Kinoshita swallowed the final piece of food he had just brought out from the restaurant, crumpled the wrapper into a ball, and tossed it into the air.
The airborne paper ball was diced into confetti and vanished.
“Let me think…”
Kinoshita’s hands rapidly formed a series of signs: Bird, Snake, Toad, Rabbit, Elephant, Deer, Ox, Tiger.
Then, he raised his hands, clenching both into fists, placing one above the other.
“Furube, Yuraura——haha, just kidding.”
Kinoshita waved his hand.
To tame Mahoraga, he would need, at the very least, Nue, Piercing Ox, Round Deer, and Mourning Tiger all ready to go.
He genuinely wanted to use taijutsu to spar with Mahoraga, but that would inevitably result in terrifying consequences for the entirety of Sendai.
He didn’t really care about destroying the terrain, but hurting ordinary people wouldn’t be ideal.
Kinoshita’s conscience hadn’t stooped to Sukuna’s level yet.
After thinking carefully, Kinoshita roughly understood what he needed right now.
First, if he wanted to quickly accumulate 100 points to add a rule without harming civilians, he needed high-speed mobility and extremely high output.
In other words, he needed to tame Nue first.
Kinoshita took a deep breath, crossed his hands, and formed the hand sign for a bird.
As cursed energy poured in, black shadows erupted from the ground, weaving the silhouette of the shikigami in mid-air—
“This is way too big.”
The shadows intertwined and merged in the sky.
Even though Kinoshita was mentally prepared, seeing this colossal “Nue” that blotted out the sun still made his mouth twitch.
As the shadows peeled away to reveal the orange, avian beast, Kinoshita raised his hand and aimed at Nue’s neck.
“『Dog: Cleave』”
An invisible blade instantly slashed across Nue’s neck, but there was no tactile sensation of a successful cut.
In Kinoshita’s vision, only a trail of purple lightning remained in mid-air—Nue had vanished.
Kinoshita’s gaze rapidly swept the sky overhead, quickly locking onto Nue, which had appeared a thousand meters high and was in a rapid free fall.
“『Dog: Cleave』”
He raised his hand and formed a sign.
The slash once again cut the lightning trail in two, but Nue vanished again.
Kinoshita’s expression darkened.
Kinoshita’s nose twitched slightly; a dangerous presence had appeared right beneath his feet.
He looked up into the distance.
Stuffed with an excessive amount of cursed energy, Nue spread its wings, casting a massive shadow that blanketed numerous buildings.
“Was the Ten Shadows Technique always this ridiculously broken?”
The strength of a summoned shikigami is directly proportional to the amount of cursed energy poured into it; this was an ironclad rule for shikigami users.
Applied to the Ten Shadows, it was like how Megumi Fushiguro could only summon a Nue about the size of two grown men, while Sukuna could summon one as gigantic as a skyscraper.
However, aside from Sukuna, who was forced by circumstances—there probably wasn’t anyone else who tried to tame shikigami after becoming the strongest.
And now, he had to add himself to the list of people “forced by circumstances”.
Fortunately, however, the newly summoned Nue for this subjugation ritual didn’t employ the tactical maneuvers of his familiar bizarre bird.
But this made him ponder.
So, would the Nue he tamed this time still be the Nue he was familiar with?
Watching Nue charge toward him while wreathed in lightning, Kinoshita stopped thinking and raised his hand.
“『Dog: Dismantle』”
The charging Nue was instantly diced into tens of thousands of slender strips in mid-air, as if it had slammed into an impossibly taut fishing net.
Then, before those strips could even hit the ground, they crumbled into a sky full of dust.
Subjugation complete.
Well then.
Kinoshita formed the bird sign once more, but this time he only poured in a fraction of his cursed energy.
Black shadows intertwined and merged in the air, finally revealing an owl-sized Nue.
Nue flapped its wings, circled around Kinoshita once, and finally landed on his shoulder.
It pressed against Kinoshita’s ear like a parrot and opened its beak.
“You’re gay.”
“Oh you little…!”
Kinoshita grabbed Nue by the scruff of its neck, and Nue immediately put on an expression like it was being strangled to death.
Despite being immediately trolled by his own shikigami right off the bat, Kinoshita couldn’t help but sigh in relief.
It seemed his shikigami retained their original consciousness, and had even gained modern knowledge through his incarnated vessel.
It was definitely a step up from a Nue from ancient times screaming into his ear that he had a “taste for the severed sleeve.”
Kinoshita released his grip on Nue.
The bird fluttered its wings and settled back onto his shoulder.
“Nue, were you conscious during the taming ritual just now?”
“You bastard, couldn’t you have just asked?! You just go straight for my head?!”
Nue’s shrill voice sounded just like a squawking parrot—which made sense, since it currently looked quite like one.
“So, were you?”
“No.”
Kinoshita nodded.
Indeed, if Nue had retained even partial control over its body, it never would have used such a suicidal ramming tactic.
“You were pretty stupid just now. Just like when you first started.”
“Gah gah gah gah!”
To avoid listening to Nue curse him out, Kinoshita hooked a finger and altered the parrot-like vocal organ inside Nue, turning its voice back into normal bird sounds.
After that, Nue slumped on Kinoshita’s shoulder as if it had lost its reason to live, viciously elbowing his shoulder with its beak.
A moment later, Nue suddenly perked up.
“Gah!”
Sensing the distinct shift in cursed energy in the air, Kinoshita hooked his finger again, returning Nue’s vocal cords.
“Smells like cursed spirits. Bring out the Deer.”
“Haven’t tamed the Deer yet.”
“Isn’t taming the Deer just a flick of the wrist for you right now?”
“There’s a cooldown.”
The Ten Shadows’ taming ritual had a mandatory built-in cooldown of approximately 22 hours.
He had already spent his “free turn” on taming Nue for high-speed mobility and its acute perception of surrounding cursed energy fluctuations.
And there were no “paid turns,” obviously.
“You never said that before!”
“Well, I didn’t have the strength to tame all my shikigami in a single day back then, you stupid bird.”
Kinoshita tilted his head up and sniffed the strange scent in the air.
It was the smell of clumps of cursed spirits bundled tightly together.
Is it Kenjaku?
Kinoshita placed his hand over Nue, turning its body back into shadows and absorbing it.
In its place, crackling lightning began dancing around Kinoshita.
Fwip!
In a mere instant, Kinoshita appeared at the location of the bizarre cursed energy fluctuation within the colony.
The air was thick with the stench of cursed spirits.
Standing beneath the black walls of the barrier, Kinoshita spotted a dark-haired youth wearing a kasaya.
Ah, just as I thought.
“Good afternoon, Kenjaku.”
“You haven’t changed a bit, Zen’in Kinoshita.”
Kenjaku turned around with a smile, his eyes landing on Kinoshita, who was currently wreathed in lightning.
“Ah… could you not use that surname to disgust me?”
“Alright, alright—my apologies, Oh Strongest of the Ten Shadows.”
“You’re totally going to call me by that surname next time too, aren’t you?”
Hearing the obvious hostility in Kinoshita’s tone, Kenjaku smiled and shook his head.
“Why would I do that? I still need your help, after all.”
“So, what brings you here today?”
Kenjaku looked at Kinoshita, then gave a helpless wave of his hand, tossing out a black sphere of cursed spirits.
“There’s really nothing I can do against that bizarre perception of yours.”
The sphere landed on the ground, and the dormant Special Grade Cursed Spirit, Kurourushi, emerged from the dissolving mass.
“This is the cursed spirit I brought to balance out the three powerful sorcerers who have awakened here. You know this too, right? If I let the strongest among them massacre everyone as they please, the Culling Game can’t continue indefinitely. And what I want is a permanent Culling Game.”
“Even if it’s written in the rules, that’s still a lie, Kenjaku.”
Even though he hadn’t seen the ending of the manga, based on what he had read and his brief interactions with Kenjaku in the past, Kinoshita understood deeply that when it came to untrustworthiness, the person standing before him was absolutely the worst among all sorcerers.
“At the very least, I need to keep the Culling Game running for these nineteen days. So, Kinoshita.”
Kenjaku pulled a bizarre-looking cursed tool from behind his back.
It lacked any offensive components; it was merely a handle that fit in the palm of a hand, much like a dog whistle.
“I will return this to you. In exchange, please do not completely kill Kurourushi.”
The golden cursed tool was tossed toward Kinoshita, landing in a pool of shadows that had risen before him.
“Though this was originally mine anyway… Ha. Deal.”
Sensing that the Binding Vow was established, Kenjaku immediately exited the barrier, not staying a second longer.
Kinoshita observed Kurourushi, formulating a plan on how to deal with the cursed spirit before him.