Taming the Nue

Xuan swallowed the last of the food he had just taken from the restaurant, crumpled the wrapper into a ball, and tossed it into the air. The airborne paper ball was sliced into scraps and vanished.

Let me think...

Xuan rapidly formed several hand signs: bird, snake, frog, rabbit, elephant, deer, ox, tiger.

Then he raised his hands, clenched both fists, one above the other.

"Furube, Yurayura—haha, just kidding."

Xuan shook his hand. To tame Mahoraga, he would at least need Nue, Piercing Ox, Round Deer, and Tiger Funeral all in place.

He really wanted to spar with Mahoraga in hand-to-hand combat, but that would inevitably bring terrifying consequences to all of Sendai.

Destroying the terrain was one thing, but hurting ordinary people would not be good.

Xuan's conscience had not yet fallen to Sukuna's level.

After thinking it through carefully, Xuan more or less understood what he needed now.

First, if he wanted to quickly earn 100 points to add a rule without harming civilians, he needed high-speed mobility and overwhelming firepower.

In other words, he needed to tame Nue first.

Xuan took a deep breath, crossed his hands, and formed the bird hand sign. As cursed energy poured in, a black shadow surged up from the floor, forming the outline of a shikigami in midair—

"This thing is way too big."

The shadows intertwined and fused in the air. Though Xuan had been prepared, the "Nue" that emerged before him, blotting out the sky, still made the corner of his mouth twitch. As the shadow peeled away from the orange-yellow bird beast, Xuan raised a hand and aimed at Nue's neck.

"Dog: Release."

A transparent blade swept across Nue's neck in an instant, but there was no sensation of a successful cut. In Xuan's vision, only a trail of purple lightning remained in midair—Nue had vanished.

Xuan's gaze swept through the sky, quickly locking onto Nue a thousand meters overhead as it plummeted at high speed.

"Dog: Release."

He raised his hand and formed the sign. Release once again cut the lightning trail in two, but Nue vanished again, and Xuan's expression darkened.

Xuan's nose twitched slightly. A dangerous presence appeared beneath his feet.

He raised his head and looked into the distance. Nue, injected with an excessive amount of cursed energy, spread its wings, casting countless buildings beneath their shadow.

"So the Ten Shadows was this fucked-up of a technique?"

The more cursed energy one had, the stronger the shikigami one could summon. That was the iron rule for shikigami-type sorcerers. With the Ten Shadows, Megumi Fushiguro could summon a Nue no larger than two people, while Sukuna could summon one nearly as huge as a skyscraper.

Still, aside from Sukuna, who had been forced into it—probably no one would start taming shikigami only after becoming the strongest.

Now, there was one more person forced into that position: himself.

Fortunately, the Nue he was taming again did not have the tactics of his own strange giant bird. Yet that made him wonder.

The Divine Dog that did not need to be tamed was the Divine Dog from before. Then after being tamed again, would Nue still be the Nue he knew?

Watching Nue charge at him wrapped in lightning, Xuan stopped thinking and raised his hand.

"Dog: Release."

The charging Nue turned into tens of thousands of long strips in midair, as though it had crashed into a taut fishing net. Before those strips could fall to the ground, they had already shattered into dust that filled the sky.

The taming was complete.

Now then.

Xuan formed the bird hand sign again, but this time he poured in only a small amount of cursed energy. The black shadows intertwined and fused in midair, finally revealing a Nue the size of an owl.

Nue flapped around Xuan once, then landed on his shoulder. Like a parrot, it pressed close to Xuan's ear and opened its beak.

"You're gay."

"Ow, damn!"

Xuan grabbed Nue by the back of its neck. Nue immediately put on an expression like it was about to be strangled to death. Though his own shikigami had pulled one over on him right away, Xuan could not help but breathe a sigh of relief.

It seemed the shikigami had retained their original consciousness, and had even gained modern knowledge from the body he had incarnated in.

That was already much better than an ancient-era Nue whispering in his ear that he had a taste for men.

Xuan released Nue's neck. Nue fluttered its wings and settled on Xuan's shoulder.

"Nue, were you conscious during that taming ritual just now?"

"Fuck you, couldn't you at least ask first? You came right at me trying to chop my damn head off!"

Nue's shrill voice sounded like a noisy parrot—though it did look quite like one now.

"So you were conscious?"

"No."

Xuan nodded. Right. If Nue had retained even partial control over its body, it never would have used such a suicidal charging tactic.

"You were pretty dumb just now, just like when you started out."

"Caw caw caw caw!"

To avoid listening to Nue curse up a storm, Gen flicked a hand and reverted the parrot-like vocal organ inside Nue's body to that of an ordinary bird.

Then, as if it had lost all meaning in life, Nue went limp on Gen's shoulder and viciously elbowed his shoulder with its beak.

After a while, Nue suddenly straightened up.

"Caw!"

Sensing the obvious shift in cursed energy in the air, Gen flicked his hand and returned Nue's vocal organ.

"There's a cursed spirit smell. Bring out the deer."

"The deer hasn't been tamed yet."

"Isn't taming the deer just a matter of raising your hand now?"

"There's a cooldown."

The Ten Shadows' taming process had a mandatory built-in cooldown of roughly twenty-two hours. After taming one shikigami, he could not immediately begin taming the next.

For Nue, which allowed high-speed movement and could keenly sense changes in the surrounding cursed energy, Gen had already used up one free taming attempt.

Of course, he did not have any paid attempts either.

"You never told me that!"

"I didn't have the strength to tame all the shikigami in a single day before, dumb bird."

Gen lifted his head and sniffed at the strange scent in the air.

It was the smell of cursed spirits bundled together in clumps.

Was it Kenjaku?

Gen placed a hand over Nue. Nue's body turned into a shadow and was withdrawn, while crackling electricity began to flash at Gen's side.

Whoosh!

In an instant, Gen appeared at the spot within the barrier where the cursed energy was fluctuating strangely. The air reeked of cursed spirits, and beneath the towering black walls of the barrier, Gen saw a black-haired young man dressed in robes.

Ah, just as expected.

"Good afternoon, Kenjaku."

"You haven't changed, Zenin Gen."

Kenjaku turned with a smile, looking at Gen, who was surrounded by crackling lightning.

"Ah... could you not disgust me by using that surname?"

"Fine, fine—what is it? I was wrong, mighty strongest Ten Shadows."

"You're going to call me by that surname again next time, aren't you?"

Hearing the obvious hostility in Gen's voice, Kenjaku smiled and shook his head.

"How could I? I still need your help."

"Then what exactly are you doing here?"

Kenjaku looked at Gen and helplessly waved a hand, tossing out a black mass of cursed spirits.

"There really is nothing I can do about your peculiar senses."

The mass of cursed spirits landed on the ground. The dormant special-grade cursed spirit, Kurourushi, appeared atop the melting lump.

"This is the cursed spirit I intend to use to keep the three powerful sorcerers awakened here in check. You know it too, don't you? If the strongest among them is allowed to slaughter freely, the Culling Game cannot continue indefinitely. And what I want is a permanent Culling Game."

"Even though it's written in the rules, that's a lie too, isn't it, Kenjaku?"

Though he had not read the later parts of the manga, based on what he had seen in it and his brief past interactions with Kenjaku, Gen understood deeply that, when it came to being untrustworthy, the man before him was absolutely the most untrustworthy sorcerer of all.

"At the very least, I want the Culling Game to continue as much as possible over these nineteen days. So, Gen."

Kenjaku drew a strangely shaped cursed tool from behind his back. It had no offensive part whatsoever, only a handle that could be gripped in the palm, like a dog whistle.

"I'll return this to you. In exchange, please do not kill Kurourushi completely."

The golden cursed tool was tossed toward Gen and fell into the shadow pool rising before him.

"Though it was mine to begin with. Heh... but deal."

Sensing that the binding vow had been formed, Kenjaku immediately left the barrier without lingering for even a second.

Gen, meanwhile, examined Kurourushi before him and thought of a way to deal with the cursed spirit.