“I lived here for sixteen years without encountering anything unusual, and now you’re telling me this was never an ordinary world?” Konoe Mayoru sighed as he surveyed the devastation around him.
It was November 1st.
Inside one of Tokyo’s barriers, everything Mayoru believed about the world had been shattered.
The Culling Game had begun.
He had been in this world for sixteen years.
Calling it reincarnation was not entirely accurate.
It was more like he had gradually awakened memories of his previous life.
Fragments of those memories had surfaced when he was a child, but he had been too young to understand them.
As he grew older, those memories became clearer, and Mayoru soon realized that the Tokyo he lived in was far from ordinary.
For example, this world had Shuchiin Academy, while Chiba had a school called Sobu High.
Later, after Mayoru moved, the family next door happened to be named Shirogane.
The father even had a deep, unforgettable voice that sounded exactly like DIO.
The man did not have an eldest son named Miyuki, but he did have a daughter named Kei.
That was more than enough to confirm Mayoru’s suspicions.
Even so, his life had not followed the path of the protagonists from the novels he had read, where they built harems while effortlessly reaching the top.
His memories had awakened far too late, and he had started life as an orphan.
Simply avoiding an early death was already something worth celebrating.
Fortunately, Mayoru had excellent grades.
He earned a scholarship to Shuchiin Academy, receiving a full exemption from tuition and other fees, along with a generous annual stipend.
‘Who needs women when studying offers rewards like this?’ He had never possessed any grand ambitions.
He only planned to use Shuchiin’s resources and connections to climb the social ladder and secure a comfortable future.
However, that simple dream collapsed today.
Looking back over his sixteen years of life, Mayoru had never witnessed a single supernatural phenomenon.
Yet when he woke up this morning, he discovered that Idle Transfiguration had altered his brain, awakening cursed energy and granting him a cursed technique.
Worse still, he had been forcibly registered as a player in the Culling Game.
In his previous life, Mayoru had been a hardcore anime fan, so he knew Jujutsu Kaisen extremely well.
The Culling Game was a ritual created by Kenjaku to merge the people of Japan with Tengen and produce an unprecedentedly powerful cursed spirit.
In practice, however, it was nothing more than a battle royale.
Sorcerers from ancient times who had made contracts with Kenjaku were reincarnated, while modern humans had their brains altered through Idle Transfiguration and awakened cursed energy.
Every player was then trapped inside a barrier they were forbidden to leave.
Any player who failed to kill within nineteen days would have their cursed technique removed, resulting in immediate death.
The goal was obvious: create fear and mistrust, then force everyone to slaughter one another.
‘Seriously?
What the hell?’ ‘Anyone entering the Culling Game should at least have special-grade strength, right?’ ‘So where’s my special-grade power?!’ Naturally, he had none.
Unfortunately, Mayoru was nothing more than a sorcerer who had awakened cursed energy less than a day ago.
He had not even had time to test his talent for jujutsu.
Still, there was some good news.
“My cursed technique…
is Vector Manipulation.” At that moment, it was Mayoru’s only source of comfort.
Vector Manipulation was one of the most famous and ridiculously powerful abilities he remembered from his previous life.
Its best-known user was Accelerator, whose legendary battle against Kamijou Touma continued to fuel endless online arguments even years later.
In theory, the ability could manipulate the direction of energy.
Even energy that was normally considered scalar gained a direction once it moved, making it subject to manipulation.
Electricity, heat, kinetic force—anything Accelerator could understand could become a target of Vector Manipulation.
At its smallest scale, it could manipulate bioelectricity to interfere with a virus.
At its largest, it could draw upon the Earth’s rotational energy and hurl that force at an enemy.
Its nearly invincible reflection could defend against almost any attack, while its offensive and even healing applications were equally terrifying.
The ability was powerful enough that few people would ever question its potential.
However, after the initial joy of awakening Vector Manipulation faded, Mayoru could not suppress his doubts.
The ability was undeniably powerful, but many people claimed that its strength depended entirely on Accelerator’s immense computational ability.
In the hands of anyone else, it might not be nearly as impressive.
Accelerator possessed the greatest mind in all of Academy City.
His calculation speed had long surpassed ordinary human limits.
Many argued that only someone with a brain comparable to a living supercomputer could properly control Vector Manipulation.
Mayoru had seen plenty of those arguments in his previous life.
He was certainly not stupid.
Otherwise, an orphan like him could never have earned a place at Shuchiin, a school filled with the children of the rich and powerful.
However, he had never imagined comparing his brain to Accelerator’s.
‘What normal person would compare their brain to a human supercomputer that’s undergone countless rounds of development?’ Fortunately, some of his anxiety faded once he began experimenting with his cursed technique.
A roar suddenly rang out.
The shriek was so sharp that it made his eardrums ache, and it came from somewhere nearby.
A massive shadow fell over Mayoru as something enormous appeared above him without warning.
A pair of twisted eyes stared down at him.
Its mouth stretched into a hideous grin, like a nightmare that had crawled into reality.
It was a cursed spirit.
Cursed spirits were monsters born from humanity’s negative emotions, and they naturally possessed an instinctive desire to harm humans.
Mayoru knew that many of Japan’s unexplained disappearances were connected to cursed spirits.
A jujutsu sorcerer’s usual duty was to exorcise them.
However, when Kenjaku began the Culling Game, he also released countless cursed spirits bound by contracts he had made over the past thousand years.
Those monsters now rampaged throughout Tokyo.
Many wandered inside the barriers, while even greater numbers flooded the areas outside them.
Before yesterday, Mayoru had never personally encountered such a creature.
The first time he saw one, he had forced himself to remain calm, though panic still churned inside him.
Now, however, things were different.
Instead of fear, he felt eager to test himself.
In less than an instant, the grotesque cursed spirit spread its lips into a grin.
Most cursed spirits lacked true intelligence.
Even among special grades, many were incapable of speaking fluently.
This cursed spirit was certainly not special grade.
It was probably not even grade one.
Mayoru vaguely remembered that one standard for classifying a grade-one cursed spirit was whether it could use a cursed technique.
The creature before him clearly could not.
Even so, a grade-two cursed spirit was already terrifying to an ordinary person.
With enough raw strength to tear through reinforced concrete, the result of its claws striking human flesh was obvious.
Although most cursed spirits were unintelligent, they were not entirely foolish.
At the very least, they possessed an instinct to avoid stronger opponents.
They usually judged strength by sensing the amount of cursed energy a target possessed.
Any cursed spirit with basic instincts knew better than to approach a monster overflowing with cursed energy.
The prey before this one, however, was different.
Mayoru’s cursed energy was not exactly scarce, but it was far from overwhelming.
Therefore, he could be hunted.
That was the conclusion the cursed spirit reached.