Special Grade Cursed Spirit.
The pinnacle of cursed spirits.
In the modern era, the known count of Special Grade Cursed Spirits is, [Sixteen] Only sixteen.
That’s just the number registered with Jujutsu High.
The true count is almost certainly far higher.
Even so.
Rare doesn’t begin to cover it.
And the insect-shaped cursed spirit now hovering before him, Was [Special Grade].
“Unusual cursed energy…” Geto’s expression sharpened.
“This one’s going to be a problem.” He pressed his hand against the base of a large tree , bark split with cracks from the fighting , and slowly straightened up.
The cursed spirit drifted in the air above him, its wings keeping it aloft in lazy, rhythmic pulses.
“Can you understand me?” Geto asked.
.
The insect-type cursed spirit was silent for a long moment.
[….Black…Black Mushi…] Geto raised an eyebrow.
“Is that your name?” He kept his voice even.
A vortex of cursed energy was already gathering around him as he spoke.
“Then let me ask you something.
Why did you attack me?
It’s not unheard of for a cursed spirit to kill a sorcerer , but you and that Special Grade at the hospital were clearly working in tandem.
Cursed spirits don’t cooperate.
So what’s driving you to come after me specifically?” Geto’s mind was already moving fast.
That question seemed to make Black Mushi go even quieter.
Hard to tell if it simply didn’t know how to use a voice, or if it was deciding whether to answer at all.
Then, after a pause, it tensed , and spoke in halting fragments.
“…[She]…
said…
told me to do this…” She.
Geto filed that away immediately.
A cursed spirit born on Japanese soil would speak Japanese, and Japanese draws a clear line between “he” and “she.” Which meant the one who’d orchestrated this ambush was a woman.
No women in the upper ranks of jujutsu society.
The Three Great Families…
not there either, as far as he knew.
He ran through the possibilities quickly and came up empty.
He set it aside.
Under normal circumstances, Geto would have played for time , a prolonged engagement suited him perfectly.
Cursed Spirit Manipulation meant he wouldn’t lose a war of attrition, and more information always meant better odds.
But Himmel was still fighting.
He couldn’t afford to drag this out.
Then they’d skip straight to the end.
“Kawa-hime!” “Tengu!” Geto summoned two cursed spirits with a wave of his hand.
Kawa-hime , a famous figure in Japanese mythology, a beautiful female ghost said to lure victims into bodies of water with her weeping, then pull them under and drown them.
Tengu , the more widely known red-faced, long-nosed flying creature.
During the Heian period it had merged gradually with Buddhist concepts of the Temma and Ashura, becoming a demon of spiritual corruption, a thing that disrupted the Dharma and tempted practitioners off the right path.
The first was a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit with a specialized domain.
The second was a combat-type cursed spirit whose raw cursed energy output sat at the very edge of Special Grade.
Both activated their techniques at once.
Kawa-hime moved first.
Transparent cursed energy bloomed outward, faster than wind, and wrapped around Black Mushi entirely.
[Aa?] The cursed spirit made a confused sound.
Then the wings on its back simply stopped , locked mid-beat , and its body began tilting forward against its own will.
Geto had deliberately avoided summoning the Ushi-Oni.
Black Mushi could fly, and the Ushi-Oni had been built for different work.
Kawa-hime’s mythological domain mapped to the same space , close enough.
Kawa-hime’s ability was Lure: forcing the target to feel a compulsive pull toward the caster.
Against anything below Grade 1, it was pure mind control, capable of stripping away will entirely.
Geto had sacrificed that intensity deliberately, trading the deeper compulsion for something closer to a guaranteed-hit binding effect.
Even a Special Grade would feel it.
It wouldn’t last.
A Special Grade would shake it off in seconds.
But that was exactly the point.
The moment that mattered was always the first one , because the brain instinctively recoils from the idea of closing distance with an enemy.
The contradiction between that instinct and the forced impulse caused the body to lock up, just for an instant.
That instant was enough.
WHOOSH!!
Tengu launched.
It shot upward like a striking hawk and drove hard into Black Mushi’s side.
Cursed energy met cursed energy and detonated in a burst of vivid, almost garish color , like over-saturated flower petals shredding apart in the air.
The impact slammed Black Mushi into the ground.
Geto was already moving.
He called out a third name.
“Tsuchigumo.” A spider descended , vast as a mountain, its eight legs thick as ancient timber, a human face riding its back.
This spirit came from the Nihon Shoki, born of the Tsuchigumo clan that the Yamato kingship once subjugated, and it carried a connection to the famous hero Minamoto no Yorimitsu that time hadn’t erased.
Tsuchigumo was another cursed spirit that pressed close to Special Grade , or more accurately, one that had once been Special Grade and fallen.
Modern humans had stopped fearing its legends, and the fear that had given it power had faded with that belief.
It was still formidable.
Just no longer what it had been.
Its technique, “Cursed Technique — Web Weaves the Mountain.” Terrain alteration.
The ground beneath Geto’s feet went liquid.
It surged toward the falling Black Mushi and coiled around its shoulders, the leading edges whipping tight and narrowing into something sharp , not tendrils, something more like enormously elongated arms.
Those arms seized the wings.
And pulled.
[AAAAAaaa!!!, , !.] The scream tore through the air.
Black blood sprayed outward in sheets.
Black Mushi took the full force of the technique in an instant, wounded badly.
It was Special Grade , but that had never meant invulnerable.
The standards for Jujutsu Sorcerers were stricter than the threshold for Special Grade, when it came down to it.
A Grade 1 Sorcerer already had the aptitude to hunt one.
And the modern era had exactly three Special Grade Sorcerers.
Geto Suguru was one of them.
Black Mushi wasn’t done yet.
Even screaming, its body began to come apart, not from damage, but deliberately.
Its flesh dissolved into a flood of tiny insects.
Cockroaches.
They poured outward in a wave and crashed toward Geto.
The Grade 2 cursed spirits he’d stationed around the perimeter were swarmed in an instant, then devoured , stripped down to nothing in seconds.
“So it eats the flesh and absorbs the cursed energy along with it.” Geto jumped back, working through it.
But that retreat was exactly what Black Mushi had wanted.
Every move Geto had made had been calculated.
So had every move Black Mushi had.
[Kawa-hime] , to restrict its movement.
[Tengu] , primary damage, and a probe to check for countermeasures.
He’d gathered enough now.
Tsuchigumo’s technique wasn’t finished.
The ground was still moving.
The moment Black Mushi had begun releasing the insects, a hollow had opened beneath it.
Not suddenly.
Geto had been excavating that landing point from the very beginning.
Black Mushi simply hadn’t noticed.
The ground began to pull back toward Black Mushi’s position, flowing in reverse , like a treadmill belt running backward.
The cockroaches crawling along the earth were swept away from Geto automatically.
The ones already airborne hit an earthen wall rising between them and ran into stone.
The wall grew.
Tier by tier, layer by layer, climbing , and then it fell.
BOOM!!!
An earthen box, built by technique, sealed Black Mushi inside.
Rhythm.
That was everything in a fight.
Introduction.
Development.
Turn.
Conclusion.
The moment Geto had first seen Black Mushi, he’d clocked the wings.
[It can fly.] [Which means that advantage comes with a corresponding weakness.
Wings are probably fragile.] Cursed Spirit Manipulation was comprehensive to a fault.
If you knew what you needed, all that was left was filling in the right name at the right moment.
Second-year Geto might have hesitated.
Might have found this one genuinely difficult.
But after [that incident], he’d driven himself relentlessly , chasing the gap between himself and Gojo Satoru, and closing more of it than anyone had any right to.
He’d grown too much to count back then.
Box it.
Insects become useless inside a sealed space.
Nothing to swarm.
Nowhere to go.
He could head for Himmel now, CRACK!
A hairline fracture split across the surface of the earthen box.
Then the whole thing blew open.
BOOM!
[AAAAaaaaaa!!!.] Dust and stone erupted outward in a spray.
Black Mushi tore through the gap, screaming, and forced itself free.
“What—?!” Geto’s composure cracked for just a moment.
Black Mushi was covered in wounds , that was expected.
Inside the box, Tsuchigumo had been filling the space with spikes continuously.
The interior had become something close to an iron maiden.
None of those wounds were a surprise.
What he couldn’t account for was how it had broken out at all.
He looked at Black Mushi’s hand.
“That thing — is that a Cursed Tool?” Cursed Tools.
Objects saturated with cursed energy, each with its own distinct function.
After the Heian period, human sorcerers had largely lost the ability to forge them.
On the current market, a quality Cursed Tool opened at a hundred million yen.
Black Mushi was holding a heavy blade, shaped like a butcher’s knife, its flat covered edge to edge in small, suspicious holes.
[Special Grade Cursed Tool] [Rotten Life Blade] ➤ Next: I’m Not Late, Am I?
The story is already written.