Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 115 - Mahito's Domain Expansion

The cold hit bone and kept going, shooting straight up through his skull.

Yuji had just closed the Gate of Rest. His body was still in freefall from the peak, drowning in the hollow ache that followed an all-out effort, and he was half a beat slow.

He snapped his head down.

A stitched face rose slowly from the shadows beneath his feet, wearing a playful grin, like sewage seeping through from some other world.

Mahito.

"Got, you — now."

Mahito's mouth split wide. His fingers clenched. A cold, warped Cursed Energy detonated straight up through Yuji's ankle.

Idle Transfiguration!

Touch the soul, reshape it at will. That was the signature technique that had made his name, his preferred art form when he butchered humans. He was already savoring the face this beast-bodied boy would make when he became an unrecognizable lump of meat in his hands.

The Cursed Energy punched through skin, muscle, bone without the slightest resistance, and then it touched the soul. Warm. Pulsing. Overflowing with life.

Now.

The grin on Mahito's face stretched to its limit.

Then it froze.

In his perception, it was like pushing open an ordinary wooden door and finding no cozy bedroom on the other side, only a bottomless abyss churning with blood-red tides and scattered bones.

Something was coiled deep inside Yuji's young, blazing soul.

It didn't even move.

Mahito's "knock" had simply woken it up. With profound irritation, it lazily opened one eye.

No. Four eyes.

The instant those four crimson eyes, ancient, saturated with raw brutality, slid over to look at him, Mahito felt an invisible hand close around his soul and squeeze.

"Urgh —!"

Agony detonated from the root of his soul. No words existed for it.

Not physical damage. Not a Cursed Energy impact. Something higher. A total erasure from a life-form so far above him there was no comparison, no contest, no negotiation.

His Idle Transfiguration, the ability he had used to play with human souls like clay, made contact with that entity and ceased to exist. Not suppressed. Not deflected. Gone, the way a single drop of water vanishes the instant it touches molten iron, not even a wisp of steam left behind.

"Pfft —!"

Mahito ripped his hand back and exploded out of the shadows like he'd grabbed a live wire. He staggered seven, eight steps, and spat a mouthful of black blood.

His hand pressed to his chest. The expression on his face was one no one had ever seen on him before, not mockery, not pleasure. Terror. Absolute incomprehension.

"What the hell... what was that..."

His own soul had been torn. Only a small piece, barely worth measuring. But that sensation, that completely unreasonable, predator-recognizes-prey suppression, left him shaking cold all over.

"Overtime's begun."

A flat, icy voice cut through his spiral.

Kento Nanami had circled behind him at some point. His right hand was wrapped in his tie. His short blade was coated in ominous black Cursed Energy.

"Something like you has no business existing during a normal person's off hours."

The blade flashed. It carved a precise 7:3 weak point into Mahito's back.

Mahito twisted instinctively to dodge. The soul wound from moments ago made him half a beat slow.

SHHK, the blade dragged across, throwing a spray of blood.

The cut itself meant nothing. He could reshape flesh in an instant.

The problem was Nanami's attacks worked like surgical instruments, always landing at the exact spot that forced him to spend Cursed Energy on repairs. Like a blood bag riddled with pinpricks, none of them fatal, all of them bleeding.

"Barrier!"

Yu Haibara's voice. A semi-transparent barrier unfolded right across Mahito's retreat path, sealing it off.

"Itadori! Right now!"

Yuji was already moving.

He didn't know what had happened. Didn't need to. The enemy was right there.

"Gate of Rest, Divergent Fist!"

He opened the Gate of Rest again. Residual Cursed Energy merged with raw muscle, and he threw a full punch straight at Mahito's face, every ounce of fury behind it.

Boxed in by Nanami's pressure and Haibara's barrier, Mahito had nowhere to go. He watched that fist expand in front of him.

This brat again.

A flash of violence crossed his eyes. He dropped any thought of defense and surged forward to meet it.

One more touch. That was all he needed. One more touch and he'd know exactly what was hiding in that soul.

BANG!

Yuji's fist connected flush with Mahito's face. The first wave of force hit like a battering ram, caving his features inward.

Mahito managed a mocking grin anyway. His expression said it plainly: that all you've got?

Then the second wave arrived, Cursed Energy delayed by 0.01 seconds, burrowing through flesh like something that had no intention of stopping, and it hit his soul directly.

Divergent Fist.

"Ugh,!"

The grin disappeared.

Nanami's attacks were needles in a blood bag. This punch from Yuji was a direct kick to the soul itself.

Not a devastating kick. But the feeling was revolting in a way that had no name. His soul, the thing he'd always reshaped however he pleased, had been sent rippling by a kid with no innate technique, using nothing but his fist.

"You bunch of flies..."

Mahito retreated, ragged. He patched Nanami's cuts and smoothed the ripples in his soul at the same time, and for the first time he looked genuinely aggrieved.

Kenjaku had been right. These Jujutsu High people were a real problem.

One of them used physical attacks to force weak points into existence, bleeding his energy reserves dry.

One of them ran support barriers that strangled his movement at every turn.

And then there was the ridiculous one who could punch souls with his bare hands.

3 people. One combination. Custom-built to destroy him.

If this went on, they'd bleed him out.

The shadow of death fell over him, more real than it had ever been. Something surfaced in Mahito's eyes. Not anger. Madness.

"Done playing..." he rasped, a low sound that barely qualified as a voice, and reached into his chest to produce the violet-black rhomboid crystal Kenjaku had given him, countless grudges compressed into a single, dense shard.

"I was going to enjoy this a little longer..."

"You forced my hand!"

He drove the crystal into his own chest. Under the stunned eyes of Nanami and Yuji, it melted like sugar, and sank.

BOOM,!

A surge of Cursed Energy erupted skyward, vaster and darker and more chaotic than anything that had come before. Mahito's body swelled and twisted, agonized human faces rising to the surface and dissolving back under, over and over.

"Haha... HAHAHAHA!"

His laugh tore out of him, hoarse and warped.

"Yes! This is it! More despair! More resentment!"

"Thanks to all of you, I got to taste the fear of death ahead of schedule. And because of that... I've comprehended the ultimate truth of Jujutsu ahead of schedule!"

His hands came together in front of his chest, fingers lacing into a twisted seal.

"Consider this my gratitude. Now die."

"Domain Expansion,"

"Self-Embodiment of Perfection!"

➤ Next: Game Over — Clash