Frieren: — Chapter 105 - Gojo Satoru: Kita Kita~
The battlefield erupted. A blinding flash, gold-red sparks exploding outward, chaotic ribbons of light raining across the sky.
Clashing currents of brightness and shadow swept through the space, light trails spiraling and scattering in a brilliant, violent mess of color.
"Haha! Hahahahaha!"
Sukuna was having the time of his life. His movements were visibly faster now, clearly, after fully adapting to this body, his output had climbed another level.
SHHK,!
A chunk of flesh was gouged from Yuta's cheek. His body lurched hard to the side, but his eyes held no fear, no pain-slugged hesitation. He just kept pressing, indifferent to it, forcing the clash.
SHHK! SHHK.
His body was soaked red within seconds. Around the 6th second, Yuta made his call: a heavy outward slash, then a deliberate explosive retreat.
(This isn't working.)
He calculated coolly.
(I need to go even, )
Another slash came straight at his face. Faster than the last.
"Ugh!"
Yuta gritted his teeth and took it. His body recoiled, out of his control, but his response was instant.
"Rika!"
The massive white silhouette appeared at his side in a blink, her enormous hand bracing flat against his back.
Smack.
Yuta planted both feet on Rika's palm.
Knees pressed down.
Elbows yanked back.
BOOM!
The air barrier shattered. Rika swung her arm and hurled him. Yuta launched himself at the same moment.
Right leg lunging forward in a massive stride, heel grinding into the ground to brake, and in the moment Sukuna's pupils widened, Yuta's Cursed Tool swept forward like a thread of flowing frost, effortlessly spearing through him.
"!"
Sukuna was long past feeling pain. But he couldn't quite suppress a flicker of surprise.
(His combat technique is even better than I imagined... And this brat, )
SHHK,!.
Both feet stomped hard to brake. Yuta's blade whirled, trailing a slick arc of light as he charged Sukuna from the flank again.
In the space of a breath, arm shadows and blade shadows overlapped and crossed, offense and defense cycling in rapid flickers. Everything around them blurred into wavering outlines.
Sukuna narrowed his eyes.
(, He still hasn't used his Cursed Technique?)
Whoosh,
In one instant, the blade curved like a crescent moon, seemingly aimed at Sukuna's elbow. But the moment Sukuna moved to pull his arm back, the arm snapped forward instead!
(He's closing in while eating my technique?)
(This guy...)
Sukuna bared his teeth in a savage grin, his delight deepening.
(Wrapping himself in cursed energy, is he trying to brute-force through my technique with Reverse Cursed Technique and raw output?!)
"Cheeky little bastard!"
(Now!)
Yuta paid Sukuna's reaction zero attention. He feinted, pommel slamming into Sukuna's right shoulder, then instantly pressed down, his entire body lunging inside Sukuna's guard.!
Rip! Rip!
Flesh scraped raw by the technique, but Yuta's face didn't flicker. Blade thrusting upward. Shoulder driving forward. He slammed squarely into Sukuna's chest.
WHAM!,!.
A limitless torrent of cursed energy forcibly ate through Sukuna's output. Even as the flesh of Yuta's shoulder was sheared away in great strips, nearly down to bare white bone, the force drove clean into Sukuna's chest and made him stagger backward.
(An opening!)
Yuta raised his left hand to cover his face.
(Does the brat actually think that's an opening?)
The King of Curses sneered.
(Then I'll just speed up a little...)
Sukuna's rear foot touched down, kicking up a small clump of earth.
He was about to expand his output,
At the same moment.
Time seemed to slow. In both their perceptions, the world drained to a faint amber hue.
Both of their movements slowed with it.
And Yuta's arm began to drop. The face hidden behind his hand gradually came into view.
On his tongue: a family crest, etched in dense black markings.
Sukuna stiffened.
With his breadth of experience, he might not have recalled the name of the crest's original bearer. But he knew exactly what those markings, inscribed upon the tongue, meant.
(Cursed Speech! The brat's technique!?!)
"D O N ' T. M O V E!"
Layer upon layer of soundwaves flooded his eardrums. Inevitably, Sukuna's body locked into severe paralysis.
"!"
And that loss of balance was exactly what Yuta and Rika had been waiting for.
Cursed Speech burned through energy at a ruinous rate. Even Yuta, with his seemingly boundless reserves, couldn't stop the uncontrolled dispersal, the discomfort was real. But he wasn't fighting alone.
The colossal Rika loomed over both of them at the center of the battlefield. She roared and thrust both arms forward, one hand clamping onto Sukuna's back, the other clenching into a fist.
BOOM!
Shockwave. Rika's gut punch landed, and Sukuna's cheeks puffed involuntarily from the impact. Genuinely disheveled, for once.
Yuta had already fully reset his stance. Reverse Cursed Technique sealed the shoulder wound in an instant.
S W I N G. T H E. B L A D E!
Hmmmm.
Blade-light coiled and spun. The high-speed friction against the air dyed the edge a blazing reddish-gold, one sword rotating at extreme velocity!
In that instant, rings of death hammered into Sukuna in rapid succession.
Rip! Rip!
Blood and flesh scattered. Yuta seized the opening, and the calm that had held his face all this time shattered into something fiercer.
"AAAAAAAAHHHH—!"
A net of blazing light wove behind him as his feet relentlessly drove forward, an airtight, unbroken torrent of blade-light!
Left side of the abdomen.
Shoulder.
Side of the neck.
Inner thigh.
Just above the wrist.
Horizontal slashes, rapid combos, clean cleaves. Yuta and Rika's joint assault had shattered Sukuna's balance, and Yuta poured in wave after wave of damage. Even the King of Curses finally showed something on his face.
And beneath that, surprise.
This brat's swordsmanship hadn't been this refined before.
This is...
Mimicry?
Sukuna felt as if he could see a shadow standing behind Yuta. Someone else's shadow.
This brat is copying another person's swordsmanship?
He'd already guessed the kid must have a decent teacher. That thought only made the emotion churning inside him surge harder.
That emotion was joy.
Which meant...
Even if he broke the toy in front of him, there'd be a better replacement waiting afterward?
In that case,
No need to drag this out.
"Don't get cocky—!"
Sukuna narrowed his eyes. But before he could finish the threat, Yuta raised his hand over his mouth again.
Cursed Speech. Again?!
A twinge of disgust.
(Idiot. Use the same technique twice in a row and it's easy to see coming, )
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Nothing. Not a trace of sound-based control. Instead, several desks, chairs, and window frames had materialized out of nowhere, crisscrossing around Sukuna's body!
(What is this?... From the ruins over there?)
Sukuna went still.
The furniture's corners interlocked in a grid, jamming every major joint of Sukuna's limbs, slowing his resistance once more.
The world flickered colorless. Once. Several times.
Sukuna's thoughts were accelerating, his transcendent battlefield reflexes processing the situation beyond the limits of human perception.
(Chairs appearing from nowhere, invisible... blind spots... no. This is spacetime-based cursed technique. Objects pre-marked in some way, then repeatedly summoned.)
The blade's edge neared his face.
(This isn't Cursed Speech.)
The wind pressure from the Cursed Tool split the surface of his skin.
(Yuta has more than one technique? The cursed spirit's? No, I wouldn't misread a cursed energy invocation. That was the brat's own technique, just now.)
Blood beaded into perfect spheres, suspended motionless in midair.
(Which means the brat's technique is, )
"It's [Copy]!"
".!"
Yuta had no intention of answering. He couldn't hear, and he didn't want to.
He was weaker than the enemy in front of him. He knew that. So he had to exploit every moment the opponent underestimated him, use rhythm to keep Sukuna completely suppressed.
That was the battle method his teacher had taught him.
[Cursed Speech.]
[Hankintenjutsu.]
Both techniques, given to him by his companions.
And for the first time in battle, Yuta deployed the cheat ability he'd earned through his Binding Vows, not just copying, but unconditional copying.
No additional Binding Vows required. No conditions at all. Yuta Okkotsu could borrow any technique he had ever laid eyes on.
(I can win.)
Each slash cutting through Sukuna's flesh, each link in the chain, his resolve to claim victory hardened another degree.
(I won't make my teachers come save me.)
(On my own.)
(If I ride this wave, right here, right now, I can finish this bastard.)
Stomp.
[Hachi.]
A murmur, from somewhere very far away.
The flowing wind stopped dead.
The world paused.
Like someone had stopped an animation mid-frame, drained away the color, stripped out the timeline, and printed the raw original cels onto paper. And then, on that sheet of paper that should have been clean and unmarked, a thick brush drew a single extra line straight down the center.
Then.
"Ugh!—!"
[YUTA!]
Rip.
The sound of flesh being cleanly divided.
The world resumed.
"Not bad."
Sukuna watched the beads of blood dissolving in the air before him. He tilted his head up to look at Yuta Okkotsu, expression still frozen in blank shock, his body split apart by the slash.
"Your name is... Yuta, was it? I'll probably remember it for a few days. As the first person this body killed."
The unknown slashing technique had reached Yuta's body.
On its very first use.
It was enough to split Yuta Okkotsu clean in two.
[Hachi], the technique allowed Sukuna to adjust his cursed energy output through direct contact with a target, delivering a guaranteed one-hit-kill slash.
Yuta's combat methodology had far exceeded what his own level should have allowed. That much was undeniable.
But against the King of Curses and his sheer, unreasonable strength, it still wasn't enough.
And yet.
In that moment, pulling free from his initial boredom, what Ryomen Sukuna felt was something belated and strange.
The impact felt wrong.
That delayed conclusion landed against his supposedly dormant heart.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Rustle...
Like a stage actor pulling down the curtain.
The [Veil] overhead was stripped away at that moment.
With Sukuna's insight, it wasn't hard to recognize: the Veil was Kenjaku's work. A barrier built on the property of prioritizing technique effect over visual effect, crafted to target one specific individual.
And when a barrier like that is dispelled, true to that same property, the barrier's effect collapses first. The visual phenomenon follows after.
That moment just now.
(Before I used [Hachi], someone destroyed the barrier. The visual change is only catching up now.)
Which means...
Sukuna looked ahead.
Before Yuta Okkotsu, standing in a position where no one should have been, was a figure.
The film reel, reprinted.
Where there should have been nothing, a terrifying tidal wave of cursed energy rolled through the air and hammered the King of Curses' senses.
White hair, slightly disheveled, cropped short. Tall and lean.
He had Yuta by the scruff of the neck with one hand, tucking the boy behind his back. His own body faced forward, toward Sukuna.
"King of Curses~~ — How many fingers are you working with right now?"
That was,
Yuta cried out, shock cracking into joy.
"Gojo-sensei!"
"Yo."
Gojo Satoru didn't wait for Sukuna's answer. He flashed a brilliant grin and glanced back, throwing a casual salute.
"I'm here~"
"Don't make that face~ I told you, didn't I, "
Told me?
In Yuta's mind, words Gojo Satoru had once spoken surfaced.
[...Sensei, I know it's weird for me to say this myself, but aren't I basically a priority surveillance target?]
[Aren't you worried curse users will take me?]
Hahaha, no way, no way~
Gojo Satoru pointed two fingers at his own eyes.
"Someone's watching~"
➤ Next: Mahoraga Launcher — The Fight Begins