Frieren: Himmel — Chapter 178 - Mahoraga, Descends
The condensed force exploded at a single point in the air, the impact crushing outward in every direction, the air shaking violently.
Blood misted from Man's nostrils, eye sockets, and ears all at once from the pressure differential, her entire body sent flying high.
CRACK!
The domain shattered in that same instant.
Black fragments scattered down from the sky, then vanished in seconds.
Toji stowed the ordinary knife in his left hand.
If this body didn't belong to Tsumiki, he would have put a few more into her neck and skull.
THUD!
Plummeting from the heights.
Man lay on the ground, completely out of fight.
The combat style of a tyrant with no cursed energy.
The Split Soul Katana's effect of ignoring hardness and striking directly at the soul.
Add to that Tsumiki's soul interference, and Fushiguro Toji's battle drive surging from a single word out of Fushiguro Megumi's mouth.
Under all those factors... this battle, start to finish, had been a one-sided stomp born from an information gap.
"Heh... hehe..."
Man lay on the ground, bleeding steadily.
Toji walked over at an unhurried pace.
SHINK!
Not a second's hesitation. Blade into her abdomen.
It didn't hit a vital point, but Man's face twisted with pain.
Because this time, it was the Split Soul Katana's damage. And through that one cut, Man became even more certain:
[Fushiguro Toji, the Heavenly Restriction Tyrant — can observe the soul.]
[From the first moment of battle to the last, every attack he made with the Split Soul Katana had been aimed at Man's soul.]
"Absurd..."
Man coughed blood, murmuring weakly.
No cursed energy, so she couldn't be locked onto.
An unnatural body that could seize spatial planes, combined with combat technique and battle Instinct.
A blade that ignored hardness and struck the soul directly.
And the first-mover advantage of having read her side's intelligence completely.
This fight... had been deeply, thoroughly unsatisfying.
"You're despicable, Fushiguro Toji. I probably never want to think about you again for the rest of my life."
"Thanks for the compliment."
Toji crouched beside her, voice goading.
"Hurry up and die already."
Even as he spoke, he had already started bandaging Tsumiki's body to stop the bleeding.
The damage to Man's soul was irreversible now. Even if her physical body remained intact, her soul would be overwritten by Tsumiki very soon.
"Heh... hehe..."
Man stared up at the sky with hollow eyes, laughing weakly.
"What a shame. I'd thought that since I was resurrected, my very first opponent absolutely had to be Sukuna."
"Is that right? Sorry~"
"My love... has no chance to reach him now..."
"What a shame."
Man closed her eyes, and began to speak. Her past encounter with Sukuna, told to no one in particular.
It was the day of the [Niiname-sai], after she had become an honored guest of the Fujiwara clan.
Ryomen Sukuna had just crushed the Sun Moon Star Advance Team, the Five Void Generals, and a host of other ancient powerhouses, and the entire jujutsu world feared him for it.
People even invited him to the [Niiname-sai], praying to him as though to a god, begging for favorable weather and bountiful harvests.
The ritual of the weak prostrating themselves before the strong.
Man was there.
And the moment she first laid eyes on Sukuna, she loved him.
Absolute presence.
Absolute strength.
That aura of rampant dominion over everything made Man feel her very womb tremble!
Her brain was trembling!
She wanted to convey it.
She wanted to deliver it.
She wanted to make him understand the existence of [love]. The meaning of [love]. She wanted his gaze to rest on her and no one else.
She wanted to kill him. She wanted to be killed by him.
That frenzied love was what drove Man to willingly become a cursed object, just to follow Sukuna into the modern age.
But this love had ultimately never found a way to reach him.
"I already said sorry."
Toji picked at his ear, entirely uninterested in a single word Man had said.
In the end,
"Your love really is twisted."
"Ha?! As if someone like you could possibly understand love!" Like a dying flame surging back, Man shrieked, her face contorted.
"Heh."
But what answered her was Toji's quiet, mocking laugh.
"...Ha? Could it be... could it be that you know?" Man stared at him. Her pupils quaked.
Yes.
[Before Gojo Satoru was born, Fushiguro Toji was, without question, the strongest in the jujutsu world.]
[And what he shares with Sukuna and Man is this: he, too, is a child of 'anomaly'.]
[Born without cursed energy, despised and antagonized within the Zen'in clan.]
[And yet, without any doubt, an overwhelmingly dominant powerhouse.]
[The 'wantonness' that Zen'in Naoya once saw in Toji's eyes, perhaps it bears a faint, unclear resemblance to certain qualities Man saw in Sukuna's eyes.]
[Absolute strength.]
[The loneliness that comes from it.]
[What taught you love was...]
"I have a wife and a kid, you see."
Toji looked down at her from above.
"Someone like you who's never been married, an eternal old maid — don't come talking to me so grandly about love and romance."
"AAAAAAAHHH! FUSHIGURO TOJI!"
Man completely broke. She launched herself up in a single lunge, both hands reaching for Toji's throat, and he stepped aside without effort.
But Toji's expression shifted.
"You... still have this much stamina?"
His Instinct spiked. His pupils dilated. He wore the same expression he'd had when he saw Gojo Satoru come back from the dead, and murmured quietly.
"You... were stalling for time this whole time?"
Ehe!
Only now did Man show her arrogant grin.
"Haha! Only noticing now?! It's already too late!"
[Man's injuries are not faked.]
[She truly cannot hold on much longer. But her reason for stalling has always been clear.]
[Because before she ever came here, she had received...]
[Uraume's final 'message'.]
Toji lunged, seized Man's arm, yanked her toward him, locked it into a twisting arm hold, and drove his knee into her back, pinning her to the ground.
At the same time, he immediately reached for the pocket she was hiding something in and pulled out the box Uraume had given her.
The instant he took it, Toji knew something was wrong.
Too light.
He opened it.
Inside the box...
[Only a single finger.]
Could it be.
"Megumi (Are you okay?!)!"
Toji shouted immediately toward the rear and moved to leave.
But Man blocked him again.
How can this woman possibly still have this kind of stamina?
Could it be,,
"You grasped the core of cursed energy!"
Drenched head to toe in blood, Man tapped her forehead with her thumb.
"Answer~ correct!"
Man grasped it?!
Reverse Cursed Technique?!
No.
No!
Not everyone is a prodigy like Gojo Satoru, capable of grasping reversal on the edge of death.
And what Man faced wasn't physical damage. It was attacks targeting the soul. Even if she had comprehended Reverse Cursed Technique, it could not turn the tide of this battle.
But that is precisely where the problem lies.
Remember,,
[Because the original host's consciousness was preserved...]
[The ancient sorcerers of the Culling Game almost all sensed the boundary of the soul at the moment of resurrection.]
Man, who had no prior understanding of the soul, came to understand it through taking on a body, and then deepened that understanding further when the Split Soul Katana cut into her.
In this moment,,
Using her 'Construction Cursed Technique', she generated the missing portions of her soul with cursed energy, patching herself back together.
Crude as it was, it could at least buy time.
Not being able to fight Sukuna left a hollow feeling inside her. But still...
"Receive it! Sukuna!"
Man burned her life, roaring at the sky.
A metallic tide became a sandstorm and tore toward Fushiguro Toji. And Man, who had now grasped 'the soul', used her own soul as raw material and her life as a binding vow to condense a solid object.
[Does the Split Soul Katana naturally cleave through any substance?]
[Or is it that, because it can directly strike the soul, it indirectly destroys the physical body as a consequence?]
[Either way...]
[Man, after burning her cursed energy dry, created a final barrier to obstruct Fushiguro Toji.]
[And her soul, her very life, transformed into...]
That was...
A cursed tool!
Cursed energy pulsed through it, sending that cursed tool hurtling upward toward the sky!
"This... is my final love!"
..................................
...................
CRACK, CRACK CRACK,
Frost and snow blanketed the surroundings. The busy modern city was silent now, like a dead city.
The ambulance parked at the hospital entrance, the automatic doors, the ornamental trees, all of them completely encased in white frost. Ice patterns spread outward, droplets splashed, ice spikes erupted and branched into the air like reaching fingers.
THUD!
"So much trouble you've put me through..."
Ice branches shattered. Uraume walked across the frozen ground, arriving beside the completely frozen Fushiguro Megumi.
There were claw marks on Uraume's side. Their clothes were dirty. They had clearly been through a fight. Before them, Fushiguro Megumi's head hung completely low, his breathing barely there.
A little farther away was Kusakabe, frozen solid, still wearing the sour grimace he'd had on before being frozen.
At the edge of the battlefield, several more figures stood.
Choso, clutching his shoulder, clearly injured. Beside him, a dark-skinned, powerfully built man was steadily trying to calm him down, along with a potato-shaped semi-cursed spirit.
[After Man and Toji left, Choso, Blood Painting, and Decay Painting appeared, all three products of the Special Grade Cursed Object: Death Painting Wombs.]
[After appearing, they did not pursue Itadori.]
[Instead... they collectively followed Uraume's instructions and launched a surprise attack on Fushiguro Megumi.]
Ordinarily, Fushiguro Megumi's skill would have let him barely maneuver and hold his own.
But Uraume had feigned going after Itadori, throwing Fushiguro Megumi into momentary panic. He moved to pursue and cut Uraume off, and in that opening, Uraume spun back and hit a vital point.
After that, Uraume fought like a mad dog, pouring every last drop of cursed energy out without restraint.
Time...
Arrives at the present.
"Haah,—"
Fighting in total disregard for their own safety, taking down Fushiguro Megumi in the shortest time possible, what echoed in Uraume's mind now was everything they had witnessed at 'that moment'.
[Uraume's eyes blazed, fully intending to give chase.
But suddenly,,
[.]
They seemed to see something.
Their feet stopped dead. Their gaze turned sharp with shock.]
When Itadori fled, Uraume moved instinctively to pursue, and in that instant, saw it: Sukuna's mouth, appearing at the side of Itadori's face.
It had been said before that Sukuna could slip out without Itadori's control from time to time, but he'd never done more than say a few words to harass Itadori.
But at that moment.
Sukuna didn't speak aloud. He conveyed his message to Uraume through lip-reading alone.
[Don't pursue.]
So Uraume, who could have caught up, braked.
And the understanding forged from a lifetime shared with Sukuna a thousand years ago let Uraume know, almost on instinct, exactly what they needed to do.
They had handed a single finger to Man. With Sukuna's cursed energy masking it, neither Man nor Toji detected anything unusual, and the two were drawn away from the field.
Uraume stayed behind to handle Fushiguro.
(Sukuna-sama said not to pursue.)
(That means he wants me here. The ones I can make use of here... there are only two.)
[Fushiguro Megumi] and [Kusakabe].
Uraume knew almost instantly who Sukuna-sama's true target was.
But what exactly made Fushiguro Megumi special?
No, the question should be reversed.
[What exactly is required, what would it take, to capture Sukuna's interest?]
[The answer is obvious.]
"To think you possess the special constitution of tolerance..." Uraume's voice was cold, clear, but the faint tremor at the end of the words betrayed the excitement beneath. "I truly misjudged you."
[Tolerance.]
[Becoming a vessel for Sukuna's fingers is not a simple matter.]
[Having absorbed a thousand years of curses as a Special Grade Cursed Object, Sukuna's fingers cannot even be destroyed by Sukuna himself. Only an extremely specific constitution can endure that toxicity.]
[You cannot simply pull any sorcerer off the street and attempt incarnation. Perhaps 1 in tens of millions would qualify.]
[And Fushiguro Megumi is that person.]
Perceiving the outside world from within Itadori's body, Sukuna had noticed this. That was why he issued the order to Uraume.
Why was Man specifically inhabiting the body of Fushiguro Megumi's older sister, Tsumiki?
Sukuna knew Kenjaku had been sealed. Knew he'd lost nine years of memories.
But they had a long history together.
Kenjaku was one of the exceedingly rare existences even the King of Curses could acknowledge.
His actions always carried deeper meaning.
Before losing his memories, Kenjaku had certainly researched incarnated vessels.
Realizing this, Sukuna began watching closely, and found Fushiguro Megumi's special nature.
He suppressed the urge building inside him, and instructed Uraume to complete the diversion.
Man was the strongest asset present. Itadori was Sukuna's target on the surface.
Everyone was missing Sukuna's intelligence on Fushiguro Megumi.
And so...
(During the battle, I started sensing it... Uraume is Sukuna's most devoted follower. There's no way they would let Man take the finger and go chasing Itadori without a reason.)
(But even with everything I had, I still couldn't beat them. Uraume's strength was beyond what I imagined. Kusakabe-sensei is completely helpless against a wide-range attacker like this.)
(And the one called Choso showing up was the last thing I expected, bringing two other unknowns with him. Kurokushibo couldn't hold all three of them off.)
(Damn it. What exactly do I,, )
Panting. Reinforcing his internal organs with cursed energy to fight off the cold. Keeping himself thinking.
But no matter how hard Fushiguro thought, Uraume still forced his mouth open,
And all 7 fingers were shoved inside.
The next instant,,
[.]
A violent surge of energy erupted from within his body, punching through every pore.
Fushiguro clenched his teeth against the pain. Black markings began surfacing across his skin.
Uraume dismissed the ice and stepped back 2 paces.
Then began to half-kneel.
At last.
The King of Curses, Sukuna, would obtain... freedom once again.
(Sorry... Itadori.)
They had made a promise.
But it seems he can't keep it...
Fushiguro's consciousness was still shaking violently.
(Don't pass out...)
He clenched his teeth. Agony radiated through every part of his body. Blood seeped through the gaps between his teeth.
(Think fast...)
Out of place among a crowd of monsters as he was, honestly, Fushiguro Megumi was genuinely talented. Willing to fight for the justice he had defined for himself, able to keep thinking and adapting in almost any desperate situation.
As long as Tsumiki, his most important person, the pillar holding his heart together, had not yet died, he could still push forward.
So he didn't give up.
(Tsumiki will definitely be fine.)
(Itadori will bring reinforcements. That's just who he is.)
(And more importantly... the two teachers are already on their way here. Who really fell into the trap, was it actually us?)
(As long as I can stall, we win. Then——!.)
"Buryura!"
[Uraume! Stop him!]
With a wet crack, Sukuna's mouth split open across Fushiguro's face, the voice cutting like a blade.
Uraume dropped all ceremony and charged.
But in that final moment, something leaped from the shadow beneath Fushiguro's feet.
"GROWL!."
The battered, barely-living [Divine Dog: Totality] roared as it lunged at Uraume, clamping its jaws down on their arm.
Even as a furious Uraume reacted and tore it apart with bare hands, that one fleeting instant was enough for the boy to make...
To make the hand sign he knew so deeply it lived in his bones.
Clench fists.
One above, one below.
"Yura Yura."
[.Thump.]
As though a being from beyond the heavens reached its palm slowly toward the earth.
Slender knuckles grazed the boy's face. A wide palm blotted out the light of the sky and the ground... the entire world, accompanied by the click of a light going out...
Sank into shadow.
Inside the world of total black.
Toads crouch.
Wolves howl.
[That existence, thereupon, manifested.]
"This is,—!"
Uraume swung ice to seal Fushiguro's hands, but even as they moved, they knew they were already too late.
Something was coming.
"Eight-Handled Sword, Divergent Sila Divine General..."
The voice was dry and hollow, dragged from the depths of a throat.
[Fushiguro Megumi, 0.3 seconds after Sukuna entered his body, had already completely lost consciousness.]
[But before Sukuna's will overwrote his body's every circuit, he,, ]
[By pure instinct, spoke that name.]
"Mahoraga."
➤ Next: Mahoraga, Beat Sukuna to a Pulp!