Fushiguro Megumi.
Officially, he was only a Grade 2 sorcerer.
Even among the unusually talented students of Jujutsu High, his strength on paper could only be considered somewhere in the middle.
At that moment, Megumi was breathing heavily.
His trademark spiky black hair was covered in dirt and blood.
Yet on that usually reserved, cool expression of his, there wasn’t the slightest trace of fear.
Only cold resolve.
As a descendant of the Zenin Clan, one of the Three Great Families of the jujutsu world, Megumi had inherited the cursed technique that countless members of the clan coveted, along with the burden that came with it.
[Ten Shadows Technique.]
It was the same technique Atsushi, after arriving in this world with his system, had immediately judged to be a complete nightmare and rejected without hesitation.
Now, it was Megumi’s greatest trump card.
At its core, the Ten Shadows Technique allowed its user to form different hand signs and use shadows as a medium to summon ten powerful shikigami, each possessing different abilities.
However, aside from the pair of Divine Dogs granted to the user from the beginning, every other shikigami had to be defeated in a ritual before it could be controlled.
In other words, the sorcerer had to personally defeat each untamed shikigami before it could truly become theirs to command.
And at the very top of those ten shikigami stood something completely beyond the rest.
The final shikigami.
Eight-Handled Sword Divergent Sila Divine General Mahoraga.
It was never something an ordinary sorcerer was meant to control.
The power contained within its body far surpassed that of most Special Grade-level beings.
Because of that, throughout the entire recorded history of the Zenin Clan, not a single Ten Shadows user had ever successfully tamed Mahoraga.
But never having tamed Mahoraga…
Did not mean it had never been used.
The taming ritual was designed as a one-on-one trial, but technically, additional participants could be dragged into it.
The rules, however, were absolute.
If anyone else participated in the ritual, then even if Mahoraga was ultimately defeated through their combined efforts, the technique would not recognize it as a successful taming.
At first glance, that sounded completely pointless.
In reality, it was the only way an untamed Mahoraga could be weaponized.
If the Ten Shadows user forcibly included an enemy in the ritual, then the moment Mahoraga was summoned, its instinct would recognize every participant as someone attempting to subjugate it.
That meant the summoner would almost certainly die.
But the enemy trapped in the ritual would also be relentlessly hunted by Mahoraga until they were killed.
Mutual destruction.
A suicide attack.
A guaranteed loss for both sides.
Brutal as it was, that had historically been the only practical way for a Ten Shadows user to make use of Mahoraga without taming it.
Back in the devastated forest serving as the Goodwill Event grounds, the air reeked of blood and scorched wood.
Megumi’s black eyes were locked on the scene in front of him.
There lay a heap of twisted metal, still giving off thin trails of black smoke.
It was Mechamaru’s puppet.
It had sacrificed itself to protect Megumi, only to be pierced by the strange cursed buds released by the Special Grade cursed spirit Hanami and drained completely of cursed energy.
Farther away, among the ruined trees, Megumi’s precious classmates lay scattered across the ground.
Inumaki Toge had collapsed from the backlash of his technique.
Panda had been reduced to his core form.
Zenin Maki lay unconscious and covered in blood.
Every one of them had been taken out of the fight.
There was no way out.
No chance of survival.
Megumi’s heart pounded violently.
But the warmth in his eyes dropped to freezing.
Half a second.
He didn’t even hesitate for that long.
The moment he thought of his classmates, whatever fear of death remained inside him was replaced by an almost unnatural calm.
Megumi drew in a slow breath.
Then he raised both hands, already clenched into fists.
One fist above the other.
Held perfectly before his chest.
The forbidden starting posture.
The one used to summon Mahoraga.
“With this treasure…”
His cracked lips moved as the ancient invocation left them.
“I summon…”
The air itself seemed to vanish.
“Eight-Handled Sword…”
“Divergent Sila Divine General…”
“Mahoraga!”
The instant the true name was spoken, an enormous mass of shadow erupted outward like a tidal wave.
It swallowed the ruined forest around Megumi and Hanami, blotting out the light and plunging the entire area into darkness.
A horrifying howl echoed from the void.
Then, with Megumi as its absolute center, an enormous and intricate ritual formation emerged over the churning shadows.
Distorted silhouettes of countless shikigami intertwined within it, radiating pressure strong enough to make the soul recoil.
The instant the ritual took shape, something enormous rose behind Megumi.
At first, it resembled some grotesque object caught halfway between a dried corpse and a massive insect.
Then the last echo of the name “Mahoraga” faded.
Crack.
Crack.
The pale material wrapped tightly around the creature’s body began breaking apart like dead bark.
Fragments peeled away and scattered in every direction.
With a tearing sound, two strange structures resembling white wings burst free from the grotesque shell.
The pinnacle of the Ten Shadows Technique.
Its undisputed strongest shikigami.
Mahoraga had emerged.
Divine?
Grotesque?
Terrifying?
Majestic?
None of those words quite captured what now stood behind Megumi.
It was something that existed outside common sense.
Its enormous shadow completely swallowed Megumi’s figure, like some divine monster pulled straight from mythology.
Its skin was an unhealthy, corpse-like white.
Its face had no eyes at all.
Instead, wing-like structures extended from either side of its head, strangely reminiscent of angelic imagery.
Yet from the back of that almost sacred-looking head extended a long, unnatural appendage that looked grotesque and alien.
Bound tightly to its powerful right arm was a pale blade matching the color of its skin.
But the most striking and terrifying feature was the enormous wheel floating above its head.
It resembled a massive ship’s helm.
Even without turning, the pressure radiating from it alone caused the cursed energy in the surrounding space to ripple unnaturally.
“What…
is that?”
Not far away, Hanami, who until now had looked down on the students from a position of absolute superiority, showed genuine emotion for the first time.
Mahoraga’s appearance had completely exceeded the Special Grade curse’s expectations.
The instant Hanami saw it emerge, every survival instinct within the cursed spirit screamed the same message.
Death.
No analysis.
No hesitation.
Just one brutally simple conclusion.
Death.
The plan had changed.
Hanami needed to retreat immediately.
The instant that thought appeared, the Special Grade cursed spirit representing humanity’s fear of forests acted without hesitation.
Its cursed energy surged.
Countless thick, hardened roots erupted violently from underground and wrapped around Hanami’s entire body in layer after layer.
It intended to use its plant-based technique to retreat through the earth.
The four Disaster Curses allied with Kenjaku each represented a deep-rooted fear within humanity.
Setting aside Dagon, who was still developing as a Cursed Womb, Jogo represented humanity’s fear of volcanoes and possessed the greatest raw destructive power among them.
Mahito, born from humanity’s fear and hatred of other humans, possessed the innate technique with the greatest potential.
And Hanami, born from humanity’s fear of forests and nature, unquestionably possessed the strongest defenses among the four.
Its cursed energy also had properties fundamentally different from those of ordinary cursed spirits.
Even Kenjaku, the thousand-year-old schemer, had once remarked that Hanami felt less like a cursed spirit born from humanity’s fear of forests and more like a spirit born directly from the earth itself.
That unusual cursed energy allowed Hanami to pass through the layers of barriers established by Master Tengen around the Goodwill Event grounds almost as if it were invisible.
It was also how Hanami had been able to bring Atsushi inside without anyone noticing.
So could a Special Grade cursed spirit built almost entirely around durability, and further empowered by fighting in the middle of a forest, escape from Mahoraga?
No.
There was no prolonged struggle.
No earth-shattering clash.
The layers of thick roots Hanami had summoned for protection and escape might as well have been made of paper.
Mahoraga’s enormous pale hand tore through them instantly.
The roots shattered apart.
And in the next instant.
The pale blade attached to Mahoraga’s right arm, the Sword of Extermination, overflowing with pure positive energy and lethal to beings born from negative cursed energy.
Passed straight through Hanami’s supposedly indestructible chest.
(To be continued.)