Blue skies, white clouds.
Waves lapped against the beach, creating a peaceful scene. However, the atmosphere here was anything but peaceful.
Or rather, it was extremely tense.
"What the hell happened!?"
A heavy voice echoed across the beach, filled with the speaker's anger and dissatisfaction—but it did not belong to a human. Although it had a humanoid body and limbs, its kettle-shaped head made it obvious that it was not human.
It was a Curse Spirit.
"Why did Hanami die? What the hell happened!? Wasn't Gojo Satoru blocked outside the barrier?!"
Kettle Head roared furiously, while the other figures nearby remained silent.
After a moment, a man dressed in monk's robes smiled and clapped his hands.
"All right, everyone. There's no point in getting worked up here. What matters is that we successfully achieved our objective, so we can begin the next stage of our plan."
"What did you say?"
Hearing the monk-robed man, Kettle Head angrily widened its one eye and glared viciously at him.
"Are you saying that Hanami's death doesn't matter?"
"How could it not matter? At the very least, they accomplished their mission, didn't they? Without their diversion, we wouldn't have been able to obtain what we wanted."
That was right. Attacking the exchange event had merely been a smokescreen, its purpose being to draw the attention of Gojo Satoru and the others.
Their true objective had been to infiltrate the Curse Technique School and steal the Special Grade Curse Objects kept there—the fingers of Ryomen Sukuna and the Curse Embryo Nine Phases Diagram.
Originally, according to the plan, an attack team composed of two curse users and one Special Grade Curse Spirit should have been enough to put the enemy in a difficult position.
However, an unexpected development had occurred. Hanami, a Special Grade Curse