Frieren — Chapter 192 - Assimilation Begins — Clash
Modern domains, for all their reputation as sure-hit, sure-kill, are mostly just that, a reputation.
Take the Four Calamities.
Jogo's Flame Technique.
Dagon's Ocean Technique.
Mahito's Idle Transfiguration.
At their core, each one does the same thing: take their Innate Technique, crank the output to maximum, and force-brand it onto every target inside the domain.
That's the whole secret behind Domain Expansion.
A sure-hit running at 120% amplification. Most people can't survive it.
But most people isn't everyone.
Take Okkotsu Yuta. As long as his cursed energy control can keep pace, coating his entire body in cursed energy, he could wander through Jogo's domain without taking a scratch.
That barely qualifies as sure-kill.
Sure-hit, at the end of the day, only guarantees contact with the cursed energy on a sorcerer's surface. Nothing more.
Even Malevolent Shrine is just a domain with higher numbers.
Anyone who's burned through enough shonen battle manga knows that physical damage is the cheapest form of damage at the top level. Unless, of course, you hit hard enough to make it not matter.
But Unlimited Void is different.
Gojo Satoru's Unlimited Void has, as of right now, exactly zero reliable counters.
If it connects, information overload is guaranteed.
That threat is something even the King of Curses, Sukuna, finds troublesome.
At the start, Sukuna had absolute confidence in domain battles. Open Domain held a categorical advantage over Closed Domain. That was the rule.
But now...
Gojo Satoru also had an Open Domain.
That changed everything.
Open versus Open.
Neither side has a boundary. So how exactly do you win?
Sukuna had no experience with this. The only other person who could use Open Domain like him was Kenjaku, and Kenjaku hated fighting. Completely useless as a reference.
By analogy, though, it would probably come down to a combined assessment: cursed energy reserves, technique precision, technique output, and Barrier Technique construction.
(Tsk.)
Sukuna's expression went unusually still.
(In Barrier Technique, I should have an overwhelming edge, but...)
The body Sukuna was using was Tengen's.
That deceptively plain, beautiful white-haired woman was the single greatest Barrier Technique user in all of Japan.
The problem was that Tengen had never specialized in combat.
If Sukuna could absorb the knowledge sitting inside Tengen's head and extrapolate from it himself, three days. No. One day. Give him one day, and his domain clash techniques would reach another level entirely.
In an Open Domain collision, he would win. He was certain of it.
The problem was,
There was no time.
Sukuna had barely finished incarnating before Gojo Satoru dragged him into a fight. The timing was, frankly, obnoxious.
His cursed energy output and reserves had recovered considerably thanks to Tengen's body, but "considerably" wasn't the same as matching Gojo Satoru head-to-head.
Barrier Technique advantage alone wasn't going to cut it.
He held Immortality, yes. But once Unlimited Void landed, Sukuna would lose consciousness regardless.
Factor in technique burnout, and Gojo could inflict injuries severe enough to push Tengen's body to the brink of death, forcibly reviving Tengen's consciousness and voiding the incarnation entirely.
Right.
The Strongest of the Modern Era. Gojo Satoru.
Just as he'd claimed, alone,
He had driven the King of Curses into a corner.
Prison Master.
His credibility score is way too high.
(Sorry. Yuji, Yuta, all of you.)
Maintaining his hand seals, Gojo Satoru felt something stir in his chest.
He played it off on the surface. Always did. But letting things collapse this far, to the Culling Game, he felt the weight of that. He wasn't numb to it.
From his side, he had given everything.
Less than 3 hours of sleep a day. Without Reverse Cursed Technique, his body wouldn't have lasted a week of this pace.
Once, his own power had walled him off from the world. But with Himmel in his life, with Geto Suguru back, that so-called loneliness of his had been quietly receding.
He wasn't fighting out of protectiveness anymore. It was something closer to empathy. A genuine attempt to change things.
He would rather die than say any of that out loud.
Even if he failed. Even if people called him negligent. Gojo Satoru would just laugh and change the subject.
And then,
Let it end here.
[The Modern Strongest, who has mastered divine technique]
[Has found the weakness of the Historically Strongest]
[What remains... is simply a question of power]
"Hm?"
In a domain clash, both sides pour all concentration into construction and competition. Gojo and Sukuna were both capable of maintaining a domain while throwing hands, but in a fight at this level, you still had to respect your opponent.
With the focus of the Six Eyes, Gojo Satoru registered Sukuna's move almost immediately.
He was shrinking the domain's range.
A smaller domain meant tighter technique precision within it.
And because Open Domain carried no boundary concept, there was no risk of the 'boundary collapse' that came from being enveloped inside someone else's domain.
Sukuna was trying to close the gap through craft.
Gojo Satoru saw it.
[Domain manipulation is an extraordinarily delicate operation. Especially for domains carrying sure-hit, sure-kill effects.]
[Under normal circumstances, just sustaining the clash is exhausting. Freely altering a domain's conditions mid-fight is another thing entirely.]
[The King of Curses, can do this.]
[But,]
(I won't let you.)
Excitement flashed in his eyes. The thrill of a genuine equal.
Gojo Satoru completed the same compression.
No experience in Open Domain clashes. It didn't matter. Instinct filled the gap.
Both Innate Domains contracted simultaneously, each pressing inward. The radius shrank, at one point dropping close to 10 meters.
And throughout all of it...
[Gojo Satoru's absolute advantage held.]
Sukuna could not escape the gap.
Realizing this, the King of Curses,
Released his hand seals.
BOOM!
He shattered the ground beneath him, body low, lunging forward.
"Heh."
Gojo Satoru understood instantly. Sukuna knew he'd lose the domain war. He was going for a surprise reversal, drop the domain, deal enough damage to Gojo's body directly.
Gojo released his own seals.
SLAP!
Sukuna threw a diagonal hook. Gojo caught it.
"Domain Amplification, inside an active domain!"
His eyes lit up.
"But playing defense to counter — that's a losing move~"
He raised his leg and drove a side kick straight into Sukuna's ribs, launching him backward.
"I'm ending this now!"
In the domain battle, Unlimited Void had already been grinding Sukuna down. And through long months of sparring with Himmel, close-quarters combat had become Gojo's territory too.
A complete and total rout.
Sukuna locked up. And at Gojo's fingertips, cursed energy began to coalesce once more, brilliant and humming.
[Blue]
[Red]
Both techniques ignited at nearly the same instant. Lapse and Reverse, collision and convergence, and the virtual mass that bloomed from the meeting of the two.
"Farewell, King of Curses."
Violet light washed over both their faces.
"I'll probably forget you by tomorrow."
The power that followed didn't discriminate. It severed everything in sight.
Because an Open Domain cannot be broken from within, Gojo Satoru did not restrain his output at all.
[100%]
"Hollow Technique: Purple."
A column of violet light tore toward Sukuna.
BOOM,!,!,,,,,, — —
A massive violet sphere skimmed the ground and surged forward, and everything caught in the wash of its escaping energy was scorched and warped beyond recognition.
Ssssss...
The smoke thinned.
And there was Sukuna, forcing his mouth into a grin, half his body burned black.
[RESIST,,,,,,,,!]
The injury shattered his domain with it.
[Simple Domain]
Sukuna was forced to throw up Simple Domain to keep Unlimited Void from landing directly.
[Domain shattered.]
[Close-quarters combat lost.]
[And Gojo Satoru's Purple had landed.]
Victory was right there.
But,
(Why?)
[A question, born in the mind of the Modern Strongest.]
(Why did Sukuna...)
Gojo Satoru's face showed none of the relief or ease that should have come with a fight nearly won. His brow was tight.
(At the exact moment I hit him, he expanded his domain?)
[In the instant before Purple struck.]
[The Six Eyes caught every detail of Sukuna's movements.]
[He hadn't defended with cursed energy. Instead, he had pushed all his focus into the suppressed domain and forced it wide open in a single burst.]
Smaller domain meant higher precision. Larger domain meant lower. That was the rule.
Sukuna was already losing. So why expand it?
[Click.]
(Unless...)
"Gojo Satoru."
(Everything he did was to hold my attention. To make me believe he was committed to a frontal fight. His actual goal was,)
"I told you. No matter how hard you try, you're just a fish flapping on the cutting board."
(Using the expanded domain...)
"From the bottom of my heart... I pity you."
Even so, it had all happened too fast. Even Gojo Satoru was still processing it. Under his hardening gaze, Sukuna raised one hand.
Fingers pressed together, palm turned inward.
The motion was unhurried. Almost delicate. Like bringing a perfectly portioned piece of sushi to his mouth.
[And with that 'eating' motion.]
"[Assimilation]"
And only then did Gojo Satoru understand.
He had always known that the worst part of the Immortality technique wasn't the inability to die. It was the Evolution that the sorcerer's body underwent to resist death, and the branch beneath that, Assimilation, which developed specifically to resist dying of old age.
He had guessed at the trigger. Physical contact, maybe. Or eye contact.
To prevent it, Gojo Satoru had spent the entire fight trying to keep Sukuna engaged, to keep the King of Curses occupied with him.
But Gojo Satoru had been wrong about all of it.
[Assimilation requires no trigger.]
[Or rather, the conditions had been satisfied long before this fight began.]
[500 years. For 500 years, Tengen had no Star Plasma Vessel. The concept of 'Tengen' had long since reached its breaking point.]
[No catastrophe had occurred only because Tengen had used Barrier Techniques to bind himself, keeping his consciousness and reason within the boundaries of 'human.']
[Sukuna's incarnation had restored Tengen's appearance to what it was 1,000 years ago, but the body beneath was still one that had completed its evolution. That appearance was nothing more than a sculpted replica.]
[So the only condition for Sukuna to activate Assimilation was: release the Barrier Technique that Tengen had used to bind himself.]
[Less than a second ago, through Domain Expansion, Sukuna extended his technique range beyond the Tomb of the Star.]
[Using the Open Domain's sure-hit property, he had physically torn apart the barrier Tengen left behind to contain the Assimilation.]
[Sukuna — or rather, the concept of Tengen, had begun to spread. Everything within range of his perception could be forcibly assimilated.]
[And Tengen's domain, his perception...]
[Covered all of Japan.]
Chin lifting slightly, Sukuna opened his mouth.
"Ah — mm."
He bit down.
..............................
...................
Tokyo.
The Culling Game had made it impossible to hide. Cursed energy, jujutsu, all of it was out in the open now.
Riots and protests had broken out across Japan in varying degrees. The worst of it fell on the ordinary people who had been living inside the Culling Game's barrier when it all began.
They had been relocated into temporary shelters thrown together over 6 months, lining up every day in open spaces the size of football stadiums to receive their rations. Living like refugees.
Everyone was scared. Everyone was anxious.
Those so-called sorcerers aren't going to tear our houses down, are they?
The government's never going to compensate us for this.
Ordinary people don't lie awake worrying about the world's power balance. They worry about tomorrow's meal and next month's rent.
So they worried about all of that instead.
"Mm..."
Inside a tent, a little girl pulled herself out from under her blankets.
Barely awake, she reached out on instinct, groping for her mother, who always slept beside her.
Her hand found nothing.
"Mommy...?"
She forced her eyes open.
The bed next to hers was empty.
A lamp swung overhead from the tent's ceiling, its light catching the human-shaped black stain burned into the sheets below.
And that scene,
Was playing out across all of Japan, at that very moment.
➤ Next: I Will Win