[You hurdle through the pitch-black forest.] [Your body is incredibly light—it has never felt this light before.] [You have completely healed your body using Idle Transfiguration, leaving your past ailments and physical frailty far behind—yet at the exact same time, you perceive something actively devouring you from the depths of your soul.] [It is the Binding Vow of the Kamo Clan.
Judging by the sheer velocity at which it is eroding your soul, you likely have only a few weeks left to live.] [You spared the non-combatants, which means they will undoubtedly report this to headquarters shortly…
and then, a Special Grade Sorcerer will inevitably be dispatched to handle this matter.] [Will it be Satomi Gojo?
Yuki Tsukumo?
Or perhaps Yuna Okotsu, the newcomer Satomi Gojo scouted just this year?] [It does not matter who it is; it makes no difference to you who ends up taking your life.] [You merely feel a sense of absolute, unadulterated ecstasy—you want to run, you want to drink, you want to gorge on sweets, you want to howl at the top of your lungs, you want to reach out to someone who is kind to you, you want to be embraced—this chaotic storm of desires echoes continuously within your mind, as though dying for it would be nothing more than a trivial matter.] [You desperately want a tangible sense of being alive.] […Deep within the shadows, the woman with stitches across her forehead watches your retreating figure as you run, her lips curling into a smile.] […] [Yujina Itadori genuinely thought she had lost her mind.] [She had explicitly promised her classmates that they would hit the arcade together after school, yet…
right by the campus gates at dusk, she caught sight of someone who should have been logically impossible to see.] “M-Mom…?” [Was it a hallucination?
Or just an uncanny lookalike?] [As a junior high student who was merely a single step away from becoming a high schooler—and who fully considered herself to be grown up—Miss Itadori didn’t think she particularly missed her mother.
Of course she didn’t; her mother had vanished without a trace back when Yujina was still learning her ABCs, and the only family she had left to lean on was her grandmother.] [Yet, her legs moved entirely on their own as she dashed forward.] [Given her monstrous physical gifts, it should have been impossible for her to fail to catch up to a middle-aged woman…
but this woman’s foot speed was extraordinarily swift.
It was as if she actively knew Yujina was tailing her, deliberately moving at a pace that was just a tiny fraction faster than her own.] [Before she knew it, the surrounding buildings began to thin out.
Yujina realized she was leaving the Sendai municipal area entirely, heading deep into an abandoned, desolate wasteland.] [Scenarios from Spirited Away flashed through her mind…
No matter how she looked at it, there was something deeply unnatural about this “Mom.” If she blindly kept up the chase, she would likely find herself in grave danger.] [But…
was she seriously supposed to turn back right here?
Abandoning all care for the mother she hadn’t laid eyes on in over a decade?] [Just as the thought crossed her mind, she suddenly noticed that the “Mom” up ahead had vanished.] [Right at the exact location where “Mom” was supposed to be standing, resting upon the bare ground, were two bizarre, misshapen objects…
looking suspiciously like severed human fingers.] [What on earth was that?] [She stepped forward and scooped them up.
Before she even had a chance to properly examine them, the ground beneath her feet began to vibrate subtly…
and something massive reared its head out of the dark night.] [The entity possessed a colossal skull and torso, its body supported by six insect-like legs, while its blood-red eyes glowed with a faint, eerie light even in the pitch-black darkness.] [That specific countenance explicitly did not belong to any animal Yujina had ever learned about.] [——A Grade 2 Cursed Spirit makes its grand entrance.] [Miss Itadori took a tiny step backward, her mind descending into absolute chaos…
*No, no, no, no, this is way too bizarre!
Why did ‘Mom’ even appear in the first place?
What are these fingers supposed to be?*] [*And then there’s the monster right in front of me…
If ‘Mom’ genuinely wanted to harm me, wouldn’t it have been faster to just release this creature right next to me from the start?*] [She lowered her head, staring intently at the fingers in her hands, which were actively radiating an incredibly sinister aura.] “Hold on a second, System.
I’m completely lost here.
Aren’t your scene transitions a bit too fast?
Just a moment ago, you were broadcasting my storyline as Kamo Itachi the rogue ninja, so how did we suddenly teleport over to Yujina Itadori’s side?” Outside the simulation, Rui questioned in utter confusion.
[Replying to host: Detected that the distance between the host and Yujina Itadori has successfully narrowed to under one kilometer.
It has been evaluated that you are both within the exact same scene.] “Huh?
If my memory serves me correctly, the Kamo main estate is located in Kyoto, right?
While Itadori attends school all the way out in Sendai.
Those two places are separated by over five hundred kilometers!
Are you implying she literally traveled hundreds of kilometers on foot?!” [The host also covered a significant portion of the distance yourself.] *Amazing.
This track-and-field athlete is practically a monster.* [Critical juncture detected.
Transitioning into Immersive Simulation.] A flood of memories and scenery materialized.
If Rui had ever fantasized about a potential reunion, it was explicitly never supposed to look like the scene unfolding before him.
The moonlight was a sickeningly pale white.
Beneath that irritatingly bright moon, he witnessed a girl toss the Sukumi fingers high into the air, swallowing them down her throat in a single, fluid gulp.
The fingers of Sukumi—being such an incredibly famous Special Grade Cursed Object, he naturally recognized them.
It was said that they housed a curse that transcended Special Grade entirely; any ordinary human who consumed one would inevitably drop dead on the spot.
As for that girl…
Rui felt a profound wave of familiarity, yet he didn’t dare confirm the exact origin of this feeling blooming within him.
“Heh heh heh…
Ha ha ha ha ha…
What a magnificent moon!
It is far grander than the moon of the Heian era!
As expected, the moonlight is best savored thoroughly in the flesh!
Furthermore, this physical vessel possesses quite the imposing stature!
To think it stands at a whopping four feet and nine inches (163cm) tall!” ——Because she was already dead.
The only entity remaining here was the most malevolent Queen of Curses in recorded history: Ryomen Sukumi.
With a sharp *bang*, the Grade 2 Cursed Spirit that had been actively closing in on the girl just moments prior was instantly blown into a million pieces.
Rui felt his head spin violently, immediately followed by a thunderous explosion echoing in his ears as though something was flying directly at him…
No, nothing was flying toward him—he was the one currently flying through the midair!
The girl—or rather, the Queen of Curses—had closed the distance with terrifying velocity, driving a point-blank “Dismantle” directly into his torso.
The titanic output instantly sent Rui hurtling backward.
However, the destructive power of “Dismantle” depended heavily on the disparity in cursed energy reserves between the user and the target.
And if there was one thing Rui excelled at in this specific world-line, it was having a massive, absolutely astronomical pool of cursed energy!
Sukumi also realized that the physical feedback from her strike felt entirely wrong.
A wild, unbridled arc curved across her lips as she prepared to lung forward once more, intending to repeat the exact same trick…
but the moment she attempted to take a step, massive objects erupted violently from the soil, ensnaring her ankles.
“…Idle Transfiguration: Deep Forest Emergence.” [LanLi: Mokuton: Jukai Kōtan ref.] It was the very trees Rui had casually brushed past earlier.
Their roots had grown at a frantic pace beneath the earth, utilizing a brief time lag to perfectly disrupt Sukumi’s movements for a split second.
Simultaneously, Rui’s arm mutated and elongated into a stark white line, stretching like a bullet straight toward Sukumi’s forehead.
Sukumi understood instantly that she no longer possessed any window to prevent Idle Transfiguration from touching her head…
That was it.
Rui had won!
“Psych!” The Queen of Curses formed a hand sign with both hands, chanting her incantation.
“Domain Expansion: Malevolent Shrin—huh?” Once again, the domain was abruptly canceled.
From a distance, Rui watched as her eyes instantly regained their natural clarity, while the pitch-black markings carved across her face by Sukumi’s presence rapidly faded into nothingness.
*Was this accomplished by the original owner of this body?
How is that even possible?* *Sukumi…
was actively suppressed?
And by a completely ordinary human being?* Confronted by the elongated arm that had aggressively surged forward only to freeze right in front of her nose, the girl was visibly startled.
She gingerly patted his palm aside, peering around it to look at Rui standing further back: “I’m so sorry!
That jerk suddenly hijacked my body out of nowhere, and I kind of lost control for a second…” She suddenly narrowed her eyes, running over to Rui with quick, short bounds— Despite wearing a frilly skirt, the child was as remarkably agile as a wild feline.
With just a few swift movements, she bridged the distance of several dozen meters, leaning in incredibly close to scrutinize him thoroughly.
Rui took a full step back under her intense gaze…
This exact burst of raw energy was identical to the person who had recklessly broken into his hospital ward all those years ago.
Even to this day, Rui couldn’t say with absolute certainty whether she was truly that same person.
So many years had passed; her physical appearance had undoubtedly undergone a massive transformation, and her personality should have changed long ago.
Only young children were universally permitted to be that persistently clingy.
There simply weren’t that many unchanging things in this world, let alone such perfect coincidences.
For no discernable reason, he felt a faint wave of embarrassment wash over his wishful self.
“—Ah!” Immediately after, the girl pointed a finger straight at his face, letting out a sharp gasp of pure wonder.
“You!
Aren’t you that friend I made at the hospital when I was little?!
Um, what was your name again…
Ah, right, I never actually asked for your name back then…
Wow, what a crazy coincidence, seriously…
Wait, no!
Shouldn’t I be asking you what the heck is going on with these monsters and severed fingers first?!” The moonlight bathed down gently, reflecting brilliantly within her sparkling eyes.