Frieren: Himmel — Chapter 175 - Fushiguro Toji vs Yorozu (1)
[Uraume]!
A Special Grade!
Outside the hospital, Kusakabe had been on guard duty. Now he was frozen against the wall, face twisted in misery. Uraume vented long-pent-up fury without a shred of concern for cursed energy expenditure.
Sure, Himmel and Gojo Satoru had assessed them as "low threat."
But Uraume was no stepping stone.
WHOOSH!
Palm raised. Breath expelled forward with force.
Massive ice crystals erupted into the air, spinning at extreme velocity, their razor edges driven by the airflow. A graze across bare skin was enough to open a gash.
The bitter white mist carried those crystals in a wide, sweeping wave. It clung to the edges of the building like something alive, sealing every crack, every gap, every crevice solid with frost.
(Just as expected, Uraume hasn't entered any of the barriers!)
(But why, why now!)
Fushiguro and the others had reasoned that without all ten fingers, Sukuna couldn't seize control of Itadori's consciousness. Uraume coming for Itadori would be pointless. That logic had let them drop their guard, just slightly.
Even so, the hospital perimeter was heavily secured.
Itadori and Fushiguro were strong enough on their own. Per Kenjaku's intel, facing Uraume alone, they shouldn't be taken down immediately. And they had Kurobotsuchi with them. Kusakabe had been posted outside the hospital as backup.
But...
[Tsumiki just happened to carry Yorozu, the only ancient sorcerer with a high probability of automatically defecting to Sukuna's faction, and one of immense power.]
That one "coincidence" sent everything spiraling.
"Nue! — Ku, damn it!"
Fushiguro tried to summon a shikigami to redirect himself and Itadori midair. But in this ice cavern that had formed in seconds, even Nue couldn't move freely. Its electrified cursed energy shattered some crystals. Then its wings froze solid and it began to fall.
In those stolen fractions of a second, Fushiguro's mind processed everything, every piece of recent intel, every variable.
He reached a conclusion.
(No matter what else changes, their target has always been Itadori.)
"Run! Itadori!"
He shouted it and acted in the same breath, deploying Rabbit Escape.
A swarm of rabbits surged from the shadows. The vast majority froze solid almost instantly, but the mass of bodies bought distance between Uraume and the two of them.
Fushiguro and Itadori broke left and sprinted.
But,
BANG!
Seconds later, a window exploded inward.
And this time,
"Abandoning your big sister just like that~ I'm so heartbroken~~~"
Multiple reversals in moments.
Above them, Yorozu had fully taken possession of Tsumiki's body. Jet-black wings of dark liquid spread from her back, and she held the sky.
(Liquid metal!)
Kenjaku had disclosed everything on Yorozu. Fushiguro knew her technique. What he hadn't anticipated was that Kurobotsuchi would fail to stop her entirely.
The cockroach swarm Kurobotsuchi prided herself on, stopped cold. The black metallic tide washed over an entire wall, sealing her inside the hospital.
Yorozu and Uraume met in the open air.
No exchange. No preamble. They moved like old friends who had trained together for years.
Both charged Itadori at once.
"Tch!"
No way to dodge both. Fushiguro drove a shove into Itadori's chest and sent him stumbling backward.
"Go!"
But,
Every part of him wanted to refuse.
Itadori knew, though. If he stayed and got beaten unconscious, or had more of Sukuna's fingers forced into him, it was over. He bit down hard.
And ran.
He had to find reinforcements.
Itadori's speed was something else. In a state of peak focus, his body unearthed capability that went beyond what it normally showed. He dropped fast, following the arc of the ice cascade Uraume had built, and landed beside the frozen Kusakabe.
"Hey, wait!"
BANG!
A curse-wrapped fist cracked the ice from the outside. Kusakabe wrenched himself free.
"Sensei! Please hold out for Fushiguro! I'm going to get backup!"
"No! You listen! Sensei here was taken out by the enemy in one shot! Can't you see I can't save anyone?!" Kusakabe howled.
He really, genuinely did not want to fight!
Out of sight, out of mind, but now that he'd seen it, what choice did he have?!
Itadori didn't wait for a response. He was already gone, sprinting in a different direction.
Himmel and Gojo Satoru-sensei were close. But close wasn't fast enough. He needed someone already in range, someone who could hit the battlefield now.
He had a clear target in mind.
His direction...
was the [Tokyo Barrier].
"Don't you dare leave!" Uraume's eyes flared with fury. They moved to pursue.
But then,
[.]
Something stopped them.
Uraume halted. Their expression cracked into something unreadable.
Fushiguro caught it. He had no time to think about what it meant, because liquid metal had already begun crawling up his body.
Is it... over?
At least. At least at the end, here. Take out Uraume first.
Clenched fists?!
No, not self-destruction!
"Madoka Deer!"
He threw the hand sign with everything he had left. A pale white shikigami materialized behind him.
[Reverse Cursed Technique, external output.]
Enough to cover the liquid metal encasing him. The metal was linked by cursed energy. Reverse Cursed Technique output could neutralize it.
"What?!"
Yorozu hadn't expected her technique to be unwound by Megumi, someone she considered laughably beneath her.
Madoka Deer's Reverse output was rare, certainly. But low efficiency was an unavoidable limitation.
[Madoka Deer's output was nowhere near the level of Okkotsu Yuta's.]
[A shikigami could be reinforced by its sorcerer's cursed energy, but Fushiguro Megumi did not possess that kind of power.]
[To neutralize this volume of metal, there was only one explanation...]
(It's not that he's gotten stronger. It's that...)
"I'm getting weaker?"
Yorozu stared at her own hand.
Even her soul hadn't fully extinguished Tsumiki's will?
"My cursed energy output is being suppressed, lower and lower?"
"Heh heh..."
"Heh heh, hahahahahaha!"
She threw her head back and laughed, wide open and unrestrained.
"I suppose this counts as a kind of love~ Tsumiki! Well done! So you understand love after all!"
Ancient sorcerers who incarnated automatically absorbed the physical memories of their vessel. Yorozu carried every moment Tsumiki and Fushiguro had shared.
"But..."
She dismissed it with a sneer.
"Compared to my love, it doesn't even register."
Yorozu generated a slide of liquid metal beneath her feet, stepped over Fushiguro, and moved to pursue Itadori.
"Damn!"
(I can't let her through!)
Fushiguro could only watch. He had nothing.
(We can't gamble on a battle of wills between Itadori and Sukuna. There's no reason to take that risk.)
(Then--)
Both hands. Closed into fists.
This time,
Those hand signs.
Unmistakable.
The cursed energy that rose off Fushiguro's body made both Uraume and Yorozu go still.
Yorozu snapped around.
The way she looked at Fushiguro now was nothing like before.
"You...,!"
The liquid metal that had been winning through sheer mass now moved like a drawn blade, launched straight at Fushiguro's face at blinding speed.
She was going to kill him.
Right now.
The cursed energy surging from his body felt wrong. Deeply, fundamentally wrong.
The speed of it, far beyond what Fushiguro could cover with an incantation.
His pupils blew wide. He couldn't react.
[Everything was about to end.........]
[It should have ended there.]
"Hey~ time's up."
[Until that figure cut into the battlefield.]
BANG!
A sharp, tearing screech, wind pressure shearing through metal. A gunshot cracking across the sky.
The blast wave slammed into Fushiguro Megumi from the sheer force of the air pressure differential and knocked him to the ground. When he looked up, a broad-shouldered silhouette stood between him and the tide of black metal.
"That Gojo Satoru, someone's been drilling proper discipline into him, huh? Didn't think a guy like that would ever actually leave a contingency behind."
"Cautious enough to make me genuinely sick~"
One slash opened a path through the metallic wave. One shot drove clean through Uraume's right palm, pinning the hand that had been rising to fire off another technique.
"Dragged back out to work even after dying..."
"Just this once, alright?"
The voice was low and rough, with a pull to it.
Loose white pants tapering at the ankle. A black compression shirt that traced every line of that enormous, densely muscled frame.
The man stood sideways, holding the attention of both powerhouses with nothing but his posture.
That was...
Fushiguro: "You — you're —!"
"Cut the 'you you you.' Didn't your old man teach you any manners when you speak to someone?"
Fushiguro Toji rolled his neck, raised one arm, and let his gaze slide between Yorozu and Uraume as their expressions shifted and darkened. Something flickered through his eyes. He almost seemed amused by his own answer before he'd said it.
", Oh. Right. Guess he really didn't."
➤ Next: Memories of Fatherly Love and Filial Piety