Chapter 169 - First Battle

The moment Megumi Fushiguro stepped across the barrier's edge, the scenery ahead was like something hurled into a blender and torn apart. The dizziness hadn't cleared when the sensation underfoot already changed. Dirt had become cracked asphalt. A row of gutted, abandoned storefronts lined the road.

"Itadori?"

Megumi turned. Yuji Itadori, who had been walking right beside him, was gone. The street was completely empty. His eyes went flat. Forcibly separated. The colony's transport mechanism had scattered players who entered together across different locations at random.

"Fwap fwap fwap—"

A strange flapping sound came from above. Megumi looked up. A Cursed Spirit shaped like a round, bloated pufferfish with bat wings hovered in midair.

"Kogane at your service!"

The pufferfish Cursed Spirit spoke in a flat, mechanical synthesized voice. "Welcome to the Culling Game Tokyo No. 1 Colony! The current rules are now being broadcast."

"First: players must kill to earn points. A sorcerer is worth five points. A non-sorcerer is worth one point."

"Second: any player who fails to earn points within nineteen days will be stripped of their Cursed Technique and die immediately."

"Third: spending one hundred points allows a player to petition the administrator to add one new rule."

Broadcast complete. Kogane flapped its wings and vanished into thin air. Megumi leaned against the wall and ran the numbers fast. Before entering the colony, through Kirara Hoshi's intelligence, they had already locked onto their target. Hiromi Higuruma. A modern sorcerer who had only recently awakened, sitting on one hundred and two points.

The plan was to find Higuruma, force them to spend a hundred points adding a rule that allowed players to transfer points between each other, and use that to lift the death sentence hanging over Tsumiki Fushiguro. Without Itadori at his side, the plan's efficiency had taken a serious hit.

"Find Higuruma. Fast."

He had barely stepped out of the alley when three shadows dropped from the second floor of one of the shops.

"Fresh face."

The one in front was a bald man gripping a cleaver, face packed with brutal muscle. "Hand over your points."

Megumi looked at them. He couldn't even be bothered to form the hand signs for Divine Dogs. Tsumiki was still unconscious. His master could storm in at any moment and tear the entire colony apart. He had no time to waste on trash like this. The bald man's cleaver had barely lifted when Megumi vanished from his line of sight.

THUD!

A single, completely unadorned front kick, trailing a rush of split air, drove into the bald man's stomach. The bald man's eyes nearly burst from his skull. His whole body crashed through the rolling shutter behind him like a burst burlap sack, smashed deep into the shop, and went still. The other two froze.

Megumi gave them no time to react. He drove force through his legs, and the asphalt buckled underfoot into a shallow crater. He closed the distance in an instant, drove a knife-hand strike into the second person's carotid artery, then spun and whipped a roundhouse kick into the third person's jaw. Five seconds. Done.

Megumi shook the blood off his wrist. Hand-to-hand was genuinely more efficient than summoning shikigami right now.

"That was incredible..."

A figure crawled out from behind a nearby trash can. Remi was dressed in little, wearing heavy makeup. The look directed at Megumi was equal parts fear and flattery.

"My name is Remi. Don't kill me." Both hands went up. "Are you looking for someone? I know this area well. I know where Hiromi Higuruma is."

Megumi stopped. He stared at Remi, eyes dragging across the darting gaze and the slightly trembling fingers. His old man had said it once: on a battlefield, a woman who approaches you first has a ninety percent chance of wanting to pick your pocket, and the other ten percent of wanting to put a knife through your heart. Remi was lying. Or hiding something, at minimum. Didn't matter.

Right now he was flying blind, and information was the one thing he needed most. Even if it was a trap, walking into it would shake loose a few leads.

"Lead the way." Megumi's voice was flat and cold.

Remi swallowed and turned, leading the way without another word. They cut through several blocks, twisting and doubling back through narrow streets, and eventually entered a half-finished shell of a building.

"Up there." Remi pointed toward the stairs.

Megumi followed the bare concrete staircase, no railing, up to the third floor. The dim, open floor held no Hiromi Higuruma. Just a man sitting there. A strange man. He wore no clothes. Instead, his body was wrapped in a patchwork garment stitched together from supermarket receipts, invoices, and transaction slips, a walking pile of trash.

"Remi, nice work." The paper-clothed man rose from a broken sofa, looked at Megumi, and smiled. A wet, sticky smile. "This one looks like it'll have some bite to it."

"Name's Reggie Star. Good moves, kid. Want to join my crew?"

Megumi looked at him.

"Are you Hiromi Higuruma?"

"I'm not." Reggie spread his arms wide. "But that hardly matters. I can be your new boss. I can keep you alive through this game..."

"You talk too much."

Megumi cut him off. He cracked his knuckles. Green Cursed Energy began to shimmer faintly across the surface of his body.

"You're not Higuruma. So I'll beat you until you cough up the location."

Meanwhile. Five minutes earlier. The moment Yuji Itadori and Megumi Fushiguro were separated. The ground dropped out from under Yuji. Weightlessness swallowed him whole in an instant. He wrenched his eyes open and found he wasn't on the ground at all, he had been randomly teleported dozens of meters up into open air.

"What kind of landing point is this!"

Wind screamed past his ears. He tried to adjust his posture mid-fall. Then a sharp tearing sound split the air above him.

"Hahaha! Another rookie falling out of the sky!"

A makeshift glider constructed from Cursed Energy came diving down out of the clouds. Two people hung from it. The man had an outrageous pompadour and was swinging a steel pipe welded full of iron nails directly down at Yuji's head.

"Die! The points are mine!"

In midair, nothing to push off. This was a near-certain death. Before, Yuji would have had no choice but to call on Ryomen Sukuna. But right now, his head was full of that man in the green bodysuit, roaring against a sunset sky.

Yuji! True youth burns even in midair! When your muscles are strong enough, you can use the very air as a foothold!

Yuji took a deep breath. The Cursed Energy inside him surged like boiling magma, flooding wildly through the special meridian circuits of the Eight Gates.

"Eight Gates — Fourth Gate, Gate of Pain!"

"Open!"

BOOM!

Green steam erupted from every pore. The savage pressure detonated a visible ring of shockwaves in midair. That recoil force physically suspended him for half a second. The pompadour man's steel pipe came crashing straight at his face. Yuji didn't dodge. Didn't retreat. The muscles of his right arm swelled block by block, and he met the pipe head-on. Fist met steel.

CLANG!

One clean ring. The pipe, as thick as an adult's arm, bent ninety degrees under a bare fist.

"What?!" The pompadour man's eyes nearly fell out. Were this guy's hands made of solid iron?

"Not done yet!"

Yuji forced a torque through his core in midair, using the resistance of that punch as leverage, and whipped his right leg around like a steel cable. The muscle fibers of his thigh let out a teeth-aching tearing sound under the load. The Gate of Pain's terrifying regenerative power repaired the damage in the same instant.

"Youth Dropkick!"

That kick split the air and left a piercing shriek behind it. Black Cursed Energy sparks gathered furiously at Yuji's heel.

"Black Flash!"

BOOM!

The dropkick, wrapped in black lightning, landed squarely across the pompadour man's back. The man's spine cracked with a sound that turned the stomach. Blood sprayed. The man and half the glider turned into a single meteor and went hurtling down toward the road below.

"Honey!"

The woman still on the glider let out a shrill scream.

"You're going down too."

Yuji flipped in midair, seized the remaining edge of the woman's glider, and tore it clean in two. Both of them went into free fall.

CRASH!

The distance vanished in an instant. Yuji hit the ground on both feet. The impact stomped a spider-webbed crater 3 meters across into the asphalt, shards of pavement flying in every direction. Green steam rose from his body, absorbing the bulk of the fall damage.

"Ugh!"

Remi hit the ground a dozen-plus meters away, rolled several times, broke bones too numerous to count, and went limp. Even farther out, the pompadour man had been driven into the earth. Alive or dead, unclear. Yuji straightened up. He rubbed his slightly aching thighs. Opening the Fourth Gate still put a load on his body within manageable limits.

As long as he didn't chain more than ten Black Flashes in a row, he wouldn't seize up and black out the way he had against Kinji Hakari. Then a faint trembling sound reached him from behind a nearby utility pole. Yuji's gaze snapped over. His head turned hard.

Behind the pole, a scrawny teenager with dyed yellow hair was pressing as deep into the shadow as they could get.

"Get out here." Yuji crossed the distance in a few strides and grabbed them by the collar, hoisting them up like a cat by the scruff.

The yellow-haired teenager went pale.

"D-don't kill me! I'm Rin Amai, I'm nobody, I don't have any points!"

Yuji stared at them. Every trace of his open smile had left his face. In the meat grinder of the Culling Game, he had to project enough threat to deter. His master had taught him: the first condition of any negotiation was making the other party feel you could crush their skull at any moment.

"I don't care who you are."

Yuji dropped his voice low. His fingers tightened — just slightly — and the collar bit into Rin Amai's neck. "One question. Where is Hiromi Higuruma?"

Rin Amai stared at the monster in front of them, green steam rising from every pore, a creature that had just been kicking two people around like balls in midair, and felt a spreading warmth in their pants.

"The theater! Ikebukuro Theater!"

Rin Amai screamed, face running with tears and snot. "Hiromi Higuruma is there! Higuruma took over that theater, and now nobody in the whole area dares go near it!"

"Ikebukuro Theater."

Yuji locked in the location, released his grip, and dropped Rin Amai to the ground.

"Thanks."

He turned and broke into a full sprint toward Ikebukuro. Green steam erupted again. His figure burned a trail of afterimages down the length of the street. Move fast. No idea how Megumi was doing. Get Higuruma's hundred points, and Tsumiki would be safe. Then link up with his master, hunt down that brain called Kenjaku, and beat it to pieces.

"Wait for me. Master."

His words dissolved into the wind, leaving behind nothing but a long stretch of shattered asphalt.

➤ Next: New! Max Elephant vs. House