Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 31 - The Overranked Trap and the Awakening Tyrant

"Let's go."

Yu Haibara stuffed the blood-soaked gauze into his pant leg and forced himself upright.

Kento Nanami pushed his glasses up, one lens missing now. He said nothing, just reached for the infirmary's iron door.

A thick arm shot across and slammed it shut.

BANG!

Plaster rained down from the wall.

Nanami turned. A green silhouette filled the doorway.

Toji stood squarely in front of the door, tossing the roasted wild boar leg, gnawed down to bare bone, into the medical waste bin without looking.

He stared down at these two kids who couldn't even stand steady.

Pale faces. Exhausted faces. Faces that had gone completely numb.

A disgustingly familiar nausea turned over in Toji's gut.

Too familiar.

They looked exactly like the ANBU brats from his past life in Konoha, the ones in animal masks, disposable rags hurled into the battlefield by the people above them.

Those old fossils in the higher-ups would sit inside their safe Barriers sipping hot tea, mouthing off about duty and sacrifice, then feed half-grown children into the meat grinder. As long as the mission got done, bodies could be swapped out for fresh ones.

This kind of high-intensity assignment stank of something rotten.

"Where are you going?" Toji asked. He already knew.

"Mission." Nanami's voice was flat and cold, weighted with exhaustion. "Please step aside, Fushiguro-sensei."

"In the state you two are in, a Cursed Spirit wouldn't even bother picking its teeth after eating you." Toji scoffed without mercy. "I'm coming along."

Nanami blinked.

"You're a specially appointed taijutsu instructor. You don't have exorcism mission quotas." He reached for the rule instinctively, like a reflex.

Toji grinned. Thumbs up. His white teeth caught a blinding flash in the dim corridor. "This counts as special training! Your passionate sensei's loving discipline! Be grateful and accept it!"

Staring at that infuriating, wide-open grin, something in Nanami's wound-tight nerves let go.

One hour later.

Outskirts of Tokyo. The ruins of an Ubusuna Shrine.

A black Curtain descended slowly along the overgrown mountain path like an enormous pot slammed upside-down, swallowing the shrine and the surrounding dead forest whole in thick, clinging shadow.

The Auxiliary Supervisor was a middle-aged man in black-rimmed glasses. His suit was a wrinkled mess.

He stood at the edge of the Curtain, a sheen of cold sweat pressed across his forehead.

"The target is a Grade 2 Cursed Spirit. Should be underground, near the main hall." He wrung his hands, eyes locked on his own shoes, not once looking at Nanami or Haibara.

Toji didn't move.

He stood beneath the crumbling torii gate and let his five senses, untouched by Cursed Energy, completely clean, stretch outward.

The air reeked. Blood and sulfur, sharp enough to bite. Beneath his feet, the earth trembled at an almost imperceptible frequency. Low. Deep. Like something enormous breathing underground.

That pressure did not belong to a Grade 2.

Toji cut his eyes toward the sweating Auxiliary Supervisor.

"Hey." His voice was quiet, but it landed with weight. "You sure what's in there is a Grade 2?"

The man flinched like he'd been struck.

"Y-Yes! The Window's observation report was very clear — it's absolutely a Grade 2!" His voice shot up. The veins on his neck stood out. He was trying to convince himself as much as anyone else.

Toji watched the man's face and said nothing. The sneer was entirely internal.

"Sensei, we're heading in." Yu Haibara wiped the cold sweat from his face, scraped together the last thread of Cursed Energy in his body, and stepped onto the moss-slicked stone stairs.

BOOM!

The instant Haibara's foot hit the third step, the entire wooden main hall exploded.

No warning. No buildup. Just gone.

Splintered beams and heavy roof tiles screamed outward in all directions like cannon fire. Then an arm erupted from the rubble, a massive arm, blanketed in tumorous growths, as thick as a century-old tree trunk.

"Watch out!" Nanami seized Haibara by the collar and wrenched him back.

BANG!

Half a beat too slow. The shockwave of Cursed Energy clipped his right shoulder.

The freshly stitched wound tore open instantly. Blood soaked through his white shirt in a violent red bloom.

He flew backward, a kite with its string cut, and crashed into the muddy ground at the base of the stairs.

"Nanami!" Haibara's face twisted with fury. He lunged forward, then stopped.

The Cursed Spirit had fully pulled itself free from the wreckage.

It was a mountain of flesh. A heaving, shifting mass, its skin dense with infant faces packed tight against each other. Every single mouth was open. Every single one was screaming, a high, thin, continuous wail that shredded the air.

The Cursed Energy rolling off it hit like a wave front. Cold. Suffocating. It stripped the warmth from the air in an instant.

Haibara's legs shook beneath him. He couldn't raise his fists. He couldn't do anything. The sheer weight of its presence had sealed him completely.

This wasn't a Grade 2. This was a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit.

For two Grade 2 Jujutsu Sorcerers who were already running on fumes, this wasn't a fight. It was a slaughter.

The Cursed Spirit raised its enormous palm and brought it down toward Yu Haibara's head. The same casual contempt as swatting a fly.

Shadow swallowed his vision entirely.

The instinct to run was gone. There was nothing left.

Then a streak of bright green tore through the air.

Toji stepped in front of Yu Haibara.

The grin was gone. Completely.

What replaced it was something colder than cold, the look of a man staring at something already dead.

The Sorcerer Killer. The Heavenly Tyrant. The thing that had made the entire jujutsu world flinch.

It woke up.

No wasted words. Toji's muscles swelled, veins rising across his body like coiled roots, a terrifying red light seeping through the skin beneath.

"Third Gate — Gate of Life, open!"

The energy detonated outward. A visible red shockwave blasted the surrounding dirt and dead leaves into the air.

Toji reached toward his waist.

An ugly, elongated Cursed Spirit poked its head out from beneath his clothes, opened its mouth, and spat out a blade with a strange, crooked shape.

The Inverted Spear of Heaven.

It had been a long time.

The Cursed Spirit's palm came down.

BANG!

The sound cracked like a small explosion.

Toji's feet punched half a foot into the stone slabs. But his arm was up, palm raised above his head, and the entire mountain of flesh ground to a halt against a single human hand.

Dead stop. Not another inch.

"Too big. Too slow. Too stupid."

His silhouette vanished.

Haibara's eyes couldn't track him. Nobody's could. There was only the sound, the sharp, repeating crack of air being split apart at high speed.

SWISH, SWISH, SWISH, SWISH,

The mountain of flesh locked up in midair. Grotesque. Frozen.

The infant screams cut off all at once.

Toji appeared behind the Cursed Spirit. The Inverted Spear of Heaven in his hand was clean. Not a drop.

One second passed.

The sounds started. Dense, low, rapid, a string of muffled pops running through the massive body all at once. Hundreds of wounds tore open simultaneously across every surface.

Purple-black blood erupted from every seam like pressurized jets.

The colossal body dropped. It didn't fall so much as collapse inward, deflating like rotten sludge, until there was nothing left but black ash drifting upward through the cold air.

One hit.

A Grade 1 Cursed Spirit, untouchable a minute ago, never got off a single technique. Pure, absolute violence had ground it into nothing.

Yu Haibara's mouth hung open. He'd forgotten entirely about the pain screaming up from his leg.

"That was... incredible..." He stumbled over the words, barely above a mumble. The wide-eyed, star-struck look had come back to his face, blazing. "Is that Fushiguro-sensei's real strength...?"

Kento Nanami pressed his hand against his blood-soaked shoulder and hauled himself out of the mud.

There was no relief on his face. His expression had gone dark and still.

"The intel was wrong." He bit down on his back teeth. Every word came out like it was being forced through a crack. "An error spanning two full major grades. This isn't a work oversight. This is premeditated murder."

Toji turned around, flipped his wrist. The Inverted Spear of Heaven disappeared back into his Curse-Belly.

He walked, unhurried, to the edge of the Curtain.

The Auxiliary Supervisor was already on the ground. He'd been there for a while. His legs were shaking so badly he couldn't stop them, a dark wet patch spread across his crotch, and he didn't have the strength to get up and run even if he'd wanted to.

Toji reached down with one large, calloused hand, grabbed the man by the collar, and lifted him into the air. One arm. Like picking up a small animal.

His eyes fixed on the man's ashen face and didn't move.

"I'll ask once." Toji's voice had no rise or fall to it. It just cut. "Who gave the order."

"I — I don't know! I was only following the report submitted by the Window, I was just executing the mission—" The man was still trying to talk his way out of it, his voice cracking apart as he spoke.

"Not talking?"

Toji smiled.

The killing intent that came up with it wasn't performed. It wasn't a threat. It was the real thing, dragged up from years spent inside mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and it hit the Auxiliary Supervisor in the chest like a physical object.

"You worthless people always get one thing wrong."

Toji's hand shifted to the man's throat. His thick fingers began to close.

"I put on this green spandex and play babysitter for two kids who haven't finished growing yet because I want to be a good example for my son. Not because I have a gentle personality."

The oxygen vanished. The Auxiliary Supervisor's legs kicked wildly. His hands clawed at Toji's fingers with everything he had. His eyes were starting to bulge.

The cartilage in his neck made a sound that set teeth on edge.

"Last three seconds." Toji's face was still blank. "Three."

Behind him, Kento Nanami watched.

For the first time, he didn't move to stop it.

Haibara's face went white. He opened his mouth, and Nanami's hand came down on his shoulder and held him there.

"One."

Toji skipped two entirely. His grip closed.

"It was the High Command!"

The man's nerve broke completely. He screamed it out, tears and snot running down his face, completely gone.

"It was a mission designated specifically by the upper echelons! The directive explicitly required that Yu Haibara and Kento Nanami be assigned to exorcise this location, they said it was a limit-boundary test, a test of the students' potential, "

➤ Next: Nanami and Haibara's Departure, The Angered Jujutsu High