Chapter 151 - The Savage Samurai — Suguru Geto's Domain

Shibuya Station, third floor underground, the electrical distribution hub. The place should have been pitch black. Instead, the air hung thick with the reek of blood, and an entire row of two-meter-tall electrical cabinets had been sliced cleanly in half at a diagonal, every single one. At the far end of the hall, a dark-red Barrier Keystone flickered with a faint glow.

Someone was standing before it. A man in an old-style samurai's robe, straw sandals on his feet. Hands tucked into his sleeves. A sheathed tachi cradled against his chest. No Transfigured Humans anywhere in sight, only the shredded remains of Cursed Spirits, hacked to pieces and scattered across the floor. Suguru Geto stopped walking. His right thumb pressed instinctively against the knuckle of his index finger.

The killing intent rolling off this man was suffocating. Not the oppressive weight of stacked Cursed Energy. This was something else, the pure death-reek of someone who had waded through mountains of corpses and come out the other side. Special Grade. This was absolutely a Special Grade sorcerer.

"Don't underestimate him, Naoya."

Atsuya Kusakabe pressed a hand to the hilt at his waist. A single bead of cold sweat traced down his temple.

"This guy... something's wrong."

"Wrong?"

Naoya laughed with contempt. Eyes bright with fanaticism, Naoya spoke into the cursed corpse communicator at his ear.

"Master Toji!"

"Can you hear me!"

"This last cornerstone — I found it first."

"I'm the one who deserves the most credit for freeing Master!"

"Naoya, don't go near him!"

Atsuya Kusakabe's hand was white-knuckled on the hilt, cold sweat already soaking his brow. Too late.

BOOM!

The shockwave erupted. The concrete beneath Naoya's feet shattered. Eight Gates Released Formation: Third Gate, Gate of Life. Combined with Projection Sorcery's twenty-four-frame acceleration. Naoya became a streak of savage green lightning, crossing dozens of meters in an instant and materializing directly in front of the samurai. The fist came with a sonic boom, tearing through the air, aimed straight at the man's face.

At that speed, a Grade 1 sorcerer wouldn't even have time to register what happened. Suguru Geto's gaze was locked dead on the samurai. The man didn't move. Didn't lift an eyelid. The only motion was the left thumb, resting on the tsuba of the cradled sword, giving the faintest push.

"Shing—"

A single, almost inaudible scrape of metal. A chill shot straight up Suguru Geto's spine. He hadn't seen the blade drawn at all. Couldn't even catch the contraction of the man's arm muscles.

"Get back!"

Suguru Geto's hand shot up. A ring of black ripples spread through the air. Special Grade Cursed Spirit, Six-Armed Asura, materialized directly in front of Naoya. That enormous monster, its body blanketed in blue-black scales, all six massive arms pressing their palms forward simultaneously, threw itself between Naoya and the blade.

SLASH!

A sickening wet tear ripped through the air. The Six-Armed Asura didn't even get to scream. Its arms, capable of stopping high-velocity armor-piercing rounds, and its colossal trunk were severed clean through the middle, like a hot knife through butter. Blood erupted in a torrent. Naoya was flung backward and crashed hard into a load-bearing pillar, steel rebar snapping apart rod by rod.

"Gah—"

Naoya coughed up a gout of blood and buckled, both knees hitting the ground. Naoya looked down at his own chest. A wound deep enough to expose bone ran from the left shoulder all the way to the right ribs. Flesh peeled back. Through the gap, a heart was faintly, unmistakably beating.

If that Special Grade hadn't bought those fractions of a second, Naoya would have been split in two.

"How is this possible..."

Naoya pressed hard over the wound, the green steam wreathing the surface of that body surging and churning violently, eyes wide with pure disbelief. The dynamic visual acuity boosted by Projection Sorcery had already been pushed to its absolute limit, and Naoya hadn't glimpsed so much as a flash of the blade. Suguru Geto's expression went completely cold.

He watched the Six-Armed Asura dissolve into black smoke, and felt something twist in his chest.

After making the Binding Vow, he had been spared the agony of devouring Cursed Spirits, that grim ordeal of swallowing something like a dirty rag, but he had lost the advantage of mass-producing low-grade ones as cannon fodder in exchange. Able to absorb only Special Grades, over all these years he had accumulated exactly eleven. Every one that died was one fewer.

What kind of monster was this samurai?

"That was Iaido."

Atsuya Kusakabe's hand on the hilt was trembling faintly.

"Iaido?"

Suguru Geto glanced over.

"No preparatory stance. No killing intent leaking out. The draw, the slash, and the resheathe compressed into a single instant."

Atsuya Kusakabe gritted his teeth, gaze locked on the samurai's tachi, already back in its scabbard, as though it had never moved.

"This person has turned Battojutsu into some kind of conceptually absolute slash."

"As long as you're within range, drawing means hitting."

"Some eye you've got."

The samurai finally opened his eyes. Murky white eyes. No pupils. Kuroda rose slowly to full height. The tachi was already resheathed somehow, as though it had never been drawn at all.

"The Zenin Clan's Projection Sorcery."

"Somewhat interesting. But far too green — your form is riddled with openings."

"My name is Kuroda."

"What a dull age this is. I had hoped to encounter someone who truly understood the sword. Instead I find only a pack of brutes charging forward on the strength of their Cursed Energy."

Kuroda took one step forward. That single step made every hair on Suguru Geto's body stand straight up. The range had just closed.

"Don't let him draw!"

Suguru Geto barked the order. His hands flew through seals at blinding speed. Two masses of ink-black spheres expanded from his palms.

"Special Grade Cursed Spirit — Shanhu."

"Special Grade Cursed Spirit, Haishi."

A faceless giant beast covered in jagged rock spines, and a translucent free-floating organism trailing dozens of jellyfish tentacles, both appeared simultaneously on either side of the hall. Shanhu threw its head back and roared. The sound wave became a tangible physical impact, peeling the floor tiles up layer by layer as it surged toward Kuroda.

Haishi dissolved mid-air into countless transparent venom-spines, sealing off every line of retreat. Atsuya Kusakabe moved too. Countering Iaido meant breaking the opponent's posture. Kusakabe knew that.

"New Shadow Style, Simple Domain, Batto!"

Kusakabe dropped into a low crouch and slid across the floor in a slashing arc, aimed directly at Kuroda's lower body.

"Too many openings."

Kuroda gave a cold smile. Shing! Shing! Shing! Three consecutive flickers of metal, gone almost before they registered. Nobody saw the blade. Only three white lines that burned on the retina for a fraction of a second.

BANG!

Shanhu, charging at the front, had its enormous body wrenched apart at the middle. It collapsed with a thunderous crash and dissolved into a rain of blood. Haishi was sliced into countless tiny fragments of gelatin mid-air. The venom-spines never even grazed the hem of Kuroda's robe. Atsuya Kusakabe's long blade had barely swung halfway when a sharp crack rang out. The sword broke.

Then Kusakabe's chest erupted in a burst of bloody mist. The sheer force hurled Kusakabe through the air and into a heap of wrecked electrical cabinets.

"Kusakabe!"

Suguru Geto swore under his breath. Two Special Grades. One move each. Together with the Six-Armed Asura earlier, three of his eleven were gone. He needed distance. Wear the enemy down with pure ranged pressure. Suguru Geto retreated quickly, preparing to summon the fourth Special Grade. Then it hit. Rumble! The entire underground of Shibuya shook with violent tremors.

Not the vibration of an explosion. This was something else, some kind of high-dimensional energy forcing its way into existence. A suffocating, malevolent Cursed Energy, like a physical black tsunami, came crashing down from the surface above, sweeping through the entire underground space in an instant. An aura that made every living creature tremble on instinct.

Savage. Ancient. Supremely above all things, carrying an absolute arrogance that regarded the entire world as worthless. Suguru Geto's breath caught. Cold sweat drenched his back in an instant. This Cursed Energy didn't feel like anything that belonged to this era.

"Sukuna..."

Atsuya Kusakabe lay severely wounded on the ground, face deathly pale, gasping for breath.

"Ryomen Sukuna... has been awakened."

In the distance, Naoya could no longer sustain even the green steam of the Gate of Life, kneeling on the ground, unable to move. He couldn't drag this out any longer. Suguru Geto clenched his jaw, gaze locked on the cornerstone at the far end of the hall.

Once Sukuna fully awakened, if Toji didn't come inside from the surface, those students from Jujutsu High were going to be wiped out to the last person. The cornerstone had to be destroyed. Now. He crossed his hands and prepared to release all eight remaining Special Grades at once, use their Maximum Techniques to bury this samurai under sheer overwhelming force.

"Ha ha ha ha ha!"

Manic laughter exploded through the silent underground space. Kuroda threw back that head. Within those murky white eyes, a terrifying brilliance ignited. The hand gripping the sword was trembling, not from fear. From excitement. Pure, overwhelming excitement, that gaze fixed on the ceiling.

"This is the scent... this is the aura!"

Kuroda let out a howling cry.

"The Cursed King of a thousand years past!"

"This is the ultimate sword I have always sought!"

Kuroda snapped that gaze downward to the three of them. The killing intent in those eyes reached a full boil. Cursed Energy of nauseating magnitude surged out from within.

"No time to play with you worthless scraps."

"Hurry up and die. I'm in a rush to pay my respects to that lord."

The hall began to distort. The old haori on Kuroda's back rose and billowed without any wind. A Domain was opening. Suguru Geto fell back hard. In ordinary space he couldn't even track the slashes. Add a Domain's Sure-Hit Effect on top of that, and all three of them would be turned to pulp in an instant.

"Move!"

Suguru Geto roared. Too late. A cruel smile split the corner of Kuroda's mouth. The right thumb shoved the tsuba hard.

"Domain Expansion."

"Avici Blade Hell: Eight Cold Sword Pavilions."

HUM!

The black barrier, an inverted hemisphere, swallowed the entire space within fifty meters in an instant. The electrical distribution hub vanished. In its place stood an ancient sword pavilion buried in snow and ice. Pale snowflakes drifted down from the sky, and every flake that touched the ground rang out with a clear, crisp sword chime.

The wooden walls on all sides were studded with tens of thousands of rust-spotted tachi. Cold. A bone-deep, marrow-freezing cold locked Suguru Geto's joints solid in an instant. He couldn't move. Not physical restraint. The temperature inside the sword pavilion was simply extreme, and the pervasive, piercing sword-ki sealed off his body's functions entirely.

Naoya and Atsuya Kusakabe collapsed face-down in the snow, without even the strength to lift their heads.

"Inside my sword pavilion, there are no blind spots."

Kuroda stood at the center and slowly drew the tachi. The instant the blade cleared the scabbard, every one of the tens of thousands of tachi lining the walls let out a shrill, unified hum. The next second, they would come raining down, piercing everyone through. We're going to die. The thought flashed through Suguru Geto's mind.

That entire system of tactics he had prided himself on, it looked utterly feeble against this kind of unreasonable, pure violence. No. Not yet. Satoru Gojo was still down there, sealed away. That idiot, without anyone around to keep an eye on him, who knew what kind of trouble he'd stir up. He had made the Binding Vow. Sacrificed quantity to gain ultimate quality.

If quality wasn't enough, then he would melt them all together.

"Did you really think I was the weakest Special Grade?"

Suguru Geto's eyes were shot through with red. He bit clean through the tip of his tongue. The searing pain jolted his numbed nerves back to life. The eight remaining Special Grade Cursed Spirits inside him erupted all at once. Not summoned as shikigami. Instead, their cores, their techniques, their accumulated grudges, all of it extracted dry, his own body used as the crucible, everything forcibly fused together.

Savage Cursed Energy detonated from within him with a blast that drove back the surrounding ice and snow. Strange black tattoos crept across the right half of his face. His left arm swelled instantly into a demon claw bristling with inverted spines. Behind him unfurled a pair of enormous bone wings blazing with ghostly blue flame. The traits of eight Special Grades, forcibly melded into one whole.

Kuroda's blade-drawing hand paused. Just slightly. Suguru Geto clasped his hands together at his chest. His voice came out low. Steady.

"Domain Expansion."

"Vile Fiends: Womb Realm Mandala."

BOOM!

A dark-red barrier surged out from beneath his feet. Countless demon hands, warped and grotesque, twisted into every conceivable form, reached up and seized those falling razor-sharp tachi with brute force.

➤ Next: Demon King vs. Swordsman