Volume 1: The Culling Game
Chapter 1: The Opening Ceremony Of The Culling Game
Beep.
Beep.
Cold.
Stiff.
That was Gen’s first sensation after opening his eyes.
The sharp smell of disinfectant spread through his nose.
His eyes, sealed shut by the low temperature, slowly opened.
What came into view were rows of metallic refrigerated cabinets.
Gen’s bare upper body lay on a freezing bed, and as his heartbeat gradually returned, his body was reshaped into another form.
“Hah…”
A cold breath scattered into white mist.
Gen pushed himself upright and looked at his unfamiliar, healthy, youthful hands.
“That bastard Kenjaku.
Did he really just grab some random corpse for me to incarnate into?”
Gen sat up and casually stretched his limbs.
His joints cracked in a crisp series of pops.
He looked around, his gaze landing on the electronic clock mounted high on the wall, glowing faintly blue.
November 1, 2018.
12:00.
“Hah…
Looks like I woke up a little late.”
The corner of Gen’s mouth lifted.
He rolled off the table, and memories belonging to this body’s original owner flooded into his mind.
Betrayed by a woman, betrayed by his brother, then, in a fit of agitation, he drove himself into a car accident.
Wow.
True to form for a Japanese person, even dying had to involve taking someone with him.
When he walked out of the morgue, the security guard on duty was just waking up from his “nap.”
A naked man radiating an inexplicable pressure strode out of the morgue as if he owned the place.
The phone in the security guard’s hand clattered to the floor.
“Yo, nice lunch.
Mind pointing me to where the clothes are?”
Gen stretched.
Under the guard’s blank stare, he reached out a hand, and the guard shakily pointed toward the area where the deceased’s belongings were kept.
“Thanks!
Saves me from having to strip clothes off a pile of corpses…
Hmm…
This is Sendai, right?”
Gen patted the security guard on the shoulder.
“Oh, right.
What’s your name?”
“Uh…
Mamoru…
Mamoru Ito.”
Gen stared at Mamoru Ito’s face, then nodded.
“Good.
I’ll remember your name.
Hmm…
Oh, right.
Lend me some money, will you?”
Gen took the wallet the guard handed over, pulled out ten thousand yen, then tossed the wallet back.
Following the direction the guard had pointed, he walked toward the deceased’s belongings area, picked up the clothes that had belonged to the original body, and zipped them up.
Then he walked toward the wall and stepped into the shadow caught between two walls.
…
Gen’s figure emerged from the shadows in an alley.
It was November in Tokyo, yet there wasn’t a single person on the street.
The wind carried a biting chill, but to Gen, the air smelled almost unbearably delicious.
It wasn’t the charred smell of wild pheasant roasted outdoors, nor the faint fragrance of bland wild fruit.
It was a scent etched into Gen’s previous life, one that could instantly awaken humanity’s most primitive desire.
Fried chicken.
“Looks like I borrowed that money for nothing…
Come to think of it, today’s Thursday.”
Of course, Crazy Thursday was a promotion in the Chinese special district.
Japanese people had no custom of going to KFC on Thursdays.
Probably not, anyway.
Thinking that, Gen tossed the ten-thousand-yen bill into his shadow.
Stepping out of the alley, Gen saw the red-and-white sign in front of him.
From his hazy memories of his previous life, he remembered that mouthwatering old man…
“No Crazy Thursday, but there is free fried chicken, right?”
Gen breathed in the aroma lingering in the air, then walked toward the entrance.
But the instant he stepped onto the stairs, his foot paused slightly.
Mixed into the rich smell of fried chicken was a thick, nauseating stench of decay.
It was the smell of a Jujutsu Sorcerer.
More precisely, the smell of an incarnated body like him.
“Come to think of it, the Sendai Barrier…
Where had the manga gotten to before I came here?”
Gen narrowed his eyes slightly and searched through his memories.
In his previous life, the manga had updated to the part where Yuta Okkotsu fought four opponents in Sendai.
After that, he had no impression of it.
As he thought, Gen’s right hand instinctively formed a sign, and pitch-black shadow climbed up from his wrist.
“Hah, whatever.
Maho-chan, lend me your sword…”
Gen’s breath suddenly hitched.
As the Ten Shadows Technique user who had once stood at the top of the Muromachi era, and who was likely the only Ten Shadows Technique sorcerer in the history of Jujutsu to have subdued Mahoraga, he instantly sensed something wrong with the technique inside his body.
The connection had been cut.
It wasn’t just Mahoraga.
Max Elephant, Piercing Ox, Round Deer, Toad…
He couldn’t even sense Nue anymore.
His Shikigami were like kites that had disappeared into the clouds.
He could still hold the strings, but he could no longer “see” them at all.
Totality!?
Totality was gone too?
“A side effect of incarnating into a new body?”
Gen felt out his technique.
Hmm.
His Shikigami hadn’t been destroyed.
Rather, this body’s subjugation rituals were completely blank.
In other words, he only needed to subdue them again.
…Maybe it was because he was an incarnated body.
Of course, if the Shikigami’s subjugation records had been completely reset, that also meant…
“Woof!” “Awoo…”
Gen waved his hand, and the black shadow around his wrist was flung out and slapped onto the ground.
Two huge wolfdogs, one white and one black, sprang lightly from the shadow and excitedly circled around Gen.
“Just as expected, Shiro.”
“Awooo!”
Gen crouched down, wrapped his arms around the snow-white Divine Dog, and furiously rubbed its head.
“It’s been a long time.
What, over six hundred years?
Hm?”
The black Divine Dog was still circling Gen’s legs, but after hearing that, the white Divine Dog slowly backed away and sat down.
A deeply human look of speechlessness appeared in its blood-red eyes.
“Don’t be like that…
There’s still something nearby we need to deal with.”
Gen clapped his hands, and the black and white Divine Dogs dissolved back into shadows and returned to his body.
Gen was a wandering bloodline of the Zenin Clan, a user of the Ten Shadows Technique from the Muromachi era.
He had been the strongest sorcerer of that era, and perhaps the only Ten Shadows Technique sorcerer in history to have subdued Mahoraga.
The Zenin Clan had left no records of him, and no one had bothered to investigate how long the line of Ten Shadows Technique sorcerers had been broken during the Muromachi era.
After all, that was neither unusual nor exceptional.
Those who are not Zenin are not sorcerers.
Those who are not sorcerers are not human.
In any case, Gen had no intention of returning to his clan just to look at those old bastards’ faces.
True, the Ten Shadows Technique would let him become the next Clan Head, but considering the state of ancient Japan, he had been more or less afraid of getting killed on the spot.
Of course, after he subdued Mahoraga, that concern no longer existed.
Tap.
“Jujutsu Sorcerers, Cursed Spirits, the modern era, the ancient era…”
Gen idly flexed his fingers, his eyes carrying a faint trace of contempt as he looked toward the source of the footsteps.
Tap.
“Hey, you over there with the ridiculous hairstyle.
Which one are you?”
Following the clear sound of dress shoes striking the ground, he saw a figure standing not far down the street.
The man wore a heavy black leather jacket, and the exaggerated pompadour on his forehead stood unmoving in the cold late-autumn wind.
The moment he saw that flashy hairstyle and posture, Gen already knew who the man in front of him was.
Ryu Ishigori.
The instant their eyes met, the Cursed Energy around both of them immediately shifted into battle readiness.
Ryu Ishigori’s sharp eyes swept over Gen, then finally fixed on his somewhat “loose” stance.
The corners of his mouth lifted into a smile mixed with anticipation and provocation.
“Modern sorcerers probably still haven’t figured out what’s going on…
I’m not like them.
Same as you, I’m an ancient Jujutsu Sorcerer.”
Ryu Ishigori’s voice was low.
In his perception, the Cursed Energy of the man before him wrapped tightly around his body, and even the faintest leakage was like a leaping, rising flame.
More than that, not only was the amount of Cursed Energy far above his own, even its so-called “richness” was far beyond anything he could reach.
“You don’t seem to be from the same era as me…
Are you from later, or earlier…?
The Cursed Energy on you is like cellar-aged wine.
It really makes my mouth water…”