Perhaps it was because Kinoshita’s reputation as a god of death had already echoed throughout the Sendai Colony, or perhaps it was simply because no other players had stumbled into this area, but Kinoshita managed to get a peaceful, sound sleep on a soft bed.
BOOM!
“SUKUNA!!!”
BOOM!!
As the clash of open-barrier domains concluded, Kinoshita and Sukuna engaged in brutal close-quarters combat.
Slashes, lightning, and torrents of water—a relentless exchange of techniques crossed between the two, until finally—
BOOM!!!!!
Amidst a deafening, vibrating crash, Kinoshita snapped his eyes open.
“So damn loud!!!”
Kinoshita, who had just been in the middle of a heated battle with Sukuna in his dream, shot up from the bed.
The muffled, heavy footsteps outside clearly didn’t belong to any normal biological creature.
As Kinoshita sat up, the distinct scent of a shikigami—a smell carrying a hint of a human aura masked by the stench of blood—flooded his nasal passages.
Gritting his teeth, Kinoshita recalled the resting Nue and Divine Dogs back into his shadows.
He pushed open the door and spread his wings.
With a flash of lightning, Kinoshita was already several thousand meters in the air, looking down.
Nue’s cursed technique was incredibly straightforward: body reinforcement, enhanced vision, and lightning manipulation.
Empowered by Nue’s technique, Kinoshita’s gaze swept across the ground.
Like an ultra-high-precision drone, he quickly spotted two massive shikigami circling the gymnasium right next to where he had been resting.
The shikigami were nearly a dozen stories tall, but more than their towering stature, Kinoshita was focused on their movements.
And more importantly, the aftermath of those movements: a condensation of cursed energy resembling a domain barrier, formed along the trajectory of the shikigami’s path.
Staring intently toward the gymnasium, Kinoshita locked onto an area where the cursed energy was completely abnormal.
An unlucky bird flew too close to the shikigami’s trajectory and was instantly shredded, as if it had flown straight into a meat grinder, leaving behind only scattered feathers and a burst of blood.
Through sheer deduction, Kinoshita could already guess what this guy’s technique was.
A technique that deployed an innate domain using the trajectory of the shikigami’s movements.
Was this guy in Sendai?
Don’t remember him.
Kinoshita lowered his head in thought.
The Sendai Four should have all been gathered by now: Yuta Okkotsu, Takako Uro, Ryu Ishigori, and Kurourushi.
Scouring his memories for information, Kinoshita dug out the name of the shikigami user from the depths of his mind.
Dhruv Lakdawalla.
Score: 91 points.
This guy…
this was his second time incarnating, right?
For a guy with zero frontline combat capability to choose the body of an old man…
it was hard not to call it a sick joke on the author’s part.
Maybe it was Kenjaku’s idea?
Kinoshita yawned, then flashed into the gymnasium like a startling thunderbolt.
Purple lightning danced before the veteran sorcerer who had once suppressed the Japanese archipelago.
The old man raised his hand toward Kinoshita.
“…The Strongest of the Muromachi.”
“Oh? You know me?”
“I have long admired your name.”
Kinoshita unclipped the handle from his waist and gripped it in his palm.
Surging cursed energy formed shadows at both ends, extending outward to form a short blade.
“You know this too? Seems you understand me quite deeply, don’t you?”
“Of course… I heard of your reputation during my first incarnation. It’s a shame I never got to meet you in person before hearing the news of your death from Kenjaku.”
Kinoshita toyed with his cursed tool.
The aura erupting from the old man before him wasn’t hostile cursed energy, but rather an aura of someone begging for mercy.
“I do not know how I have angered you, young man. I was merely following my Binding Vow, maintaining the balance Kenjaku required in this Sendai Colony filled with powerful individuals.”
Kinoshita looked up, evaluating the man in front of him.
A score of 91 points meant this person didn’t just kill sorcerers.
But considering the nature of his technique, there really was no way to prevent ordinary people from accidentally walking into his invisible barrier.
“Old man.”
“My name is Dhruv.”
“Old Geezer Dhruv.”
“Then I suppose you can just call me ‘old man’…”
“Why did you choose to incarnate into a body as withered as dead wood?”
“Did you not make a Binding Vow with Kenjaku?”
“Regrettably, I do have a Binding Vow with Kenjaku.”
Dhruv wore an expression that said ‘of course you do.’ His unnervingly abnormal eyes refocused, looking straight at Kinoshita.
“My Binding Vow with Kenjaku was that I had to maintain this withered body in order to earn a third incarnation.”
“So basically, you just have to start all over again. Boring.”
Kinoshita sat down next to Dhruv.
Dhruv unclasped his hands, canceling his hand sign, and looked at Kinoshita.
“So… how did I anger you?”
“In the neighboring country across the ocean, there’s a good saying: ‘You don’t hit a smiling person.’ Originally, I wanted to—do this—”
Kinoshita swung the short blade in his hand.
With a surge of cursed energy, a fierce slash shot out, carving a long, straight gouge into the far side of the gymnasium.
“But your attitude isn’t bad… so I can spare your life for now.”
“What is the price?”
“Don’t hurt ordinary people.”
“…I will try my best.”
“What I mean is, before I establish a new rule to kick ordinary people out of the colony, do not use your shikigami to expand your domain.”
“My technique… requires a massive amount of startup time.”
Dhruv looked troubled and fell silent for a moment.
“I require compensation.”
“What kind of compensation?”
Kinoshita was actually relieved; having room to negotiate was better than none at all.
Originally, Yuta Okkotsu had killed this old man cleanly and decisively precisely because of his indiscriminate point-farming.
If that behavior could be curbed, keeping him as a member of the Sendai Colony might even trigger an even more spectacular war.
I’ll just use Toad to spectate when the time comes.
Kinoshita didn’t think the old man before him would make any unreasonable demands.
It wasn’t that Kinoshita could grant anything, but rather—the old man wouldn’t dare ask.
Seeing the enigmatic smile on Kinoshita’s face, Dhruv raised his hand.
“I have heard of your technique. When I incarnated, the faction I joined described your technique as that of a deity. A resilient body, extraordinary vitality, immunity to certain attacks, the Piercing Blood of the Kamo clan, slashing abilities akin to Sukuna—the strongest of the Heian era—the power of lightning and flight, and even technique control, all readily available…”
Dhruv opened his hand.
“I want to know… what exactly is your cursed technique? Is it mimicry, or are you a shikigami user?”
As a fellow shikigami user, Dhruv could naturally use his shikigami’s techniques by expending more cursed energy.
However, in his current withered state, he possessed absolutely no close-quarters combat capability.
“What the hell, that’s all you wanted?”
“Yes, after all… I have my curiosities as well. Please rest assured, even if I learn your technique, I could absolutely never defeat you.”
A look of “fanaticism” appeared on Dhruv’s face, while Kinoshita simply chuckled.
“During the Muromachi period, there was an extermination squad of three hundred sorcerers sent after me… And everyone who forced me to get serious and thus learned what my technique was… not a single one survived, right?”
“Was that the battle where the Six Eyes of the Gojo clan fell during the Muromachi period?”
“What the hell, you know this perfectly well, don’t you? You’re like an obsessive fanboy.”
“Led by the Six Eyes of that generation, you, who were accused of killing the Star Plasma Vessel, were hunted down by the Kamo clan, the Zen’in clan, the Gojo clan, and a massive horde of sorcerers blinded by the bounty.”
Through Dhruv’s retelling, Kinoshita felt as if he were looking back at the past once more.
The Six Eyes of that generation didn’t possess the Limitless technique, but rather a manipulation-type technique.
How should he put it…
it was similar to the technique of the strongest fighter of the Q organization who made a brief appearance during the Hidden Inventory arc.
With the aid of the Six Eyes, he was able to display applications similar to the Limitless.
And it was in that very battle that Kinoshita felt a passion for combat he hadn’t experienced in a long time.
Of course, the vast majority of the sorcerers participating in the hunt weren’t even speed bumps to Kinoshita.
A single “Dismantle” from Totality filtered out the massive horde of sorcerers who couldn’t mobilize their cursed energy for defense in time, as well as the clan scions who simply couldn’t react.
After filtering out that first wave, the remaining sorcerers rapidly fled the stage, terrified by Kinoshita’s horrifying strength.
It was a total rout.
Under the combined assault of the heads of the Kamo and Gojo clans, Kinoshita found himself in a tight spot for the very first time.
The pseudo-Limitless technique was just too troublesome; even though it was merely a similar technique, Kinoshita had no immediate countermeasure.
And in that predicament, for the first time in front of an opponent, Kinoshita revealed Mahoraga’s wheel.
And then.
The Gojo and Kamo clan heads present recognized the technique of the man before them, but they never got the chance to tell anyone else.
And the Zen’in clan head, who had fallen much earlier, didn’t even get to witness the spectacle.
Their fates were easily imaginable.
With six highly offensive shikigami deployed simultaneously, and without any personal usage restrictions placed on Kinoshita himself, it took a mere three minutes for the remaining thirty sorcerers—all of Grade 1 caliber or higher—to be completely wiped out.
As for who actually killed the Star Plasma Vessel?
That wasn’t important, and Kinoshita had no way of knowing anyway.
It was just that after that battle, Kinoshita lost his desire to fight more and more.
The strongest man in the world sat lonely in the mountains, waiting for that person named “Kenjaku.”
The next time any news came out, it was the announcement released by the Kenjaku of that era: the Strongest had committed suicide.
No one suspected that he had been murdered.
In the minds of the jujutsu society at the time, the only person capable of killing him was the King of Curses himself—Sukuna.
Some even believed that not even Sukuna could kill him.
“In the end, it was discovered that the Star Plasma Vessel was murdered by the head of the Zen’in clan, simply because he harbored a grudge against the head of the Gojo clan.”
Just as he finished reminiscing, Kinoshita heard Dhruv’s voice beside his ear.
“Just as I thought. The rotting, foolish Zen’in clan… no, rather, all three great families are exactly the same. Just a bunch of foolish, rotting old men huddling together for warmth.”
“Haha… It is exactly as you say. Those foolish old men. In the end, they still have to rely on Kenjaku incarnating me to handle their so-called wars… Speaking of which, your cursed technique is?”
Dhruv was an excellent straight man, and Kinoshita genuinely heard the “respect” for the strong in his words.
There was no harm in telling the man in front of him, so…
“It feels pretty good to have someone care about me. Listen closely, my cursed technique is—”
—The Ten Shadows Technique.