Frieren — Chapter 197 - Righteous Gang Beatdown
Before the battle, the Jujutsu High group had discussed how to land the first blow.
This was a fight with no fixed arena and no fixed time.
The crows would broadcast everything live, but Sukuna himself wouldn't bother watching. He would simply wait, leisurely, in the manner of the King of Curses, for the challengers to come to him.
"Should we open with Hollow Purple?"
Gojo Satoru spoke first.
"Hollow Purple has the highest output, right? If we get Utahime and Rakugenji to back us up and boost it with incantations, I should be able to push output to around 200%."
"If we fire it at Sukuna from the estimated distance..." He tilted his head. "Maybe we could blow off both his hands?"
He raised a finger immediately.
"Once his hands are gone, I rush in, open my Domain, and blindside him."
A straight one-on-one against Sukuna, and Gojo Satoru would probably only be thinking about the most satisfying head-on clash possible. But this was a righteous gang beatdown. And when it came to those, min-maxer Gojo Satoru had opinions.
"No. It won't go that cleanly." Himmel cut in. "Domain Expansion comes with a clear surge of Cursed Energy. Sukuna would feel it and try to move the instant it starts."
Yuta added, "Sukuna's technique precision is abnormal. He doesn't even need his hands to release Dismantle and Cleave. Even if he can't interrupt the Domain Expansion, he can still reposition himself."
"And we can't afford what happens if we miss," Geto Suguru said, dismissing it as well.
"Tch~" Gojo Satoru pouted. "So what, we just use it as a greeting~?"
"A sneak attack is that kind of thing by nature. And honestly, a 200% Hollow Purple at long range might not guarantee serious damage on Sukuna as he is now." Geto Suguru's brow furrowed as he thought it over. "His Cursed Energy is even more refined than what I sensed before..."
"What! Suguru, you bastard, how dare you look down on me!"
"Stop fooling around. What I'm saying is — let me do it."
Suguru faced the group. His eyes were steady.
"I know I'm the weakest one here."
"I won't overreach. But if it's just one sneak attack — one strike — I'm confident."
Everyone present understood immediately.
Himmel said quietly, "You're going to use Uzumaki?"
Maximum: Uzumaki.
By converting the Cursed Spirits Geto Suguru has subdued into high-precision Cursed Energy and expelling it in a single concentrated burst, the conversion efficiency is extraordinary. 2,844 Cursed Spirits would be enough to match the Flash Sky Strike Himmel delivers seriously in Priest mode. A collision between the two could redraw the map.
Of course, on its own, it still falls far short of Gojo Satoru's Hollow Purple.
But...
The number of Cursed Spirits Geto Suguru now possessed was on an entirely different scale than before.
During this Culling Game, Kenjaku had unleashed a full ten million Cursed Spirits. And Geto Suguru hadn't spent those ten-plus days lying low in the Sendai Barrier just watching the other three Heavenly Kings bicker.
These past 9 years, he also hadn't spent his time simply contemplating life inside a prison cell.
Because of the Cursed Spirit Sealing plan, Geto Suguru had previously only consumed the best, handpicked. For 9 years, he'd been starving, and he couldn't afford to be picky anymore.
Fed consistently by Himmel and Gojo Satoru, his accumulated Cursed Spirit count had long since surpassed 40,000.
Then came the half-year after Kenjaku joined Jujutsu High. His consumption rate had more than doubled.
By using Idle Transfiguration on his own taste bud cells, Geto Suguru could temporarily ignore the flavor of the Cursed Spirits themselves entirely, swallowing them with brutal efficiency.
And throughout the ten-plus days of the Culling Game, he had barely stopped. Consuming, constantly.
His total count had now exceeded...
One hundred thousand.
If Himmel and Gojo Satoru had captured the Cursed Spirits they'd encountered rather than killing them, that number would be even higher.
But regardless.
100,000 divided by 2,888.
Approximately thirty-five.
A rough calculation, of course. Back then, Geto Suguru had run a "few but elite" approach, so those 2,888 were mostly excellent Cursed Spirits. The current hundred thousand were uneven in quality.
Final estimate: roughly twenty times the output of that original strike.
"Kenjaku released ten million Cursed Spirits. Our Cursed Spirit Sealing plan is essentially bankrupt. The only path left is Idle Transfiguration on real people — remodeling everyone's constitutions."
"So it doesn't matter if my Cursed Spirits get used up."
"Pure Cursed Energy damage won't stop a top-tier fighter on its own. They'll just patch themselves with Reverse Cursed Technique. But that's the normal case. At this level of power, I believe we can at least drop Sukuna's combat condition to around eighty percent at the start of the fight."
Geto Suguru's analysis was sound. The only question was,
"Can it actually reach that level of power?" Yuta's brow furrowed. He looked uncertain.
Cursed Techniques aren't simple math. Not addition and subtraction, not even multiplication.
Maximum techniques are still Cursed Techniques. Which means the sorcerer has to control them. No matter how high the theoretical total output, the moment the sorcerer demands directional focus, efficiency drops by half.
"Yes. How much damage actually lands after directional output, that part is uncertain," Geto Suguru confirmed.
And beyond that: activating a Cursed Technique at this scale carried a real risk of catastrophic failure during deployment. If it went wrong, it wouldn't be Sukuna who died first. It would be Geto Suguru, the technique detonating against its own caster.
But every one of those concerns dissolved with his next words.
"Trust me."
.
BZZZZZ,
A magical array spun beneath their feet. Barrier techniques expanded outward with the four at the center.
Gojo Satoru was responsible for throwing up a barrier to mask their presence from Sukuna's senses. Yuta and Himmel held position outside it, watching for ambushes.
Geto Suguru stood in the middle of all of them.
Maximum: Uzumaki.
Above his head, jet-black Cursed Spirits were being pulled at extreme speed into the warped disc forming overhead. He didn't call on Utahime or Rakugenji's techniques to boost the output. It was already more than he could fully control. Adding more would only multiply the risk.
Control the rate of Cursed Energy flowing in.
Make sure the Uzumaki itself doesn't collapse before the technique fires.
It was far harder than he'd expected.
2,888 Cursed Spirits, the Uzumaki could swallow all of them in under 2 seconds. But now, Geto Suguru had to hold the reins the entire way, with the precision of a surgeon.
And somehow, he still had room to think.
(My Cursed Technique is Cursed Spirit Manipulation.)
(Sukuna's current existence is closer to a Cursed Spirit than a human. That means, if his condition is bad enough, I can be the one to finish him.)
(Only... finish him.)
If it's me, even dying is fine.
(I am the weakest among them.)
The wind whipped at the hem of his clothes.
This is my atonement.
His hair was swept up with it.
(It's not that I don't think like that. But maybe, the feeling is even more simple than that.)
The Uzumaki had started to swell past his control. Geto Suguru reinforced its outer shell with his own Cursed Energy, pressing back against it.
(I don't want to be useless. Not because of shame. Because I don't want to leave everything to them again.)
(After this strike, I'll pull back from the battlefield for a while.)
Gojo Satoru stood ahead of him, expression uncharacteristically grave.
He didn't look back. As if he simply trusted that Geto Suguru would handle what needed to be handled.
Then...
I can't fail.
BZZZZZ!,!.
The pitch-black vortex swelling above his head collapsed suddenly inward.
The murky darkness crushed itself into a single point, flickering black and white, a blinding, distorted light. Rampaging Cursed Energy slammed against itself at the core, unstable enough to see with the naked eye.
Is this the best I can do?
...It's enough.
Geto Suguru pointed forward.
2000%.
Maximum: Uzumaki.
The next instant,
The point of light left the string.
.
The pitch-black beam of light seemed to take on physical mass. Starting from the four of them, all of Shinjuku began to go silent and gray-black, as if the world was ending.
Sunlight was swallowed whole by the weight of the Cursed Energy.
The beam spread toward the sky and bored into the earth. The skyscrapers in its path didn't even have time to collapse. They were devoured, ground down, erased.
"So you're going with that!"
Sukuna bared his teeth in a savage grin.
The Uzumaki's output was converged into a fan shape, radius spanning several kilometers, amplified further by Gojo Satoru's barrier interference sweeping across the area.
Sukuna didn't run.
Almost without hesitation, he deployed Domain Amplification to absorb part of the damage. At the same time, both hands struck out simultaneously, unleashing Dismantle and Cleave at maximum output and maximum frequency.
His judgment: only by doing this could he possibly,
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
Steel rebar and shattered concrete wrapped in dust and ceased to exist as solid matter. The ground behaved like stacked sheets of paper, torn, lifted, dissolved, carved into deep interlocking chasms of black.
A boundless torrent of black and white swept across the entire district without a single gap, moving in one unbroken line.
Covering Sukuna completely.
.
Shinjuku.
East to west, roughly 6.5 kilometers. North to south, roughly 5.2 kilometers.
Under this one strike, over a third of the district...
Every trace of human presence had been erased.
Viewed from above, the damage bled into the neighboring wards, Nakano to the west, Shibuya to the south.
A ferocious scar etched into the map.
And at the very front of that scar, where the claw marks ran deepest,
Hisssssssss,
Ryomen Sukuna looked down.
He scanned his charred skin and his severed hands. Something unreadable settled into his expression.
Even at the equivalent of 24 fingers, even with Domain Amplification, external technique release, and Reverse Cursed Technique all working in concert, it had still come to this.
Geto Suguru.
A fool who should have been crushed like an insect under his foot. And yet he'd actually caused this much trouble.
How truly...
"Yo, Sukuna~"
Shoom,
"Haven't you gotten a little thin?"
The King of Curses composed his expression and looked up toward the figure cutting through the sky above him.
The strongest sorcerer of the modern era. Mouth already open, smirking, insufferable.
Behind Gojo Satoru, Himmel and Okkotsu Yuta had both arrived.
"Brat." Sukuna laughed the word out like a curse.
"Just so you don't get the wrong idea, let me clarify."
He raised both arms. His hands restored themselves in seconds.
Sukuna lifted a single index finger.
"You are the challengers."
➤ Next: Second Time. Domain Clash