With [Monk] mode active, Himmel looked like a father to every cursed spirit in his path.
The Smallpox Deity froze where it stood.
No resistance.
No attempt to flee.
Himmel walked toward it anyway.
The deity’s body shook at high frequency, a full-body tremor it couldn’t control.
Himmel drew back his fist and drove it straight into the thing’s face.
BOOM!
His fist punched clean through flesh.
Blood splattered onto the ground in heavy drops.
He pulled his arm back.
The Smallpox Deity crumpled, completely spent.
Himmel didn’t exorcise it.
He left it a sliver of life, grabbed it by the head, and dragged it away.
And then.
There was now.
……..
…..
“That said, Special Grade Cursed Spirits really are something.” Himmel examined the wounds on his body.
Purple spots coiled around his arm, vivid against his skin.
The sure-hit effect of a Domain.
Even Himmel wasn’t exempt.
But, “Heal.” A casual word.
White light bloomed behind him and spread.
Himmel threw himself a healing spell using Heiter’s ability , the Monk’s , without a second thought.
The wounds the ‘smallpox’ had carved into him closed in an instant.
Heiter’s ability, as tested: [Magic level unconditionally raised by one rank.
Gain [Absolute Resistance to Evil Attributes] and [Life Technique].] His companions’ abilities really were convenient.
Himmel couldn’t help but think so.
“Convenient is right.” Geto Suguru couldn’t keep the envy out of his voice.
[Goddess’s Blessing] and [Life Technique].
In his understanding, they amounted to an extremely high-purity [Reverse Cursed Technique].
Usable on oneself, or projected outward.
Which meant Himmel was now the second healer among modern jujutsu sorcerers, after Ieiri Shoko.
Geto had received treatment during their shared missions before, but he hadn’t expected Himmel’s technique could outright cancel the sure-hit effect of a Domain.
If he’d known that beforehand, he wouldn’t have spent the whole fight trading damage with Blackbird.
He could have just worn it down at his own pace.
“Speaking of which, you were actually forced to use Tamamo-no-Mae?” Himmel raised an eyebrow.
“Then the enemy on your end was even worse than mine.” A month in, Himmel felt he’d learned a lot about the people around him.
The trump card of Cursed Spirit Manipulation was the cursed spirits themselves , and as a Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer, Geto’s strongest was the Special Grade Imaginary Cursed Spirit, Tamamo-no-Mae.
The thing’s ability was terrifying enough that among the current Grade 1 sorcerers, probably no one could exorcise it.
Geto didn’t bring it out unless the opponent was worth it.
“Mm.” Geto swallowed the remnants of the Smallpox Deity , Himmel had already compacted them into a ball for him , and finally spoke.
“The cursed energy output was wrong.” He wasn’t exaggerating.
The moment the Smallpox Deity and Blackbird had appeared, Geto had already taken rough readings of both.
The Smallpox Deity was strong, but not out of the ordinary , which was exactly why he’d held back and only moved to support Himmel after the Domain expanded.
Blackbird was another story entirely.
No Domain, but its cursed energy output far outstripped the Smallpox Deity’s.
More abnormal than that: it genuinely would not die.
Taking that many of Geto’s attacks without going down was one thing , but surviving Himmel’s kick?
Geto knew Himmel’s stats.
A single sword swing produced wind pressure that could reach several kilometers.
Something surviving a direct hit from that foot defied easy explanation.
“I have some guesses.” “Do you?
Then let’s finish this first.” A buzzing rose from the dirt pile in the distance.
The two of them reached a quiet agreement.
“Mm.” BUZZ…
BUZZ!!
.
The earthen mound split apart.
Blackbird, knocked into the ground by Himmel’s earlier strike, used its endless tide of offspring to gnaw through the rubble piled on top of it.
It forced half its body free and opened its massive maw to roar.
Twin-tailed swarms of cockroaches stacked and surged over each other, becoming a black ocean that blotted out the sky and swallowed half the forest.
Daring to ambush us, Inherently evil humans!
I’ll tear you apart with my own, “WHOOSH.” The roar died in its throat.
In its enormous, protruding eyes, Blackbird watched a blue figure streak toward it.
The thing was moving so fast that it left a long afterimage trailing the arc of its path.
Both hands gripping the sword.
Blade angled toward the ground.
[CLANG] Gears turning.
The gear at Himmel’s back rotated, switching from [Monk] to [Warrior].
His entire presence shifted.
Bottom to top , slash.
The next instant, a clear, biting gale slammed into Blackbird’s face.
Its lips peeled back violently.
Its eyelids clamped shut against the force.
Sound arrived late , a thunderous roar that consumed every cockroach Blackbird had thrown into the air.
Those bodies were reinforced with cursed energy, tough as steel, and not one of them lasted a second.
They were gone like smoke.
Blackbird itself was pinned flat to the ground by the wind pressure, every muscle in its body heaving and rolling like something beneath a wave.
BOOM!!!!!!
Mud erupted upward.
Blackbird had already taken an enormous accumulation of damage from Geto.
It was running on fumes.
Himmel’s slash took it the rest of the way.
“Truly outrageous…” Geto Suguru watched the whole thing from where he stood and decided not to move.
Would this make him look like he was slacking?
Himmel was already dragging Blackbird’s remains across the ground toward him.
“Done.” Himmel put both hands behind his back and knocked a fist against his lower back with a dull thud.
“Really like an old man,” Geto said.
The kind smile on Himmel’s face didn’t vanish so much as drain away.
His steps slowed to a halt.
His expression settled into something distant and cool.
“…That’s the second time you’ve called me an old man.
There won’t be a third.” “Why are you suddenly speaking in that terrifying tone!?
And the first time was a month ago , you still remember that!?” “Kidding.” Himmel laughed, easy and open.
He was nothing like his old flame when it came to holding grudges.
Probably.
Geto took the remains Himmel passed him and swallowed the cursed spirit.
“As I thought.” Then, like he’d just confirmed something, he held out a pitch-black object toward Himmel.
Himmel stared at it.
“Is this…
a finger?” “Mm.” A warped, purple-black finger lay in Geto’s palm.
That was…
“Based on what I know, this should be a Special Grade Cursed Object , Sukuna’s finger.” Sukuna.
The supposedly strongest jujutsu sorcerer this world had ever produced.
Dead now, but even his corpse had become a cursed object, radiating immense cursed energy and a toxicity that made it something humans avoided on instinct.
To cursed spirits, though, it was a windfall.
“Blackbird seems to have used this finger to be born ahead of schedule as a Special Grade Cursed Spirit.
It gave the thing overwhelming vitality, and it was still growing.
If we’d been slower, this would have gotten considerably worse.” “Two Special Grades in a row, and Sukuna’s finger on top of that.” Himmel’s voice was steady.
“That’s not a coincidence.
Someone has us in their sights.” “Any leads?” Himmel asked.
“…Mm…” Geto was quiet for a moment.
“Can’t narrow it down?” “No.
The opposite — there are too many.” “?” Himmel crossed his arms, expression genuinely concerned.
“You really have terrible social skills, the lot of you.
I worry about you.” “I told you not to — don’t use that old — that elderly tone with me.
Anyway, we need to tell the teacher and Gojo.
And also…” Geto Suguru had already noticed it.
A month of working alongside Himmel, and he’d developed a real trust in the man.
That trust, shaped by the way Himmel carried himself , the unmistakable weight of an elder , was slowly becoming something different from what he felt toward Gojo or Shoko.
Something closer to reliance.
That couldn’t happen.
He wouldn’t let it.
When Geto was troubled, he pressed his thumb against his brow without thinking about it.
“We should also inform the Kyoto sorcerers.” “Kyoto, huh…” Himmel’s expression shifted to something carefully neutral.
The two of them stood there in the same silence.
Neither of them, it seemed, had particularly warm feelings about the Kyoto side.
……
…
The mastermind watched from a distance, deliberately removed from the battlefield.
One arm rested on the hospital windowsill.
He was smiling.
“Cursed Spirit Manipulation…
what a convenient technique.” “But what’s more remarkable is that shikigami of theirs.” A quiet, satisfied sound.
“Heh.
As expected , humans are truly interesting.” ➤ Next:
The story is already written.