Takako Uro, a Jujutsu Sorcerer from the Heian period and former captain of the Jitsugetsusei Corps, an assassination unit directly under the Fujiwara clan.
After a certain mission, she took the blame for a crime committed by someone in the Fujiwara clan.
She was given a name, then executed.
Gen looked at the exposed woman in front of him and could not help feeling puzzled.
Was one glance really enough to make her react that strongly?
As the warped space dispersed, Gen finally saw Takako Uro’s full body, along with the gloomy look on her face.
“What is wrong with the sorcerers in this place…?
One of them could see me earlier, and now there’s another.”
Seeing the look on Takako Uro’s face, the kind that clearly said she had no intention of letting him leave, Gen had no choice but to take an attack stance.
The woman in front of him had been more or less one of the good guys in the manga from his past life.
Besides, her Cursed Technique was still somewhat troublesome for the current Gen.
“We can keep this peaceful.
We don’t have to fight.”
“You say that, but the Cursed Energy around you doesn’t look very ‘peaceful’ at all.”
As Gen took his stance, Takako Uro also sensed the surging Cursed Energy coming from him.
What a terrifying amount of Cursed Energy…
Takako Uro could not help comparing the man in front of her to Sukuna.
Her fear of Sukuna was clearly stronger, but this man had not even fully revealed his Cursed Energy yet.
With that level of Cursed Energy control, his total reserves might not be all that far from Sukuna’s.
And that meant…
“Hey…
what era are you from?”
“Do people like you always ask that before a fight?”
“…”
Takako Uro had already twisted the space on both sides of her.
Gen naturally understood that there was no avoiding this battle now.
“Gen.
The strongest of the Muromachi era.”
“In return, you should give your name too.”
“The strongest, huh…”
When she fought Ryu Ishigori, she had kept hearing him complain that she was not as good as his previous opponent, always dodging and slipping away.
This Barrier was only so large.
It was not hard to guess that the young man in front of her was Ryu Ishigori’s previous opponent.
“Come to think of it, did people in the Heian period not have clothes?”
“Hah?”
Takako Uro, who had originally intended to avoid the fight, was momentarily stunned by the sudden question.
“Think about it.
According to the modern laws in your head, there’s a word for someone in your current state.
You’d be considered an exhibitionist, right?”
Bang!
A sound like shattering glass rang out.
Gen sensed Takako Uro’s movement in an instant.
He clapped his hands together, and a bolt of lightning shot from his palms.
Takako Uro, who had charged forward with Ushuro Dan, instinctively bent space to deflect the incoming lightning, but in doing so, she missed her chance to attack.
“Hey, hey…
I thought you were at least self-aware.”
“My Cursed Technique lets me grasp ’emptiness’ through a ‘surface’…”
Takako Uro pulled at space, then used Thin Ice Breaker again, shattering the space behind her as she accelerated toward Gen.
“Explaining your Cursed Technique?”
Gen shifted slightly to the side and neutralized the attack.
Nue’s Cursed Technique allowed him to move dozens of meters through the air with only a slight acceleration, giving him nearly omnidirectional instant mobility with no blind spots.
“Everyone knows an information gap is incredibly important, yet you still act like you’re in a manga, exposing your own information just for a tiny boost.
Don’t you think that’s absurd?”
“Heh…
If I failed to kill my target during a fight because I missed out on even a small boost, and the assassination failed because of it, I’d be in serious trouble.”
“Did you know?
Among Shikigami users, quite a few can make a Binding Vow without summoning their Shikigami and use the Shikigami’s moves that way.”
Gen raised his hand.
“Ten-Thousand-Jun Force.”
As he lifted his arm, condensed lightning flew toward Takako Uro like a pillar of light.
Takako Uro seized the surface in front of her with both hands, intending to repeat what she had done before.
But the instant the lightning was about to reach her, it scattered.
Then, under Takako Uro’s astonished gaze, it struck at her from every direction.
Even though she quickly swept the space around her in a circle, part of the lightning still hit her body.
Takako Uro forced herself to endure the pain and numbness, then threw the lightning caught in her hand back at Gen.
“Take this!”
Shing!
As the lightning tore across the sky, Gen’s body vanished in an instant.
Right after that, Takako Uro felt the rooftop of the building getting closer to her.
When did he…?
Takako Uro could barely sense any Cursed Energy leaking from him.
She had noticed the movement of Cursed Energy, but it had happened at the exact instant the lightning was fired.
Based on her own experience, she had thought it was a Cursed Technique used for defense, or perhaps an attack meant to cancel hers out.
She had not expected him to overwhelm her with pure speed.
Takako Uro was kicked away like a cannonball, smashing through most of a floor.
Even with Cursed Energy protecting her body, she immediately escaped the building amid a burst of splitting air.
A moment later, the building was struck by a lightning storm.
“Hah…”
As she dodged at high speed, Takako Uro still could not help looking back.
The building, which had already been smashed almost completely through the middle, had been nearly melted away by the raging lightning storm.
If she had not left right away, she would have lost the ability to fight.
She might even be dead.
“See the gap between us now?”
Gen’s voice came from above.
“You really are something else…”
Takako Uro looked up at Gen, and the hand she had been about to use to gather Cursed Energy dropped involuntarily.
“I give up.
Watching you kill people from the sky, I thought you were one of those brainless sorcerers who attacks the moment he spots someone.”
“I can’t just pretend I didn’t hear that.”
Takako Uro slowly flew into the sky, looking at the man in front of her, who showed no real hostility.
Gen stared at Takako Uro.
The surging Cursed Energy appearing around her was practically sending him a message.
“You people really are hard to understand.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone who clearly can’t beat me is standing right in front of me, yet she insists on using Domain Expansion against me.”
Takako Uro slowly raised her arms and crossed them in front of her.
“Are you really that confident…
that you can beat me without using your own Domain?”
“Want to find out?”
Gen tilted his head back.
“Domain Expansion.”
Blue Cursed Energy unfolded in an instant.
A black Barrier surged out violently, and then.
“Blue Sky Line.”
Strange.
Where did she go?
The moment the Domain Expansion activated, Gen had already formed his hand sign.
But by the time Hollow Wicker Basket appeared, Takako Uro had vanished from in front of him, replaced by a blue sky.
There were no points of reference anywhere.
Above him was a sky covered by ribbon-like strips, faintly glowing with dim light.
Below him was an endless, unobstructed sky.
Gen sniffed the air for the “human” scent, but he could not smell anything.
Then he realized what was strange.
It was not that he had lost the smell.
The air current was rushing upward from below in an extremely unnatural way.
He was falling.
Falling downward at tremendous speed.
“Interesting…”