Jujutsu Kaisen: Megumi — Chapter 41 - Light and Shadow

Suspended in midair above a sky utterly torn apart by despair.

Megumi Fushiguro's body defied every physical law in existence, hanging silently upside-down in the boundless heights above.

His inverted field of vision refocused.

Those pitch-black eyes, gazing downward from on high, pierced through the swirling dust and smoke blanketing the sky, and once again locked hard onto the reflection of that impossibly arrogant King of Curses below.

That spirited confidence. The kind that belonged to a young man who had the entire world pinned underfoot.

Irresistibly, it flooded back into his eyes!

A grin so brazen it sent a chill to the core of one's heart hung shamelessly across the dead-silent sky!

"Reverse Cursed Technique..."

Deep within the ruins, Ryomen Sukuna's four crimson eyes stared hard at the figure suspended high above.

The shattered limbs. The caved-in chest.

Even the burns so deep they had exposed bone, beneath that impossibly sacred radiance, they were completely whole.

"Correct!"

Megumi, hanging in the heavens, responded to Sukuna with almost fanatical fervor, like someone tearing the cover off a great secret.

He extended his palm and proudly revealed the spot where the wound had been. A chest now bearing nothing but scar tissue.

Just a few lines of fresh scars.

Displayed before the King of Curses' gaze with undisguised pride.

"Feeling absolutely great!"

"And furthermore."

Megumi's tone shifted on a dime, utterly flippant.

"This isn't Round Deer's Reverse Cursed Technique..."

"It's mine!"

The moment those words rang out, in the underground chamber of Jujutsu High countless miles away,

Shoko Ieiri, who had been standing with her back to the broadcast screen the entire time, unable to bear watching the carnage,

The instant she heard those words, her whole body whipped around as if she'd been electrocuted. She pressed her entire face hard against the old television flickering with static.

"Wait — Emperor Megumi learned Reverse Cursed Technique?"

"Is this actually happening?"

The cries of disbelief weren't limited to one place. Out on the battlefield, the same question rang out.

"You — you actually learned Reverse Cursed Technique?"

All four eyes fixed on Megumi burned with absolute, unfiltered disbelief.

Sukuna could not accept it. That Megumi had truly awakened the Reverse Cursed Technique on his own.

And yet his cursed energy perception kept telling him otherwise.

That energy flowing through the young man's body, so utterly unlike Round Deer's.

That positive energy, bearing the unmistakable imprint of Megumi Fushiguro's own soul, was without any doubt completely and undeniably real.

Watching Sukuna's expression twist as if his entire worldview had caved in.

Megumi lazily stretched his newly reborn limbs in midair, satisfied down to his bones, and slowly began his explanation.

"It's simply that... no one ever truly understood Mahoraga."

Megumi tilted slightly to one side and glanced back at the wheel of light behind him, almost tenderly.

"At your cautious contact frequency, that fighting style designed to avoid triggering Adaptation, if you wanted seven rotations per second, you'd probably have to stake your entire life as a Binding Vow and still fall short of that effect."

Megumi broke into a wide, elated grin.

He spread both arms, embracing the entire world within his palms with supreme arrogance.

"So at this crossroads of life and death, I gave up on adapting to you, and instead adapted to myself!"

......

In the instant Weightlifter fell in defeat.

When the mass of dozens of skyscrapers came crashing down squarely onto his body.

The moment his internal organs were crushed and his bones were ground to powder.

Lying motionless in a pool of blood, Megumi knew it better than anyone, his body had already begun its countdown to death.

His only remaining card was Mahoraga.

"Hey, hey, you're not the self-destructive Mahoraga from the subjugation ritual anymore. You're my Mahoraga!"

"Come on."

"Show me what you've got!"

"Make me fall for you, Mahoraga!"

Megumi made an insane gamble.

He didn't place the wheel of light, the symbol of Adaptation, in front of himself to block Sukuna's damage.

He cast it directly into his own shadow.

Instantly.

Within the surging tide of shadows, Megumi channeled his cursed energy and launched a relentless, storm-like offensive.

Mahoraga's Adaptation mechanism: the more contact it receives, the further its analysis and Adaptation progress can climb.

And in this state of nearly zero contact,

Megumi poured every ounce of his cursed energy into offense. Dozens, even hundreds, of pure cursed energy strikes per second.

All of it. Every last drop. Poured onto the wheel of Adaptation.

"Mahoraga's Adaptation is, at its core, more akin to analysis. To learning."

"Nullifying a target's effect is merely the most basic application.

"Something like the World Cutting Slash is a further development of what Adaptation can do.

"So what I had Mahoraga do instead —"

"Was learn!"

Megumi snapped his head around with sudden, erratic energy and turned toward the crow relaying the broadcast high above. He flashed it a slightly apologetic smirk.

"My apologies, Kashimo, I've always called you the most highly educated person here."

"But looking at it now, the title of highest academic achievement belongs to Mahoraga."

Beneath that relentless storm-like offensive,

In an extraordinarily short span of time, Mahoraga had already completed a thorough dissection of Megumi's cursed energy.

Complete deconstruction.

And, complete mastery.

As the shadow that belongs to Megumi Fushiguro, Mahoraga delivered the ultimate answer:

"So... Mahoraga learned your cursed energy, and learned how to use your cursed energy to release the Reverse Cursed Technique."

"It was Mahoraga who helped you learn the Reverse Cursed Technique!"

Ryomen Sukuna delivered the final answer in a dry, hollow voice.

And once again, it earned a "Correct" from Megumi.

Satoru Gojo, a once-in-five-hundred-years genius, still needed sustained exposure to reverse-related training to awaken it at the threshold of life and death.

And yet Lord Mahoraga...

Needed only four rotations.

Bathed in the light of the open sky and the radiance of the Reverse Cursed Technique, Megumi's soaring confidence stood in stark contrast to the King of Curses' mounting dread.

"I see... the first four rotations, Mahoraga was analyzing your cursed energy, reverse-engineering the Reverse Cursed Technique for you."

"Then the remaining three sounds were..."

With four of seven sounds now confirmed, Sukuna reasoned through the Adaptation conditions for the remaining three.

Adaptation... learning.

Something clicked.

He snapped his head up. His gaze locked hard onto that god-like young man suspended in the sky.

That eerie silhouette hanging upside-down in the heavens.

Upside-down in the heavens!

Megumi was floating high in the sky with nothing to anchor him whatsoever.

Wasn't that proof that the second Adaptation target had already advanced to its third rotation?

"Is it Gravity? Or something else?"

Unnerved, Sukuna dropped back into the stance of Furnace: Open, his mind racing through the possible targets Megumi had chosen.

His gaze lifted once more. The blinding sky-light stung his eyes. He blinked slowly.

And in that instant, Sukuna finally understood.

The second condition Megumi had set for Mahoraga's Adaptation.

Was precisely what had just begun taking form on this battlefield,

The reverse of shadow,

Was,

LIGHT!

"Sorry, Weightlifter, I didn't feel a single thing when you died."

Above the heavens, Megumi's voice dropped to a whisper, ringing perfectly clear in Sukuna's ear.

"And I don't hold any hatred toward anyone."

Megumi drifted among the radiance in utter, unhurried ease, his form gliding like a fish through water.

Beneath the light of the sky.

Perfectly at ease.

And like an absolute sovereign.

"All I feel right now is."

"That this world fills my heart with boundless exhilaration."

Click,

The wheel of Adaptation turned at that precise moment, perfectly on cue.

That crisp, clean sound of gears completely drowned out Sukuna's heavy, desperate gasping.

Submerged within the tide of that sound, Megumi twisted his face into a fierce, savage snarl, and directed his final proclamation at the King of Curses.

"Above the heavens and below the earth, I alone am supreme..."

Accompanying that arrogant declaration, spoken like the divine words of a god,

A brand-new mark, woven from the interplay of ultimate light and ultimate shadow, began condensing before Megumi's body in a frenzy, like a supernova compressed into a single point.

"Have you ever been kicked by light?"