like morning frost scattering over broken jade. Quiet. Warm.
The flash of Jogo's face, harsh and exasperated and yet, in its own way, indulgent.
Dagon's gentle, earnest expression.
And...
A white silhouette, glimpsed for just a moment in memory.
Hanami.
A cursed spirit who laughed and joked its way through everything, but had its own inner world, too.
Born from human fear. And yet carrying something unmistakably human.
Even among them, there had been something close to family.
[The one laughing on the wasteland a hundred years from now doesn't have to be me. As long as curses can stand upright like humans, that is enough.]
Jogo had said that.
[Humans fear death and refuse to speak its name. And yet, on the far shore of death, there are still those who stand.]
Hanami had said that.
[To humans, death is a mirror. And you, Mahito, you are that mirror itself.]
Everyone had placed their hopes on him.
So,
"I WILL WIN!"
Blade-light rose skyward.
Shoulder and arm snapping like a whip, he wrenched his elbow up and drove the scythe-blade through the air. Black light split the atmosphere wide open.
The third,
[Black Flash]!
Each successive Black Flash pushed his state closer to something the Hero himself embodied.
Victory was right there. Within reach.,!.
"Quiet down."
[. Hum.]
The blade tore through the air.
The black light shattered. And the intersecting blade-light had already arrived, one beat ahead, pressing into Mahito's chest and abdomen.
(Huh?)
Mahito's thoughts stalled.
(How can this be...)
He saw it.
The Hero who should have been backed into a corner, Cursed Energy was rising off his body.
Not a vast amount. But the flow was extraordinarily fast.
"I don't know what Kenjaku told you," Himmel said, "but you didn't seriously think I'd made zero progress in nine years, did you?"
And that was exactly right.
After [Priest] was used to rescue the hostages and counter the domain, Himmel had been operating on base stats alone. Base-state Himmel was powerful, certainly, but it was a power built on combat experience and raw numbers. Immense, but technically uncomplicated.
Three Black Flashes. Domain amplification. True body liberation. Mahito, having reached the singular peak of his existence, had genuinely earned the right to stand against that version of Himmel.
But,
That was already a ghost.
They had both overlooked the simplest variable.
[Cursed Energy.]
When Himmel first arrived in this world, he had been assessed as having no talent for Jujutsu. But with each use of [Astraeum Crus], he had housed his companions' souls within his body.
Heiter and Frieren's mastery of mana, their techniques, their precision, had been carved into his flesh by repetition. Over time, Himmel had learned to apply Cursed Energy.
In [Priest] mode, that mana-based capability elevated by one tier.
And on his own, Himmel's Cursed Energy reserves sat at roughly a Grade 2 Jujutsu Sorcerer's level.
Not much.
But for someone like Himmel, even a marginal improvement in base capability translated into something enormous in practice.
And besides,
[Yeah, there was a certain someone who studied Jujutsu for a full month and still couldn't get Cursed Energy to coat a weapon.]
During a PE class years ago, watching Okkotsu train, Gojo Satoru had said that to needle him.
But,
9 years had passed since then.
[Simple Domain.]
Cursed Energy rose around his body and built a Simple Domain, briefly canceling the interference from the massive hands the surrounding domain generated, and stacking a second layer of enhancement on top of his base capabilities.
[Cursed Energy Coating.]
Cursed Energy channeled rapidly along the blade, sharpening draw speed and impact alike.
"I don't know what you were thinking," Himmel said. "But I was only ever waiting for one thing, the moment Purification Arts fully settled on every last hostage. Forcing you to open your domain was the point."
Himmel lowered his stance.
Arm drawn inward, tucked beneath his left ribs. Left foot set back, right leg forward. Right hand gripping the sword, left fingertips pinching the base of the blade.
Crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-crack.
Skin and flesh stretched taut over solid muscle. Veins rose in hard ridges along his arms.
[Iaido Slash.]
The pale blue light behind his eyes, soft as mist, clear as glass, was wrenched outward by sheer velocity, dragging a razor-straight streak of light through the air.
"Once you're inside a sealed space like this—" Himmel's voice was quiet, even.
"—what I do next is entirely my call."
Blade pressed flat along the forearm. A reverse cross-draw.
The sound of air splitting joined into one long, desolate wail.
Light passed through Mahito's body.
And bisected it completely.
This time,
Mahito never had the chance to deploy Simple Domain.
This strike.
In [Priest] mode. Aimed directly at the soul.
[Crack.]
The domain ruptured along with its host. Vast sheets of black glass collapsed and fell, scattering across the ground.
.
"You..."
Himmel sheathed his sword. He shook the blue hair out of his face. Only then did he glance down at the minced flesh twitching on the ground below.
To Mahito's euphoria. To his surging battle-hunger. Himmel's response was,
"What were you muttering about this whole time?"
He hadn't been paying attention at all.
"Cough... cough..."
Cut to pieces, his soul suffering damage that couldn't be undone, Mahito could only squirm across the ground. Two rows of teeth grew and clacked open and shut as he wheezed out something barely audible.
"Impossible..."
"Impossible... it's impossible..."
Tap.
His body shuddered violently. Mahito snapped his head back to look at Himmel, walking toward him, one step at a time.
"!"
The madness.
The arrogance.
None of it was there anymore.
Like something cornered by a predator, Mahito dragged himself across the ground in a hideous, desperate scramble, shrieking sounds clawing out of his throat.
"No!"
"Don't, stay AWAY from me!"
Himmel, of course, did not stop.
He closed the distance. The blade rose.
"Wait, don't kill me! Just listen! Kenjaku's plan,! ——! ——"
The slash fell.
HUM!,,!.
No chance to beg.
One clean stroke severed Mahito's neck.
Himmel did intend to keep Mahito alive. But he also needed to strip the man completely of movement and thought.
[Priest] mode was more than capable of both.
In that instant.
Mahito became Masamichi.
Still.
[Special Grade Cursed Spirit. Mahito]
[Extermination Complete]
[Casualties,]
[Zero]
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
Himmel tucked Mahito's head inside his cloak (the thing was roomy enough) and with his other hand, dialed out.
The call connected almost immediately. Ijichi's voice came through.
[Himmel-san! Did you, did you already deal with the enemy over there?! Wait, ]
"Yes. Took a little longer than I'd have liked."
[A little longer... you're joking... it's barely been...]
"Let's do the debrief first. How are things on your end?"
[Yes! I'm sorry, you already warned me someone might go after Okkotsu-kun and the others, and I still couldn't...]
"Don't worry about it."
The cross-wheel at Himmel's back cycled over to [Mage]. He raised one hand and ran levitation magic through the wreckage of the shattered train, reinforcing the structure, gradually sealing the broken sections of the tunnel as he kept talking.
"More or less what I expected. Where's Gojo?"
[Gojo-san headed for Sendai immediately. He should still be engaged with the enemy curse users there.]
Engaged?
(No one reported what's happening inside the Curtain?)
Himmel swept a quick look over the life-signs of everyone still inside the train. All clear.
(Then...)
"Understood."
He had a fairly good idea of what Gojo had decided to do. A quiet, satisfied look crossed the Hero's face.
He was currently fifty meters underground inside a deep trunk-line tunnel. He backtracked until he found the maintenance shaft, then immediately started sprinting upward, ninety degrees straight up, with a phone pressed to one ear.
WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH-WHOOSH!
Vertical. Near-sonic. Less like climbing, more like firing himself at the sky with his legs.
His body alone made him considerably faster than anything [Mage] mode could manage in the air.
"I'm picking up Hakari and Todo's Cursed Energy in Shibuya. Looks like there are Special Grade cursed spirits on the surface. I'll deal with them quickly, then rendezvous with Gojo Satoru."
He kicked off the wall to bleed speed, found a breath to spare, and finished the sentence.
[You're coming to Sendai?]
"No. Kenjaku's objective probably isn't there."
[...What do you mean?]
Tap.
BANG!
A kick blew the maintenance hatch clean off its seal.
Himmel broke the surface.
And what greeted him was,
"AAAAAAHHHH!"
"WHAT IS THAT?!"
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!
The intersection that had been loud and ordinary hours ago was now something out of a disaster film. Traffic was frozen on the main road, cars rear-ended, others spun out and buried into lampposts and guardrails. Glass everywhere. Thin wisps of white smoke drifting up from crumpled hoods.
The traffic lights were still cycling. Nobody cared. Pedestrians fled in every direction, screaming, stumbling over each other, crying, a wall of chaos that moved without any logic.
Exactly like the zombie-invasion scene from every disaster movie ever made.
Except the invaders weren't zombies.
Bloated. Twisted. Wrong.
The cursed spirits tore through every corner of the city, and the sheer intensity of it was forcing open the perception of people who had never been able to see them before. The things were becoming visible even to ordinary eyes.
And the fear that came with it, that sweet, pure terror, made the cursed spirits hungrier.
If not for the sorcerers and auxiliary managers working to partition Shibuya with multiple Curtains, this would have already spiraled completely out of control.
The exposure of cursed spirit activity directly fed the growth of negative human emotion. It was an unspoken rule on every side, sorcerers and curse users alike, to keep as much of this hidden as possible.
Kenjaku clearly didn't care about unspoken rules.
The good news, at least, was that Gojo Satoru had concentrated every available combat resource in Shibuya. Under coordinated effort across multiple Jujutsu organizations, the disaster had been held, barely, within limits.
For now.
"One... two... three... At least five Special Grade presences. But only two at Mahito's level."
My priorities right now are,
"In any case, I'll need you auxiliary managers to keep running. Do everything you can to minimize the exposure to ordinary civilians."
[Huh?]
One last line to Ijichi. Then Himmel disappeared from where he stood.
.
"Dun-dun-DUUUN~~"
In a corner of the Shibuya battlefield.
Hakari Kinji was doing what Hakari Kinji always did, baiting cursed spirits with maximum attitude, two fingers raised, hips cocked, waist rolling.
"Hey hey hey, somebody threw one hell of a party!"
A worm-shaped cursed spirit lunged at a couple further down the street.
"Hey!"
He turned, broke into a full sprint, and at exactly the right moment, launched himself upward. Both arms reached the overhead signboard. Four fingers locked on.
He ripped it free, body spinning mid-air from the torque, and came down with it at full speed, driving the signboard into the cursed spirit's skull like an axe.
SQUELCH!,!.
Blood scattered. The couple's scream cut off mid-note. They dropped.
Hakari didn't spare them much thought. He grabbed both of them by the collar the second the cursed spirit was down and hurled them through the glass storefront of the multi-level clothing shop behind them.
WHOOSH!.
The two hit the glass and went through it. And right alongside the crash of shattering storefront came a different sound, the dull thud of something punching clean through Hakari's body from behind.
A jet of water straight through his back. Through his heart. Hakari's stride hiccuped. He took a few steps forward anyway.
"Tch~"
Then the flesh sealed itself.
"Hey hey hey, piercing me from behind with water? Even my last girlfriend wasn't that ruthless."
He turned around. Grinning.
It was something distinctly [wrong].
A humanoid cursed spirit with an octopus for a head. Black abdomen. Black wings fanning out from either hip.
[Special Grade Cursed Spirit. Dagon.]
A cursed spirit born from humanity's fear of the sea.
One of the most powerful entities in this Shibuya operation.
Dagon existed well outside the range that an ordinary sorcerer could handle. Fortunately Hakari had shown up, and his domain had been keeping the thing occupied.
But only occupied. That was the limit.
Dagon had wings. Its mobility was in a different class. Even wrapped in Hakari's endlessly cycling Cursed Energy, even when every punch he landed could have obliterated a Grade 1 cursed spirit, none of it was quite enough to put a killing wound on the thing.
"Hmph~"
Hakari hummed to himself and turned the problem over in his head.
So. What now,
And then.
"Hakari."
.!
That voice,
"Himmel-sensei!"
"Yo."
Blue hair.
A white cloak, billowing.
He had appeared in the middle of the battlefield like something dropped in from outside, no warning, no announcement.
[!]
It wasn't just Hakari who froze.
Dagon, who had been squaring off against him, expressed the same shock in the same instant.
(This person, this is the Special Grade that Mahito and Jogo talked about...!)
, Do not fight him, Dagon.
, If you encounter him, run. Full strength. Don't hesitate.
Jogo's words still lived in the cursed spirit's chest.
As the least mature of the four Disaster Curses, Dagon had always held Jogo and Hanami in absolute regard. Under normal circumstances, that instruction would have activated like a reflex.
But,
"...Mahito... Mahito..."
The great octopus head. At the places that served as eyes, hot tears ran down.
From this man's body, Dagon could feel the echo of his companion.
And that single moment of hesitation,
The instant Hakari looked toward Himmel. The instant Himmel smiled and returned the greeting.
Wind swept past the young man's side.
A blue afterimage. Cutting across the space. Passing through the cursed spirit in nearly the same frame.
Then,
[Pap.]
"Well done."
Tap.
Dust particles stirred and settled. Himmel came to a light stop on a rooftop roughly fifty meters from where Hakari had been standing. He looked back and gave Hakari a nod of approval.
"Against an opponent like that, stalling is the right call. Your Cursed Energy output's better than it used to be." He glanced over the surrounding area. "The only real problem left here should be Jogo, I'll leave that one to you. I need to move."
"...Ah... yes."
Hakari could only manage a hesitant nod in the face of that exchange.
Then his eyes drifted, without quite meaning to, toward Himmel's hand.
The extra octopus head sitting in it.
The easy, humming confidence from 30 seconds ago had completely vacated his expression.
(Sensei isn't... a little angry, is he?)
(God, that'd be rough.)
➤ Next: Fight! Fight! Fight!!!