Jujutsu Kaisen — Chapter 116 - Game Over — Clash

The world lurched.

One moment Yuji was inside the blood cave. The next, he wasn't.

He stood in a dark, warped space built from countless enormous hands, a place that should not exist, shaped by something that should not be.

"Welcome to my soul, Yuji Itadori."

Mahito's voice came from everywhere at once, soaked in malice and triumph.

"Within this domain, my Idle Transfiguration is a sure-hit. Which means..."

"As long as you're here, your soul is already my toy."

The sure-hit effect activated before the last word landed.

The torrent of Idle Transfiguration crashed in like a tsunami, vast and absolute, swallowing Yuji Itadori whole.

It worked!

Outside the domain, Mahito's ecstasy crested. One second. That was all it would take to reshape this brat's soul into whatever form he pleased.

But the instant his technique made contact with Yuji's soul,

He knocked on that door again.

And this time, what woke up was not merely disturbed.

It was furious.

Mahito stood at the center of his own domain, sole creator of this twisted architecture of hands and darkness. The sure-hit torrent surged toward Yuji like a tsunami, ready to drown that young, blazing soul completely.

It worked!

The sickly ecstasy of an artist on the verge of a masterpiece spread across Mahito's face.

His technique touched Yuji's soul. It was like pushing open a wooden door into a new playroom.

There were no toys behind the door.

There was an abyss. Bottomless. Churning with blood-red light and the pale gleam of bones. And at its center, rising until it pierced the darkness above, stood a throne built from skulls and silence.

On that throne, something stirred.

Ryomen Sukuna sat propping his chin on one hand, radiating boredom so complete it had curdled into contempt. He didn't bother to stand.

He had plenty of reasons for a foul mood. Days ago, Yuji Itadori had forced him into a Binding Vow through the sheer shamelessness of threatening his own life. That humiliation had been festering in his chest ever since, a fire with nowhere to burn.

And now some insect, some worm that didn't know what death meant, had come crawling straight into his territory.

Eyes full of violence cracked open, lazy and slow.

One glance.

Just one.

Mahito felt an invisible hand close around his soul and squeeze.

What,

He was a master of the soul. He had unmade people from the inside out, reshaped their existence like wet clay. And now he felt like a street performer waving tricks in front of a god.

He tried to run. He couldn't move a single finger.

This wasn't a physical restraint. It was the absolute crushing weight of something on an entirely different tier of existence.

"Who gave you permission," Sukuna said, voice still rough with sleep, carrying the cold of something dredged up from the lowest depths of hell, "to raise your head and look at me?"

Fear.

Not the manageable kind. Not the fear that sharpens you or drives you. Pure, animal, instinct-born terror, and it drowned every single thought Mahito had.

Sukuna didn't even bother with another word.

He raised one hand.

"Dismantle."

An invisible slash crossed Mahito's soul.

Then nothing.

In the real world, it lasted less than a heartbeat.

"AAAAAAAHHHH —!"

The shriek that tore through the air wasn't human.

Mahito crashed backward, both hands clawing at his own skull, black blood exploding from his mouth, stumbling and stumbling and not stopping. His body was physically intact. But his existence itself, something had been gouged out of it at the root. The pain of it wasn't in any muscle or bone. It came from somewhere deeper than that, and it nearly broke him completely.

Yuji Itadori didn't give him a single breath.

He had no idea what had just happened inside the domain. He didn't need to. The enemy was wide open.

Cursed energy flooded back. The residual power of the Eight Gates surged through his body like a river breaking its banks.

He drove his fist into Mahito's gut.

BOOM!

The raw physical force hit first, launching Mahito off his feet and into the air.

But it wasn't over.

A fraction of a second behind it, imperceptible and deliberate, the massed cursed energy detonated. A second bomb going off inside what the first had already destroyed.

"Divergent Fist!"

The secondary impact blew Mahito's upper body apart. A red mist of flesh and fragments hung in the air where a torso had been.

Yuji stepped forward, eyes bloodshot, voice scraping past the fury he was barely holding in.

"That punch is the price for every soul you played with."

What remained of Mahito hit the ground. Half a body, writhing, already trying to regenerate.

He had felt fear before. He had never felt this. The double despair of having his soul touched and his body shattered simultaneously settled into him like something permanent.

Today, he finally understood. He hadn't kicked an iron wall. He had kicked an active volcano.

Living inside this brat was something older and darker and more incomprehensible than Mahito had ever imagined. Something that made him look like the toy in the room.

If he kept fighting, he would die.

Something venomous moved through Mahito's remaining eye.

He gathered the last dregs of his strength and wrenched his ruined body inward with violent force. There was a wet, splitting sound, and then he burst apart, hundreds of grotesque palm-sized mutants scattering in every direction, fleeing through every crack and shadow in the cave.

"Don't even think about it!"

Yuji lunged after them.

"Look out!" Kento Nanami's shout came sharp and immediate.

Even as he fled, Mahito had triggered the detonation. The cursed energy core buried in the underground domain, the Special Grade auxiliary cursed spirit he had long since assimilated into the structure itself.

RUMBLE!

The blood cave convulsed.

A berserk tide of cursed energy tore outward in every direction. The walls split. The ceiling peeled away in massive slabs. The whole underground world began folding in on itself, determined to bury everything it contained.

"Move!"

Kento Nanami hit the front without hesitation. His short blade, wrapped in his tie, flickered with black cursed energy. He wasn't targeting any enemy.

"Ratio Technique — Seven-Three!"

Stroke after stroke, he split the falling slabs of rock and writhing flesh ahead of them, carving a path upward through the collapse by force.

"Barrier!"

Yu Haibara's face had gone pale and bloodless, but his feet didn't move backward. Cursed energy bleeding from him at a dangerous rate, he threw up a translucent dome and pulled every survivor, every frozen and stumbling civilian, inside it.

"Everyone — now! Follow Mr. Nanami's path and climb!"

In the chaos, people were going down. Falling stones caught a few isolated stragglers, and the collapsing ceiling was already reaching for them.

A green blur tore through the disintegrating space.

Yuji activated the last of his Gate of Opening power and threw himself into the madness, vertical walls, plummeting boulders, angles that shouldn't support a human body. He scooped a paralyzed young man off the ground in one arm and hurled him toward Haibara's barrier. Then he spun, drove his foot into a massive rock hurtling toward an old man, and sent it somewhere else.

The floor was disappearing beneath them. Above, the exit was close.

A thin thread of natural light bled through the darkness overhead.

Kento Nanami smashed through the last obstacle and broke the surface. Yu Haibara followed, the dome of light pressing up behind him with the survivors packed inside.

Last was Yuji Itadori. He sent the final survivor tumbling out of the opening ahead of him, then pushed off the crumbling edge and vaulted out himself, rolling hard across ground that was already splitting with hairline fractures.

Behind them, a sound like the world swallowing itself.

The underground entrance they had crawled out of, and the earth around it for hundreds of meters in every direction, sank and was gone.

Whatever had happened in that dark place stayed there.

Buried. Finished. In the dark.

➤ Next: Return to Jujutsu High, with an Assistant