Frieren — Chapter 198 - Second Time. Domain Clash
Scene transition.
The ambush on Sukuna had landed. But the King of Curses still stood in front of the global livestream, and he opened his mouth to issue a declaration.
A challenger's declaration.
"Challenger?"
Gojo Satoru was the designated trash-talker on this team, and he didn't waste a second.
"Looks like getting those two arms fixed back has you absolutely ecstatic."
"Sukuna, you're nothing but a freshly hired orange tabby at a pet shop. A little more prone to hissing than the other cats, sure."
"But in the end, you're still a pet without a name."
"And now—"
Gojo Satoru dropped into a boxing stance.
"I'm here to take off your bell."
"That phrasing is way too weird, Gojo-sensei!" Okkotsu couldn't hold it back.
Himmel just watched the whole thing with an easy grin.
A great battle was imminent. Somehow the atmosphere refused to feel like it.
But that was only on the surface.
Sukuna scoffed. He lowered his stance gradually, settling into a posture built for counterattack.
The next moment,
All four of them vanished at once.
Sukuna moved first. Three against one, and he was the one pushing forward, a knee drive and a kick that grazed across Gojo Satoru's body.
Gojo Satoru sank his elbow outward to break the distance, then immediately loaded up for a strike.
His memory said the Sukuna he'd fought before couldn't have blocked this.
But,
BOOM!
The punch shot out, Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue pulling with it, and Sukuna still intercepted it first, leg retracted, a sideways cut that knocked it off course.
(Reaction's fast. But...)
Gojo Satoru's lip curled.
(Not as fast as I was imagining.)
"Hm?"
Sukuna felt it immediately. The killing intent at his back.
Himmel was already low to the ground, cloak dropping with him, then snapping open as he drew.
Steel cleared the sheath. He cut through the air in a flat, horizontal slash aimed straight at Sukuna's spine.
Sukuna didn't turn around. He just freed one hand and flung it backward.
[Dismantle]
Output amplified. The technique caught Himmel's blade mid-swing and shoved it off course.
Sukuna retreated several quick steps and snapped his head up.
There was a silhouette between him and the blazing sun. Okkotsu Yuta dropped from above, both palms driving down on his sword hilt, a lance of sharp white light driving straight at Sukuna's face.
BOOM!
The blade hit the ground. Rubble detonated in every direction.
Sukuna had already pulled back.
One exchange.
Okkotsu pulled his blade free. Gojo Satoru extended one finger, and a sphere of [Blue] materialized behind Sukuna. Himmel, completing the arc of his swing, flowed straight into a blade flourish and came out of it at a dead sprint, the fastest person on the field.
CLANG! CLANG!
Two slashes, left and right. The [Blue] sphere dragged at Sukuna's momentum simultaneously, and in two strikes Himmel stripped him of his footing and drew two lines of blood across his shoulder and flank.
Himmel accelerated into a follow-up,
RUMBLE!
Shadow swept over them.
He looked up.
A building.
When Sukuna had flung that hand backward, deflecting Himmel's slash was only half the point. The other half was the structure standing behind him.
Geto Suguru's earlier attack had leveled nearly half of Shinjuku. That entire section was scorched earth, too constrained, too unsatisfying to fight in. So the combatants had almost instinctively herded Sukuna toward whatever was left standing.
Now a 40-to-50-story tower came apart in two pieces and fell.
BOOM!
Rubble cascaded like a waterfall and swallowed the streets whole. The road surface fractured and sank under the impact. Buildings along the block vanished under the debris. A gray haze consumed the sky.
The view pulled wide.
Draw a line from the fight's starting point outward. Steel-and-concrete towers were being sectioned off one after another, some toppling intact, others getting broken apart mid-fall by further blade-light, fragments spinning out in all directions.
The ordinary people watching through the livestream had probably stopped thinking entirely by now.
Modern arsenals had weapons capable of demolishing reinforced concrete. None of them could do it at this frequency. None of them could do it at this efficiency.
And for the jujutsu sorcerers watching the same feed...
It wasn't any less terrifying from where they were standing.
[A sector well clear of the battlefield]
The Jujutsu High group had combined Mei Mei's crow manipulation with a bank of modern screens to assemble a multi-angle broadcast room.
Originally, Okkotsu had proposed using Rika as a shell to create an inviolable space around them, ensuring no one got hit before they even reached the fight. But Sukuna's faction had been reduced to Uraume alone, so there was nothing left to fear on that front.
Now the heavyweights of the jujutsu world watched in silence.
"This is insane."
Miwa was the first one to speak. Cold sweat ran freely down her face.
"Watching Himmel-sensei swing that sword, I just feel like I've wasted my entire life studying."
"Don't compare yourself to monsters."
Kusakabe had a hand over his mouth, watching hard. Miwa glanced at him and asked carefully.
"What about you, sensei? Can you follow Himmel-sensei's movements?"
"Don't insult me." Kusakabe scoffed. "Of course I can't."
"It's not just Himmel."
Ishigoori Ryu was standing by as a reserve combatant, eyes locked on the screen and burning with hunger.
For someone with an appetite like his, every punch and every kick up there was a French pastry with some kind of premium filter thrown on it.
Sickeningly sweet.
He wanted to eat.
"Gojo Satoru can keep up with both of them using his technique."
Uro Takako caught that and added her own voice.
"Honestly... I never thought the modern era would produce someone capable of fighting Sukuna like this."
She had declined to go up against Sukuna at the end. But she was here supervising, and she'd given her word to help evacuate whoever she could if it came to that.
Uro had introduced herself before the battle, former captain of the Sun, Moon, and Stars Squad. She knew what Sukuna's terror looked like up close.
Nobody had asked her opinion on the fight, though.
There was a genuine intelligence Jiraiya in the room.
[Preventing the progress of assimilation, saving Japan's number one]
Kenjaku stood with his arms crossed.
"Yes. I'm surprised as well."
"By my calculations, Sukuna's cursed energy reserves and output after full assimilation should run about a quarter higher than his prime."
"I expected a complete stomp. I didn't expect a stalemate."
"As expected — that opening strike did its work."
Kenjaku hadn't missed it. In one corner of the livestream, Geto Suguru was half-kneeling on the ground, panting hard and bleeding from both nostrils, the minor technique backlash from deploying Uzumaki.
"Adjusting the trajectory, condensing the output, unleashing the highest-degree Maximum Technique, the damage that actually reached Sukuna was roughly 20 times what landed 9 years ago. Even with everything thrown at him, Sukuna still took injuries far worse than projected."
"But his hands recovered pretty fast, didn't they?" Choso frowned.
"Because hands mean everything to a jujutsu sorcerer. Assisting technique activation with your hands raises output, and hand signs are non-negotiable. Sukuna almost certainly adopted a strategy of slowing wound recovery across the rest of his body and concentrating his resources entirely on restoring his hands first."
Yuki Tsukumo was one of the few people present who could use Reverse Cursed Technique. She explained without hesitation.
"So Sukuna's current movement capacity is still a long way from full power. That's why it looks like they're suppressing him."
"Does that count as a Binding Vow?"
"A very shallow one. At this level, any of us could do the same, but to impose it instantly?" A pause. "Can't say I'm shocked. He's the King of Curses."
The group debated in overlapping voices while the combatants on the field continued to dismantle the city around them.
But there was one person in the room who didn't look remotely pleased.
Kashimo had his lip clamped between his teeth, gaze fixed on a single figure in the feed.
"...Don't embarrass me, Okkotsu Yuta..."
.
CLANG!
(As I thought. I'm the only one who can't quite keep up...)
In the thick of it, Okkotsu Yuta stayed behind Gojo Satoru and Himmel. He only cut in when the window was right.
Okkotsu Yuta.
The modern era's anomaly.
Half a year of explosive growth had carried him to a height where he could stand beside Gojo Satoru and Himmel.
But in pure close-quarters combat, he felt it clearly. He was behind those two, and the gap wasn't small.
Gojo Satoru had a broken technique. Cursed energy precision and output that belonged in a different category.
Himmel had instinct that shouldn't exist, technique built over a lifetime, and sheer crushing force.
Okkotsu's cursed energy reserves surpassed both of them. Beyond that, the gap was real on almost every front.
Three against one, and just not getting in the way was already the ceiling of what Okkotsu could manage right now.
He kept that thought off his face.
Another exchange of slashes. A building came down with a thunderous crash.
"......."
Gojo Satoru tracked his surroundings through the Six Eyes. They could see through the flow of cursed energy, but not through matter that held none.
Smoke was everywhere. Sukuna had buried himself in it.
Himmel and Okkotsu stood a few meters apart. The haze cut into both of their sightlines.
Okkotsu's eyes moved. Then they locked.
He's here.
The yellow smoke collapsed inward like cloth being pinched at its center, then a figure tore through the curtain and erupted outward, savage grin already on his face, coming straight for Okkotsu Yuta.
CLANG!
The cursed tool blade caught the first strike. Okkotsu and Sukuna were nose to nose.
"I remember you, brat."
Sukuna threw a straight punch mid-sentence. The speed was brutal. Okkotsu barely got out of the way, and his cheek opened up in a spray of blood.
"I told you. Next time I see you, I'd kill you."
Sukuna snapped his leg up and drove it down into the inside of Okkotsu's calf, wrecking his stance, and landed a [Dismantle] in the same motion.
"And it seems like, you're the only one who's been off the pace since the start."
Blood sprayed. Okkotsu had his blade up for the defense, and he still took shallow cuts across his body.
The boy went airborne backward.
But Himmel and Gojo Satoru had already moved into position.
Same pattern as before: Gojo Satoru opened with [Blue] to pin Sukuna, and Himmel came in to finish it.
SHRRKK!
The blade drove down from above. Sukuna caught it on a palm layered with technique.
Like a saw biting into steel. Dense, blazing sparks burst from the contact point and rained down.
At the same time.
Himmel let go of the blade. Gojo Satoru pulled his elbow back, palm cupped over his fist, loading up.
BOOM!
BOOM!
The instant Sukuna braced into his defensive posture, both of them hit him, front and back, simultaneous.
"Ngh—!"
Sukuna's body locked for a fraction of a second, a muffled grunt forced out of him.
The wounds Geto Suguru had opened earlier hadn't finished closing. They split again. Himmel didn't give him a moment, the punch was already done and he was already accelerating.
Like a Sandevistan had kicked in. His figure stretched into a smear of afterimages, one explosive step forward, fist clenching down, veins standing out across his forearm,
BOOM!
Clean hit. Dead center, abdomen.
"GHK—!"
This time Sukuna coughed. A few drops of dark blood. His body arced backward and went flying.
.
"He's crushing them..."
"He's too strong!"
The whole room was stunned.
Himmel and Gojo Satoru's coordination was seamless, the King of Curses suppressed completely. Even the students could read it.
But,
"He's still not showing any sign of actually losing, is he." Ishigoori Ryu's brow furrowed.
Everyone knew why.
[At this moment, Sukuna held the Immortality technique.]
Damage dealt, damage regenerated. No exceptions, no ceiling. Push this fight as hard as they could and it would stretch into a war of attrition too long to imagine.
So then,
"If that's the case, why not just open a domain?"
Every head in the room turned to Miwa.
She pulled her neck in slightly but kept going.
"Once a domain is up, Unlimited Void should be able to take complete control of his brain, right? Sealing him after that seems like the obvious move."
"I know punching things is the foundation of jujutsu. But fighting like this just gives Sukuna time to regenerate."
"Last domain expansion — Gojo-sensei won, didn't he?"
Yuki pressed both hands over her face and said nothing.
Kenjaku went quiet too.
She wasn't wrong.
An open-barrier Unlimited Void was probably the most dangerous domain in existence. Kenjaku had exactly zero interest in finding out what it felt like from the inside.
...But would it really be that clean?
Everyone's thoughts tangled,
"Hey."
Higuruma spoke, eyes never leaving the screen.
"It's coming."
.
"Gojo!"
"Yeah!"
The call went out the instant Himmel sent Sukuna airborne. Both of them read it and moved.
Gojo Satoru formed the seal.
[Unlimited Void]
Sukuna was still in the air, still hurtling backward, and he felt the cursed energy shift. His hands were already moving.
[Malevolent Shrine]
Both sides. Open-barrier domains. At the same time.
The first round of confrontation.
Began.
➤ Next: The Heart-Pounding Combo!