Chương 2: Brutal Exorcism
Kuro had left home not too long ago and had begun his walk to school, his thoughts were still completely occupied by numerous questions regarding what had just happened to his once normal life. Not too long ago, he was just a normal high school kid. Now, he was going to become something called a Jujutsu Sorcerer.
As he arrived at school, he didn't really pay much attention to anything around him as he made his way into his classroom. While it wasn't exactly out of excitement or anything, he wanted school to be over so he could meet up with Gojo.
He needed to know just what he had gotten himself into.
"Morning, Kuro."
"..."
"Kuro?"
"Wh-What?" Kuro snapped out of his thoughts when someone called out his name, twice that is. Blinking, Kuro turned his gaze towards the person in question to see that it was a female classmate of his who was giving him a confused look. "Oh, Honoka. Sorry, I was lost in thought."
The person in front of him was Sawada Honoka, a friend he made some time when he first started high school a few weeks ago. She had long long black hair along with a pair of blue eyes, and looking closely, you could see that she had a mole under her left eye.
When Kuro first spoke to her, he was instantly able to see just how introverted she was when he spoke to her. In fact, she had almost seemed to fear him a bit. Overtime though, she seemed to be gradually getting more comfortable around him and was even able to have a proper conversation with him without stuttering.
"I see, are you okay?" Honoka asked with a bit of a concerned look on her face. She did notice how Kuro looked incredibly deep in thought, she had even noticed him almost walk into someone after entering the classroom. "Is something wrong?"
"Ah... no, don't worry about it." Kuro gave a small laugh as he shook his head. "Just have a few things I needed to think about. Nothing to be concerned about."
"..." Honoka stared at Kuro for a second with suspicion before nodding. "If you say so."
Kuro gave a small inward sigh of relief, there was no way in hell that he was going to start telling her things like 'Jujutsu Sorcerer', 'Cursed Spirits' and the like, she'd definitely think he was going crazy. Plus, he barely knew anything about the topic either.
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"Hey, Kuro~!"
"..."
"Hello~? Earth to Kuro!"
"...What are you doing here?" Kuro's eyebrow twitched heavily as he now stood outside of his school. He was about to head on back home since Gojo said that he'd meet with him after school, but the thing was... "Gojo, what the hell are you doing at my school?"
"Eh~? I said that I'd meet with you after school, right?" Gojo formed a small confused frown as he crossed his arms. Kuro could feel all the stares from the other students, no doubt staring at Gojo due to his rather unique appearance with that blindfold. "Anyway! Let's get going, we have things to do!"
Wordlessly, Kuro just sighed before nodding as he walked beside Gojo. During the walk, Kuro had made sure to ask Gojo to explain to him thoroughly just what Jujutsu Sorcerers even were, along with the bigger scope about what Cursed Spirits were.
From what Gojo explained, it wasn't much different from what he had told him back at the house this morning. Cursed Spirits were born from the cursed energy released by humans in response to the negative emotions they have. Along with the fact that these spirits are completely unperceivable and untouchable by normal humans.
On the other hand, Jujutsu Sorcerers thrived in their use of their own Cursed Energy, which were what Cursed Spirits were composed of, and used it to exorcise the spirits. He had also been explained that the power of a Sorcerer is usually determined at birth and by a person's genes, with how much Cursed Energy they have and their apparent innate talent or whatever.
"How much Cursed Energy do I have?" Kuro couldn't help but ask as he looked around at the rather desolate and empty streets of the place they were walking through. "You said it's determined based on things like my genes, right?"
"To put it bluntly... you're below the average Jujutsu Sorcerer! You only have slightly a bit more needed to see Cursed Spirits!"
"Ha?!" Kuro flinched heavily at the blunt response, definitely expecting such a disheartening answer. Hearing it though, he was very concerned. Didn't that just mean there really wasn't any point in him even trying to become a good Jujutsu Sorcerer? "I-Isn't that bad?"
"Yes and no." Gojo answered with a wave of his hand. "Usually people with low levels of Cursed Energy like you become Windows and such, unless they have something to compensate for that lack of energy, but you don't need to worry about that. After all, you have the Zero Order!"
"That again..." Kuro frowned once more as he heard the term being spoken again. "You mentioned it before, but I still don't get it. Just what is this ability I possess? You said things that insinuate that it has something to do with my family history."
"Mm, I guess it would be best for you to know. The Miuraraki family were actually an ancient family of Jujutsu Sorcerers, definitely one of the strongest to exist due to their ability to utilise Zero Order. In fact, the ability was lost for many centuries, you are the first after a very long time."
"Huh..." Kuro was definitely surprised by what he had heard. He honestly had no clue at all that his family had anything particular special about them, he just thought they were normal people. From the sounds of it, he couldn't have been any more wrong. "What is Zero Order then?"
"Well, do you know how you stopped the cup I threw?"
"Um, no? It just kinda did, and I thought it was you who stopped it."
"Nope! It was all you, Kuro!" Gojo grinned as he poked Kuro on the head a few times. "Zero Order, from what I know, allows the user to make anything involving a number become zero as long as they understand at least three major bits of information!"
"I still don't get it..."
"Well, let's take the cup for example. You managed to stop it because you wanted to, you made it so that the speed in which it was moving dropped to zero, bringing it to a complete stop. What intrigues me is that you didn't need to focus on the information, you just needed to know it at the time."
"What information exactly?"
"To use your ability, it requires you to know of three major pieces of information. Number one, you need to know exactly what it is you want to do! In this case, you wanted the cup to stop, this information is very basic and the easiest of the three to collect."
"Okay? And the others?"
"For the second, you need to understand the effects and outcomes of what it is you're trying to accomplish! Tell me, just what happened because you managed to use your abilities to stop that cup from hitting you? You can do it!"
"Well, I guess I stopped myself from getting hit..."
"That's half of the answer! The other is that you avoided being severely injured, if not outright killed. The effect was that you prevented yourself from being hit, the outcome was that you avoided becoming severely injured and/or killed."
"Okay, I think I'm understanding. What's the third?"
"The third is both the most difficult and restricting thing when it comes to Zero Order. You need to determine a numerical value that has to do with what you're using it on, after all, you can't make something zero if it isn't a number~!"
"Meaning I can't use my ability on something if I can't view the target of my powers in a numerical form?"
"Exactly! It was due to this third factor that a lot of your ancestors, if not all of them, were said to be incapable of bringing forth the true potential of Zero Order! It's also important to keep in mind that your technique only works on what's in your line of sight, or you directly."
Hearing all of this information, Kuro found himself drifting into deep thought. He could see many possibilities with such a power, but it obviously had its limits when it came to use. He could only effect the speed in which that cup flew at him because he was able to determine the speed in which it flew at him.
Mainly thanks to Gojo having told him how fast he needed to dodge, and him having been able to make an estimation on how far he had been sitting away from Gojo in his house, which was around a meter or so. Meaning the cup was moving at around one meter every 0.1 seconds.
"Wait, what does this have to do with my Cursed Energy?"
"Think about it, what do you think you can do if you can view your use of Cursed Energy as numbers?" Gojo smirked before grinning as he saw Kuro's eyes widening. "Figured it out? It doesn't matter how small your reserves of Cursed Energy are if you can just make the amount you exhaust become zero! You can't do it yet, but with enough training, it's definitely possible~!"
"Is that what we're doing now?" Kuro couldn't help but ask in an excited tone. After hearing what Gojo had explained about jujutsu Sorcerers and their capabilities, he was honestly excited to get training. "What kind of training do I need to do?"
"Hahaha~, not just yet." Gojo then stopped walking before gesturing towards what looked to be a rather abandoned looking building. "This is a small abandoned apartment, and inside is a Grade 3 Cursed Spirit. I want you to go in and exorcise it!"
"...Huh?"
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"The hell is wrong with that guy? I haven't even trained yet he sends me in here...."
Kuro scratched the back of his head as he entered into the abandoned complex, his eyes narrowed as he glanced around. He could feel a certain heavy pressure pushing down on him, and from what Gojo had told him, it was most likely the Cursed Energy that was accumulating here.
If he wasn't mistaken, this apartment was shut down some time ago due to various murder cases that occurred here. While he wasn't certain of the total number of victims, he was pretty sure it was somewhere around ten. Considering the events, he honestly wasn't surprised a Cursed Spirits had formed here.
Anyway, since he had yet to receive any form of Cursed Energy training, Gojo provided him with a simple western sword. While it looked like any other sword, the weapon was apparently a Cursed Tool, an item capable of being used to exorcise Cursed Spirits.
Kuro made his way through the building quickly yet silently and cautiously, he could feel the pressure of Cursed Energy originating on the higher floors. It was a strange feeling, but at the very least he could tell where this Cursed Spirit's general location was.
"Flesh...more...more!"
"..." Kuro quickly hid himself upon hearing the voice. It sounded distorted, and honestly a bit hard on the ears as it had a strange effect similar to a record scratch. Narrowing his eyes, Kuro peeked around the corner. 'What the hell?!'
Kuro had to hold in a gasp when he saw a grotesque looking monster with a deformed figure, it had no hair to speak of and had skin looking as if it had been severely sunburned. It's form was... humanoid, if you could even call it that at this point. It just looked twisted and mutated, along with sprouting a third arm on its back.
Since the Cursed Spirit was facing to the left, Kuro was able to see just what it was doing. There was a corpse, no doubt belonging to a human, completely mutilated against the wall as the spirit seemed to be literally pulling the corpse's organs out slowly one by one.
'Okay, hold it together...!' Kuro screamed to himself mentally as he went back fully behind the wall. Taking a silent deep breath, Kuro steeled himself. He didn't know what he was expecting of these spirits, but he was certainly not prepared for such a scene. 'That corpse didn't look like it was decaying, must have been very recent...'
Shaking his head, Kuro eye's hardened as he gripped the sword attached to the left side of his waist. He didn't know how strong this thing really was, Gojo said it was a Grade 3, but he didn't really know what that really entailed.
'I can't just run in attacking, I need to take this opportunity to strike it by surprise.' Peeking back inside, Kuro ignored the scene of the corpse and focused entirely on the spirit. 'The debris on the ground of this room will definitely give me away... hold on.'
If what Gojo said about his abilities were true and he could reduce anything in this world that he can view in a numerical form to zero, then he had an idea. Narrowing his eyes, Kuro scanned his eyes along the ground before nodding.
'Approximately four meters, okay... Hope this works.' Whether it was by some form of muscle memory or whatever, Kuro miraculously managed to activate his Zero Order as he soon found himself standing directly behind the Cursed Spirit who hadn't registered his appearance at all. 'Holy shit, it works!'
Basically, he reduced the distance between himself and this particular position to zero. He had initially thought to determine the time in which it might take him to get into this position, but thinking on how he could reduce any number to zero, this was a simpler alternative.
'Since it works, let's try this out... Should take no more than a second.'
Kuro prepared to swing his sword, his target being the Cursed Spirit's head. Activating his technique, Kuro soon found that his blade was now embedded into the Cursed Spirit's head. Silence went through the area before the part where the blade would have slashed down from split open as purple blood gushed out.
The blood did splash onto Kuro's face, but he didn't seem to care as he forced the sword out from the Cursed Spirit's head. Kuro didn't want to give it any chanced, so he performed the same thing, taking it's legs, along with its three arms.
Due to the amputations and massive blood loss, the Cursed Spirit collapsed to the ground before slowly dispersing into particles. The blood went away too, including the bit that had splashed onto Kuro's face. Seeing this, Kuro smirked, he wasn't sure why, but it honestly felt really damn good killing that thing.
After the Cursed Spirit vanished, Kuro felt the pressure in this building lift away entirely.
"So, whatever action I do with my ability has to be within the realm of possibility." Kuro had initially wanted to cut through the Cursed Spirit entirely, cutting it completely in half. However, the had become lodged into it's skull instead. "So I can't just bypass physical restrictions. Makes sense I guess."
Sheathing the sword, Kuro looked down at the corpse before closing his eyes and giving the person a silent prayer. The body had been destroyed to the point that Kuro couldn't really even tell if the person was male or female, just a mass of tissue and organs.
"Well done~!"
"Gojo?" Kuro was a bit taken back when Gojo suddenly appeared at the entrance to this room. "What are you doing up here?"
"Just checking in." Gojo chuckled as he waved his hand. Gojo then frowned as he looked down towards the corpse that Kuro was giving a prayer to. "These are the kinds of scenes you should expect to see with the job, in fact, you might even become just like them. Be prepare for that."
"R-Right..."
"Well, let's go~! I'll treat you to some food!" Gojo grinned as he gestured out the door. Kuro stared for a second before shrugging, he then walked past Gojo and began making his way down stairs. Gojo just watched with a smile as Kuro descended. "Heh, that kid definitely has some screws loose in that head."
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