Frieren — Chapter 194 - Who Will Fight Sukuna?

The grand Culling Game had finally neared its end.

All barriers, aside from the temporarily expanded [Tokyo] zone, had been suppressed by Jujutsu Society.

With Gojo Satoru, Himmel, and the rest of the Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerers present, the whole affair never felt truly perilous.

Ryu Ishigori. The Three Greats of Sendai. Powerful as they were, none of them managed to cause large-scale destruction.

Man and Uraume likewise failed to inflict a single casualty on Jujutsu Society's side.

But at the very end of the Culling Game, Sukuna's resurrection cast a shadow over everything.

The summoning of Mahoraga had come close to threatening civilians. Himmel stopped it, but the battle's aftershocks still indirectly leveled the entire Ikebukuro district. And because Mahoraga had kept Himmel occupied, Sukuna found the opening he needed to reach Tengen.

Incarnation complete, Sukuna initiated the assimilation.

Within Japan's borders, the missing persons count, by rough estimate...

exceeded ten million.

Sukuna's incomplete assimilation produced disappearances on that scale.

For context: according to Japan's most recent 2017 census, the country held approximately 126.7 million people. The targets of this [Assimilation] were selected entirely at random, the scope covering all of Riben. One-tenth of the nation's flesh and blood, simply gone.

To take it further: Japan's administration, legislature, judiciary, economy, media, and major corporate headquarters are almost entirely concentrated in Tokyo. But Tokyo had become a battlefield, forcing a total evacuation.

Transportation severed. Shops shuttered. Riots erupting. Hospitals overwhelmed.

Panic spread across the entire country.

An anomaly like this should have triggered upheaval across the globe.

But after other nations grasped the key detail, that [Tengen requires barriers to perform assimilation, and those barriers are confined within Japan's borders], the outcry went quiet almost overnight.

It was treated as a natural disaster.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, Japanese geophysicist Takeuchi Hitoshi had been among the first to propose it: Japan sits at the subduction boundary where the Pacific Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate dive beneath the Eurasian Plate, sliding toward the Japan Trench and Mariana Trench at roughly 8 to 10 centimeters per year.

The theory was quickly seized upon and stretched into the "Sinking Hypothesis." From that starting point, modern doomsday thinking had spread widely through Japanese culture.

Volcanic eruptions. Towering tsunamis. Japan sinking beneath the sea. What once circulated as dark humor now seemed to be inching toward reality.

And the outside world...

The nations with the most reason to intervene were, unexpectedly, silent. The uninformed public was merely confused. But those who knew more could probably guess the truth:

[If it's this quiet, they've already made their move.]

Ninety percent of nations had no intention of involving themselves in this calamity descending on Riben. They stayed silent and turned their eyes toward the island nation.

Until that announcement went out.

[August 15th]

[The King of Curses, Ryomen Sukuna, will challenge all modern Jujutsu Sorcerers to battle.]

Curiosity about Jujutsu, these so-called "superpowers."

Anticipation for Japan's sinking.

Or simply bloodthirst. Spectators who just wanted to watch something burn.

Every eye turned to the same point.

And time... slowly ticked on.

.

"Sukuna-sama. I am deeply sorry. I willingly accept whatever punishment you see fit."

It was a palace unlike any conventional idea of luxury.

Towering trees rose in elegant, uneven clusters, weaving the space into something cool and still. Dense shade blanketed the ground. The air was hushed. The throne, carved from stone and ice and built for reclining, had a severe, imposing quality to it.

The white-haired beauty lay half-sprawled across it. Posture loose. Unhurried.

Brows lightly shut, the line of his lips soft.

Snow-white strands of hair draped across his face, and he had no particular interest in moving them, just turning through the pages of a book with languid attention.

Uraume knelt to one side, expression drawn.

"I was only able to recover seven fingers. The fault is mine..."

"It's of no consequence."

SHFF!

Sukuna turned a page with his thumb. His lips held a faint smile. He didn't even glance at Uraume, let alone apply pressure.

"The sorcerers of this era are decent enough. That you managed to cooperate with me in seizing Fushiguro Megumi's body, that was already the limit of what could be done."

"I couldn't have expected you to go after the fingers under Gojo Satoru's or Himmel's watch. Let alone control that brat Itadori Yuji."

Uraume: "Even so..."

Setting aside Himmel and Gojo Satoru for the moment, what gnawed at Uraume was being launched through the air in a single blow by someone called Okkotsu Yuta.

That bastard. Making me lose face in front of Sukuna-sama. Next time I will absolutely,

"Either way, what's left can be supplemented through Tengen's body and [Assimilation]." Whether or not he had noticed Uraume's silent struggle, Sukuna kept talking. "In terms of Cursed Energy reserves and output alone, I'm still running nearly one-fifth above my peak."

"And beyond that —"

Sukuna steadied the book with one hand. His left reached in the opposite direction.

CRACK!

It was a massive, humanoid shape.

Its posture resembled someone seated in Zen meditation, but it was no longer anything living. The surface was wrapped in a structure like dried, withered bark.

[Sokushinbutsu]

The so-called Sokushinbutsu: Japanese monks who, through extreme ascetic practice, mummified themselves while still alive, their physical bodies remaining uncorrupted after death.

Such figures were sometimes enshrined as "Living Bodhisattvas", beings said to have transcended the cycle of rebirth.

Near the close of the Heian era, Sukuna had indeed attempted this so-called extreme asceticism.

He had no intention of leaving behind a Sokushinbutsu, though. This one was...

"That revolting creature. Tengen."

Sukuna turned another page, then ate the Sokushinbutsu's head.

The texture was apparently somewhat crunchy. Two quick, audible bites, and he chewed through it, swallowing it down.

"This Sokushinbutsu is worth at least several million [Assimilations]. After consuming it, my level — measured against the cursed objects I left behind — puts me at roughly 24 fingers." Sukuna ran his tongue across his lips. "More than enough to handle Gojo Satoru and the rest."

He finally set down the manga volume of Naruto, adding it to the already-finished pile beside him.

Then he looked at Uraume.

"Is the [Bath] prepared?"

"Yes."

Through a specific ritual, Tengen's consciousness within the body would be submerged, and along with it, every soul newly folded into this flesh would be pushed down into the depths.

Right after the assimilation completed, Sukuna had been working at roughly [22 fingers] of combat power. If Gojo Satoru and Okkotsu Yuta had pressed him together, the threat of Unlimited Void factored in, Sukuna couldn't have claimed a hundred percent certainty.

But what Gojo Satoru didn't know, what he couldn't have known, was that through the [Bath] and the [Sokushinbutsu], Sukuna's strength had already reached [24 fingers].

At that level, Sukuna was confident he could defeat Himmel and Gojo Satoru together.

Even so...

"Set up the barrier as well. Just to be safe."

"One more thing —"

Sukuna turned back to Uraume.

"That item Man left behind, hang it on me. And have that cursed tool ready."

"Yes!" Uraume dropped to one knee.

"Heh."

Sukuna turned back toward the black pool.

He had everything now.

"Well then..."

He approached the vast dark water, shed his garments, and stepped in slowly.

The surface rose past his ankles. Past his stomach and chest.

His waist-length hair fanned briefly across the water, then soaked through and sank, dragged down by the blood-dark liquid filling around it.

Before he went fully under, Sukuna raised his eyes. He seemed to look through walls, through distance, toward something far away.

"Have you made your preparations?"

.

"Preparations are finally complete!"

Jujutsu High. Training hall.

Meimei launched herself to her feet.

Her deliberately grown-out hair swirled in the air around her. This fully-grown, composed Jujutsu Sorcerer was grinning like a kid.

"Ahaha! Hahaha! We are so in the money!"

"Sukuna, the King of Curses, resurrected in the modern era! Single-handedly challenging all of Jujutsu Society!"

"Once Jujutsu was exposed, even livestreams on the topic got approved, material this explosive, a battle on this scale, I'd die happy just for having seen it! I'm broadcasting through my Cursed Technique, and ticket sales alone have already cleared ten billion yen!"

"Haha! Hahahaha! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

She laughed without a shred of restraint.

"Easy for you to laugh." Kusakabe sat off to the side, bandages still wound around him, clearly not yet fully healed from earlier. "Once Sukuna demolishes Jujutsu Society, this Japan becomes his personal nation. At that point, every household might have to hand over their firstborn for Great Leader Sukuna-sama to enjoy."

"Doesn't matter."

Meimei waved him off.

"I'll emigrate."

"The hell you will! A deserter!"

Kusakabe pressed a hand to his forehead.

It's people like you, with zero sense of national duty, that got us here in the first place!

Not that Kusakabe actually expected anything from Meimei.

He didn't expect anything from himself, either, if he was being honest.

(This is a genuine war. To face a monster like Sukuna, you need to send monsters.)

To that end, the higher-ups had, for once, actually cooperated, issuing a mandatory summons across all of Riben.

Every powerful Jujutsu Sorcerer converged on Tokyo Jujutsu High.

And the conclusion they reached after deliberation was this:

Build a formation centered on [Gojo Satoru] and [Himmel] that can take down Sukuna.

(Because of Sukuna's [Assimilation] technique, anyone on our side who gets within range risks being absorbed on the spot.)

Sukuna's Assimilation was exceptionally particular.

He could freely designate any target, not just humans. Cursed Spirits qualified too.

Possessing a sufficient amount of [Cursed Energy] could resist assimilation, yes. But the threshold for what counted as "sufficient" was maddeningly vague.

During Gojo Satoru's fight with Sukuna, Sukuna had activated Assimilation, targeting everyone present except Gojo Satoru.

Ordinary people without Cursed Energy were absorbed in an instant. Those with only a trace, Miwa, for example, reportedly felt the pull nearly take them.

The picture was clear enough: even Jujutsu Sorcerers, even while Sukuna was simultaneously running assimilation on tens of millions of targets, could still be swept up by long-range assimilation if their rank was low enough.

And that was Sukuna running it broadly, at scale. If he narrowed his focus to a specific individual...

A full charge was out of the question.

They needed a small group of elites to engage Sukuna first. Anyone else deploying would have to wait, hold until the first wave had ground Sukuna's condition down to near nothing.

And the candidates for that first wave were:

[Gojo Satoru]

[Himmel]

And,

[Okkotsu Yuta] and [Geto Suguru]

➤ Next: Pre-Battle CG