Chapter 128 - Toji Fushiguro, Come Out and Face Your Death
Crunch.
The sound of bone and flesh being ground apart echoed through the dead-silent forest.
The figure lying on the ground tilted its head back. "Yuji Itadori" opened his mouth.
In the distance, from the shattered remains of the Cursed Spirit brought down by Piercing Ox, three withered dark-red fingers answered an absolute pull, streaking through the air as trails of light and vanishing into his throat. His throat worked.
Crunch. Crunch...
Megumi Fushiguro knelt half-collapsed in the mud, his whole body ice-cold. The Special Grade Cursed Energy that had just barely been pushed down erupted like an oil well catching fire, multiplying out of control. Black Tattoos crawled up the boy's cheeks, his neck, spreading along the lines of his muscles all the way down to his wrists. The second pair of eyelids opened.
Four scarlet eyes rotated, sweeping the clearing with nothing but pure brutality and contempt.
"Six fingers."
Ryomen Sukuna rolled his neck. The bones cracked like a string of firecrackers. He drew a slow breath, as if tasting the blood soaking the air.
"Still too few. But just enough to move around in this disgusting piece of meat."
BOOM.
Those words alone. His materialized Cursed Energy detonated outward, an invisible pressure wave slamming in every direction. A dozen ancient trees, each one thick enough for three men to wrap their arms around, snapped at the trunks. Splinters tore through the air. Megumi Fushiguro was thrown flat by the shockwave. Too strong. There was no fighting this.
This wasn't a matter of pushing past your limits. This was a wall between dimensions, and it was crushing him. He couldn't lift a single finger.
CRACK!
A clear shattering rang out overhead. The virtual Barrier blanketing the forest above crumbled under that horrifying surge of Cursed Energy, fracturing inch by inch like spun sugar glass, dissolving into a sky full of scattered light before disappearing entirely. The camouflage had been blown open by sheer force. Inside the Jujutsu High Monitoring Room.
The entire wall of screens, still broadcasting a "peaceful training exercise," simultaneously burst into heavy static.
Then the red lights hit. The piercing Special Grade alarm tore through every corner of Tokyo Jujutsu High. The screens convulsed, flickered, and cut back to the real forest.
Severed limbs. Shattered trees. Maki Zenin and Nobara Kugisaki gravely wounded and unconscious. Megumi Fushiguro on his knees in the mud. And standing at the center of the wreckage, four scarlet eyes burning in the dark, a demon god carved from ruin.
Crash.
The purple clay teacup in Yoshinobu Gakuganji's hand hit the floor. Scalding tea splashed across his shoes. The old man lurched out of his chair, face white with shock, the finger he jabbed at the screen shaking hard enough to blur.
"Ryomen... Sukuna? Why is he here!"
The door flew open from a kick. Satoru Gojo walked in still holding a freshly opened box of limited-edition strawberry daifuku. His gaze cut straight through his black blindfold and locked onto the screen. The Six Eyes caught the Cursed Energy shockwave detonating in the forest several kilometers away in an instant. They'd been played.
The pieces clicked together all at once in Satoru Gojo's mind. A sophisticated illusion Barrier placed over Jujutsu High's surveillance. A Special Grade Cursed Spirit unleashed during the chaos of the exchange event. And then the lure, drawing Sukuna awake inside Itadori's body. A beautiful trap.
Crunch.
The paper box crumpled in his fist. Killing intent flooded the room, and the temperature dropped to nothing. He raised his right hand, ready to teleport directly into that forest. A large hand came down on his shoulder from behind.
"Easy, young master."
Toji Fushiguro's voice. Satoru Gojo glanced sideways. Toji's blood was running hot. His muscles were trembling. The hunger for a real opponent, raw and barely leashed.
"He came for me." Toji kept his eyes on the screen. His tongue dragged across his chapped lips.
In the forest. Ryomen Sukuna didn't spare a glance at the Jujutsu High students bleeding out at his feet. Killing small fry would only dirty his hands. There was only one thought in his head right now. Humiliation. He, the King of Curses, had been swung around like a piece of old rag by a wild animal that didn't carry a single drop of Cursed Energy.
Beaten senseless by pure physical violence. Beaten until he'd been forcibly cut off. That debt could only be repaid one way. Crushing the man's bones down inch by inch. Peeling that flesh away strip by strip. Only then would it be clean. Sukuna snapped his head up. Four scarlet eyes punched through layer after layer of forest canopy, aimed straight at the Jujutsu High Monitoring Room.
He opened his mouth, and a wave of sound loaded with devastating Cursed Energy detonated across the entire valley like a thunderclap.
"TOJI FUSHIGURO!"
"COME OUT AND DIE!"
The whole mountain shook. The sonic wave kicked up a gale that scraped a layer of topsoil clean off the ground. Megumi Fushiguro clamped both hands over his ears. His eardrums ruptured anyway. Blood ran. His old man's name. This thing was here for his old man. In the monitoring room, Satoru Gojo let out a cold snort. Then everything changed again. The screen went blinding green.
Every ancient tree, every vine, every shrub across the entire mountain behind Jujutsu High surged to life in the same instant. Thick trunks twisted. Countless thorn-studded vines as thick around as pythons erupted from the earth, coiling and tangling into each other with furious speed. A few seconds. That was all it took.
A colossal Plant Prison slammed into existence over the entire mountaintop, sealing every exit shut. White Spore Dust, visible to the naked eye, began bleeding into the air.
"Hanami."
Satoru Gojo recognized the technique. The Special Grade Plant Cursed Spirit. The worse part: Hanami's main body wasn't even here. It had dissolved its will and its Cursed Energy into the mountain's entire plant network. Those white spores were spreading fast.
"Tsk." Satoru Gojo's fingers stopped in midair. "Annoying."
He understood exactly what would happen if he charged in swinging. These blood-drinking plants would grind the already-wounded Megumi and the others into pulp before he reached them. He was being held in place. Whoever was pulling the strings had calculated this with surgical precision, using the students as chips to split the opposition's combat power in half.
"Looks like I'm on weed duty out here." Satoru Gojo bit out each word through clenched teeth. The deep blue light of Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue gathered at his fingertip. "Toji, the cripple inside is all yours. You good with that?"
No answer. He turned his head. The space beside him was already empty. High above the mountain. Toji Fushiguro dropped from the cliff behind Jujutsu High like a heavy-grade missile, falling straight and fast. Weightlessness tore through his entire body.
Midair, he reached up and ripped the green spandex off in one motion, baring a torso built lean and dense like a hunting cat. Old scars ran across the muscle in ragged lines, aching faintly in the cold wind. Yeah. This feeling. Toji showed his teeth. Schemes. Conspiracies. Machinations. In front of absolute violence, they were sandcastles. You crushed them without even looking. At the forest's core.
Ryomen Sukuna stared up at the sealed green sky and clicked his tongue with open contempt.
"Trash is trash. Can't even set a battlefield without making it an eyesore."
He raised his hand, ready to cut the plants, the brats on the ground, all of it into scraps. The air directly above him screamed. A high-density object tearing through it at supersonic speed — that was the sound. The air itself crying out. Sukuna's hand stopped. His head snapped up.
BOOM!
A meteor wrapped in a wild surge of green force punched straight through the plant dome, more than ten meters of dense, solid growth, and hit the ground less than five meters in front of him with earth-ending force. The ground heaved. A fifty-meter radius of earth rolled like a wave. Mud, rock, and shattered wood blasted skyward on the shockwave.
Megumi Fushiguro was thrown by the pressure and rolled seven, eight times across the ground before stopping. He forced his eyes open and looked toward the center of the blast. The smoke and dust thinned. A tall figure climbed out of the crater and stood up straight. Toji Fushiguro rolled his neck. It cracked clean.
"Hey."
"You want to die that badly, you don't have to yell about it."
➤ Next: Malevolent Shrine vs Morning Peacock