Chapter 124 - The Switched Cursed Spirit

"Come on, best friend. Let's clean up these Cursed Spirits fast and go find Master Toji to pay our tuition."

They slung arms over each other's shoulders and turned to leave. A sound tore through the air behind them. A blood arrow shot straight for Yuji Itadori's right thigh.

Slap.

Clean. Crisp. Yuji Itadori landed three meters back, planted his feet, and dropped into a fighting stance. Figures stepped out from behind the trees. Noritoshi Kamo walked at the front. Longbow in hand, right eye narrowed. Kasumi Miwa's grip closed around her sword hilt. Mechamaru swiveled the cannon mounted on his arm. Momo Nishimiya hovered on her broom beneath the branches. The Kyoto squad was all here.

"What are you doing, Todo." Noritoshi Kamo's eyes stayed on him. "Did you forget Principal Gakuganji's orders? We win. By any means necessary."

"Orders?" Aoi Todo's voice dripped contempt. "Don't dirty my best friend's ears with that fossilized garbage."

He stepped forward, planting himself between Noritoshi Kamo and Yuji Itadori.

"Yuji Itadori is Toji Fushiguro's Direct Disciple. The living proof of what that taijutsu system can do."

Noritoshi Kamo drew his bowstring back and nocked a second arrow. "We're going to cripple him. The Three Great Families' rules don't get trampled by some curse-less monkey."

Yuji Itadori understood. This was aimed at his teacher. He clenched his fists. Cursed Energy surged back through him.

"Rules?" Aoi Todo slapped the splinters off his hands, his voice rising like a war cry. "I'll say it once. Anyone who touches a single hair on my best friend gets put in the ICU. That's a promise."

Noritoshi Kamo did not lower the bow. The Exchange Event's entire plan had fallen apart. Aoi Todo was a variable no one could predict or control.

"If you won't follow orders," Noritoshi Kamo said coldly, "then you get dealt with too."

Before the words finished leaving his mouth.

ROAR.

A sound split the air from the forest's northeast corner. Deep. Massive. Wrong. The trees nearest to it, trunks thick enough to need two people to wrap their arms around, turned yellow in seconds. The leaves shriveled and dropped in cascading showers. Every trace of moisture was gone. The soil cracked open in spreading webs. Yuji Itadori shuddered. Inside him, Ryomen Sukuna shifted. Said nothing.

Noritoshi Kamo's bowstring jerked off-line. The arrow buried itself in the tree beside him. Every person on that clearing turned northeast at the same instant. The Jujutsu High monitoring room. A wall of screens, split into a grid of smaller windows, each one feeding live footage from a different section of the forest. Tokyo students moving through their zones. Kyoto students moving through theirs.

In the northeast corner window: a heavyset Grade 2 Cursed Spirit locked rigid by Toge Inumaki's Cursed Speech, then dropped flat by a single punch from Panda. Yoshinobu Gakuganji sat back in his wide chair, both hands resting on his cane, watching the screen with a quiet smirk. The Kyoto students had Yuji Itadori boxed in.

Cripple that boy, and Toji Fushiguro's so-called legacy turns into a punchline overnight. In the corner of the room, Toji Fushiguro was sprawled on the sofa. Long legs propped up on the edge of the coffee table, head tipped all the way back, mouth open in a slow yawn. Satoru Gojo stood directly in front of the screens.

Hands in his pockets. Black blindfold across the top half of his face. He watched the footage in silence for a moment. Then turned his head to the right.

"This match is completely boring," he said flatly. "Nothing's happening."

Utahime Iori sat behind the monitoring console, paper cup in hand, and gave him a look.

"Does it only count as interesting if someone gets seriously hurt?" She took a sip. "Students clearing Cursed Spirits safely. That's the best possible outcome."

Satoru Gojo scratched the back of his white hair. He didn't respond. Behind the blindfold, the Six Eyes were already running. His vision cut straight through the screen's pixels, pulling data out of the image itself. The Cursed Energy flows in the footage were all intact. Toge Inumaki's output, Panda's output, the Grade 2 Cursed Spirit's — everything tracked perfectly. Too perfectly.

Every single frame read like a demonstration reel. Textbook output, no deviation, no variance. Satoru Gojo reached up and tugged his blindfold down a fraction, just enough to expose his pale right eye.

"Did that Cursed Spirit not even struggle before it went down," he said. Not quite a question.

Utahime glanced back at the screen. The Cursed Spirit was on the ground. The scene was calm and still.

"The Soundproof Barrier would've blocked the sound," she said.

Satoru Gojo pulled the blindfold back into place. Northeast corner of the forest. No Grade 2 Cursed Spirit. Not anywhere. Megumi Fushiguro, Nobara Kugisaki, Maki Zenin. Three of them, standing in a forest clearing, and the ground beneath them held no fallen leaves. Just a layer of thick, sticky black liquid. The smell hit like a closed fist.

Nobara Kugisaki pressed her hand over her nose and mouth. Her other hand locked around her hammer.

"What the hell is this place."

She turned, scanning the clearing in every direction. Maki Zenin had her spear shouldered and was walking point. She hooked the tip under a dark clump on the ground and turned it over. Remains of a Grade 2 Cursed Spirit.

"Stay close." Megumi Fushiguro's hands moved through seals. The shadow pooled beneath his feet began spreading outward across the ground. "The original target was one Grade 2 Cursed Spirit. But there are shredded remains all over this clearing."

Not just Grade 2. Fragments of several Grade 3 Cursed Spirits were scattered across the area as well. Incomplete. The cross-sections ragged, marked with bite marks. Something had been eating here.

"What..." Nobara Kugisaki pointed straight ahead. "What is that."

Thirty meters away. At the base of a long-dead ancient tree. A black shape crouched in the shadows. Humanoid. Spine curved, hunched low. Black miasma rolling off it in visible waves. It had its back to them. One hand clutched half a Cursed Spirit's arm. It was pushing the arm into its mouth. The sound of bone being chewed carried through the trees.

Megumi Fushiguro swallowed. His hands stayed locked in their seal. Every tree near that figure was carbonized. The ground around it had been eaten through, pockmarked with craters of all sizes. No barrier technique, no deliberate jutsu, just its presence corroding everything within reach. The figure stopped chewing. It turned its head. A pale white horn jutted from its forehead. Both eyes were dull, clouded, empty.

It looked at the three of them and opened its mouth. Black fluid dripped from its chin and hit the ground. Where it landed, white smoke curled up. The pressure landed like a physical weight. Megumi Fushiguro's shoulders dropped. His knees nearly buckled. The Cursed Energy moving through him stuttered and briefly stopped. He knew this feeling.

He had felt something like it once at the West Tokyo Juvenile Detention Center. This was worse.

"Fall back." His voice came out steady. "Maki-senpai, Nobara. Forget the match. Run."

Maki Zenin didn't move. The hand on her spear was drenched in sweat.

"We can't run." Her eyes stayed fixed on the horned figure. "It's already locked onto us."

The horned Cursed Spirit stood. Three meters tall, maybe more. It stared at the three of them. The sound that came from its throat was like air bleeding through a crack.

"Hungry..."

➤ Next: United Front — Clash