People on Entirely Different Wavelengths Each Filling in the Blanks

Cursed Spirits?

It seemed like a setting he had never heard of. Had he come across any information related to this recently?

Gu Mo thought it over seriously, but still had no clue. He had not really kept up with anime or TV dramas for ages, and the games he had played lately were mostly uplifting, humanistic stories about love and peace, like "Stellaris" and "Crusader Kings"...

In short, he had not encountered this sort of information lately, so it was hard to understand why such a setting had suddenly popped up.

As his thoughts turned, Fushiguro Megumi, who was running ahead, had already darted into the school building. He kept a sliver of his attention on the suspicious guy behind him without lowering his guard, while following his Cursed Energy senses to swiftly pinpoint the spot inside the building with the strongest cursed presence and most intense negative fluctuations.

That was right. As the core of this vortex of curses, it had to be where the Special Grade Cursed Object was!

But just as Fushiguro Megumi was about to charge upstairs in one go, he noticed that the suspicious person behind him had suddenly slowed down and stopped outside the entrance.

His heart tightened. Without thinking, he slammed on the brakes, turned around, and shouted, "What are you doing?! Get over here!"

"..."

"..."

"Fine, fine..."

Gu Mo shook his head, withdrew his gaze from that direction, said nothing more, and followed the young man ahead.

He had been absentmindedly letting his thoughts wander while looking around, and his gaze had happened to sweep over there. It was pitch-black in the night, and he could not make anything out, yet a glaringly obvious marker had appeared in his vision—

"??? (100%)"

Gu Mo could not tell whether it was another monster his mind had imagined. Instinctively, he wanted to get a better look, but he had barely slowed down before the Fushiguro guy ahead noticed and decisively stopped him.

Yeah, this really did not seem like the time for that—

What would seeing it clearly accomplish, anyway? It would only disgust him. With that thought, Gu Mo decisively dismissed his curiosity, looked away, and stopped paying attention. After hesitating briefly, he still followed the young man into the building.

The reason he had hesitated was because he remembered something: he had just decided to be a normal person. Breaking into a school at night now did not seem very appropriate, did it?

If someone found them, there would be no way to explain it.

After struggling with it for only a moment, then seriously recalling the disgusting forms of those monsters he had imagined, Gu Mo made his choice without hesitation... Too disgusting. Staying behind to face those things was clearly even more unbearable.

"This guy... is suspicious."

At the same time, on a slope somewhere outside the school, a figure stood atop a tree under cover of darkness, taking in everything inside and outside the campus. He was at least six foot three, with striking white hair, and even at night, he wore a black blindfold.

After observing for a moment, he lightly raised an eyebrow. From afar, he had briefly met the gaze of the passerby following his student.

That was right. Even from so far away, the other man had looked directly toward him. That calm, casual gaze had unmistakably locked onto his position... It had not been accidental. He had truly discovered his presence.

"Heh. Interesting. Even I misjudged him..."

The man immediately looked intrigued. What kind of monster was this, to have the leisure to play a game of pretending to be weak with a junior? His student was good, and his potential was worth looking forward to, but he was not yet capable of standing on his own. Such a monster should not have taken an interest in him, should it?

Well, then it was probably after the Special Grade Cursed Object.

That was the reasonable conclusion he drew. At the same time, he frowned. He had originally thought this mission would be nothing much. Barring any surprises, his student could handle it alone, leaving him free to slack off and maybe grab a late-night snack.

But now, it seemed that would not do.

It was not as though the man had misunderstood for no reason—his strength went without saying. On top of that, he had been born with the Six Eyes, allowing him to see through another person's techniques and directly track or predict Cursed Energy trails. As for distinguishing whether a target was a Jujutsu Sorcerer, that was something he could do with effortless ease.

Yet this time, he had unusually misjudged someone...

No matter how he looked at the man across from him, he was just an utterly ordinary passerby. There was not the slightest trace of cursed techniques on him, and he looked like a normal human who did not even possess Cursed Energy... Not just Fushiguro Megumi, a student who had only recently started out and lacked experience—even he himself had thought so just moments ago.

Yet this very "ordinary person" had spotted him at a glance from far away, where he had been secretly observing outside the school.

To put it simply, he had failed to notice the other man, while the other man had noticed him... Whether or not carelessness had played a part, it at least proved that the person opposite him was anything but simple. He was not what he appeared to be, but some mysterious powerhouse.

Hmm, it was hard to say whether he was even human.

Meanwhile.

Gu Mo had no idea that merely because he had seen a Health Bar from afar, he had suddenly acquired a whole list of suspicious traits and had even been stripped of his human status. Otherwise, he would have found it utterly ridiculous. Who casually revoked someone else's humanity like that?

Right now, all his attention was focused on the dangerous battle before him. The youth named Fushiguro Megumi had led him straight toward their destination... Uh, which floor was this again? The third or fourth?

He could not tell. He had just charged up after him with his head down and had not counted.

Anyway, that was not important. What mattered was that the Fushiguro guy had sprinted up here and found the scene with remarkable precision.

A terrifying curse erupted. The vortex of Cursed Energy nearly swallowed the entire school building, and its center was on this floor. With the seal on the Special Grade Cursed Object, "Sukuna's Finger," broken, its scent was as pungent as fresh blood dispersing through seawater, naturally drawing sharks from the surrounding sea toward it.

"Damn it!... Was I still too late?"

Fushiguro Megumi clenched his fists tightly and stared at the scene ahead.

In the dim corridor before them, dense masses of flesh squirmed while disgusting tentacles writhed and crushed against one another. They were several different malformed monsters... No, Cursed Spirits?

In any case, multiple monsters were packed into this stretch of hallway, their huge, swollen, disgusting bodies tangled together. The floor was littered with severed limbs—

It was an exceptionally bloody scene, with flesh flying everywhere. It seemed the monsters had already fought and slaughtered one another, inflicting grievous wounds upon each other before arriving at this deadlock.

At that moment, they seemed to be merging into some new composite creature. Their many overinflated, enormous bodies kept pressing together in the corridor, weaving into a disgusting and hideous ball of flesh... The hallway had originally been fairly spacious, but now there was not even room to stand.

At the center of that writhing ball of flesh was the faint outline of a girl. She seemed to have lost consciousness. Whether she had been hurt or simply frightened unconscious by the overwhelming mental shock was impossible to tell.

Amid the compression of flesh, the writhing of ash-gray hands, and the slimy tentacles, the girl's body was dragged into the mass, gradually being swallowed.

"This..."

Gu Mo's eye twitched furiously. He really did not want to admit it, but this scene felt strangely familiar... Was this really something he could watch for free? Could this be the information and setting he remembered?

What the hell!

He had spent his entire life doing good deeds and building virtue. He had never watched this kind of thing, okay?!

"Damn it! They want to devour the person and the cursed object together!"

Fushiguro Megumi clenched his fists, frantic with worry. Yet in his agitation, he could not make a decisive choice. His experience was still too shallow for him to act with ruthless decisiveness at a moment like this.

He was caught between a rock and a hard place. He wanted to attack, but feared accidentally harming the unconscious girl. Yet reason told him that if he did nothing, not only would he fail to save the innocent bystander, but he would also have to watch helplessly as these things swallowed the Special Grade Cursed Object, gained tremendously powerful Cursed Energy, and became even harder to deal with.

—"Crash!!"

Fortunately, this dilemma did not last long. Or rather, it was especially brief. In a single instant, the window beside the corridor suddenly shattered, and a nimble figure crashed in with fearless momentum. No one knew how he had climbed up to this floor.

"Itadori?!" Fushiguro Megumi was startled. Hadn't he told him to wait outside? Why had he rushed in too?

But the effect was excellent. Even he had not anticipated it, so the Cursed Spirits, who regarded him as the main threat and had focused all their attention on him, naturally had even less chance of reacting.

With both sides caught off guard...

A selfless hero made an abrupt entrance...

He charged fiercely and brutally straight into the monsters...

The sudden figure did not use any cursed techniques. He simply relied on bull-like physical strength, punching and kicking as he forcibly tore apart the tangled monsters or knocked them back some distance. Then, seizing the brief opening, he grabbed the girl's arm and narrowly rushed out before the monsters could react!

The entire process was terrifyingly dangerous and thrilling from start to finish. One misstep, and another person would have been dragged in...

Even Fushiguro Megumi unconsciously held his breath. Only when he saw the boy who had charged in safely rescue the girl and leave the danger zone did he finally let out a long breath.

At the same time, he could not help glancing at the other person beside him—

That man looked completely distracted. Standing beside him, he paid no attention to the scene of monsters dancing wildly around them. His eyes were still unconsciously fixed on the shattered window, his gaze unfocused. No matter how he looked at it, he seemed to be spacing out...

Fushiguro Megumi immediately clenched his fists. Who was he trying to fool? This absolutely could not be the behavior of an ordinary person!

What ordinary person would not be scared out of their wits in a situation like this, turning pale and trembling so badly their legs nearly gave out? Someone acting this distracted and casual, even too lazy to spare a glance at the dangerous, explosive scene that should have drawn the most attention—there was no way to explain that as normal!

Gu Mo had no idea that Fushiguro Megumi was criticizing him internally, or that the other's confusion and anxiety about him were steadily growing stronger.

He merely rested a hand against his chin, tilted his head, and stared thoughtfully at the shattered window on the side of the corridor.

—"It should... be fake, right?"

—"That window definitely isn't actually broken, right? It has to be like that, right!"

That was right. At such a tense, exciting, and perilous moment, the thoughts circling through his mind were this random and irrelevant. What concerned him was the broken window.

After all, he had just been thinking that they should not make too much of a disturbance. This was really hard for him to accept.

Like a flash of lightning, or perhaps a swift blade cutting through the air, arcs of light streaked through the air with several sharp swishes. After flashing, they left fleeting afterimages on the retina. Accompanied by tearing sounds, the Cursed Spirits in the hallway were ripped into pieces without the slightest ability to resist!

Two Spirit Dogs, one black and one white, pounced viciously upon them, tearing them apart and swallowing them whole.

Flesh flew everywhere, making for an exceptionally bloody scene. Fortunately, they were spiritual entities after all. The texture and traits of their flesh were merely simulated special effects. As their Cursed Energy rapidly dissipated, fragments and severed limbs quickly lost their bestowed properties and evaporated into the air.

"Though I want to ask why you came anyway, you did well..."

Fushiguro Megumi, having deployed his cursed technique, commanded the Cursed Spirits, and seized the chance to decisively crush the curse, strode forward and spoke to the high school boy named Itadori. There was a trace of urgency in his voice, and he could not help turning back to watch Gu Mo warily.

"Now! Check on the cursed object!"

"The cursed object... This?" After checking the girl's condition in his arms and sighing in slight relief, the boy hurriedly searched and discovered a strange object clutched tightly in the unconscious girl's hand.

It was a shriveled finger. At first glance, it looked like a human finger, but closer inspection revealed subtle differences. The overly sharp nail and somewhat bizarre lines gave off a deeply unsettling feeling...

"That's right, that's it. Sukuna's Finger. Give it to me, quickly! This thing is dangerous." Fushiguro Megumi nodded repeatedly and held out his hand toward Itadori.

"What does this thing do?" The boy examined the cursed object in his hand. Had those Vengeful Spirits just now been after this?

"Don't ask so much. Give it to me, quickly!" Fushiguro Megumi took several steps forward, his tone urgent. This was not the time for explanations!

Sukuna?

Gu Mo's heart stirred. Not long ago, he had played a game set in the Sengoku Period, where ghosts and monsters ran rampant. Using the beautiful young lady he had created... Ahem, the pretty young lady he had created, he had slain all manner of bandits and demons. This element seemed to have been in it.

Could it be because of information from that kind of content?

"Um, could you let me take a look? I'm kind of curious too."

Thinking that, Gu Mo spoke lightly as well, stepping forward with the expression of someone wanting to join the fun.

But Fushiguro Megumi, who had just taken the Special Grade Cursed Object from Itadori, had been on guard against him the entire time. The moment he noticed Gu Mo move, he turned around with the air of someone facing a formidable enemy and warned him—

"Don't come any closer! Stop approaching!"

He knew it. This person really had ulterior motives. He had come for the Special Grade Cursed Object all along!!

"?"

Gu Mo froze, stopping in his tracks as a question mark slowly floated above his head.