💎 WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 30→2ch | 60→5ch | 100→8ch | 200→15ch | 400→25ch⏰ Resets Monday!
——————– Cursed Spirit Manipulation is, at its core, the ability to control cursed spirits.
But in practice, that label hides a mountain of nuance.
The conditions for subduing a cursed spirit.
The conditions for summoning one.
Summoning speed.
Control precision.
The hard ceiling on how many can be active at once.
Every variable.
Every tradeoff.
All of it governed by this world’s principle of fairness.
[Abandoning control precision] , exchanged for [summoning speed and quantity].
Cursed spirits erupted from ripples in the earth, spreading and metastasizing like cancer cells gone unchecked, flooding the entire field of vision in an instant.
But, What the hell is this guy?!
Geto’s lips curled involuntarily.
Cold sweat poured down his back just as fast.
Excited and terrified.
Both at once.
Himmel’s calves tensed.
He sprinted.
The cursed spirits came swarming, His fingers locked around the sword guard, forearm flexing, and he swung.
Whooooom, !
Light streaked.
A diagonal vacuum tore open across the sky.
The residual blast rolled outward, sword wind wrenching buildings off their foundations, the shockwave slicing a gray line hundreds of meters long into the earth as it expanded into the distance.
BOOM!!
Thatched huts.
Rice paddies.
Everything in the path was shredded and sent spiraling into the air.
It looked less like a fight and more like a weather event.
Is this a person?!
No , are you a damn shikigami?!
Geto barely had time to process it.
Himmel was already moving again, using his own momentum to surge forward a second time.
He seemed curious about something.
On the fly, he reached down and snatched a splintered piece of wood off the ground.
The moment his fingers closed around it, light pulsed and swirled.
The next instant, the wood had become a blade , a perfect copy of the Pseudo-Hero’s Sword.
“Haha!
Now that’s interesting!” He lunged.
Drew back.
Twisted into a slash.
Running and cutting, running and cutting, the sword wind howling like petals tearing off a lotus in a storm.
Shing — shing , shing , shing!!!!
Spinning cut.
Back slash.
Vertical cleave.
Horizontal sweep.
Like a man chopping vegetables , except the vegetables were cursed spirits, and the knife was moving in every direction at once, leaving nothing but afterimages and a clear path through the horde.
Hyakki Yagyo.
Meaningless.
The swordsman would be at Geto’s throat in seconds.
“Ushi-oni!” Geto bit down hard and abandoned the numbers game.
The new cursed spirit hit the ground behind Himmel: ox-headed, spider-bodied, a nightmare out of old woodblock prints.
It lunged for Himmel’s back.
Geto himself took a half-step backward and slammed his palms together.
SMACK.
BOOM.
The clap and the impact landed almost at the same moment.
Because by the time Geto’s hands came together, Himmel was already there, right in his face , mobility like that shouldn’t exist.
His foot hit the ground.
The ball of his foot torqued, feeding rotation into the jump.
His body lifted just slightly, balanced, stopped , and in the same motion, knee rose, body spun, heel came around.
Roundhouse.
“Hm?” Something was wrong.
The feel was off.
At the last instant, Geto had clapped and pulled , like a magician palming a coin , and between his hands appeared a slab of purplish-red tumor flesh, some lesser cursed spirit pressed into service as a wall.
Not hard, but elastic.
Incredibly elastic.
He’d read Himmel’s movement.
The plan was clean: let the tumor absorb the kick’s momentum, bounce Himmel backward, then let Ushi-oni , already positioned behind him , do the binding.
A word on Ushi-oni.
Sea monster.
Japanese mythology.
Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyo.
Ox head, giant spider’s body , or sometimes a crab’s , and two abilities that made it genuinely dangerous: an Evil Eye that caused creeping paralysis in whatever it looked at, growing stronger the closer it got; and injected venom that could strip a Grade 1 Sorcerer of all mobility the moment it made contact.
Convenient didn’t cover it.
All it had to do was look at you.
But that convenience came with a constraint , because in this world, everything came with a constraint.
The Evil Eye couldn’t be aimed.
It applied to everyone in its line of sight.
Including Geto.
So the moment Geto read Himmel’s approach, he had already done the geometry.
Summon Ushi-oni behind Himmel.
Position himself, Himmel, and the cursed spirit in a single line , using Himmel’s own body as a shield to block the gaze.
Let the tumor wall bounce Himmel back into it.
Get Ushi-oni close enough to inject.
Win the first exchange.
All of that, mapped and calculated in the middle of a fight.
Geto was, without question, an excellent combatant.
But.
CRACK.
(What in the, ) Geto’s teeth were clenched so hard his jaw ached.
Arms spread wide, the purple tumor flesh stretched taut between his palms, his whole body bowed under the weight, arms shaking, veins standing out on his face and throat.
His plan was right.
He had miscalculated exactly one thing.
That tumor wall was one of his standard tricks.
Reliable enough to stop bullets.
It could not stop Himmel’s kick.
This is about stats, kid.
CRACK , CRACK , CRACK.
The white boot sank into the tumor with a sound that made teeth ache.
Then, BOOM.
A transparent shockwave bloomed through the air.
Geto’s body shuddered , then he was gone, launched backward as a blur, crashing through a farmhouse forty meters behind him.
BOOM!!!
The old building didn’t survive the impact.
Lights flickered on across the village.
Screaming started somewhere in the dark.
“Cough — cough!” Geto waved the smoke away, one eye shut, and dragged his arm across his forehead.
He lowered his arm.
There was blood on it.
Reddish-brown against his sleeve.
One of three Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerers alive in the modern era.
And he was bleeding.
But.
Hah.
That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Geto exhaled , long and slow , and something in his face unclenched.
The gloom.
The simmering anger.
Both of it, gone.
He’d been close to the edge before the fight started.
Seeing the Hasaba sisters’ situation had connected to everything he’d been bottling up for months, dragging him toward some dark precipice, and it had made him sloppy.
He’d known Himmel had hostages.
Known going all-out wasn’t an option.
He’d revealed his hand anyway, like an amateur.
He noted that.
Filed it.
Let it go.
And as he did, something in his bearing shifted.
The vast weight of his cursed energy began to stir and rise, slow and deliberate, like a tide coming in.
“Back to your senses?” “Haha — good.
Then let’s talk.” A figure emerged from the dust.
The debris curled along the edges of a blue cape, spiraling away as the man stepped through.
The Hero walked out of the smoke at a leisurely pace, smile on his face, looking entirely unbothered by the fact that he’d just demolished half a rural village.
“Hello.
I’m the Hero, Himmel.” He extended his hand.
“I think you’re a good person.
Let’s stop fighting.
How about we make peace?” Right now.
You cannot be serious.
Geto very much wanted to say that out loud.
He was a high school student.
He was a Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer.
There were rules about being unilaterally beaten up and just accepting it , unwritten ones, deep in the bones.
And this man had just killed two of his…
well.
Three.
Three Grade 1 cursed spirits.
He had been about to release a Special Grade cursed spirit and show this person exactly how serious things were.
He’d been ready.
But.
Geto glanced at the two small heads perched on Himmel’s shoulders.
“Hah!!” Nanako and Mimiko had already noticed him looking.
They switched forms on the spot , spiky-back dragon, instantaneous.
Hiss.
Their logic was the same simple, direct logic it always was.
The big blue guy is good.
Anyone who hits the big blue guy is bad.
Geto: “…” He’d banged his head during the crash.
His thoughts had already been clearing from the impact , and now, looking at those two small furious faces, the last of the tension drained out of him.
He couldn’t help it.
He almost smiled.
“…Fine.” He let his cursed energy go.
Both hands came up.
Geto Suguru , who had, until approximately thirty seconds ago, been preparing to level the countryside , raised his hands in a French military salute.
“I surrender.” “Let’s talk.” ➤ Next:
The story is already written.