"It failed, huh?"

Sukuna felt the tremors roll through the earth and turned toward Ikebukuro.

He was already far from the battlefield. Southwest by five to eight kilometers in a straight line, deep in a forest in the hills.

Even at this distance, he could feel what had happened over there. The peak output Himmel and Frieren had produced together, even Sukuna had to stop and take notice.

".......So that's......Himmel."

He didn't have much of an impression of the man.

The last time he was resurrected, the ones he'd encountered were Gojo Satoru and Okkotsu Yuta. Those two, he already knew could reach his level.

And now.

It seemed the number of existences capable of interesting him had grown by one.

"Heh." Sukuna savored the unexpected pleasure, something genuine in it. "No matter the era, Jujutsu Sorcerers never get old, do they."

Then.

He turned and walked toward his destination.

.

[How long has it been since I last thought about the past?]

A thousand years. Tengen had nearly forgotten all of it.

Her Cursed Technique was [Immortality]. Her body had changed continuously to accommodate it, and yet it had not given her a mind capable of holding a thousand years of memories.

Or perhaps. She had chosen to let it go.

To keep her Cursed Energy from dispersing, she had sealed Japan within a barrier. That decision, made so long ago, had begun to turn on her in ways she couldn't have predicted.

Whether that was fortune or catastrophe, she didn't know.

Most of the time, Tengen simply let her consciousness sink into sleep and drifted through her days in a haze.

She had given enough to Jujutsu Society. Jujutsu Society had never given her anything in return.

She still remembered a conversation with Kenjaku. A thousand years ago.

[Are you going to spend your whole boring life just like this?]

Back then, Kenjaku hadn't been switching bodies so frequently. If she was being honest, he had been considerably more tolerable than he was now.

Whether it's boring or not isn't yours to decide.

[Heh. Spouting nonsense. You envy it, don't you? Living like Sukuna.]

........

That innate, overwhelming strength. The sheer willfulness to wield violence simply because he wanted to.

Tengen hadn't answered.

But. To call it envy wasn't quite right, and yet. Perhaps Tengen had always felt something close to awe toward the King of Curses' very way of existing.

Balancing humans and Cursed Spirits by his strength alone, standing above everything.

Good and evil alike were nothing more than a passing thought to him. An existence unlike her. An existence unlike Kenjaku.

[Those who take a brave step forward move one step closer to their dream. People who die without ever feeling that, I have nothing but contempt for them.]

Is that meant as a jab at me?

Brat. If you want to say something like that, come back after you've lived as long as I have.

[......Heh. Fair enough.]

[Then this conversation.]

[Let us continue it after a thousand years.]

.

"Yo, Tengen."

"......You can't be serious."

The Tombs of the Star.

Tengen, her body no larger than a thumb, stood with her arms crossed and her back straight, watching the man in front of her with undisguised wariness.

It was clearly Fushiguro Megumi's body. But under Sukuna's possession it had taken on something sinister, something that hadn't been there before.

"The genuine article~."

Black markings. Slicked-back hair. That loose, unrestrained smirk.

".....Sukuna?"

"Got it in one."

Sukuna shrugged.

"How did you get into the Tombs of the Star?"

"Ah, easy enough." He seemed genuinely happy to explain. One hand on his hip, he swept his gaze across the entire space. "Kenjaku left a hint for Uraume. The one called 'Fushiguro Toji'."

"That man is interesting. He carries not a single trace of Cursed Energy, which means he can walk through any barrier."

"Kenjaku said nothing outright, and Uraume's read on it only went as far as [Fushiguro Toji can pass through barriers to retrieve cursed objects and tools]. But me?" Sukuna's eyes slid sideways, a sneer pulling at his mouth. "I understood what Kenjaku meant the moment I saw it."

"He was giving me a hint."

"When it comes to barriers, nowhere in the world is harder to breach than wherever a shut-in like you is hiding."

"Kenjaku didn't know what would happen if he used Séance Technique on Fushiguro Toji. Best case, if he could fully control the man, he'd have Fushiguro Toji punch a hole in your barrier himself. If not, he'd need me to handle it alone."

He said it like he was talking to himself.

"Fushiguro Toji himself is equivalent to a building. So all I had to do was walk the building through your door."

"Like this."

Sukuna turned toward Tengen and snapped his wrist.

A stone flew from his hand and crossed the space to her side in an instant.

SLAP!

A hand caught it.

"!"

Tengen spun around. Sukuna was gone from where he'd been standing. He was behind her now, the stone resting in one casually outstretched hand.

Speed?!

No, this was,

"Ten Shadows Technique."

He was less than 5 meters away. He tossed the stone up and caught it, easy and bored.

"Throw an object. Use the technique to enter the shadow it casts beneath it. Once the object passes through the barrier, emerge from the inside." He turned the stone over in his fingers. "The essence of Barrier Techniques is similar to Domain Expansion — or no, that's backwards. Domain Expansion reflects what Barrier Techniques already are. Either way, both use [Cursed Energy] as the filter."

"When Ten Shadows Technique is active, the shadows themselves carry no Cursed Energy. My own Cursed Energy sits hidden on the inside of the shadow. I tested this with Mahoraga — if you're inside the shadow, even Mahoraga won't pursue you."

"Most barriers block matter from passing in or out. But yours doesn't, does it. You left that opening so people on the outside could still send things through to you."

CRACK!

Sukuna closed his fist. The stone crumbled. He opened his fingers and let the powder sift down through the gaps.

"Well. That's the boring part handled."

The King of Curses stretched, rolling his shoulders, then glanced at Tengen.

"Won't you offer an old acquaintance a seat?"

Tengen: "......"

A chair materialized in the white space. Sukuna dropped into it without ceremony, one arm draped over the back, looking Tengen up and down.

".....What are you staring at."

"Heh. Nothing. I just didn't expect you to end up like this. Ironic, isn't it?"

The exchange was disjointed, missing its context, but Tengen understood.

(The way I look right now. It's as if.)

She looked up. Past Fushiguro Megumi's face, she could just barely make out what lay behind it.

The true shape of the King of Curses' soul.

A monster with four eyes and four arms.

That face. How much it resembled her own.

For just a moment, the look in Sukuna's eyes held neither violence nor mockery. It was the look someone gives an old friend they're teasing gently. "You've ended up like this too, in the end."

".......I truly didn't expect to see you or Kenjaku in this era." Tengen's voice was quiet. "Honestly. I didn't want either of you to see me like this."

"Hmph. Setting me aside — Kenjaku worked for it." Sukuna's tone was offhand. "He went to considerable lengths to arrive at this particular moment."

"Fushiguro Toji. The Angel. Foreign interference. The Culling Game. Cursed Spirits. Your barrier. All of it was meant as a message to me."

"He trusted you'd figure out what he meant?" Tengen asked before she could stop herself.

"What that man does is always repulsive." Sukuna's mouth curved in a cold smile.

They traded lines, one after the other.

Like old friends. Like people who hadn't seen each other in years.

But both of them knew exactly why Sukuna was here.

[Kenjaku believed that Sukuna, moving through the chaos Kenjaku had manufactured, would eventually understand his intent, and take some action that exceeded even Kenjaku's imagination.]

And he was right.

The King of Curses knew this era held more than one enemy capable of matching him. Gojo Satoru was not the only one.

He also knew that ten of his fingers were inside Itadori.

Even pouring the remaining ten into Fushiguro Megumi, he couldn't face Gojo Satoru, Himmel, and Okkotsu Yuta and the others at the same time.

[Some action that exceeds his imagination.]

The answer was simple, wasn't it?

[Ryomen Sukuna's fingers are Special Grade Cursed Objects. An ordinary person who uses one will be killed by the toxicity. Even those who survive, without sufficient tolerance, they will turn into something monstrous in that instant. Incarnation will fail.]

Ten million people. One exception.

Itadori Yuji is an artificially constructed vessel.

Fushiguro Megumi is a natural constitution.

[But there is one person in this era who is an [exception] different from either of them.]

Surviving from a thousand years ago, perhaps longer, all the way to the present.

[Tengen, who carries the [Immortality] Cursed Technique.]

[Tengen is one of the existences capable of accepting Sukuna's Incarnation.]

"Once Incarnation begins, your [Immortality] Cursed Technique will start spontaneously evolving to suppress the toxicity. Tolerance will form. Incarnation will succeed. That much is certain."

Sukuna sat with his head tilted back, staring at the pale ceiling. He muttered, almost to himself: "Boring place."

"......My [evolution] is uncontrollable. What makes you think I won't simply consume your existence instead? Even if Incarnation does succeed, I have every confidence my soul's strength is not inferior to yours."

"True." Sukuna sounded entirely untroubled. "Whether a soul grows stronger as time passes, or rots — humans who can't perceive souls have no way of knowing. But I worked out the answer to that problem long ago."

He looked back at Tengen. Then, slowly, he raised one hand. His fingertip leveled at her, at her side.

"[Cleave]."

ZZZ!

The slash cut past Tengen and tore into the white space behind her.

The boundless emptiness shuddered. A sharp crack rang out, and then the surrounding walls buckled and broke apart, the false surface falling away to reveal what lay beneath.

And across Tengen's body, a blood line bloomed from shoulder to lower abdomen.

Tengen: "!"

"Without a [Star Plasma Vessel], your main body has already started expanding, hasn't it. What's standing in front of me is just a physical shell held in shape by Barrier Techniques." The mockery in Sukuna's voice was unhurried. "You were right, Tengen — I don't think you'd lose to me in a direct contest. But if your soul decides to cause trouble once Incarnation is underway, that would be a problem."

"So. Right here. I'm going to take your soul apart."

Tengen's teeth came together. A faint tremor moved through her body.

"You mastered it....a slash that targets the soul directly."

"I only got a rough feel for it while I was stuck inside that brat. The soul boundaries of an incarnated body are clear, which gave me something to work with. Honestly, I was still half-planning to just try it and see." He trailed off. Then a low sound of amusement settled in his throat.

"But then. An unexpected gift. The fight between Mahoraga and the one called Himmel."

[Having adapted to the Hero's fighting style and confirmed that the Hero possessed 'Reverse Cursed Technique', Mahoraga's attacks carried explicit killing intent.]

[What Mahoraga unleashed against the Hero was an attack method that had genuinely, at one point, reached the Hero.]

That being.

[A slash that wounds the soul.]

"After watching it once, I was certain. Not just the targeting of the soul — also the expansion of the technique's range of application. Anyway. That's all for later." Sukuna's gaze settled back on her. "Tengen. Time's up."

Tengen stopped trying to hold her expression together.

Inside her, something was crashing against something else, far beyond what showed on the surface.

Incarnating into her. It was a path she had never once considered.

But the probability was undeniable. Incarnation would succeed.

And once Sukuna had cut her soul down to weakness, she would lose the ability to suppress him, and Sukuna's soul was already something abnormal to begin with.

[Once Incarnation is complete.......Sukuna will obtain the [Immortality] Cursed Technique. And everything that technique has already built up over a thousand years.]

If it were only [Immortality] itself, that might be manageable.

The technique does exactly what the name says: it prevents the user from dying.

At that level alone, it wouldn't meaningfully strengthen Sukuna, whose soul was currently scattered across ten fingers.

They could simply seal him again.

Gojo Satoru and Himmel could manage that.

But.

The Immortality Technique is not that simple.

Immortality is not the same as agelessness. And when the body ages but cannot die, [evolution] begins, not at the sorcerer's direction, but on its own.

The technique drives its user toward transformations they cannot control, cannot predict, cannot stop.

Tengen, who feared that change above everything, had poured her entire self into keeping still. She had sealed herself inside the Tombs of the Star to keep from becoming a burden on the world.

But.

[Sukuna would not sit still.]

[He would deliberately, willfully initiate [Assimilation] and [Evolution].]

[And when that happened, the missing ten fingers would stop mattering. [Assimilation] would treat every human being, sorcerer and civilian alike, as prey.]

[All of Japan would be nothing more than food on Sukuna's plate.]

[Sukuna would become the most terrifying thing Jujutsu history had ever produced.]

When that moment came, not the Six Eyes, not a Hero from another world, nothing would be able to stop him.

The King of Curses would descend in a form beyond anything in the original record.

And I,

"And you can't stop it."

Sukuna looked at her steadily. Calmly. The word that came to mind, almost against her will, was peacefully.

"A life unchanged for a thousand years." His voice was quiet. "That must have been so dull."

"Isn't it about time to let it end?"

From the beginning of this visit, he had been nothing like the manic, bloodthirsty creature from his first resurrection.

Facing Tengen, Sukuna had been patient in a way that was almost strange.

Until now.

His fingertip moved forward.

And Tengen, staring into the face reflected before her, found herself thinking back to that conversation with Kenjaku.

[Let us continue it after a thousand years.]

"Farewell."

"Old friend."

➤ Next: The Strongest of the Modern Era VS The Strongest in History