Dead silence pressed over the ruins.

Toji Fushiguro stood motionless, the Sorcerer Killer's body battered from head to toe, pushed to the absolute edge of its limits.

Toji didn't move. Only those pure-black, hollow eyes still stared blankly in Megumi's direction.

Like a departed spirit that had fulfilled every last duty, finally able to set everything down and face its end with calm acceptance.

At peace.

That phrase drifted unbidden through Megumi Fushiguro's mind.

Toji was waiting to be sent back to the realm of the dead where Toji belonged.

Then a wildly insane idea slammed into Megumi's ghost brain.

A widely circulated anecdote from his past life, half teasing, half wistful, suddenly surfaced:

"Your Uncle Todo, you know, he was so determined to keep staying by Yuji's side that he cursed himself into a Vengeful Cursed Spirit through sheer obsession. Even declared himself Yuji's shikigami."

Fan content, obviously. A joke built on a character's emotional bond with another.

But right now.

In this world where cursed energy and obsession could warp reality, where death was not an absolute endpoint.

This absurd idea lit a fire in Megumi.

If he could somehow preserve Toji in some form, transform Toji into something close to a shikigami or a contracted spirit...

Have Toji continue to serve him.

Megumi slowly raised his fist.

"For my sake —"

"Become a Vengeful Cursed Spirit."

"...Dad!"

But the next practical question hit him like ice water poured over his head.

How?

The nature of a Vengeful Cursed Spirit: intensely negative emotions and obsessions from one's lifetime, combining with cursed energy after death to form a special cursed spirit.

But Toji Fushiguro had the Heavenly Restriction. Zero cursed energy, absolute.

After death, the chance of becoming even an ordinary cursed spirit was zero, let alone a higher-order Vengeful Cursed Spirit.

Any ordinary human generated cursed energy from negative emotions, and after death, that energy flowed into the cycle of curses.

But Toji was an exception among exceptions.

Unless he could bypass that absolute barrier of zero innate cursed energy.

Forcibly granting or grafting cursed energy from an external source, maybe that was the answer.

It sounded like a fairy tale.

But inside Megumi's mind, the knowledge belonging to a Ten Shadows Technique user began to collide furiously.

Summoning Toji through the séance technique had already been exploiting a bug.

Megumi didn't mind exploiting one more.

The key lay in the link and the vessel.

Bloodline was, without question, one of the strongest links in the world.

As for the vessel, Toji's own corpse was the most perfect vessel imaginable.

But where would the cursed energy come from?

How do you conjure something from nothing?

Megumi's perception swept across the shadow beneath his feet, the shadow that belonged to the Ten Shadows Technique.

Deep within it, a shikigami that had died in an earlier battle. Its remains and cursed energy, still preserved inside the shadow.

A shikigami that had never once been used in a fusion,

Orochi.

In the original story, Megumi had cherished these animal companions who had grown alongside him, unable to bring himself to use them in fusions, to strengthen other shikigami or forge new forms.

To that Megumi, it might have been tenderness. A bond.

The soul from another world now piloting this body had only a cold sneer for that.

Animal companions?

Then let me ask you,

What's your DPS?

Can you deal effective damage to a Special Grade cursed spirit?

Can you stop me from getting dragged into brain-dead low-tier fights like which weighs more, a house or an elephant?

No?

Cold pragmatism replaced pointless sentimentality.

Sorry, I'm a sorcerer with no limits.

The dead shikigami Orochi still held the cursed energy and shikigami traits sealed within its remains. And before him stood Toji Fushiguro, equally dead yet temporarily active through the séance technique.

Was fusion possible?

If the gamble paid off, he might gain a special existence under Megumi's control, carrying partial cursed energy traits, power unknown but undeniably terrifying.

If the gamble failed... at worst, it would waste the already-dead Orochi and completely destroy Toji's corpse.

"Worth trying."

A flash of cold resolve crossed Megumi's eyes.

He had no time to hesitate. The aura of Sukuna's finger in the distance hung over him like the Sword of Damocles.

Every possible means of increasing his combat strength had to be attempted.

Hmmm.

The dim shadow expanded outward again with Megumi at its center, enveloping both himself and Toji not far ahead.

Toji was effortlessly swallowed by the writhing darkness, sinking slowly into the seemingly bottomless black beneath Megumi's feet.

Megumi's focus sharpened to a single point. His hands formed the complex seals used for fusion within the Ten Shadows Technique. Cursed energy guided the flow of shadow with unprecedented precision.

Taking that thin, faint root of cursed energy from Orochi's shed remains.

Attempting to brand it into the deepest core of Toji's body, a Heavenly Restriction physique that should have utterly rejected all cursed energy!

"Sink in — sink in for me!"

Beneath Toji's charred skin, serpentine patterns briefly surfaced and crawled.

At the wound of the severed arm, muscle tissue stirred with an unnatural motion.

Deep within those hollow, pure-black eyes, a faint glow that didn't belong flickered once, and vanished.

The fusion... was happening.

Full of unknowns, full of risks, but genuinely happening.

Megumi could feel it. Deep within the shadow, that silent weapon of slaughter was undergoing some extraordinarily subtle, indescribable change.

"Did it work?"

Megumi didn't know. He slowly exhaled a breath that tasted of rust.

The shadow beneath his feet returned to calm, deep and still as ever.

"Ten Shadows Technique —"

Megumi took his summoning stance.

"Sorcerer Killer!"

The next moment, a brand new humanoid shikigami emerged from the darkness, reborn from shadow.

The Sorcerer Killer shikigami.

Had arrived.

A mountain of fatherly love, that was for sure.

The smirk at the corner of Megumi's mouth grew ever more brazen.

➤ Next: After Shibuya

Chapter 11 - After Shibuya

Captured!

The legendary Pokémon Master Fushiguro had successfully added a new fighting force to his Ten Shadows.

The injuries hadn't recovered, and combat strength was still unknown.

But at the very least, if he ever got dragged into some tedious debate about houses versus elephants again, Fushiguro now had the confidence to flip the table.

"Next."

Fushiguro took a deep breath. His gaze turned toward the direction where Sukuna's finger aura was erupting:

"I have to get to Itadori right now!"

However.

The instant he turned around, at the very edge of his vision, in the center of an open space carved by pale moonlight and the shadows of rubble, a figure appeared without a sound.

As though it had always been standing there.

"Hey, little one."

A voice laced with amusement and unconcealed malice drifted through the air, light as a feather.

Every drop of blood in Fushiguro's body seemed to freeze in that instant.

He could only stiffen, lifting his gaze inch by inch.

Pink hair casually swept back, revealing a full, broad forehead.

And a pair of crimson eyes looking down at him with gleeful, unhurried interest.

Chin tilted slightly upward. The corner of the mouth curved in an arc that could only be called delighted, and yet it chilled a person to the marrow.

Yuji Itadori?

No. The King of Curses who had seized Yuji Itadori's body.

Ryomen Sukuna.

"Long time no see."

Sukuna spoke again. His voice carried none of the sentiment of a long-awaited reunion, only the cruel amusement of a cat with a mouse.

"That expression. Not bad."

"You... why are you..."

Fushiguro's mind was in complete chaos.

Why was Sukuna here? Where was Itadori? Where was Jogo? Those ten fingers...

No. Wait. Sukuna had appeared — in a state of total, undisputed dominance.

Then Itadori...

"Where is Kento Nanami?!"

"Where is the Zen'in Clan head?!"

"Where are the others from Jujutsu High?!"

Fushiguro nearly screamed the words. His last shred of reason clung to a faint, desperate hope, that they had simply been held up somewhere, that Sukuna had gotten around them.

"Oh?"

Sukuna tilted his head slightly, a flash of feigned contemplation crossing those crimson eyes.

"Which ones?"

"I cut a few too many just now."

Sukuna's tone was flat. Almost bored.

"I can barely keep track myself."

One step forward, closing the distance. Those eyes locked onto Fushiguro's suddenly contracted pupils.

The smile widened, baring bright white teeth.

"Do you remember... how many slices of bread you've eaten?"

Offhand. Casual. All the more hopeless for it.

Yet the words announced a simple and terrifying truth.

The people Fushiguro had fought desperately to protect — the people still fighting at his side, who had said their goodbyes — they very likely had already...

But the being radiating boundless malice before him, that matter-of-fact indifference, was more convincing than any evidence could ever be.

What now?!

Release Toji from the shadows?

No. That won't work.

Setting aside the fact that Toji had only just completed the integration and wasn't anywhere near fully recovered,

Against Sukuna at full power, except for that one final measure, Toji or Nue or Divine Dog would all likely be nothing more than...

Speed bumps.

A debating term surfaced in his mind, coldly laying bare the reality.

"Come on."

"Let me have a little fun, kid."

Everything that had just happened.

The maneuvering against Dagon, the death struggle of playing Jogo and Toji against each other, the madness of fighting desperately to capture the tyrant.

All the scheming wrung out of an exhausted mind. All the life-or-death battles staked on nothing but desperation.

Before the greatest cursed sorcerer in history, it all seemed to become nothing, laughable, pointless futility.

Tokyo, Shibuya.

23:07

The night was deep. The fires had not died. The ruins stood in silence.

Fushiguro took a long, deep breath.

He stopped looking at Sukuna. His gaze dropped, falling on his own slightly trembling hands.

Ten fingers began to interlock, in a slow and heavy rhythm.

Ancient hand seals gradually took shape between them.

As the seals formed, the shadow beneath Fushiguro's feet began to boil and expand wildly, a darkness surging as if it might swallow even him whole.

The color drained from Fushiguro's face at a visible rate. Life force and cursed energy poured out, flooding into the phantasmal silhouette rising at his back.

But the hands forming the seals held steady as stone.

Countless memory fragments swirled before his eyes, past life and present life tangled together, tumbling end over end.

Schemes exhausted to the last effort. Gambles staked on his very life.

As if no matter how far he ran, he could never escape this Shibuya night.

Every syllable fell heavy enough to collapse the ruins beneath them:

"Buru bu..."

The phantom solidified. A great eye blazed to life.

"...Yura yura."

Eight-Handled Sword Divergent Sila Divine General Mahoraga.

In this place of despair, appeared once more.

When Fushiguro regained consciousness, he had long since lost all sense of time.

What was the situation now?

No charred stench of ruins. No iron reek of blood.

"Probably the classic plot where I got smacked flying by Mahoraga and slept straight through to the end of the Shibuya Incident."

A heavy sense of loss settled over Fushiguro.

His blurry vision gradually sharpened.

The first thing that met his eyes was a familiar black side-parted hairstyle, and a face wearing an expression of concern.

"Yokatta!"

Yuta Okkotsu showed a strained smile.

"I'm so relieved Fushiguro managed to wake up!"

Fushiguro struggled to sit up, but Yuta gently held him down.

"What time is it."

Fushiguro asked quietly.

Though he had read the original story thoroughly, after such drastic changes, he needed to confirm exactly where in the timeline he'd landed.

"November 1st, nine a.m. We're at the boundary of the Culling Game's barrier." Yuta answered.

The Shibuya Incident had already become the past.

Fushiguro let out a long, heavy breath:

"Which barrier boundary are we at?"

"Which?"

Obvious confusion crossed Yuta Okkotsu's face. Yuta blinked, seemingly unable to parse the question at all.

"Isn't there only one barrier in the Culling Game?"

"Only one..."

"One..."

"One..."

"What is going on!"

In the original story, there had been multiple scattered barriers.

This was a drastic deviation far beyond the original timeline, a change that had completely blown past anything Fushiguro had anticipated!

"This is all thanks to you, Fushiguro."

Yuta watched the shifting expressions on his face, gave him a light pat on the shoulder, and helped Fushiguro to his feet. The two of them slowly walked toward the depths of a nearby building.

"The strategy meeting for the Culling Game assault is about to start. You still need rest, but come listen in."

The heavy door swung open.

Several figures that Fushiguro had thought were already gone, erased from his mind by Sukuna's bread announcement, now stood completely unharmed, each wearing their own distinct expression, turning their gazes toward Fushiguro's face full of disbelief.

Fushiguro's eyes moved slowly across them, face by face.

Itadori...

Nobara...

Masamichi Yaga...

They were all here.

They were all alive.

Standing right there.

And also...

"Kento Nanami..."

Fushiguro opened his mouth. The voice caught in his throat.

A thousand words jammed there, and in the end they all collapsed into a single wave of overwhelming disbelief.

What on earth had happened?

At the same moment, beneath the same sky, inside the massive bowl-shaped barrier that covered all of Tokyo.

Above an urban wasteland reduced to scorched earth.

"Kenjaku, I'll admit you didn't lie to me this time."

Inside the Culling Game barrier, Hajime Kashimo watched the beam of cursed energy blasting across the sky, his expression twisting with barely suppressed excitement.

"Now THAT'S a real cannon!"

A grin spread across Hajime Kashimo's face, twisted nearly beyond recognition by excitement he could no longer hold back.

Four hundred years of waiting, and at last, a stage worthy of throwing punches!

Beneath the same sky.

"It has already reached the level of indiscriminate slaughter. It must be dealt with. It must be punished. It must be judged by me!"

Hiromi Higuruma seized the gavel, strode forward with resolute steps, and plunged into the depths of ruins where cursed energy fluctuations raged most chaotically.

Beneath the same sky.

"Better to retreat for now."

Reggie Star, hidden in the shadow of a building, kept watching how the situation unfolded.

Guided by a millennium-old covenant, sorcerers from different eras and dimensions gathered one after another in the streets of Tokyo.

The elders of a golden age of jujutsu, alongside the gifted anomalies of the modern era.

Ancient curses, and newborn madness.

Personal obsessions, and sweeping conspiracies.

The chaotic spectacle of the Heian period's jujutsu golden age had been reproduced, in this absurd and brutal fashion, ahead of schedule, on the streets of twenty-first-century Tokyo.

➤ Next: Culling Game

Chapter 12 - Culling Game

"Nanami..."

Fushiguro looked at the sharply dressed man standing before him, and his emotions surged before he could stop them.

"This is all thanks to you, Fushiguro."

Yuji was there too, bursting forward to fist-bump him.

Yuta stepped up and walked Fushiguro through everything that had happened while he was unconscious.

Jogo had indeed used the Domain Coordinates transfer to cut ahead of Nanami and Naobito, and force-fed Yuji the remaining ten fingers.

But because of that, Sukuna and the Jujutsu High sorcerers, Nanami and the rest, had missed each other entirely. The moment Sukuna revived, the only one he'd gone looking for was the Fushiguro he'd had in mind.

The outcome that followed was the same.

Grade 2 sorcerer Fushiguro had unleashed Mahoraga, and Mahoraga had landed a crushing elbow strike on the fifteen-fingered Sukuna.

He had successfully contained the damage from the fifteen-fingered Sukuna to the bare minimum.

Fushiguro listened in silence.

Mahoraga.

That desperate, all-or-nothing gamble, it hadn't been entirely in vain after all. It had truly changed something.

"Afterward, Naobito and I both rejoined the Shibuya battlefield."

Nanami pushed up their glasses.

A Grade 1 sorcerer in full condition. The head of one of the three great clans, battle-seasoned, combat power completely intact.

Being able to rejoin that chaotic, desperate battle had a decisive impact.

The small gust stirred by that Shibuya butterfly had indeed become a typhoon sweeping through the entire jujutsu world.

In the subsequent battles against Mahito and Kenjaku, the strengthened forces of Jujutsu High meant the final results were,

"Kenjaku failed."

Yuta raised their voice.

"We killed the Special Grade Cursed Spirit Mahito ahead of time and made Kenjaku's plan fall apart."

"Her meticulously crafted Culling Game barrier — designed to cover the entire country — could no longer unfold as originally planned. The absence of Idle Transfiguration and our relentless pressure saw to that."

"Of course, she's an old monster who has roamed the jujutsu world for a thousand years. She had a backup."

"Using the remnants of Mahito's soul and cursed energy residue, combined with her own technique, she hastily constructed a new barrier."

"But its scale, stability, and controllability fell far short of what she had originally envisioned."

"In the end, it only produced a small-scale barrier confined to the Tokyo area, with rules far more chaotic, disordered, and extreme."

What was originally Kenjaku's grand Culling Game, that sweeping game of chess, had been dragged by Fushiguro alone into a confined death match within the great city of Tokyo.

That was also why only a single Culling Game barrier remained.

"The final outcome of the Shibuya Incident came at the cost of Gojo-sensei remaining sealed, but..."

Yuta paused, then spoke word by word, like hammering down a final gavel:

"Jujutsu High sorcerers."

NOT A SINGLE ONE DIED!

Those words swept through Fushiguro's consciousness like the first light of dawn.

This was nearly the best outcome he had never even dared to imagine too concretely, not since the moment he'd arrived in this world.

He had really changed things.

With madness and a reckless, no-cost-spared gamble, he had pried open that indestructible tragic trajectory.

Yet, just as his emotions were about to burst through the dam, reason reclaimed his mind.

"But."

Fushiguro zeroed in on the blind spot.

"Tokyo has become the only remaining Culling Game barrier?"

"And the gathering place for all reincarnated sorcerers?"

"That's right."

"The situation in Tokyo has become... something we can barely handle."

Tokyo had become the sole death arena.

Ghosts from the Heian era. Battle-obsessed warriors craving peak combat. A judge consumed by Judgeman's law.

Every existence dragged into this warped Tokyo Colony would carry out the most brutal, most primal slaughter within this city.

The storm had not subsided.

"So then."

"This Tokyo Culling Game going forward — how do we win it?"

According to the original story's development, that would mean gathering as many points as possible, rescuing civilians, and unsealing Satoru Gojo.

But clearly, the Culling Game barrier now confined solely to Tokyo was vastly different.

"The barrier will no longer run on points."

"But on the players themselves!"

"The barrier will purify fallen players into cursed energy and, as a kind of reward, feed it in real time to the last survivor standing."

"The victor won't just claim the opponent's cursed energy to strengthen their own technique and recover from injuries, they could even... break through the limits they held in life."

"By having the reincarnated sorcerers tear each other apart, continuously devouring one another's cursed energy."

"In the end, raising another King of Curses in the present world."

The conference room went dead silent.

This was literally raising parasites inside Tokyo.

What a rush of a fight.

This was a real battle royale, that point-scoring system was already outdated by comparison.

"Faced with such overwhelming temptation, these reincarnated sorcerers will never walk away!"

"So we must stop them from growing stronger through mutual slaughter. We must stop this insane evolution."

"We have no choice but to send them back to the era where they belong."

"Of course, if we can successfully unseal Gojo-sensei, everything that comes after stops being our problem."

Fair point.

Once Gojo shows up, three punches and the whole mess clears itself.

"Our elimination plan is as follows."

Yuta cleared their throat again.

"First, finding a way to unseal Satoru Gojo is the top priority."

"Second,"

A note of resolve entered Yuta's voice:

"Active intervention. Hunt the reincarnated sorcerers!"

"All members still capable of fighting will enter the barrier in groups to hunt reincarnated sorcerers!"

"We cannot let this terrifying accumulated power fall into the hands of any uncontrollable reincarnated sorcerer."

"If a monster is needed to stop this disaster..."

"Then let me be that monster!"

"Jujutsu High's first strike team enters the Culling Game battlefield in one hour!"

"As for you, Fushiguro."

Yuta looked toward him, voice softening:

"You just woke up. You need rest..."

"No. I'm fighting too."

Fushiguro cut Yuta off.

Responsibility was part of it, sure.

But deeper than that was an anticipation he couldn't keep down.

The strongest fighters of every era, gathered in one place. Tearing each other apart under a brutal rule where combat itself made you stronger.

This was every "who would win" debate made real, the ultimate fantasy brought to life!

How could he possibly miss this feast?

Who wouldn't want to dive headfirst into the Culling Game battle royale and watch Hajime Kashimo vs. Ryu Ishigori play out to the absolute limit?

And more than that.

Never mind the reincarnated sorcerers, even Fushiguro found the spoils of the Culling Game's slaughter impossibly attractive.

Cursed energy volume and Innate Technique were almost fated from birth.

But now, an outright savage leveling path like this actually existed.

If he could hunt a few powerful fighters within it, would Fushiguro still need to worry about being stuck as a Grade 2 sorcerer his whole life?

After all, there was a new trump card hiding in his shadows.

Don't make me too eager for this!

Outside the Tokyo Colony, 9:50.

Everyone began their final checks and preparations, the atmosphere sharp and taut.

......

......

At the same moment, inside the Tokyo Colony, above a stretch of commercial district ruins reduced to scorched earth.

"So I'm that famous? I haven't heard your name before, though."

Ryu Ishigori smoothed back his curly hair, ruffled by the shockwave, and aimed the enormous ball of condensed cursed energy in his hand once more at the white-robed sorcerer ahead.

"Hey, hey. Are you looking down on me?"

Hajime Kashimo stretched his mouth into a wild grin. The purple electricity crackling around him grew ever more blinding.

In the brief but fierce exchange of probes just moments ago, the scale and quality of cursed energy they'd both unleashed had already made things clear to each other.

Incredibly strong.

"Can you fill me up?"

Ryu Ishigori licked his lips, greed and battle-hunger tangled together in his eyes.

"Can you satisfy my craving?!"

Hajime Kashimo burst into savage laughter, battle-lust boiling over.

No more words were needed.

The slaughter played out across every corner of Tokyo.

......

......

(No need to drag out the post-Shibuya plot here, I'm sure no one wants to read a straight translation of the original anyway, so let's go straight to the grand Culling Game free-for-all!)

➤ Next: The Target Is Special Grade!