Chapter 35
Curses were boring things, creatures of brute strength and very rarely, animal cunning.
Jiki slipped past an armor-clad blow, spun behind the humanoid figure, and grabbed onto the head with his curse energy-enhanced fists, snapping the neck.
They had no finesse and skill, which made them lack an appreciation for the finer arts of murder. He glimpsed another humanoid curse charging towards him but turned his back to it. The moment it got within ten meters of him, it leaped at his unguarded back and was body-checked in the air by another leaping form: a black hound with multiple rows of fangs that tore into the curse with mad savagery.
As he said, they could not think or devise strategies on their own, making it harder to understand when strategies were employed against them. Yet there were a few rare ones, not special grades, just curses that were formed with more than the urge to rip and tear.
He ignored the sounds coming from behind him, as the hound ripped into the other curse and instead glanced once more at the four-winged crow with three rows of eyes perched on a windowsill and watching him. It would have been an easy thing easy to kill it, but he left it out of curiosity and some penchant for crows, curious to see what it would do in the end.
What was its goal? Why had it been watching him? Was it a direct agent of Geto? Those were the questions that tugged at him.
He finally turned around to see that the hound had killed its opponent, feeding on the cursed meat to fuel its metabolism and gain a greater metaphysical presence. Even now, he could feel its power increasing. What had started off as a grade three curse had grown to grade two status from the bounty formed from the corpse of his enemies.
He walked past it, allowing his fingers to glide through its black coat for a bit as he observed his surroundings. Everywhere and everything around him was a smoldering ruin, buildings cracked and blackened, cars bashed and burnt, even the road not spared from the fury of combat.
His clothes were stained from multiple blood splashes, and he had allowed the kimono to slide off his shoulders and bunch up on his hips, leaving the body-tight top that clung to him and gave him an easier range of motion.
Yet destruction was not all that surrounded him, there were bodies more than could be counted in different stages of dismemberment, with limbs and redundant organs littering the scene. The sheer amount of death had formed a miasma in the air, one of condensed fear and other negative cursed energy, slowing the decay of the numerous bodies that littered everywhere.
He glanced around once more, searching for something, a comfortable spot where he could rest. He could feel his tiredness mounting, his muscles straining. The night was not over, so he found the most comfortable pile and sat, his hands beneath his chin, waiting for what was to come next.
The presence of so much cursed energy in the air drew them to him like moths to flames. Yet they stood indecisive, their varied forms watching him, confused about whether to feast off the plentiful corpses surrounding them or attack the obvious threat in front of them.
He made the choice for them by rising to his feet.
...
He had lost count of the curses he had killed so far. He was a white blur of movement and death, a maestro of death with his tools being his eyes, and his audience, the new batch of unwilling curses seeking to rend his skin from his bones.
Instead, they tore into each other in an orgy of madness and savagery, turning the stomachs of the weak-willed and sending them scrambling. Massive fur-clad palms sought purchase on slimy, feather-covered flesh of unseemly physiology, and vice versa.
There he stood, in the middle of the madness of his own making, staring down at the bedlam he had unleashed: twisted minds against inhuman minds. The few that managed to either escape his genjutsu or proved too resilient drew his attention, demanding a personal touch and suffering all the more for it.
Cursed energy-enhanced blows with accurately timed explosions of force rent bones and skin apart, and without the ridiculous healing factor special grades boasted, most curses died just as easily as the fleeting emotions that spawned them.
When the bodies proved either too slow to dissolve into the ether of nothingness or the number of resilient curses more than he expected, he did more than apply a personal touch — he resorted to calling on his old ways, jutsu.
His great flame annihilation had decimated a couple of blocks, taking the respective curses with it, granting him a moment to breathe and think once more. Beneath the hidden sky of the veil drawn over the city, he wondered.
It had been over an hour since the war against the curses began, and he had not seen a single glimpse of Geto. Why would the person who started the whole thing be missing? Unless this was all a ruse, a bait-and-switch they had fallen into, pulled off so seamlessly that it took being in the middle of a slaughter for it to click.
Geto did not care about this war, not in the slightest — it was only a cover for him to hide behind. Sitting on the corpse of a three-meter curse that had been partially burnt by the great fire annihilation, he ignored the now-gathering curses as they surrounded him, silent as the grave and without their former screeches or growls.
Over the past few minutes, he had taught this new batch something they never had the opportunity to learn: fear — something that would stay ingrained in them even if they managed to survive this night. So, they gathered around him, and he continued to ponder on his putrid corpse throne.
A brief explosion in the sky drew his attention, and he sent a lazy glance at it, witnessing Satoru sending a RED through a gigantic curse that aimed to surprise him while the black man with the cursed ropes attacked him from behind.
The lack of a distorted field around Satoru forced his eyebrows to arch. His cousin had deactivated Infinity, and the only reason he would was If it had proven useless against his enemy.
If Satoru was still fighting him, then the man was more of a threat than they had expected, one brought specifically to counter Satoru. However, he was not truly worried for his cousin.
This was not the first time someone was countering his technique. Satoru had learned from his near-death experience and was stronger for It. No, forcing Satoru to release his grasp on Infinity just made his cousin a whole lot deadlier. It had taken whatever perpetual humor his cousin found in a fight and forced him to take an opponent seriously.
So he drew his eyes from the heavens back to the earth and focused on his situation.
His curse energy reserves were still sufficient, at least enough to last him the rest of this fight. If he was forced to unleash any of his Mangekyo abilities, that would change things. Even with his near-perfect control of cursed energy, his Mangekyo was like a greedy beast. Lapping up his cursed energy down to his reserves if he would allow It. Yet that was not the main reason he had held back.
That was because Ieri was still taking her time getting to the battlefield.
She was slow to show up, and that restrained him. He was not certain if it was because she disliked combat in general or her perpetual lackadaisical attitude to life and most things. If he had to guess why she had not made It yet, It was probably because of the latter. Sometimes he wondered how the woman defrauded her way into getting a medical degree, considering her apathy.
He had missed his last few healing sessions due to his faults and the war had sprung up before they could reschedule a new one. Now he could not risk the possibility of sudden blindness in a war - it would be a forty percent reduction in his combat effectiveness, something he would rather not suffer.
The curses in front of him shuffled for a few seconds before they slowly parted, giving space as something walked forward. Something different, greater than the sum of their combined forms.
They drifted to the side, instinctively forming a procession of honor guards surrounding and protecting the new variable. The scene drew his attention once more and he wondered, was it Geto?
Perhaps his old friend had accomplished what he set out to do, and this was him coming back to gloat. But no, it was not Geto. He could sense the curse energy now and knew it was not the long-haired man.
It was a woman. More accurately, a feminine-looking unfamiliar curse that finally stepped into the ring created by their fear of him. Perhaps calling it unfamiliar was a mistake.
Another glance at her features sparked his memories. He knew the curse; it had a humanoid stature, and its black, long hair fell smoothly past its face. But that was where its human likeness ended. Its four black eyes peered at him from the back of its kimono-clad hand as it lifted it to cover her mouth as she giggled.
Giggled?
Its voluminous robe hid the rest of its body, with the only exception being its long insecticide legs peeking out from beneath the kimono as the curse floated.
He recognized it easily, having done his research on the actual threats in this new world. There were few curses that he could consider as a threat, and he had Identified this particular curse as one. It was one of the few registered special grade curses they had a record of; Tamamo-no-Mae Incarnate.
This was to be his opponent then, he mused as he acknowledged her with a slow nod before moving to stand up once more, cracking his neck to the side as he stepped down from his impromptu throne with a casual walk.
After this curse, he'll find Geto and put an end to this farce. Another thunderous clash above drew his attention up, and he witnessed Satoru sending the man through a building. Well, it seemed like Satoru was well ahead of him in that regard.
....
They had done their best, he admitted as he flung his hands to the side, sending blood splatters off his robes and to the ground in an arc. The duo had Proven more capable and strategic than he had expected. The cursed Puppet had matched him blow for blow, yet his superior skill and experience won the day, but It was not without a cost.
His left hand still trembled for a bit, but hidden under his voluminous robes, the motion was concealed, so instead he was allowed the chance to continue projecting strength to the world.
Motion from behind drew his attention once more - the cursed puppet tried to force itself to its feet, once again igniting the urge to kill them for the damage they had inflicted on him. It would've been an easy thing, yet like the last six times the urge came up, he ruthlessly crushed it down.
They embodied everything he wanted to see from Jujutsu sorcerers: strength, guile, and the will to fight and protect one another instead of wasting that skill on the monkeys. Yet he was not above being petty.
It was the cursed creature's technique that fractured his arm; the shockwave had slipped through his defense and reinforcement like it wasn't even there and blasted his arm to the side. He took a leisurely stroll forward and towards the still-struggling creature, stepping over the cracks and pockmarks in the ground, signs of the battle they had fought, and ignoring the body of the Inumaki.
That one had proven cunning, moving like a ghost and striking from unaware angles, forcing him to freeze with a word at the exact moment his partner struck with Its defense-bypassing technique.
Their greatest strength turned out to be their greatest weakness, for the cursed speech of the Inumaki was easy to counter once one was aware of it.
From someone of his caliber, It had been easier, and he had dismantled the boy just after rendering his technique useless. That was the beginning of their downfall. Without the Inumaki to run interference, he had trashed the cursed puppet to the ground. Still, the continued ache in his arm was a source of anger, and who better to turn his ire to than the person responsible for it.
His legs finally led him to where the cursed puppet was still struggling to its feet, and in one smooth motion without stopping his walk, he lashed out with a kick aimed directly at the white and black head of the puppet.
The force of the blow sent it blasting through the aged walls of the courtyard, and the kick proved to be just as therapeutic as he had hoped it would be.
"What have you done?" a whisper rang out from behind him. He grinned as he heard the voice. He had timed it perfectly then. The kick had not just served as an outlet for his simmering anger. It had also been done to provoke the boy who had been steadily making his way towards the commotion their fight had caused. The sheer amount of cursed energy that reeked out of him, made it impossible for the boy to creep up on anybody, especially not without specific training for it.
He finally turned his head to the back after schooling his features and observed the boy up close for the first time. He was young, with black hair falling low, and pale skin highlighting the dark circles under his wide and surprised eyes.
The boy was a child, younger even than they were when he and Satoru were forced to confront their mortality at the hands of the sorcerer killer.
"Ahhh, we finally meet Yuta-kun." He said with a smile, even as his eyes drifted behind the boy. His technique allowed him to feel the presence of the cursed spirit intimately, even while unmanifested.
It was a miasma of hate, envy, jealousy, and greed, all bound together by spite and love. Every moment the boy looked at the fallen and broken bodies of his classmates, his cursed energy spiked, and he could see the slow manifestation of the curse forming behind the boy.
Satoru had picked his scapegoats well it seemed, sending people whose loss would trigger something in the boy, the complete manifestation of the special grade queen of curses, Rika. Hoping it would lead to his loss, and Geto had fed on that knowledge, Inflicting more damage than needed, hoping it would affect the boy's mental state so much, that he and the curse bypassed lethality and went straight to raving madness.
In the end, he and Satoru were two sides of the same coin. Trying to manipulate the boy in their own way. The difference was that Satoru's wish for the manifestation of the special grade curse coincided with his. It was a win-win for him
"Why, why, why, why, why?" The boy muttered like a broken record, staring at the collapsed forms, hands cradling his head as if he could change it like he could twist the hands of time and return his friends to their optimal states. If only...
"Why not?" he replied instead as he finally spun to face the boy. "They-"
"You killed them!" The accusation stalled him for a second before he realized what had occurred. He laughed with a hand on his head as he tilted it back. It worked, the boy was blinded with anger, and that anger fueled the formation of the queen of curses, manifesting behind the boy through the cracks of his fingers.
He could have disputed the fact, pointed at their still breathing forms, and cleared the boy's illusions, but he didn't. Instead, he let his hands down and grinned cruelly at the boy, needing him blind and filled with anger, needing Rika unleashed because that was the only way he could absorb her.
He could not reach into the formless ether she occupied when unmanifested, so he pushed the boy over the edge with a single word. "Of course I did, they were weak."
Those words triggered the boy, who screamed out in pain, sorrow, and loss, loud enough to shred his vocal cords. "Come out, Rika!!!!!!" The curse obliged happily with a screech to match the boy's own, manifesting around the boy and gripping him in a grotesque parody of a hug, its protruding ribs sticking into his back as its fanged head formed just above the boy's head.
His cruel grin shifted into a smirk as he watched his desires come to fruition. He almost licked his lips at the volume of cursed energy the curse brought to bear. It was a near-physical thing, the cursed energy of the fully manifested new queen of curses.
He didn't need the boy anymore; killing him would be a waste, but he had already made his peace about it. It was a sacrifice he was willing to pay. He had learned from his mistake of trying to take a curse already engaged in a servant and master relationship without killing the master; Toji had almost killed him for that lapse, leaving scars on his chest to remind him.
"I'll kill you," he told the boy, a statement and declaration all in one without genuine feelings or attachment.
"I'll murder you!" The boy replied with hate, fueling the curses and making it screech even louder, the sound blasting back everything.
"You will try," he noted with a smile, "You'll fail," he finished. The boy charged at him in a mad dash, the full manifestation of Rika behind him, and Geto breathed out. Facing the boy and the special grade spirit simultaneously would have been a loss, but he was not just a frontline fighting brute. He did not become a special-grade sorcerer due to how hard he could swing his fists.
His true power and calling lay elsewhere. Reacting to his thoughts, his shadow rolled and bubbled beneath him, stretching, twisting, and coiling like something alive. And out of that otherworldly bubbling cauldron, something shot out hands first.
A grey palm lined with black fingernails slammed into the boy's chest, its owner a short grey-skinned, one-eyed curse with a miniature volcano on top of its head, calling out with a droning grandfatherly voice: "Cursed Technique: Disaster Flames."
Geto grinned with malevolence. He had been hoarding this particular curse since he got it, It was one of the few curses with the raw strength to match another and he had seen it as a gift of luck and chance. His greed had aimed at capturing the first true queen of curses, Jorogumo, an apex predator from a time when curses ruled as superior beings.
If he had captured her, he would have had the power to remake the world however he wished. He did not know how he would do it, but he charged on anyway and got blessed with something else.
The boy was blown away by the explosion but survived, Rika had interposed herself between Jogo's hand and his chest a split second before the technique activated. The duo retreated to the top of a building courtesy of Rika, and Geto watched them go unhurriedly before his eyes moved back to the short cursed spirit he had subsumed.
Its diminutive form stood unmoving, but its red eyes drifted to him, blazing with hate. It was still rebellious, yet could not counteract his desires and commands, and he would have time to squash its remaining stubborn will later.
Instead, he sent his gaze back to the boy and his curse. He had done his investigations, it was not just a curse, but a boy and his lover - love truly the most twisted of curses.
"Come then, Yuta, come let us curse ourselves to death," he challenged. The boy unsheathed his sword, preparing to face him — two special-grade sorcerers with special-grade curses at their disposal. It would be Quality vs. Quality, who would come out on top, he wondered with a smile.
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