Tokyo. Noon, 10:00.

A pallid sun hung high at the edge of the barrier, casting cold, warmthless light over the entire city.

Right where that light met the warped barrier, several figures plummeted down like meteors tearing through the sky.

Yuji Itadori,

Megumi Fushiguro,

Kento Nanami,

Aoi Todo,

Kinji Hakari,

and Yuta Okkotsu, the first hunting unit, composed of Jujutsu High's current top combatants, officially entered Tokyo's one and only barrier!

As for the Zen'in Clan forces Fushiguro had risked his life to preserve back in Shibuya...

Hmph.

While Fushiguro was still unconscious, the false intelligence he had personally sent out, declaring Naobito Zen'in dead, had ignited the suspicion, ambition, and rot that had been festering inside that ancient clan for a hundred years.

According to what Yuta later mentioned in passing,

the Zen'in Clan had descended into chaos. Chaos severe enough to reach the point of purging its own members.

It was easy to imagine just how remarkably effective Fushiguro's spur-of-the-moment provocation had been.

The ever-devoted Naoya Zen'in, along with the Zen'in Clan's combat forces, were most likely now mired deep in the clan's internal power struggle, too occupied to spare a thought for anything else.

That was also why the Culling Game's first hunting unit consisted almost entirely of Jujutsu High's own strength.

For Fushiguro, though, this was actually a good thing.

After all, the rewards of the Culling Game were no longer those inconsequential points. They were genuine, tangible cursed energy stripped directly from one's opponents.

The more reincarnated sorcerers he could hunt, the greater the gains he stood to make.

The shame of being a Grade 2 sorcerer ends today!

But the moment they breached the void, every figure from Jujutsu High instantly vanished from one another's sight!

Wind fierce as blades sliced across Fushiguro's cheeks and flooded into his tattered Jujutsu High uniform.

Even though only one barrier remained, the one over Tokyo, the mechanism that randomly scattered those who entered was still in effect.

In the vast open sky, he fell alone at breakneck speed, the urban sprawl rushing up to fill his vision.

His reliable companions. All scattered.

"Ten Shadows Technique — Nue!"

Fushiguro brought all ten fingers together into a hand seal, and cursed energy surged instantly.

The shadow beneath his feet boiled and expanded, taking on physical form!

The enormous owl-like shikigami screamed into existence from the void, its broad back catching the falling Fushiguro with precision.

The plummeting momentum converted instantly into a graceful glide. Fushiguro grabbed Nue's neck feathers with one hand and steadied himself against the howling wind.

This was the privilege of having an aerial unit.

He lowered his body slightly and surveyed the battlefield below with a hawk-like gaze.

Ruins. Thick smoke. Twisted buildings.

It was plain to see how brutal things had become after all the sorcerers were thrown into the same battlefield.

Every last one of them tearing at each other desperately, fighting to plunder cursed energy from one another's bodies.

Nue held position at low altitude. Then without warning, a shockwave ripped through the sky and nearly sent Fushiguro crashing down.

In the center of a wide street carved into deep gouges by that shockwave, two figures were hurling devastation at each other. Between them erupted a torrent of energy so violent the air itself seemed to wail!

And on one side, lightning tore through the atmosphere and crackled through the turbulent energy.

It was Ryu Ishigori.

It was Hajime Kashimo.

"Hah — output at this level!"

Kashimo laughed wildly and shook out his numbed arms. A faint crackling sound came from his shoulder blades.

He had been far from prepared for how impossibly heavy each cursed energy cannon blast would be.

It was nearly enough to shake apart the body he had spent years tempering.

But the more that was so, the more fiercely the near-frenzied battle lust in his eyes blazed!

The violet lightning crackling around him hadn't diminished at all; if anything, it had grown more concentrated.

The charge had built to the breaking point.

"No matter how many more times you come — it doesn't matter to me!"

Ishigori licked his chapped lips, eyes gleaming with the hunger of a man eyeing a meal he couldn't wait to devour.

A far denser, blazing-white ball of energy was taking shape at a furious pace.

Directional cursed energy cannon, ready to fire.

Four hundred years of silence and longing. Four hundred years of accumulated power and battle instinct.

All of it converged in this moment into the purest, most scorching gaze, hot enough to incinerate reason itself!

The next blow.

Would decide everything!

But someone would not allow it.

Atop Nue's back, Fushiguro slowly narrowed his eyes.

As a hardcore debate enthusiast at heart, part of him desperately wanted to watch with his own eyes, whether Ryu Ishigori, the greatest offensive powerhouse the Date domain had ever produced, would blast Hajime Kashimo to dust, or whether Kashimo would successfully defend the title of strongest from four hundred years ago.

But no matter which of them ended up dead,

it was not acceptable.

Reason poured over him like ice water, dousing the fervor before it could rise any further.

The loser dies; the winner devours their cursed energy.

Fighters of the caliber of Ryu Ishigori and Hajime Kashimo, the quality of the cursed energy stored within them, and the quality catalyzed by this fight to the death, if absorbed by the victor, what kind of terrifying monster would it produce?

That enormous, refined experience package was far too dangerous,

and far too... tempting.

"My apologies,"

Fushiguro murmured, ten fingers interweaving in front of him, forming the cursed seal for summoning and control,

"but your cursed energy... is far too precious."

"So."

"You both have to die by my hand."

Grade 2 sorcerer Megumi Fushiguro, entering the battle!

Cursed energy poured instantly into the shadow beneath him, into the most chaotic existence within the Ten Shadows.

"Ten Shadows Technique."

"Sorcerer Killer!"

"Descend."

BOOM!

Below, between Ryu Ishigori and Hajime Kashimo, in the center of that stretch of ground repeatedly ravaged by cursed energy and lightning, space itself shattered.

A towering, powerfully built humanoid figure slammed down from the churning pitch-black void with tremendous force!

No forewarning. No cursed energy fluctuation.

Pure mass and pure violence, converted, the instant it met the ground, into kinetic energy that destroyed everything in its path!

The concrete road collapsed outward in a thunderous radial blast!

The terrifying ring-shaped shockwave toppled the surrounding skeletal remains of buildings like they were made of paper, and a roiling storm of dust and debris blasted skyward.

As if the most magnificent, most violent salvo had been fired to announce the arrival of this third dancer who had suddenly joined the stage!

Ishigori's cursed energy cannon, primed and ready. Kashimo's lightning, drawn back and waiting. In the face of this physical intrusion pushed to the absolute extreme, both had their rhythm instantly broken!

"Who's there?!"

Ryu Ishigori's pupils snapped tight.

Battle instinct made him swing around without hesitation, aiming straight at the center of the smoke and dust!

The blazing-white torrent of cursed energy, compressed to its absolute limit, poured toward that hazy figure!

He would vaporize this reckless interloper, along with the entire surrounding area, without a trace!

The cursed energy cannon slammed squarely into the smoke with a deafening roar, triggering a secondary explosion. Blazing-white radiance swallowed everything.

But the very next instant,

the hairs on the back of Ryu Ishigori's neck stood straight up. Something ice-cold pressed against his back without any warning whatsoever!

The intruder had appeared directly behind him.

How was that possible?!

When had it managed that?

"Hey, hey..."

Ishigori slowly turned his head.

"You're a little sweet too!"

Kashimo stopped moving. Dark violet electric light crackled and snapped all around.

"You little..."

Kashimo bared his teeth, a grin that was twisted and excited all at once.

"Give us your name!"

Two of the top fighters from four hundred years ago, death-stares fixed forward, issuing their passionate duel invitation.

The Sorcerer Killer who had descended, Toji Fushiguro, under Fushiguro's control, settled into the simplest of combat stances.

Left fist loosely clenched and extended forward. Center of gravity sinking slightly. The muscles of the right shoulder blade winding tight as steel wire.

Silence.

Stillness.

Yet it declared what was coming more clearly than any roar ever could.

The battle begins.

➤ Next: Round Two: The Weightlifting Tournament

Chapter 14 - Round Two: The Weightlifting Tournament

Megumi's intent was never to cut down Ryu Ishigori and Hajime Kashimo on the spot.

Even if he wanted to kill them, he had no blade worth using.

A high-grade cursed tool fit for the Sorcerer Killer to wield.

All that remained was the shattered husk of Playful Cloud, badly damaged in the desperate battle of Shibuya.

The red-and-black short spike still radiated an ominous, cold gleam.

But against two ancient sorcerers from four hundred years ago, both at the absolute peak of cursed energy and technique — its deterrence and destructive range were plainly not enough.

"Granité Blast!"

Ryu Ishigori's roar tore through the smoke and dust.

He had already adjusted his strategy.

No longer seeking a single concentrated decisive strike, he unleashed a broader, more sustained torrential scatter of cursed energy, all to deal damage to both enemies at once.

Bone-piercing and terrifying, it swept forward in a fan-shaped arc.

Wherever it passed, the ground was gouged into deep furrows. Rubble pulverized a second time. Even the air seemed to tear.

Facing that saturating, blind-spot-free barrage, Toji Fushiguro had no choice but to push the supreme physical capabilities granted by the Heavenly Restriction to their absolute limit.

The body became a series of blurred, broken lines that defied all physics, weaving and dodging through the pale storm of ice particles with heart-stopping precision.

Every twist barely let the lethal cursed energy crystals graze skin, adding fresh bloody gashes to an already scorched frame.

But the threat didn't stop there.

CRACKLE!

The deep-violet lightning coiling around Hajime Kashimo had not ceased, if anything, as the battle wore on, it grew more alive.

Instead of rushing in, Kashimo circled the edges of the battlefield, hands loosely cupped, lashing and coiling from cunning angles, even predicting and cutting off Toji's escape routes.

Electric charge, as a fundamental physical phenomenon, does not distinguish between those with cursed energy and those without.

Even the Sorcerer Killer's body, zero cursed energy, the instant it stepped into that field of lightning, the muscles would involuntarily seize and spasm as powerful current surged through them, causing that fractional, fatal delay in movement.

And that sliver of delay, before Ryu Ishigori's all-encompassing Granité Blast, was the difference between life and death.

Dodge. Dodge again.

Under Megumi's remote control, Toji danced on a knife's edge.

Megumi's plan had been to sow chaos and drag out the grinding attrition between the two ancient sorcerers. Ideally, let them wear each other down through mutual restraint and wariness toward this new threat, until both sides were spent, too exhausted to fight further.

But now, he realized he had thought too simply.

These two monsters from four hundred years ago had combat intelligence that was outright frightening.

Almost instantly, they'd reached some unspoken understanding: take out this dangerous third party first.

The damaged Playful Cloud couldn't inflict decisive harm on two ancient sorcerers who were fully guarded and fortified by deep cursed energy defenses.

And Toji, under the relentless, attribute-complementary assault from both sides, could barely hold form, gradually falling into passive defense, struggling just to keep up.

"Hah... hah..."

From a distance, Megumi crouched at the edge of a high-rise that hadn't yet fully collapsed. Fine beads of cold sweat seeped from his temple.

He had to pour every ounce of focus into it, pushing perception and control to their absolute limit, just to keep Toji, moving within the shadow, barely hanging on against two top-tier powerhouses bearing down at once.

A feinting left jab to draw the enemy. A right palm to knock aside the lightning whip closing in from the side. The body folded backward at an impossible angle, narrowly clearing a pale torrent sweeping low across the ground.

But...

Megumi gritted his teeth. The sharp light in his eyes didn't waver.

The two figures in the battle were ferocious, but plainly, neither was as reckless as they'd been at the start.

Ryu Ishigori's sustained wide-range technique was visibly draining his cursed energy.

Kashimo's frequent lightning intercepts weren't an inexhaustible reserve either.

Keep dismantling. Keep grinding them down. Maybe it really could work.

And at the exact moment Megumi's entire mind was fixed on the distant battle, controlling Toji through one more limit-defying evasion,

Whiff! Whiff! Whiff!

Sharp sounds of splitting air arrived with zero warning from directly above his head.

Megumi jolted. He looked up on instinct. His pupils contracted sharply.

Dozens of short blades in varying shapes.

Mixed in with chunks of concrete and rebar.

And even a small car.

Like a precisely calculated barrage, they came pouring straight down in trajectories that covered every possible angle of escape.

Too fast. Too close. Completely beyond expectation.

"Divine Dog — Totality!"

Megumi's voice tore from his throat at the last possible instant.

"Awoo!"

The shadow beneath his feet surged in a turbid wave, and the black-and-white Divine Dog, Totality, came howling out.

The dull thud of blades biting flesh mixed with the ear-splitting clatter of metal on metal.

Most of the hurled projectiles were forcibly deflected or blocked.

But several short blades at particularly treacherous angles punched through the gaps, driving hard into Megumi Fushiguro's shoulder and thigh before he could fully move aside.

Blood sprayed instantly, soaking through shredded clothing.

Megumi let out a muffled grunt. The impact and pain sent him stumbling backward, nearly pitching off the high-rise's edge.

"For a sorcerer to let yourself get so distracted in the heart of a battlefield..."

A mocking voice drifted from the shadowed ruins at Megumi's rear flank.

"How unprofessional."

Megumi forced down the vertigo clawing at him through the searing pain. He braced one hand against the ground and wrenched his head around.

A figure stood there, no one knew when it had arrived, already settled, without a sound, on a fractured concrete crossbeam not far behind.

A dense mass of tickets, bills, and contract papers had been forcibly woven together into a feathered robe that wrapped the body entirely.

Beneath slightly disheveled golden-yellow hair, a gaze filtered from beneath the shadow of those long, fallen locks, making no attempt to conceal the malice directed squarely at Megumi.

Reggie Star.

The nemesis who, in the original Jujutsu Kaisen, had dragged Megumi into the abyss.

And now, at this moment, at the worst possible moment, Reggie had appeared here, in the most lethal posture of all: striking from the shadows before anyone could see it coming.

"Ten Shadows Technique."

"Heavenly..."

Megumi had almost instinctively started forming hand signs again, intending to forcibly recall Toji.

The thought had barely surfaced before it was snuffed out.

Toji was still tied up breaking apart the battle between Ryu Ishigori and Kashimo. There was no pulling out.

And aside from the Sorcerer Killer, that unexpectedly obtained trump card —

Megumi's heart sank. Bit by bit. All the way to the bottom.

Since transmigrating. Surviving Shibuya. Scheming against Special Grades. No matter how desperately he had fought.

Compared to the Megumi in the original work.

Nothing had changed.

The same Ten Shadows Technique.

The same number of shikigami.

The same Grade 2 sorcerer level.

Could it be...

A wave of utterly absurd, bone-deep cold swept through him, mingled with the raw agony from his wounds, drowning him from the inside out.

Could it be that he really... couldn't escape this Culling Game Weightlifting Tournament after all?!

➤ Next: The Shameless Sorcerer

Chapter 15 - The Shameless Sorcerer

Would he lose?

The thought flashed through Megumi's mind as pain screamed through every corner of it.

No. He would win.

Things were different now.

He had Fushiguro under his control!

In terms of both pressure tolerance and sheer ruthlessness, this version was beyond anything the "original work" could compare to.

"Ten Shadows Technique—"

Megumi gritted his teeth against the wounds on his shoulder and leg and locked his focus.

"Nue!"

He tried to launch himself skyward and open distance.

Cursed energy surged into the shadow beneath his feet.

But beside him, the loyal Divine Dog: Totality's massive frame had begun to turn transparent, wavering, its black shadow-matter melting like wax, dripping slowly downward until it dissolved back into the darkness below.

The absolute limit of the Ten Shadows Technique.

At any one time, two shikigami could be summoned and maintained in the present world. No more.

Even if the King of Curses, Ryomen Sukuna himself, were here, he could only call out two Ten Shadows shikigami.

Otherwise the Shinjuku showdown would have long since turned into a team brawl.

And right now, the Sorcerer Killer, Toji Fushiguro, who had forcibly merged using Orochi's remains and was fighting two ancient powerhouses alone at a distance,

had already claimed one of those precious summoning slots.

What did that mean?

It meant that in this life-or-death clash with Reggie Star, the number of shikigami Megumi could deploy simultaneously was reduced to exactly one.

He had even lost the option from the "original work", using a hidden Divine Dog for tactical deception and ambush.

Even the most fundamental "hidden dog" battle-of-wits approach was impossible under this brutal constraint.

Such was the Ten Shadows Technique: wheelchair-bound and tripping over its own feet.

Reggie obviously wasn't going to give him any breathing room to collect himself and sort out his tactics.

The face covered in an instant by the receipt contract showed a leisurely cat-and-mouse smile.

A finger curled lightly, and cursed energy surged out with the spoken words:

"Contract Re-creation!"

The air dozens of meters overhead warped instantly.

A compact sedan, contracted from some unknown stretch of rubble, obeyed the most primal laws of physics, trailing a wind-splitting shriek that set every nerve on edge.

It plummeted straight toward Megumi's position.

The kinetic energy of the descent compressed the air into a deep, thunderous howl.

"Rabbit Escape!"

Countless shikigami rabbits, snow-white fur, translucent red eyes, erupted like a surging white tide, with Megumi at the center, exploding upward and outward in every direction, pouring forth in a relentless flood!

In an instant they swallowed the entire area dozens of meters around him.

The Rabbit Escape shikigami had no fangs, no claws, no special abilities.

Their only trait was numbers. Absolute, suffocating numbers.

BOOM!

The falling car slammed hard into that sea of rabbits that had risen out of nowhere, thick and towering!

A dense, continuous sound of crushing bodies merged into one unbroken mass, enough to set your teeth on edge.

The car's momentum was absorbed layer by layer, buffered bodily by what seemed like an inexhaustible tide of rabbits, until it was fully arrested.

Pristine white fur was stained instantly into garish red. Severed limbs and viscera mixed with shards of metal, spraying in all directions, gory and grotesque.

At the same time, that explosion-like surge of the rabbit sea completely swallowed and buried Megumi's silhouette.

The countless writhing white bodies formed the perfect visual barrier and physical concealment.

Every trace of him, his presence, his outline, even his cursed energy fluctuations, was hidden deep within that white ocean.

In the ruined plaza, only an expanse of unsettling pure white remained.

Reggie tilted their head slightly, watching the silently churning sea of rabbits. The eyes beneath the yellow hair narrowed, a flicker of surprise crossing their face.

"Contract Re-creation!"

Within the rabbit swarm, Megumi clearly registered the reactivation of Reggie's technique.

Just as he was about to take a defensive stance, a collision far beyond anything his eardrums could handle stabbed straight into his skull.

This time it didn't come from above, it came from the side.

At the edge of the rabbit sea, the second-floor outer wall of a half-collapsed shopping center shattered! A mid-size box truck, its frame twisted and its paint scraped beyond recognition,

launched as if fired from a cannon barrel, carrying the crushing force of something that would obliterate everything in its path, dragging concrete chunks and glass shards behind it. It barreled horizontally toward the center of the rabbit sea where Megumi was likely concealed.

And it wasn't just one.

Three or four sets of headlights broke through together.

Megumi was like an insignificant speed bump on some forgotten back road.

He could only watch, helpless as a useless husband, as that row of hulking machines bore down to flatten him completely.

"Those guys in Tokyo are far too terrifying — they flip cars barehanded without a second thought."

"Without this stockpile of numbers, I wouldn't dare come out hunting."

What made it even more desperate: Reggie had personally climbed into the cab of one of those trucks, manually working the steering wheel, driving it straight at Megumi again and again.

Why hadn't Megumi dismissed Rabbit Escape yet? It clearly couldn't provide effective cover anymore.

Watching Megumi flee in disarray, the confusion and fascination in Reggie's mind both hit their peak at the same moment.

Reggie had already guessed that Megumi's shikigami count had certain limits.

The rabbit sea was useless now. So why was Megumi still clinging to the rabbits?

Reggie wanted to force out that final hidden card, or personally watch him get crushed beneath the wheels.

The next moment.

A crisp, sharp crack.

Within the rabbit sea, Reggie spotted one rabbit that was clearly unlike all the rest, it neither dodged nor fled. It hurled itself directly at the rampaging truck's hood.

Splat!

In the instant that special rabbit was smashed apart, its body didn't become mere flesh and blood. It burst into a small cloud of mist shot through with fragments of black and white light.

Immediately after,

With the position where that rabbit had burst as the center, every remaining Rabbit Escape shikigami,

regardless of distance, whether fully manifested or already fading into near-transparent wisps, shuddered violently in the exact same instant, then popped like punctured soap bubbles and vanished all at once.

The rabbit sea dispersed in an instant.

"Wha—" The leisure on Reggie's face froze solid.

The Rabbit Escape shikigami was dead.

In that instant, because of Rabbit Escape's death, Megumi was spared the time-consuming wind-up of manually dismissing a shikigami. He could summon a new one immediately.

"I didn't think... you could go this far!"

Reggie's voice trembled slightly with excitement. "Directly sacrificing a shikigami to buy a tactical window and open new possibilities.

Is that something a normal person could even think up?!"

Watching Megumi, already in summoning stance in front of the cab, Reggie felt joy and exhilaration in equal measure, eager to see what shikigami he would call forth next.

"...Fusion."

But the cursed energy activation and technique name were both beyond what Reggie had anticipated.

Megumi was going to perform another merge right here, fusing a brand-new shikigami state into being.

"Rabbit Totality!"

Countless fine but dense streams of black-and-white light blazed out of the vortex like arrows loosed from a bow!

Innumerable fangs surged forth from the shadows.

The Divine Dogs were a size smaller, but their numbers far exceeded Reggie's expectations.

Countless Divine Dogs immediately surrounded Megumi, walling him in completely.

"You think that's going to stop me?"

Reggie roared and pressed harder on the accelerator.

"Take a look behind you." Megumi smiled.

Reggie glanced back.

Countless Divine Dogs were pouring out of the shadows behind Reggie, pressing down onto the steering wheel clenched in Reggie's hands.

In this moment, Megumi had utterly cast aside every last scrap of dignity as a Jujutsu Sorcerer.

He issued the Divine Dogs their final command,

"Grab the steering wheel!"

➤ Next: Tier-0 Human Trafficker Master