Kyoto.
Deep within a certain mountain range.
Gojo Satoru walked through the vermilion torii gates, passing through layers of shadowed, dense forests.
Guided by the rustling sounds of the thickets, Gojo Satoru arrived at his destination: a rustic yet imposing structure
The Jujutsu Headquarters.
In other words, the home base of the old oranges.
A barrier guarded this place, preventing outsiders from wandering in while simultaneously blocking signals to prevent their location from being exposed.
Only specialized equipment could maintain clear communication.
The death-fearing old oranges had taken painstaking measures to avoid being wiped out in a single sweep.
Gojo Satoru sneered at this.
An assistant manager was already waiting at the entrance.
“The higher-ups are waiting for you inside,” the person whispered by way of a heads-up.
The curse riot in Roppongi had been reported by the Windows to the higher-ups.
Yet instead of killing the person who triggered the riot, Gojo Satoru had brought him back to Jujutsu High, leaving the higher-ups deeply displeased.
“The higher-ups have already been keeping a close eye on you; this unexpected incident will certainly give them an excuse to make a fuss.”
The assistant manager whispered while leading the way into the rustic building.
Gojo Satoru let out an “un-huh.”
He was noncommittal.
Or rather, he didn’t care at all.
Even if the higher-ups made a fuss out of it, what could those old oranges possibly do to him?
A bunch of withered, wrinkled oranges rotting from the inside out at most, they could attack people with a stale odor.
Naturally, he wasn’t here to be lectured.
On one hand, it was to issue a deterrent, warning the higher-ups not to lay a finger on Ieiri Yuuki.
On the other hand…
Jujutsu High was about to welcome its second problematic freshman, so of course he had to show off a bit!
Speaking of which, his first problematic student, Yuta from the previous year, had also been mentored by him.
Teacher Gojo’s student luck was truly fantastic!
Gojo Satoru touched his chin, the corners of his lips curling up as he strode inward.
Passing through a winding corridor, he arrived at a pitch-black room.
Dozens of shoji doors stood inside, silhouettes printed upon the paper.
The higher-ups were seated right behind those shoji doors.
Gojo Satoru stood at the very center, surrounded in a ring by the silhouettes on the shoji doors, hemming him in at dead center resembling a high-and-mighty judgment.
An aged, chilling voice rang out:
“Gojo, this time, you must not be allowed to act as you please Ieiri Yuuki, his very existence is a stimulant to Curses! He must not be left alive!”
“We have all cast our votes: Ieiri Yuuki is sentenced to death!”
The dungeon.
The comments drifted across:
[Good grief……]
[Well, the old oranges aren’t wrong about Yuuki being a ‘stimulant’.]
[From a downward-looking perspective, dense and numerous Curses surging one after another—the visual impact is so intense]
What Ieiri Yuuki couldn’t see was
The perimeter of Jujutsu High.
In the deep, dense forest, the previously green-shaded sky was suddenly draped over with a layer of pitch-black cursed energy mist.
All sorts of Curses shared a clear objective, scrambling and fighting over one another, eagerly trampling on the ones ahead to climb higher.
There were mask-shaped Curses resembling Hannya evil ghosts; Monstrous Curses covered in fangs and barbs; Screaming fog masses roaming the air, scorched by their own flames.
Gloomy and bizarre, exceptionally chaotic.
The spectacle was immense!
Nearly ten thousand evil-ghost Curses of various appearances and types.
Entangling one another like maggots, slowly yet swiftly advancing toward Jujutsu High.
Curses pressing upon the border.
Imposing unprecedented pressure on Jujutsu High.
The sky was ashen, permeated by an ominous and despairing aura.
The cursed energy emanating from the endless stream of Curses was so thick it practically blotted out the sun.
Unfamiliar cursed energy entered the territory, triggering the sirens into an ear-piercing wail that refused to cease.
“Woo-woo—”
Utterly desolate.
[Getting goosebumps, who can relate?!]
[This pile of Curses looks like maggots, and also like cockroaches, ugh!]
[Stop it, ahhh!]
[From the aerial perspective of looking down on the outer perimeter of the curse tide all the way to the very front, it’s making my heart race. The scale of this curse tide is terrifying.]
[The Curses are evolving, even proliferating…]
[Ahhh!]
[Teacher, save us! Everything goes wrong the moment you leave for a second!]
[Jujutsu High can hold out for maybe a few more minutes before getting swallowed by the swarming Curses!]
[Catnip, terrifying beyond measure.]
[The number of these Curses is already enough to submerge all of Jujutsu High; I can’t imagine what will happen once they find Yuuki…]
Yaga Masamichi breathed heavily, his brows furrowing tightly.
He manipulated all his cursed corpses, attempting to block the advance of the curse tide.
Yet it was undeniably like a mayfly trying to shake a tree.
His stamina was draining fast, many cursed corpses were consumed, and his cursed energy was squeezed dry.
Yet it failed to slow down the Curses’ invasion speed by even a fraction.
Not just him.
The students as well, fighting the enemy with all their might, were merely pouring a cup of water on a cartload of burning firewood.
“Principal Yaga!”
Fushiguro Megumi grabbed the foot of his shikigami [Nue], flying over with it.
“We completely can’t hold them off! In another ten minutes, those Curses are going to occupy the entire Jujutsu High!”
Fortunately, Jujutsu High possessed a vast area and was nestled deep in the mountains with steep terrain, which had allowed them to stall for a little while longer.
Kugisaki rushed over as well, saying: “The key point should be that person inside the dungeon, right?! Let’s go find him in the dungeon first, then figure something out!”
Hearing this, Yaga Masamichi’s expression turned ugly, his voice exceptionally hoarse.
“Ieiri Yuuki is ‘immortal’.”
“Satoru told me that his ability to rapidly regenerate isn’t because he mastered Reverse Cursed Technique, but because he carries the curse of ‘immortality’.”
This meant that as long as he didn’t die, his attraction to Curses would never cease.
“What?!”
Everyone gasped.
[The curse of immortality?!]
[That’s an overwhelming amount of information]
[Immortal meaning he can continuously attract Curses, guiding them to proliferate, evolve, and gather]
[Hiss]
[The curse tide will never recede]
[Couldn’t Satoru just drop a Hollow Purple and wipe out all the Curses present? If not, drop a few more. They’re all gathered anyway, making area-of-effect strikes convenient]
[A Hollow Purple from Satoru could indeed flatten all the Curses present, but……]
[But as long as Yuuki is still around, the proliferation of a new wave of Curses will never stop]
[Curses grow stronger, and ordinary people suffer. Gojo Satoru can’t keep an eye on him every second, right?]
[We’re finished]
[This time it’s a dead end]
Well, a dead end…?
Ieiri Yuuki sat cross-legged inside the dungeon, reading the comments with keen interest.
Strangely enough, ever since he crawled out of his coffin, he had developed a bad habit He was passionately addicted to the sensation of finding a way out of a desperate situation.
After all, death was not the end for him, thought Ieiri Yuuki.
The weightlessness when falling from a height…… Extreme cold…… A pierced heart……
Ieiri Yuuki had experienced them all.
How interesting.
Perhaps some part of him capable of functioning like a normal person had been broken, yet he considered himself not too terribly broken Because his consciousness presumably still belonged to the category of humans.
At the very least, he hadn’t turned into the kind of cold-blooded monster of his own imagination.
And now, he found himself trapped in a dead end.
Transmigrated into an unfamiliar world, encountering unfamiliar monsters. Becoming…… a chess piece on an unfamiliar chessboard.
Suddenly, Ieiri Yuuki felt no fear. The “fun” he desired was served up right before him, sparking his interest, and his laughter grew increasingly brisk.
He abruptly stood up.
Let the game begin.
With a lovely smile still hanging on his lips, he paced along the inner walls of the dungeon.
His fingertips brushed against the stacked, yellow cursed talismans painted with cursed characters covering the walls.
Sealing, eradication, isolation……
He murmured silently.
He could read every single cursed talisman, clearly understanding their functions.
The fingers resting at his sides twitched slightly, tracing the characters on the talismans.
Over and over again, shifting from slow and even to gradually accelerating.
Over and over again. Faster and faster. Ten times, twenty times, a hundred times……
“You…”
“Hum—”
Wind stirred without cause within the dungeon.
Fierce and sharp, rushing right at them.
Causing Fushiguro Megumi, who had hurried over to the entrance, to raise his arm to fend off the bone-chilling wind that felt like snow piled atop a mountain peak.
Fushiguro Megumi: “?!”
Lowering his arm, he hurriedly looked over.
In the dim, gloomy, yellowish dungeon stood the blonde, blue-eyed youth.
He looked over, and floating right in front of him was a yellow cursed talisman.
Fushiguro Megumi was startled, but he had no time for idle chat: “Ieiri Yuuki, how much do you know about that constitution of yours that attracts Curses? Can it be stopped?!”
“I don’t know.”
Ieiri Yuuki smiled.
He didn’t miss the urchin-headed boy’s furrowed brow and undisguised anxiety.
He said: “But perhaps, I’ve found a method that might be able to curb it.”
Fushiguro Megumi couldn’t care less anymore: “Then you…”
Suddenly, a black-suited man with black hair rushed out from the corner.
He was a man from the Jujutsu Headquarters.
Originally, acting on the higher-ups’ orders while Gojo Satoru was away, he had come to Jujutsu High to “interrogate” the criminal who triggered the curse riot, only to find himself trapped by the Curses.
That sky-darkening curse tide had nearly swallowed all of his sanity.
Fear took over his body.
The man’s terrified and malicious gaze fell upon Ieiri Yuuki.
“If the source is gone, the Curses’ restlessness will subside—”
With that, cursed energy surged in his palm, locking his technique onto Ieiri Yuuki.
Fushiguro Megumi: “Don’t!”
The man in the suit thought those words were addressed to him, serving instead as a stimulant.
Unfortunately, however, they were not.
“Ugh, gah—!”
A ferocious, bloody monster arm lunged out from the shadows.
With speed impossible for the naked eye to catch, it slammed the suit-clad man against the wall.
With a heavy “thud,” he crashed into the wall, dropped to the ground, and fell silent.
The one who struck was…
[Muzan!]
Fushiguro Megumi’s whole body tensed up.
At some point, a Curse had appeared inside the dungeon.
Ink-black hair cascading down in slight waves, skin pale and handsome.
That bizarre meat-arm had reached out right from his sleeve.
For a split second, the dungeon fell into silence.
Fushiguro Megumi’s Adam’s apple bobbed as cold sweat trickled down. This oppressive aura
Without a doubt… A Special Grade Curse!
Just meeting its gaze gave him goosebumps.
[Muzan is quite protective of his food, huh?]
[Pfft, how so?]
[He killed people twice, acting as if nothing happened, yet the moment someone else makes a move, he shows up.]
[Rules for thee, but not for me, huh?]
[I’ve got a feeling something’s wrong with him]
[Plotting something nasty]
[Slang aside, sis, that description is a bit too raw]
Another wave of icy aura wove its way into Ieiri Yuuki’s breathing.
He raised his head, only to realize that unknowingly, the Curse had drawn right up to his front.
The man, dead or alive, lay at his feet like a dead mouse a cat brought to its master.
“Do you like it?”
Such an intimate tone.
Yet his gloomy gaze seemed to condense into strands of affectionate black hair, slowly creeping up Ieiri Yuuki’s calves, tangling inextricably and leaving no escape.
[Hiss……]
[What is Muzan trying to do? Something’s wrong with him]
[He’s leaning more and more into that Female Ghost Type 1 vibe]
Yuuki smiled: “I don’t like it. Please take it further away, thank you.”
He refused very politely.
With that, he stopped paying attention to the disobedient Curse, turning instead to ask Fushiguro Megumi:
“Inside Jujutsu High, where is the place with the densest cursed energy?”
Fushiguro Megumi: “That would be the Tombs of the Star…”
He caught on.
“The curbing method you mentioned just now is it related to the Tombs of the Star?”
“Indeed.”
In Fushiguro Megumi’s field of vision, Ieiri Yuuki stretched out his hand, a yellow cursed talisman floating slowly upon his slender, fair fingertips. “The method is
To seal myself away.”
He said with a smile, before shifting the topic:
“But my cursed energy is too scarce; it’s not enough to carry out a sealing ritual. I’ll have to borrow some from someone.”
Fushiguro Megumi was dumbfounded: “…Borrow?”
How do you borrow it?
Ieiri Yuuki: “Do you know the Kagura dance?”
[Hold on, let me go check Baidu]
[Kagura dance is a type of Japanese ritual prayer activity]
[Praying to the gods for blessings; sometimes the supplicant can also receive a sliver of power from the gods to protect themselves]
[Why is Yuuki bringing this up?]
[Is Yuuki going to borrow cursed energy from a “god”? Who? Tengen?]
Not just the comments; Fushiguro Megumi asked the exact same question.
Ieiri Yuuki already had a candidate in mind.
The black-and-red mandorla-like evil ghost stood not far from him. “Naturally, that god…”
“I hope ‘Lord God’ will respond to my prayer.”
In the dim, yellowish dungeon, the blonde youth piously offered his prayer to the Curse.
[Ahhhhhh……]
[He really knows how to play!!]
[Visibly, Muzan’s gloomy expression is starting to crack]
[Kid, I know your game. You’re about to be reeled in like a hooked fish, aren’t you?]
[Someone actually treats him as a ‘god’!]
[And it’s Yuuki, toward whom he has an initial high affinity the very Yuuki he wanted to turn into a demon the moment they met!]
[Muzan is blessed once again]
[Title bestowed: Blessed Bro!]