Jujutsu Kaisen: Megumi — Chapter 35

"Just this once."

That soft declaration had long since stopped being a simple remark. It was a proclamation that drove the entire lifting match to a white-hot crescendo.

Megumi didn't hesitate. His left leg extended, dropping him to one knee, a new fulcrum, replicating the absolute stance from the earlier lift.

Both palms locked together. Cursed energy surged to a boil. The calm black shadow tide beneath him tore open like the gates of an abyss.

Within a full two-hundred-meter radius, the urban wreckage of Shinjuku, pulverized to drifting dust by Malevolent Shrine's indiscriminate slashing, was instantly transformed by the shadow tide's immense suction force into a reverse-spinning vortex of gray-white ash and debris.

Like a hundred rivers rushing back to the sea, it poured madly into the bottomless abyss of Megumi's shadow.

Sukuna saw it and curled his lips into a savage grin.

The hands sustaining [Furnace: Open] thrust forward in a sudden surge, and a fire arrow came streaking out.

The King of Curses' arms, occupied until now with the casting motion, were at last completely freed.

His massive frame sank sharply in place. Both legs drove into the ground. The back of his neck tilted slightly forward, letting his trapezius form a triangular balance with his raised, bracing palms. Perfect lifting posture.

"Come on!"

"3,000-meter gravitational acceleration — charged Piercing Elephant!"

"Shinjuku building district, full 200-meter radius!"

Both battle cries erupted simultaneously.

"Sukuna — can you catch this one Piercing Elephant?"

"Megumi — can you catch this entire Shinjuku?"

High in the air, the fire arrow, symbol of destruction, sliced across the devastated battlefield like a meteor.

The vortex spread with Megumi as its center. But it absorbed with Sukuna as its center.

Within thirty meters of Sukuna, every speck of dust, every fragment of debris, every microscopic particle suspended in the air, all of it had already been devoured clean by the shadow tide, leaving an absolute vacuum zone.

And the slow-moving Furnace: Open could not detonate instantaneously inside a vacuum.

Like Chasing the Sun, it could only strain forward through the trail of dust steadily being drained away behind it.

Only when it caught up to the dust the shadow tide kept absorbing would it trigger that world-destroying chain explosion.

And so Megumi's condition for victory,

Was to lift this entire Shinjuku district.

A single-family house?

No. That was the weight only a weakling couldn't manage.

Megumi was no longer the person who had nearly failed to lift three cars, who had escaped that single-family house through trickery, the one who had faked winning the lift on the surface, who had won the fight but lost the lifting match.

But now, Megumi was the man who had lifted the entire Tombs of the Star.

"Come then, all of it, every last bit,"

Recalling the moment before Malevolent Shrine had even been deployed, Megumi reconstructed as precisely as he could just how much structural mass was contained in this field of dust.

Average lot size: 369㎡. Large individual footprints, relatively wide spacing between buildings. The total building count wouldn't be that high, somewhere in the range of several dozen.

But every single one of those buildings was a massive high-rise. Floor-area density was extraordinary.

Shinjuku's first and second blocks were packed with commercial super-skyscrapers. Buildings over 200 meters tall alone numbered more than 10.

That kind of density and mass was already countless times beyond the limit Megumi had previously endured.

This offensive barrage Sukuna had launched across the street.

Would become the full weight that Megumi absorbed.

I can absorb a street-level attack?

Then doesn't that mean my stacking is at street-level too?!

Pass it on, Megumi the Heavenly Emperor just went street-level!

The shadow tide's expansion grew nearly ravenous.

Megumi's seven orifices finally began seeping dark blood, but the smile on his face only grew wilder and more terrifying.

And at the same time.

In the instant where all things fell silent, Sukuna, braced and ready below, finally met his own lift.

What reached the surface first wasn't the physical mass capable of crushing the earth's crust. It was the violent gust of wind produced by that enormous weight compressing the air before it.

Hurricane-force pressure blasted away the gunsmoke swirling around Sukuna and sent the black bangs at his forehead flying.

It also made that terrifying face, features twisted, all four eyes blazing open, appear even sharper against the howling wind.

And even more elated.

"Come then, Megumi Fushiguro!"

Within this thoroughly destroyed two-hundred-meter radius of rubble, the fire arrow sluggishly chasing the tail of dust moved like the final red countdown of an inescapable death trap.

One above, one below. One shadow, one light.

Both figures settled into their peak lifting stance, about to decide who came out on top in this desperate countdown.

"Let's see..."

"Whether you lift this Shinjuku first, or I lift Piercing Elephant first!"

BOOM!

A thunderous impact erupted across the battlefield.

First, Sukuna!

Piercing Elephant came crashing down with the gravitational acceleration of 3,000 meters, its impact power infinitely multiplied by the Piercing Ox properties, and it landed hard onto Sukuna's raised hands and shoulders.

"RAAAAAAAAAH!"

The King of Curses let out a savage roar.

In the first microsecond of contact, the entire section of earth's crust beneath his feet shattered. A terrifying crater, diameter exceeding 100 meters, tens of meters deep, blasted open with him at the center.

But Sukuna did not go to his knees.

That blood-drenched face bloomed with pure, frenzied ecstasy.

The Reverse Cursed Technique within him was driven to an unprecedented overloaded extreme. Muscle torn apart in one instant was forcibly knit back together. Bone pulverized in the next was forcibly reconnected. Destruction and regeneration formed a bloody cycle across both his arms.

Sukuna's eyes split wide, and bloody tears streamed from all four crimson irises.

Yet with sheer brute force, using nothing but those mangled, blood-soaked shoulders and arms, he held up Piercing Elephant.

His spine, like a supreme war bow drawn to its absolute limit, let out a spine-chilling chorus of bone-cracking reports. And yet, inch by inch, it brought the great beast's downward press to a stop.

Sukuna crossed the threshold of absolute desperation.

A mad laugh exploded from the center of that annihilation, roaring deafeningly into the ruins.

And on the other side, Megumi's ordeal was no less extreme.

Originally on one knee, the moment absorption began, the other knee was also driven brutally into the earth by that invisible, crushing weight. Both kneecaps emitted a brittle crack.

But he watched that fire arrow. Barely a dozen meters from catching the dust trail.

Megumi bit down hard. He poured every last bit of cursed energy, together with his own life force, madly into sustaining the shadow tide.

"Shadows!"

Across this utterly devastated rubble, separated by howling gales and a rain of blood, the two of them had reached a standoff that made every witness tremble to their core.

And this scene, staggering as a mythic epic, was recorded without missing a single second by the crows circling high overhead, faithfully carrying out their broadcast relay, and transmitted directly into Jujutsu High's underground live-feed room.

In front of the screens, the deathly silence shattered.

Whether it was Yuta Okkotsu, the strongest combatant present, or the members of the Anti-Sukuna Squad who had lifted the Tombs of the Star alongside Megumi, or every single member of Jujutsu High:

All of them stared slack-jawed at the screen. At the monsters who had long since surpassed the limits of humanity, enduring with everything they had amidst blood and howling wind.

Shock. Awe. Countless emotions rose in everyone's hearts.

"They actually..."

"Both lifted it!"

➤ Next: Chanting