Juchu Kaisen - 49

Chapter 49

Exorcisms at last.

Jun had waited for this since the first day of Jujutsu High. His crazy classmates, and the equally crazy upperclassmen and teachers had proven a most frustrating distraction, but it was finally here.

He could finally exercise his truth without having to worry about maintaining an act. He could do what he hadn’t done to help his friends and family.

Get justice.

He walked on the sidewalk ahead of Hibana and Ieiri, both of whom were chattering amongst one another. Hibana looked… normal for once. Her skin-color wasn’t as ghastly as before, and she wore glasses that made her eyes look human, even. It had been a slight worry of his that she might prove too distracting when in public, but the Special Grade sorcerer had clearly thought of everything.

It was public knowledge that Ieiri was both Hibana’s friend and protégée. The result of that tutelage was plain for most to see.

It was especially plain to see for Jun.

The first time he had laid eyes on his fellow class representative, she had been entirely overshadowed by the suffocating threat of Geto, Gojo and Hibana, all of whom drove his Coward’s Dance to the point of constricting his breathing. Ieiri had been an almost comically irrelevant bug in their vicinity—although Jun would never use such demeaning terminology out loud.

Still, that had been his realistic estimation of her: a bug.

Now she was… far less so. Far more than a bug, certainly. She had a stronger body—somehow, despite the brief amount of time that had passed—and her cursed energy manipulation was solid enough to have her competing on par with the rest of the class, bar the outliers. Still, her martial technique left much to be desired. Although Jun would never challenge her, he did estimate that she was weak enough that he could grapple her into submission.

In a more brutal fight, her chances were even more dismal, but it never made sense for him to imagine brutalizing his very own classmates, let alone his fellow class rep.

Indeed, no one was deserving of his ire.

With the sole exception of Satoshi Ren, of course.

Just the thought of that numbskull made him clench his fists involuntarily.

Jun would challenge him again someday. Not any time soon, however. He intended to widen their gap, first. He didn’t want to just beat Satoshi by the skin of his teeth.

He wanted to go for the jackpot.

He wanted a fly swatting.

Complete annihilation. He wanted to perform an act of violence that would leave him repenting for years.

I hate that guy…

Until then, he would sharpen his proverbial sword in silence and solitude.

The church they were heading towards was finally up ahead. Tokyo churches, like most things Tokyo, were quite a sight to see. A mix between modern and traditional—it had a tall, acutely angled roof made of wood, and seemed to be made of both that and just glass. It was clearly modern. This one was deep into the suburbs, and had its own graveyard, and a nearby hospital.

According to Yaga-sensei, sanctified spaces like these tended to discourage the proliferation of cursed spirits. According to the laws of Jujutsu, prayer was a minor act of sorcery. The more people came together to pray, the less likely such a space would breed a cursed spirit.

Unfortunately for this parish, prayer had fallen out of fashion for some reason, and now it was up to the local priest to pull his own weight of prayer.

The priest was up ahead right where the sidewalk met the path up to the church. He was dressed in black robes, and had a white collar, wore glasses, and had sunken cheeks. He looked exhausted.

He walked up to them. “You are from Jujutsu High, correct?”

This priest was a ‘window’, a non-sorcerer capable of perceiving cursed spirits even without the need for special circumstances—like being close to death, or in an area of high cursed energy concentration.

A large number of men—and people—of the cloth, whether they were Buddhist, Shinto, or Christian, were windows. There was usually at least one in every major religious gathering place, that catered to more than a thousand people.

It was one of the few career paths that allowed untalented sorcerers to still be able to remain within the world of Jujutsu.

Of course, all these disparate faiths had their own method of reconciling cursed spirits with their belief systems. The Christian reckoning was that cursed energy was a curse from Satan to produce cursed spirits. Then, that ‘curse’ was counterbalanced by God who allowed this energy to be harnessed by humans for the good of mankind.

Thus, non-sorcerers were cursed, and Jujutsu Sorcerers were God’s chosen, acting in His capacity as shepherds to protect the weak.

Jun… didn’t really know what to believe, or whether it was relevant that he accept any particular origin story in the first place. For the purposes of this mission, it wasn’t.

“Yes,” Jun nodded to the elder priest. “My name is Kobayashi Jun. These are my classmates. We’re here to address the cursed spirits in your church.” He left out that he was a first-year, hoping that his attire and his briefcase might do the talking for him.

Evidently, it did. The priest nodded. “Thank you. I assume you are in charge.”

An incredibly awkward assumption, but Jun was an old hand at dealing with awkward questions.

He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Hibana stepped forward. “He and the one behind me, Ieiri Shoko, will be tasked with the exorcism. I will merely observe and report on the mission. Father, if you can help provide us with any pertinent details, that would be greatly appreciated.”

She then stepped back and pushed Ieiri so that she and Jun stood side by side in front of the priest, who simply nodded. “This is a powerful cursed spirit. I recommended that it be given a Grade Two designation.”

And yet, according to Yaga-sensei, the threat was rated at Grade Three, perfectly within the capabilities of himself and Ieiri. Although windows were tasked with giving a preliminary rating of a cursed spirit’s power, not all of them were equally competent in this field. Jujutsu High had sent some assistants to paint a more detailed picture on the situation, which was where the Grade Three rating came from.

Still, Jun wouldn’t dismiss the man’s concerns out of hand.

“How are you still alive?” Ieiri asked.

Her flippant tone caught the priest off-guard, and he took a moment to collect himself before answering. “Not all cursed spirits attack immediately after manifesting. Indeed, most of them build a nest, lying in wait in their area of influence, slowly feeding off of human negativity until it comes time to pounce. I took some small measures myself to keep it dormant. I burned prayers and used holy water blessed by Jujutsu Sorcerers, but even those measures were not powerful enough to hold for very long. I fear that the moment you approach the creature’s sphere of influence, it will instantly leave its state of dormancy and attack.”

One good way to inflame a cursed spirit situation was to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer, or someone with the potential, at least. The latter was a common experience for the students in Jujutsu High.

Curses attract curses. A ruthless fact of life.

“I am ashamed,” the priest continued. “From the bottom of my heart. My community has shamed me deeply by failing me in this time of need. If it wasn’t for their dwindling number and their utter lack of faith, this never would have happened. I wonder if these people even deserve the sanctuary of God.”

“Right,” Ieiri drawled. “I’m sure it had nothing to do with your diligent personality.”

Jun rolled his eyes and took over before the priest could respond—likely very hotly if his gobsmacked expression was any indication. “I understand your frustrations, father. Rest assured, we will resolve this situation.” He then raised his right hand, pointing two fingers upwards. “Emerge from darkness, blacker than black. Purify that which is impure.”

A dome of amber cursed energy appeared in the sky, and spread out to form an amber dome that plunged the area into a twilight of a sort, blocking the high noon sun.

It had taken him days of ceaseless practice to master this one. Yaga-sensei only sent pairs or trios of students when at least one of them were able to cast this most rudimentary barrier technique that there was—the veil.

Compared to the legendary Domain Expansion, it was apparently a firecracker next to a nuke. And the only reason he had even been able to cast it in the first place was because the mysterious ‘Master Tengen’ was apparently making it easier for everyone—somehow. In contrast, a Domain Expansion relied entirely on one’s own skill.

Either way, he’d take this as a win.

…That and the widening of Ieiri’s eyes as she looked around at the amber, domed sky, letting out an appreciative whistle.

He had to fight not to grin at her reaction.

“Good job,” she said.

Inwardly, he was doing a jiggy.

“Let’s move,” Jun said, turning towards the path up to the church. “A cursed spirit awaits us.”

000

Ieiri Shoko had become a Jujutsu Sorcerer in order to get away from her mother.

After hearing the principal and Yaga-sensei go on and on about the importance of ‘having a good reason’ to do this work, Ieiri had never quite been able to appreciate the wisdom in that advice until right now.

The ceiling of this modern church was covered in spider webs. A cursed spirit in the shape of a spider, purple and with a weird face, was currently launching at her and Kobayashi a hail of smaller spiders.

At this moment, she had to ask herself if this was what she really wanted—to do this.

And what if they became worse? Even grosser? Or… weirder?

I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.

There were so many ways that Jujutsu Sorcery could go from not just mindmeltingly horrifying like a rain of dog-sized spiders—but also just plain weird. All because humanity’s imagination was the darkest, evilest realm in existence.

She’d heard once from Teira that Jujutsu Sorcerers were no more than janitors. Whereas they would clean up all sorts of nasty crap, so too did sorcerers clean up an even more profound form of nastiness. She’d never considered just how disgustingly accurate that comparison was until now.

She punched. She punched the air, punched the ground. She stomped. She picked up a pew and used it as a giant bat, waving away the spiders.

All the while, Jun was over near the alter, dodging the spiders like they barely even existed, as he made a beeline for the big spider coiled against the giant crucifix.

Teira, meanwhile, was unleashing a swarm of her own spiders that were each wrestling the ones trying to get closer to her. Conspicuously, none of them were actually doing any exorcising.

“HELP!” Shoko screamed at Teira at the top of her lungs.

And what did Teira do?

Well, the bitch grinned at her. Then she stuck her tongue out at her.

The distracted Shoko couldn’t react in time before one of the spiders landed on her head.

It had touched her.

Burn it. Burn it all.

Even my hair.

She kept waving her arms without stopping to think. She caught snippets of Jun’s own fight against the big spider. Most of the small ones were flocking her now—likely to try and get Kobayashi to release the pressure off of it. It was banking on Kobayashi being a good person, which he obviously wasn’t if this was how he treated his fellow class rep.

I have no friends in this world.

“Shit!” Teira roared.

She exploded with cursed energy, powerful enough to get the spiders to scatter away from her, giving her a wide berth. They also abandoned Shoko as Teira stomped towards her. “We need to go!” she shouted.

W-what?! What’s going on?

“Kobayashi, can you handle this alone?”

“A-alone?!” Kobayashi jumped away from the big spider, but didn’t take his eyes off it.

“I’ll leave a Juchū to watch you. If you can’t handle it, I’ll step in. But I need to take Shoko. Good luck.”

“What?!”

She didn’t waste a second longer explaining as she grabbed Shoko’s arm. Then a portal swallowed them up, depositing them—

In the air, on top of a giant dragonfly.

“Ito got hurt,” Teira said quickly. “It’s bad. Really bad. Gather your thoughts, Shoko—it’s life or death now.”

Shit.

Shitshitshitshitshitshit.

I can’t do this, I can’t—

If I don’t do this, someone will die.

Ito will die.

“We’re five minutes out,” Teira said. The dragonfly flapped its wings and zoomed through the sky at breakneck speeds, almost causing Shoko to be flung away from her iron grip around Teira’s waist. “It’s up to you, now.”

000

“Bullseye! Or maybe I should say Cow’s Eye—cuz she’s a girl and all?! Hahah, I’m so fuckin’ funny.”

Suguru turned around, towards the shattered window behind him from which the projectile had come in from. Outside the window, across from a courtyard, was another wing of the hospital where the asshole in question was.

He wore a spandex uniform all over his body, black and red, and criss-crossing his torso were two bandoliers containing axe-heads of all things—crescent-shaped pieces of sharpened metal.

He didn’t wear a mask. His head was uncovered. He was tan-skinned and bald.

“I guess that pun doesn’t really translate,” the man continued, rubbing his bald head with one axe head, creating a scraping noise.

Who was this man? How had he come this far? Did that mean that the Assistant Managers were dead?

Like… Ito?

“I’ll kill you,” Suguru said tonelessly.

He unleashed almost every spirit in his inner dimension, leaving enough cursed energy for himself so he could feel the warmth of his skull after he cracked it open in one punch.

The building exploded outwards as a deluge of twisting cursed flesh shot itself towards the opposite building, tearing down everything in its way.

And all the while, Geto Suguru had never felt closer to the core of his cursed energy than now.

There were no questions in his mind any longer. Only answers.

No question about whether or not he had it in him to make good on his promise given to a dead man walking.

No question about whether it was right or wrong. Good or evil.

Or even if he would feel bad or not.

That didn’t matter. None of it did.

His answers satisfied him.

He felt a surge of cursed energy to his right. Two axe-heads flying towards him. He punched each of them, blowing them back from where they came.

Then, behind him, he felt a kick to his head that threw him down the ravaged, ruined hallway, almost towards a gap in the ground from when the above floor had fallen and crushed the lower floor.

“You fuckin’… prime meat!” the asshole laughed as he walked towards Suguru. “Didn’t know you had that in you! I’m glad I’m here! Honest! I get to see the best of Jujutsu Society struggle against the world’s very own evolution! It’s grand!”

Suguru pointed two finger-guns at the curse user, firing off a barrage of low-powered spirits. The curse user dodged and deflected each of them. All the while, he talked.

“Cursed spirits have learned from the wanton exorcisms of your Swarm Queen!” the man cackled. “They’ve learned more than you can imagine! So much so that they’ve finally managed to steal back their edge from Jujutsu Society! They evolved, boy!”

Suguru let up on the barrage. He was talking. That was good. It gave his own swarm time to swing back and engulf him—

No. Ito was still in this building. He couldn’t command them all to return.

Only the strongest. Then he could take the fight away while leaving this building mostly intact.

And the civilians? Were there any in that other building that I just tore down…?!

Shit!

All the while as this internal war raged in Suguru’s mind, the man continued speaking. “You took out all the curses in this hospital. Except!” He raised his finger. “Those that stuck around beyond the veil. In the cursed realm. There, they stayed. There, they even managed to grow. Can you fathom that? They remained out of your reach! Until…”

He snapped his fingers.

Cracks in reality began to open. They were like the portals he opened to his own inner dimension, except… what he could glimpse beyond them was something far, far more true, more vast than his own inner dimension.

It was like his own was merely an infinitesimal slice of that great blackness within those cracks.

Cursed spirits tore themselves free. Their shapes and sizes differed drastically, but Suguru could instantly sense their power.

Grade Ones. All of them. Ten in number.

The curse user stepped aside, revealing one last crack right behind him, from which an even more monstrously powerful figure emerged.

A four-eyed woman with a wide maw, its lower jaw segmented from the top half of its face as though it was a wooden puppet. It had long, flowing black hair, light red robes and with enormous sleeves, green hems, and other patterns besides.

It wore black pants visible under its robes, and it was barefoot, each of its toes anomalously long, but not quite finger-length.

“You must be fuckin’ pissing your pants!” The curse user laughed. He turned towards the curse. “Like I promised—some Jujutsu dipshit, ready for your… something pleasures. I don’t know. Do whatever. Eat him, snort him, inhale him—I don’t give a shit.”

The cursed spirit’s mouth slid open.

Then…

…it spoke.

“A successful proof of concept,” it said. “You did good, human. Your loyalty will not be forgotten when the revolution is upon us.”

The revolution?

Suguru quickly clambered to his feet, and crouched low.

“As for him,” the curse looked at him with four narrowed eyes. Then its wooden smile widened. “You manipulate cursed spirits, boy. Such sacrilege should not go unpunished. For your crimes against my kind, only a most painful death awaits you.”

She gestured a wooden finger towards him, and three of the cursed spirits pounced on him.

Just then, he summoned his new Grade One—the humanoid monstrosity without a head, and a giant mouth on its stomach, and eyes on its shoulders.

It tackled a metallic-looking wolf that had pounced at Suguru. Moments later, the hallway became choked with his strongest cursed spirits, having returned from the other building.

The floor under them collapsed.

The talking cursed spirit floated mid-air, watching the scrimmage from above, while next to the human curse user.

One of the enemy Grade Ones—a tentacled beast with a lecherous smile—threw itself towards him while they were still mid-air.

Suguru grabbed two of its arms, twisted his body mid-air, and pulled the creature towards him with all his strength, kicking the middle of its body. Black Fl—

The hit was powerful, but not powerful enough. It blew the monster back towards a few of its fellows.

Just then, another of the Grade Ones—a giant white goose with multiple eyes—opened its mouth to swallow Suguru whole.

Suguru punched the roof of its mouth—

Something behind him pushed him, out from the collapsing hallway into the courtyard outside.

Eight Grade One curses jumped out after him, intending on getting their hits in before he could land on the ground. Without the ground, he couldn’t generate enough leverage to make his hits truly matter.

He summoned a cursed spirit in front of him and made it push into him so that he could land faster. He braced his legs in the moment of impact, kicking up dirt and stone tiles on the footpaths in the courtyard.

Then, he summoned his giant eel.

The Grade One hadn’t been enough to contain someone as strong as Ito the first time they had fought—but it could distract them, at least. If only for a time.

The eel crashed into all but one of the cursed spirits still flying down from above. That one was a multi-armed ape with oversized eyes that rolled wildly in its skull, independently of each other.

Suguru took a step back, tilted his body, and prepared to strike it.

000

Ito Aoi moved without thinking. The sounds of war and the sensation of cursed spirits beckoned her own spirit, causing her to stand up and open her eyes. Eye.

The world was strange—she could only see half of it. The other half was blocked off by something. Something on her face?

She felt at her face. Someone had glued a sheet of metal to her face while she had slept. Who would do such an odd thing?

She grabbed the sheet and—

The instant she tried to pull, some long-buried instinct screamed at her to leave it, that if she tried it, she would instantly die.

And it all came back to her at that moment.

Someone behind Suguru had thrown something at her.

She had seen it the instant before it had hit, and had tried to enforce herself with as much cursed energy as possible.

An axe-head? She couldn’t feel or see any handle.

It was buried in her face, all the way from her left cheek, up through her eye, and up her forehead, and a piece of it stuck out a few inches above her head.

Her left eye was gone. Judging by the depth of the axe-head…

Her heart beat rapidly, and she felt her mouth on her right side curl into a half-smile.

She was already dead. She was just too stupid and stubborn to accept that. Eventually, reality would assert itself, but… for now.

She clenched and unclenched her fists, then skipped on her feet a little. She cracked her neck, feeling an odd weight from moving her head.

It’s simple. I’m dead.

So nothing matters now. Not my regrets. Not my lack of life experience.

I never told my parents about this life of mine.

I’ll die without them knowing.

But I’ll die anyway—so all I have to do is give it my all.

She walked out of the room she had been blown into, into the hallway, and witnessed two figures. A cursed spirit in the form of a robed woman, and a bald man wearing spandex.

And axe-heads all over him.

“Huh?” he turned around, saw Ito, and grinned. “Eyyy, you brought my axe head back! Thanks!”

A human.

And a curse.

That made him… a curse user.

An enemy sorcerer, a traitor to mankind. The likely orchestrator of this incident.

What to do? Ito couldn’t exorcise him. That wasn’t how humans worked.

Capture him? The higher-ups would likely want to interrogate him and all.

She loosened her fists.

She straightened her hands instead.

She looked down at those hands in wonder. Her fists were far less lethal than her open hand, so why…?

The curse user threw another axe head.

She sliced it in half.

Two more.

She used both hands this time, to slice them both in half.

The curse user whistled.

And Ito understood why her hands were open.

“I guess I will exorcise you,” she whispered. “Curse user.”

000

Suguru was doing better than he had expected.

He would never presume to deserve the title of Special Grade, but when it came to any number of cursed spirits attacking him, Suguru genuinely couldn’t imagine losing.

Especially not to mere Grade Ones. The talking one was an anomaly, but these riff-raff? With each one defeated, he gained another soldier he could use to suppress the remaining ones, over and over until…

The hospital’s courtyard was a ravaged mess of upturned dirt and shattered gazebos. The surrounding buildings were only barely standing. And Suguru?

He still stood.

The talking one floated in the air, arms in each of its sleeves as it watched on dispassionately. “You…” it said. “Are too strong to allow to live.”

The window of a building shattered.

Ito Aoi came flying out.

Jumping out after him? The curse user from before, an axe head on both hands.

Suguru’s toad-like curse, the one with the pot that could be used for energy beams, had been charging up with lesser spirits for much of the fight, converting Suguru’s Grade Fours into pure energy. He had intended on using the creature’s pot to strike the talking curse. At the sight of a live Ito, however, all those priorities immediately went out the window.

He commanded his toad curse to redirect the pot towards the curse user.

In that exact moment, the talking robed curse opened its mouth to generate energy, pointed at Suguru.

His senses screamed. Whatever that thing was about to unleash, it could kill him.

Suguru had to make a choice.

Jujutsu Sorcerers… are not heroes.

He made the toad curse redirect its pot to the talking curse. Energy blasted out from the pot, and from the curse’s mouth, both cancelling each other out.

The curse user threw his axe heads at Ito as she fell. She deflected them both. He threw two more—behind him. In doing so, he generated enough force to catch up to Ito, winding back with a punch.

Ito raised her arms to block it.

Black lightning exploded from the point of contact. The man’s fists broke through, and dug the axe head further into Ito’s head.

They finally landed, or more accurately impacted, against the ground, raising up a plume of dust.

Ice filled Suguru’s veins as he realized what he had done, via his own inaction.

Is this what it means to be a good Jujutsu Sorcerer?

Is this what it means to be strong?

The energy beams between his own curse and the talking cursed spirit finally abated.

The plume of dust finally cleared out.

Ito Aoi was back-first on the ground, arms spread widely. The axe head had all but disappeared into her face. Spurts of blood squirted out from the top of her head, and her cheek. He could make out her bisected eye, squeezed against the eye-hole that the axe-head took up most of.

Suguru ignored the curse in the sky.

He ignored the entire world, in fact.

Anger rose, but he dispelled that the instant it appeared. He had no right to be angry. Not after sacrificing Ito’s life to save his own.

He had no right to any emotion whatsoever.

All he could feel was emptiness. A profound void that nothing could escape. A void that demanded to be filled by the vilest substance in existence, as long as it could cause him pain for what he had done.

A rumbling in his stomach.

His penance.

He dashed towards the curse user, appearing before him in a single step.

He punched his stomach.

He ignored the black lightning and the warping of space that bloomed from the point of contact. Instead, he simply commanded one of his Grade Ones, the tentacled one with the lecherous grin, to hold him before he could fly off his feet.

He punched him again, ripping the man free from the tentacled curse spirit’s grasp.

Suguru’s army was adept at following his every whim.

The muscular humanoid with the mouth on its stomach stood in the way of the curse user’s flight. It punched, sending the curse user back to Suguru, who punched him one more time.

Black Flash.

He sensed the talking curse in the air, charging up a new beam, this time facing Ito’s downed form.

Screw that.

He called his giant eel curse to him, and used it to make a path up to the curse in the air. He ran up that path, his toad-like curse with the pot running up ahead, in front of him.

The curse blasted again. The toad with the pot held it up to take the energy and neutralize it. Still, Suguru could sense that this measure wouldn’t hold for long.

The pot was about to explode. Maybe it would even take the toad curse with it. A shame. It had served him well thus far.

Suguru jumped, and stomped on its head to gain even more altitude. The talking curse redirected the beam in order to hit Suguru, giving some relief to the toad curse and its pot. It released the energy in an unfocused blast.

Suguru could hardly see past the glare of cursed energy.

Thus, he hadn’t been able to react in time as almost half a dozen smaller copies of the talking curse burst out from the light to wrap around Suguru, locking his arms and legs on his body and sending him careening down to the ground.

He flared his cursed energy to defend him from their biting maws as they tried their best to rip chunks out of him. He also commanded his cursed spirits to come to his aid. All the while, he hoped that the impact against the ground would at least shake some of them off.

He finally crashed.

The smaller copies broke against him, and his cursed energy dipped drastically from his sudden output, but he was free, finally.

He got up to his feet—

And staggered as he felt something bury itself in him.

His back.

There was an axe head between his shoulder blade and his spine.

The curse user, bleeding, broken, and battered, hobbled over to him. He was doubled over, but his arm was outstretched from the axe head he had thrown. And he was still smiling. “I’ll kill you,” he hissed.

Then a dainty hand burst itself free from his stomach.

The curse user looked down in shock and horror at the hand that had suddenly sprouted through him.

Another followed. Then the first disappeared back from where it had come.

He fell on his knees, revealing Ito standing behind him. She looked like a zombie. How anyone could have survived such a blow was beyond him.

“What… are you…?” the curse user asked shakily. “Are you… half curse or… something?” he coughed. Blood coated his lips and his lower chin. He put a hand over his stomach wounds.

“I’m…” Ito said, “A Jujutsu Sorcerer.”

She stretched her arm out, her hand flat, and swiped.

The curse user’s head fell right off.

Suguru was too exhausted to feel even a shred of horror at the sight. All he could feel was satisfaction.

The talking curse in the air tittered, hiding its mouth behind a large sleeve. “You humans are such amusing creatures. You know nothing of loyalty or unity. You are chaos incarnate. Thank you for showing me this. This was an amusing show.”

Suguru was almost running on empty.

And if Ito wasn’t already dead on her feet, she would be dead soon if this fight didn’t end.

Suguru had to take the curse out in one go.

His tactic of flooding his opponents with cursed spirits had barely ever worked. The only reason it had even worked against Ito was because she was relatively unskilled next to the monster of cursed energy above his head.

This one demanded more finesse, however.

He had to take it out in one strike.

…Compress his cursed spirits. Enclose them in an overwhelmingly powerful void through which none of them could escape.

Like Satoru’s Blue.

“Sorcery is all about imagination,” Satoru had once said to him. “And visualization.”

His inner dimension was something that Suguru had never thought to manipulate. He had never seen a reason to. Not until now.

Ever since Teira had called him a Special Grade, he had wondered selfishly what the point of hoarding Grade Fours and Threes even was. If that was supposed to make him ‘Special Grade’, then obviously, the title didn’t mean anything at all.

And the more he trained with Satoru, the more he learned about the heights of Jujutsu Sorcery, the more he wondered.

The weak curses were worthless riff-raff, and were good for nothing else than to be used as cheap defense or offense. Bullets to feed a one-person war machine.

But why stop at bullets?

He would burn them all. Every single Grade Three and Four that he had—even the strong ones that he could otherwise have had use for. He would squeeze them down into shape.

Before him, a gray maelstrom formed. Arms, legs, appendages began to spiral out from it. Hundreds of cursed spirits crying out for their lives.

“Insolent!” the cursed spirit shrieked, opening its mouth wider than it ever had before. “Disgusting, foul beast! Your life is forfeit, or my name is not Tamamo-no-Mae!”

The gestures came to Suguru as if by telepathy. He felt omnipotent, omniscient. A master of Jujutsu. Two hands, two fingers pointed towards the talking curse.

The number of curses inside the whirlpool ticked ever upward until finally, he ran out. Eight-hundred and seventy-four were in there, representing years of hard work and diligence.

The gray whirlpool was about the size of a car when he was done.

He sent it.

Tamamo-no-Mae released its mouth beam…

…for the last time as the beam became swallowed up by his blast of broken-down cursed spirits. As the ball hit the spirit, it finally exploded, shattering every last window that still stood in the entire hospital.

Suguru blinked the light from his eyes.

Tamamo-no-Mae was falling from the sky, its arms and legs torn off by the blast, and its robes tattered, revealing a waifishly thin body, seemingly made of wood.

He reached his hand towards the creature and activated his technique.

The last of the cursed spirit finally disintegrated, turning into an amber ball above his hand.

He seized it, and turned to Ito, who was swaying on her feet. Just as she was about to fall, he ran up and caught her. He gnashed his teeth at the sight of her. “You’ll—you’ll be alright, Ito-san. I promise, you’ll…”

The veil above their heads shattered.

Teira and Shoko appeared from a portal next to them. Shoko fell on her knees next to Ito and began her work.

“You took care of it,” Teira said to Suguru. “Good. I’m sorry I couldn’t help. There was a barrier preventing my Juchū from accessing this place. They… worked hard to stump me.”

Suguru felt light-headed, but in the mess, he could faintly recall something about a ‘Swarm Queen’.

Suguru heard a giggle. From Ito.

“What is this thing…?” she asked as she touched the axe head, that was almost entirely in her head.

“Don’t touch it,” Shoko shrieked as her hand darted to stop Ito from touching the axe head.

“I’ll sedate her,” Teira said as a small beetle-sized Juchū landed on her neck. “It’s just a paralytic.”

“Save her,” Suguru said to Shoko. “Please.”