My head hurts...
As if someone had forcibly shaken him awake after a night of heavy drinking, Kana Shizumi opened his eyes groggily, his head throbbing fiercely.
Then he saw a face stitched together in a mocking grin.
The pale complexion gave away the fact that the person wasn't human. Curiosity was reflected in his mismatched gray-and-blue eyes.
He lowered his head, prying his eyelids open like a cat-eyed Peeping Tom, and asked,
"Is this guy... already dead?"
Another humanoid creature, with a single eye and a slightly hunched body, came up beside him and stopped. It looked down at him expressionlessly.
"Not sure. Anyway, Kenjaku's arrangements were a complete mess to begin with..."
"Hey, hey, hey~ Are we going to have gone through all this for nothing?"
"Odds are, yeah. Remember to complain to Kenjaku about it later."
"Okay... But Jogo, doesn't this guy look like he's alive again?"
"...Seriously? Let me see."
Two people and three eyes crowded over him all at once, nearly leaving Kana Shizumi unable to catch his breath.
Huh?
What's going on? Did I get transmigrated? The Jujutsu Kaisen world???
That groundbreaking series where everyone elbowed each other like one big family, until the grandson gathered a bunch of people to beat the crap out of his great-grandfather, then killed himself in shame after they turned him into mush?
He could just about accept the premise, but why had he run into these two disasters the moment he opened his eyes?
Mahito and Jogo?
Elite enemies blocking the door right from the start? What was the point of playing, then...? Just kill me already!
At the same time, memories of a young man named Kana Shizumi surfaced, and he quickly understood what had happened.
He'd been an ordinary seventeen-year-old born and raised in Kumamoto City!
Then, for reasons unknown, two disasters had stormed into his home and slaughtered his entire family, leaving no one alive but him.
The blood pooled on the ground was still warm, and the smell permeating the air was especially pungent...
After spending three seconds trying to accept reality, Kana Shizumi closed his eyes as if resigned to his fate, giving up on explaining himself or resisting.
Might as well start over. I'll just treat this as a nightmare... Goodbye, Elbow Kaisen!
"Is he pretending he can't see us?"
"That's kind of annoying."
However...
Before Kana Shizumi could say anything, footsteps sounded beside him. A moment later, a lazy voice drifted down the corridor...
"This so-called 'return from the dead' is merely a superficial appearance. In reality, this person's outside still looks much as it did before, but his insides have long since become 'unrecognizable.' After all, I set the time limit for him at seventeen years back then."
A moment later, a man dressed in Buddhist robes, with his hair tied in a topknot and a rather unremarkable appearance, stepped into the light.
His hands were clasped within the loose sleeves of his robe. He looked down at Kana Shizumi from above.
A faint, mocking smile appeared on his face.
"Although the technique was already fairly mature, this is still a rather unusual Incarnated Vessel. We can look forward to seeing what he can do, can't we?"
He spoke as if to himself, but his gaze remained fixed on Kana Shizumi.
Then, as if urging him, he said,
"Get up. Let me see how you're doing now."
"..."
He's telling me to get up. Should I listen to him?
After a brief hesitation, Kana Shizumi opened his eyes apprehensively and met the gaze of the man who seemed both laid-back and strange.
Kenjaku.
In a sense, he was the most scheming person in all of Jujutsu Kaisen.
Made Itadori with his own hands, laid plans for a thousand years, became Tengen's best friend, a supreme agent of chaos... He had dozens of titles, but there wasn't enough room for them all here.
If he were to transmigrate into Jujutsu Kaisen and pick the one person he least wanted to meet or get involved with, this guy would be near the top of the list.
But... after hearing Kenjaku's explanation, Kana Shizumi couldn't help having a peculiar thought.
He called me an Incarnated Vessel...
As everyone knew, Incarnation meant turning certain parts of a sorcerer's body into a Cursed Object after their death, then placing it inside a vessel to bring them "back to life."
In other words.
It was body-snatching (correct).
"Did Kenjaku help me steal this body? Why would he do that?"
The timeline shouldn't have reached the Culling Game yet, right? Otherwise, these two beside me should've already turned to ash.
Besides...
"He doesn't seem to realize the person who took over the body isn't the one he expected?"
I've been overwritten by a transmigrator, buddy.
Kenjaku slowly walked forward, reaching into his sleeve and taking something out.
It was about the size of a fist, its surface a pale blue-green. It looked like a piece of decade-old zombie meat that had frozen solid, then thawed. Kenjaku smiled as he looked at him.
"Your memories might be a little muddled, but something more important needs to be done now, so I'm going to be a little reckless."
He stepped closer, then promptly shoved the lump of meat into Kana Shizumi's mouth.
"Swallow it, savor it, and remember who you really are."
His mouth was covered, so he couldn't spit it out. Kana Shizumi could only struggle "for show" a few times before giving up completely.
The lump of meat slid down his throat. Kana Shizumi shuddered as if electrocuted, then seemed to lose consciousness.
Mahito, standing behind them, couldn't help letting out a little "Oh."
"His eyes rolled back..."
"That's normal. In terms of its nature, this process is probably equivalent to a 'Secondary Incarnation.'"
After releasing Kana Shizumi, Kenjaku seemed to be in an excellent mood. The corners of his mouth showed no sign of dropping.
Jogo stared at the young man convulsing on the ground and spoke in a flat tone.
"So what's so special about this guy? Why did we have to come all the way to Kumamoto to find him among ordinary people?"
"Death Paintings... Have you heard of them?"
After saying this, Kenjaku chuckled lightly, as though he'd realized he was wasting his time. He waved his right hand as if brushing away a fly buzzing in front of him.
"Never mind. You probably wouldn't be interested in learning about them... To put it simply, the Death Paintings were the result of an experiment I conducted using a woman with a special constitution as a vessel."
After learning the story behind them, even the mischievous Mahito couldn't help sticking out his tongue.
"You're one sick bastard."
Kenjaku didn't respond. He merely lowered his gaze, his expression calm.
"Although the process was complicated, my research on the Death Paintings didn't meet my expectations. At most, it only proved the possibility of something half-human and half-cursed spirit... Using that as a basis, I made two separate arrangements afterward."
The first...
He turned his gaze aside, thought for a moment, then smiled wryly.
It was better not to mention that one for now. It was still developing, after all.
As for the second, it was right here before them.
"To observe corpses rotting and bones whitening, and even the emptiness reached after all things vanish... To see the undefiled essence of all phenomena amid the flux of impermanence, to perceive 'neither defiled nor pure' in the impure. This is the extraordinary aspect I created. Come to think of it... I should give it a name."
Rubbing his chin, Kenjaku said thoughtfully,
"I'll call him the Non-Defiled Aspect."
Mahito squatted down and poked the half-dead man with his right hand. His tone was quite curious.
"So what makes him different? At most, isn't he just half-human and half-cursed spirit?"
"That's only where he starts."
Kenjaku lowered his gaze and stared at the figure on the ground, his tone tinged with something hard to read.
"I want to see more possibilities in him. If the Death Paintings are the process of death itself, then what I want to discover in him is the 'seed of rebirth' that might appear at the very end."
Mahito shrugged, but Jogo seemed to have finally taken a little interest. He looked toward Kenjaku.
"Pure awareness transcending impurity and purity, is it...? Your ambitions are too great. Is something like that even possible?"
"You seem to know quite a bit, Jogo."
"I've lived a long time, after all. It's just a Buddhist story. Of course I've read it... I'm simply not interested."
Kenjaku chuckled and folded his arms across his chest, speaking casually.
"It was only an experiment to begin with, so I don't mind if it fails. Still, to make sure this pawn is usable, I need to add several layers of insurance and Binding Vows... Of course, that's assuming he can wake up first."
Come to think of it...
"Shouldn't you be regaining consciousness about now? Unblemished?"
"..."
Kana Shizumi had actually been awake the whole time.
But he didn't dare say anything. None of the people here were exactly harmless.
Besides, the thing that had appeared before his eyes when he swallowed the lump of meat needed some time to process.
[Best Misalignment System]
Seeing this thing finally put Kana Shizumi at ease.
The protagonist did get special privileges, after all. He had no idea how he'd survive without a cheat.
Still, considering the circumstances of his identity and when the cheat had appeared, Kana Shizumi had reason to suspect that Kenjaku had done a good deed with bad intentions...
What did he mean, helping me steal a body and conveniently giving me a cheat, too?
Well, there really is no place like home.
[Refer to the original plot and make selective changes to obtain corresponding stat rewards]
That was a simple description. Did it mean I was supposed to be a disruptor?
Considering that everyone in Jujutsu Kaisen was a total lunatic, it didn't seem all that difficult.
But just as the description said, making "selective" changes was important.
For example, Gojo had to get sealed... Otherwise, how could Sukuna fight Gojo without enough fingers? Should I team up with Jail Mom?
I wouldn't even be enough of a speed bump.
As he mused over it, Kana Shizumi glanced at the panel listing his stats.
[Kana Shizumi] [Cursed Energy: 39] [Cursed Energy Efficiency: 18] [Cursed Energy Output: 22] [Innate Technique: Modified Blood Manipulation] [Physical Ability and Cursed Energy Control: 33] [Derived Abilities: None] [Note: A value of 30 is the average for a Grade 2 Sorcerer; 60 is the average for a Grade 1 Sorcerer; 85 is the average for a Special Grade Sorcerer]
How should he put it?
At first glance, it seemed a little complicated, but after calmly analyzing it, it was easy enough to understand the differences and how the categories were organized.
As everyone knew, Satoru Gojo had once said that a sorcerer's overall strength was more or less determined from birth.
That was because a sorcerer's core abilities were usually innate. If you had a stick and I had a machine gun, we'd never been on the same level to begin with...
Besides.
"In theory, the only things you can train should be physical ability, combat experience, Barrier Technique, and the like."
Of course, talent mattered for those things, too.
For example, Higuruma had understood Domains as soon as he started, and learned reverse cursed technique under extreme pressure. Then there was Mahito's 0.2-second Domain Expansion...
Working backward from the results, it wasn't hard to see that the Jujutsu World didn't value hard work.
So, based on the situation...
There was one good piece of news and one bad one.
The good news was that Kana Shizumi's Innate Technique was the Kamo Lineage's signature skill, Crimson Blood Manipulation.
Although it didn't have any particularly outstanding power or unique traits, it could be used for both offense and defense, and offered plenty of different tricks.
Also, what was this "Modified" supposed to mean?
For now, he could only assume Kenjaku had added something to it... He'd have to investigate when he got the chance.
As for the bad news, that was simple.
Judging from the stats panel, Kana Shizumi's current strength was probably below that of a Grade 2 Sorcerer.
Bro, what level was a Grade 3 Sorcerer, below Grade 2?
Let's take a quick look at who that included.
Miwa Kasumi, Mai Zenin, Nishimiya Momo (Semi-Grade 2 in the original)...
Just imagining himself on the same level as these prodigies made Kana Shizumi feel like laughing in disbelief.
All he could say was, I'm cooked.
Without the system's help, it would be more satisfying to use Blood Manipulation to blow his own head off.
"Can you hear me?"
Kenjaku's voice reached him, tinged with a little impatience.
Kana Shizumi came back to himself with a start and glanced to the side. Meeting Kenjaku's calm, emotionless gaze, he couldn't help feeling a little uneasy.
Calm down. Try to analyze the situation first.
"I'm another one of Kenjaku's experiments after the Death Paintings. In essence, I'm about the same as the other ancient sorcerers who signed up..."
In theory, he should've only been awakened during the Culling Game, but there were exceptions.
For example, Fushiguro Megumi's sister was different.
"So I should go along with Kenjaku's plans for now and show my loyalty?"
After all, even if I wanted to grow stronger, I had to survive first. Worst case, I could prostrate myself before Satoru Gojo later and get a job at Jujutsu High!
Who wasn't Itadori's brother?! (And he said it with righteous conviction.)
"This guy looks kind of spaced out. Are you sure there's nothing wrong with him?"
"I've placed safeguards and Binding Vows to ensure his safety, and I've also prepared memories and information to implant in advance... Honestly, I can't think of any reason he'd betray me."
Since the subject had come up, he turned to Kana Shizumi with a beaming smile and asked,
"Kid, do you know who I am?"
I'll call you Jail Mom. You dare answer to that?
That was what he wanted to say, but Kenjaku's current identity was unusual enough that getting the answer wrong might immediately trigger the "loving mother cleans house" ending.
Relying on the garbage implanted in his mind, he forced a stiff smile and said quietly,
"Kenjaku... Father."
Clap.
Kenjaku brought his hands together, his face breaking into a hearty smile.
"Excellent. It seems my experimental theory was sound. This prototype appears quite stable."
As soon as he finished speaking, Kana Shizumi's vision blurred. He blinked instinctively and shook his head.
Distorted the plot of "inevitable death" Reward: 3 free attribute points
...Huh?
Kana Shizumi froze for a moment, then understood two seconds later.
If things had followed the original plot, there was a very good chance I would've answered incorrectly, triggered a bad ending, and gotten casually executed by Kenjaku...
No wonder the original story never mentioned this "tenth aspect." In the eyes of an old monster like Kenjaku, flawed experimental data wasn't worth further study, much less discussion.
Basically, a "failure" he couldn't even be bothered to mention.
Who would've thought? A few words had just saved his life.
Could that count as a talent? Hard to say.
Besides, he might have survived for now, but what happened next was anyone's guess.
After all, it was hard to get by on the villains' side...
Sukuna was already an unpredictable bastard, and once he emerged in Shibuya, he'd rampage and smash both sides to pieces.
There wasn't any way to contact the heroes, either. The higher-ups in Jujutsu Society were all under Kenjaku's control. He'd slip out the front door, and Jail Mom would be on his heels moments later, riding a cursed spirit...
Satoru Gojo was kind to his students, but ruthless toward everyone else.
There was no point in coming clean to him before the right opportunity arose. Besides, Kana Shizumi still needed to rely on the plot to earn points.
Otherwise, at his Grade 3 Sorcerer level, the best way to survive would be to leave Japan and come back after the Shinjuku battle was over.
He could shout, "Yuji, we're brothers!" Then he and his adorable little brother could happily play pachinko for three hundred years...
Absolute strength, and the loneliness it brings... Let me teach you the true joy of pachinko over three hundred years!
Actually, that doesn't sound too bad.
But no matter what, he had to make it through this mess first. Then he could slowly find a chance to get stronger, break free of Jail Mom's control, and reclaim his freedom!
As he secretly breathed a sigh of relief, Kana Shizumi suddenly felt a chill run through him.
He looked up and saw Mahito staring at him with a faintly amused expression...
Yikes!
Kana Shizumi nearly jumped out of his skin. He hurriedly stood up and took half a step back.
That bastard didn't even look human. The scene that had stuck with Kana Shizumi most from the manga and anime was the one where he fought Mechamaru.
It was like having a ghost image shoved right in your face...
"So, is this guy one of us now?"
Mahito didn't seem bothered by Kana Shizumi's reaction. He simply looked to Kenjaku for confirmation.
"Of course. Is there a problem?"
"Hmm~"
Mahito didn't answer directly. He just rubbed his chin with one hand.
His expression was enough to bring to mind a mischievous kid full of bad ideas—and now he was racking his brain, getting ready to be a nuisance.
"I'm just worried this guy won't be strong enough to satisfy me..."
Mahito spread his hands and shrugged. There was a hint of smugness in his smile. He was like a kid picking on the new student, and he even glanced back over his shoulder.
"There aren't many of us, but we're all pretty strong, right?"
No one answered.
But Jogo soon made his position clear.
"I don't care about any of that, but since Mahito brought it up, there shouldn't be a problem with putting him to the test."
...Huh?
Kana Shizumi had only just let out a sigh of relief, but now it felt like his skin had tightened painfully.
He'd just escaped one tiger's jaws, only to fall into another wolf's lair?
At his Grade 3 Sorcerer level, the three of them could flatten him without breaking a sweat... There was no way he could fight back, so he could only call for help.
"Father!"
To survive, I'd even called him Dad.
Someone save me!
Compared to Kana Shizumi's panic, Kenjaku remained quite calm.
He didn't stop his adopted son from retreating behind him. Instead, he put on a thoughtful expression and murmured,
"Although he's mostly inherited the Kamo bloodline and abilities, the addition of an ordinary human lineage should dilute his strength considerably..."
As he spoke, Kenjaku rested his right hand against his chin. He turned his head like a sheltered noblewoman debating whether to have sukiyaki or high-end sushi for dinner.
Then he looked down at Kana Shizumi.
"Come to think of it, this is a rare opportunity. Let me see what you can do."
He raised his left hand and gave a friendly little wave.
"Right here. Use Piercing Blood on my palm. I'll reinforce it with cursed energy beforehand, so don't worry... No, actually, if you can still hurt me under these conditions, then I'd say you're performing at a normal level."
Huh?!
Wait, no.
I'm supposed to punch through Jail Mom's cursed-energy-reinforced palm with Piercing Blood?
Wasn't even Choso, after powering up in the Shibuya arc, able to do that? That was way too much to ask of a rookie who'd only just started out!
Mahito was even clapping and cheering from the sidelines.
"Awesome, awesome! Our new companion's that strong? I might have to start looking at you differently! Right, Jogo?"
The volcano-headed man dragged a chair over and sat down, casually crossing one leg over the other.
He looked like he was settling in to watch a show.
Kana Shizumi stood there, dumbfounded.
Why did everyone seem to think I was strong? I'd just awakened. I'd never even used Crimson Blood Manipulation once, and you're asking me to beat someone with some advanced technique?
Seeing that Kana Shizumi still hadn't moved, Kenjaku kindly prompted him.
"What's wrong? Don't know how to use Piercing Blood? I should've included those details in the memories bound to you, along with the techniques passed down through the Kamo Clan..."
Could it be that...
"You don't know how to use it?"
As Jail Mom gave him a scrutinizing look, Kana Shizumi swallowed hard.
In theory, the moment someone understood their Innate Technique, they also knew how to use it. But, apparently... Kana Shizumi was the exception.
I have no idea how to use this...
At that moment, he truly understood just how cruel the Jujutsu World could be.
No talent? Then go get reincarnated! You're wasting everyone's time by staying alive!
Before you continue