Jujutsu Kaisen: Megumi — Chapter 36 - Chanting

"He lifted it!"

Inside Jujutsu High, the stifling air, dense enough to have nearly solidified, was finally torn apart by that single unbelievable cry.

Yuta Okkotsu watched the shadow formation expanding outward without end, and the sky-blotting Piercing Elephant looming over everything. The fingers gripping the scabbard went involuntarily slack.

The heavy katana, still in its sheath, struck the floor with a resounding clang.

"And here I was, thinking about how I might help His Eminence Megumi."

"If I were the one taking part in this weightlifting match..."

Yuta slowly lowered their head, staring at their own hands, trembling faintly from the extreme tension, unable to hide the shock.

Turning back to the battlefield feed relayed through the crow, Yuta's voice wavered:

"Is this what a battle above Special Grade looks like?"

No commentary was needed.

The savage aura radiating from those two figures on the screen, that crushing, suffocating pressure that made breathing difficult even through a monitor,

had already completely overwhelmed every sorcerer in the observation room at Jujutsu High.

Every heartbeat seemed to shudder violently for this single moment!

......

"I didn't think you could pull this off, Megumi Fushiguro!"

The towering King of Curses.

Both palms and shoulder bones crushed under Piercing Elephant's weight, unable to straighten his back.

Before a force sufficient to shatter the earth's crust, even he could no longer maintain his composure.

The King of Curses looked wretched.

Bone-splitting sounds crawled from within Sukuna's body in a continuous, nauseating chorus.

Under Piercing Elephant's relentlessly compounding pressure, the legs that had been driven into the ground like pillars finally began to bend.

His knees, under that irresistible mass, drew closer and closer to the scorched earth, inch by inch.

If his knees slammed into the ground in this pure contest of strength...

Would that not mean that he, this unrivaled, eternal King of Curses, was actually kneeling before this green little brat standing in front of him?

Bowing down humbly?!

An earth-shattering kneel!

Sukuna's expression twisted.

"No. I, the King of Curses, absolutely cannot fall!"

"I will stand!"

A hoarse roar tore from Sukuna's throat. He held the stance through sheer will alone, conceding not an inch, halting the downward creep of his knees by force.

And the resilience and ferocity Megumi displayed was no less!

The blazing white fire arrows, radiating terrifying heat, were still cutting through the vacuum zone, continuously chasing the dust trail, counting down the clock on Megumi's lift.

Yet not a trace of panic showed on Megumi's face.

Because he had already grasped the core of weightlifting!

"Shadow Tide, micro-adjust five millimeters left!"

Under the near-death pressure of dozens of skyscrapers' worth of mass bearing down on him.

Megumi's precise control over his cursed energy showed not even a flicker of disruption.

His operational precision had hit millimeter level, continuously driving the Shadow Tide to actively adapt.

Slowing. Accelerating.

Holding a precise relative distance from the fire arrows at all times!

"His Eminence Megumi is micro-adjusting the rate of dust accumulation each second!"

"Letting the weight increase gradually, so a sudden spike won't collapse the stance!"

"That's complete and utter mastery!"

Every eye in the Jujutsu High observation room snapped to the two figures mirroring each other on screen.

"If we're judging by the completeness of the weightlifting stance..."

"His Eminence Megumi has the edge!"

His wealth of weightlifting experience had become Megumi's absolute advantage in this fight, the force that kept Sukuna pinned!

Under the crushing weight.

Even with Reverse Cursed Technique pushed to its absolute limit, Sukuna's physical functions had already begun seriously deteriorating.

His lips had already started to turn purple.

Watching Sukuna's increasingly strained and wretched condition, Megumi forcibly swallowed the blood surging up his throat and flashed a wildly brazen grin.

"I told you that you couldn't out-lift me. Do you believe me now!"

Megumi Fushiguro, deploying trash talk!

The ultimate taunt, a blade driven straight into the King of Curses' pride.

"Is that so?"

Faced with Megumi's supremely arrogant in-your-face provocation.

Instead.

A deeply unsettling, faint smile flickered with eerie strangeness through the King of Curses' bloodshot crimson eyes.

Behind that smile, the King of Curses still had a hidden card!

"It's time to end this farce!"

Sukuna's mouth split open again, revealing two rows of stark white fangs.

This time, accompanying the movement of his lips, there was an extremely subtle, nearly imperceptible ripple of cursed energy.

Spreading silently through the dusty air of the ruins!

"Flowing Fire..."

The murmur was nearly swallowed by the roaring chaos of the clash.

But.

It was still captured with pinpoint precision by Megumi, who held peak alert at every moment!

"That is... a cursed chant?!"

"Sukuna just intoned..."

Megumi's mind locked onto the only possible conclusion in an instant, and a chill ran through him.

"It's the chant for Furnace: Open!"

"He's going to use the chant to push the fire arrow's speed even higher!"

Extreme shock spilled uncontrollably across Megumi's face.

Watching this unfold, Sukuna accelerated his cadence and drove the remaining chant to completion!

BOOM!

In an instant!

The blazing white fire arrows that had been drifting ghost-like through the vacuum zone.

The moment the full-power chant amplification hit, the flames erupted into a violent, raging surge in midair!

The slender arrows.

Within a single second, they swelled with the wind and transformed completely.

Bloating into a terrifying torrent of fire dozens of meters in diameter, a sky-piercing column that looked as though it would burn through the heavens themselves!

In an instant, at a velocity the naked eye couldn't even track, it closed the fatal gap toward the retreating dust trail with savage, merciless speed!

"Damn it!"

Megumi jolted with sudden alarm.

Sukuna had been holding this back the entire time, saving the cursed chant as a hidden ace for the critical moment, completely shattering the balance of the lift!

He'd been concealing it all along.

Waiting for the precise moment when Megumi had poured every ounce of focus into micro-operations just to maintain this fragile balance.

Then unleashing it at the single most lethal instant!

"It seems I have no choice but to expand the dust absorption range."

Megumi grimaced.

If the absorption spiked instantaneously, if the weight jumped abruptly,

it would destroy the stance he'd fought so hard to maintain.

And yet that sky-scorching torrent, capable of burning everything to ash, was already bearing down!

If it grazed even a single particle of dust, everything would be undone.

"I'm going all in with you!"

"Come on then, all the dust, every last bit!"

Cursed energy surged around Megumi's body and poured madly into the abyss beneath his feet.

This time.

The gates of the abyss blew wide open!

Toward the entire world, completely and without any reservation, it revealed the absolute limit of the Ten Shadows Technique!

To strip Furnace: Open of every condition it needed to trigger an explosion.

Megumi.

Expanded Shadow Tide's absorption to its absolute maximum.

He was going to swallow every last particle of dust in one single breath!

"Watch my cup-like suction!"

Megumi, through sheer force of will, swallowed down the physical mass of this vibrant heart of Tokyo, the entire battered, crater-riddled wreckage of Shinjuku,

and gulped it all down in one go!

"STARVING!"

When the weight fully compounded, every bone in Megumi's body erupted with the groan of something driven well past its limit!

Under that superhuman, crushing pressure, his skin split and tore open. In an instant he was transformed into a wretched, blood-soaked figure.

It seemed even his internal organs had been shattered by the force, fragments of organs mixed with blood spilling continuously from his mouth.

"Your Eminence Megumi!"

In front of the screen in Jujutsu High's underground room.

Watching that swaying, teetering figure, who still refused to fall, still standing on the ruins with every last shred of will,

every heart inside Jujutsu High lurched with a sudden, violent pang.

➤ Next: How Will You Receive the Second One?