The name Megumi Fushiguro darkened Sukuna’s face into absolute malice.
“Who the hell are you?” Sukuna’s fingers tightened around Julian’s jaw until the bone groaned.
“How do you know my plans?”
Megumi Fushiguro was indeed his chosen target.
The Ten Shadows Technique offered versatility that suited Sukuna’s long-term objectives, while Julian was nothing more than a baseline Grade 4 weakling with zero inherited talent.
Using him was a contingency born of immediate necessity.
Kashimo was a Special Grade threat whose battle instincts would prevent a forced feeding within the sixty-second window.
Choso was a hybrid engineered by Kenjaku, carrying unknown biological variables that might trigger an unexpected suppression response similar to Yuji’s.
That left Julian—a helpless civilian with negligible defenses and zero counter-measures.
Julian dangled by his chin, his boots kicking uselessly in the air.
“I told you…
my intelligence network doesn’t miss.”
“If you won’t speak,” Sukuna growled, “I’ll read it straight from your brain once I take the seat.”
Incarnation granted an ancient soul complete access to the vessel’s memory reserves.
Sukuna had no time to waste on interrogation; the sixty-second limit of Enchain was ticking down by the millisecond.
A short distance away, Choso’s eyes widened in horror as Sukuna held the severed, blood-soaked pinky above Julian’s mouth.
“Stop!” Choso roared, stepping forward.
He didn’t care about Julian’s personal fate, but he knew Yuji’s fragile state of mind would completely break if another person died because Sukuna used his physical frame to execute a swap.
As the elder brother, he had to carry the burden and prevent the casualty.
Before Choso could take three steps, a thick iron staff slammed into his chest, throwing him back ten meters.
“Stay out of this,” Kashimo said, his voice quiet, vibrating with dangerous excitement.
“I’m not letting you ruin his arrival.”
Julian’s importance paled in comparison to the King of Curses.
Kashimo had spent four hundred years waiting for this exact moment.
He had zero intention of letting anyone disrupt Sukuna’s revival.
Julian glared at Kashimo from midair, his eyes watering from the pressure on his jaw.
“You absolute bastard…
standing there watching me get eaten…
just wait until my next run…”
Sukuna didn’t give him the chance to finish.
He pried Julian’s mouth open with two fingers and shoved the severed, energy-laden digit straight down his throat.
The foreign object slid down Julian’s esophagus like liquid fire.
A violent, convulsing shockwave tore through Julian’s nervous system.
The pale blue aura surrounding his core shattered, and his vision began to dissolve into pure, oppressive darkness.
Yet, right before his consciousness faded entirely, Julian mustered every ounce of remaining physical control into his right arm.
He swung his open palm around in a wide, desperate arc.
Slap!
The sharp crack echoed across the empty street.
The blow caught Sukuna squarely across the cheek, snapping his head to the side.
Julian’s face twisted into a broad, satisfied grin as the black marks began spreading over his skin.
“Round one to you, ancient bastard…
let’s see how you do next time.”
Sukuna’s brow furrowed, his eyes narrowing as he touched his cheek.
Next time?
What is this bug babbling about?
He had no time to ponder the phrasing.
The sixty seconds expired, and the last traces of Sukuna’s power vanished from Yuji’s physical frame.
Yuji collapsed onto his hands and knees, gasping for air as his pinky finger bled onto the concrete.
He stared up at Julian’s standing form, his chest heaving with rage.
“Sukuna!” Yuji pushed himself up, Cursed Energy flaring around his boots as he lunged forward.
“What did you do?!”
Sukuna didn’t bother facing the incoming strike.
He tilted his head slightly, dodging Yuji’s fist by a hair’s breadth, and delivered a short, heavy kick to Yuji’s ribs that sent the boy tumbling across the asphalt.
Sukuna wasn’t showing restraint.
His mind was entirely preoccupied with an anomaly inside his new host’s soul.
When an ancient sorcerer incarnated, the vessel’s life memories—from early childhood to the present moment—unfolded like an open book.
Yet, as Sukuna took full control of Julian’s brain, he found nothing.
There were no childhood memories.
No family.
No background.
The host’s memory record began abruptly at the exact moment Julian fell out of the sky into the Culling Game barrier hours ago.
Beyond that point lay a complete, absolute void.
“What is this?” Sukuna muttered, staring down at his new hands.
“Where are this brat’s memories?”
Choso caught the skidding Yuji, hauling him upright.
“Yuji!
Choso stared at Sukuna with cold dread.
He knew the curse was currently operating at the strength of fifteen fingers.
Against that level of power, a Grade 1 hybrid and a newly awakened vessel were nothing more than targets.
Even Jogo, a high-tier disaster curse, was estimated at less than ten fingers.
They had zero chance in a direct confrontation.
“Retreat!” Choso gritted his teeth, pulling Yuji toward an alleyway.
“Now!”
Unlike Choso, Kashimo was practically glowing.
The electrical aura around his body flared into a blinding, white-hot pillar of light.
The concrete beneath his boots vaporized into fine dust as he stepped forward, a wide, wild grin stretching across his face.
“Sukuna!
I’ve waited four hundred years for this!”
Kashimo didn’t hold back a single thread of energy.
He activated the single-use technique he had saved through an entire lifetime and centuries of slumber.
“Cursed Technique Release: Mythical Beast Amber!”
Electric currents flooded Kashimo’s flesh, forcibly reconstructing his nervous system, muscle tissue, and organ structure into a form made of pure electrical phenomena.
His physical attributes shattered human limits, ascending into a realm of pure energy output.
With a roar that shattered the surrounding glass windows, Kashimo launched himself straight at Sukuna.
Sukuna pulled his attention away from the vacant memory reserves in his host’s mind, looking up at the approaching lightning bolt with mild annoyance.
“Annoying bug.”
Boom!
The collision shattered the street, sending a shockwave ripping through the surrounding buildings.
Amid the blinding flash of electrical arcs and cutting energy, Choso dragged Yuji behind a collapsed concrete wall, forcing the boy’s head down.
“Move, Yuji!
We can’t stay here!”
“We can’t just leave him!” Yuji shouted over the roar of thunder.
“We can’t defeat him as we are!” Choso snapped, his voice firm.
“Our only priority now is reaching the others and unsealing Satoru Gojo!
He’s the only one who can stop this monster!”
Yuji clenched his fists until his knuckles bled.
He took one last look at the blinding storm of electricity in the center of the avenue, then turned toward the alleyway.
“Right…
let’s go unseal Gojo-sensei.”