No Time to Mourn Haruta Shigemo's Death-Next to Arrive on the Battlefield Was...

Above Shibuya.

Golden butterflies stretched their beautiful forms freely between the buildings.

Though humans would probably find it difficult to appreciate that beauty.

No matter how beautiful a butterfly was, magnified to this size, it became grotesque and terrifying.

Compared to an ordinary butterfly, she was incomparably huge. If she lay flat on the ground, each of her wings would take up the space of one or two people.

Four or five slightly smaller golden butterflies circled around her.

Each of them was the size of a child.

Behind those larger butterflies flew even more tiny golden butterflies, seemingly numbering in the hundreds. They trailed behind her like a scattered tail.

Every butterfly glowed, giving off a faint golden shimmer even in the darkness.

Each time the largest butterfly beat her wings, pale golden scales drifted down from them.

Once those scales left the butterfly's body, some of them turned into new butterflies and joined the swarm behind her, becoming part of that pale golden tail.

However, these little butterflies seemed to have very short lives. They died in large numbers after only a few minutes, barely keeping the swarm's numbers stable.

There was only one large butterfly, several medium-sized ones, and hundreds of small ones.

They gathered together and drifted leisurely at roughly the height of the third or fourth floor, their movements relaxed and their dance graceful.

A car suddenly flew up from below.

Yes.

Flew up.

A man had hoisted a car onto his shoulder and hurled it at the butterflies in the sky.

The man had black hair, black eyes, and a cut at the corner of his mouth.

Quite a few people in Shibuya were watching this scene.

"Is that the butterfly Cursed Spirit you were talking about?"

A chestnut-haired woman in a white coat leaned against the railing, a cigarette between her fingers. She looked up and asked.

She was Shoko Ieiri, the only person in Jujutsu Society publicly known to be capable of using Reverse Cursed Technique externally.

Jujutsu Society's sole officially designated healer.

"Yeah, that's it." A black-and-white panda answered her. "But there weren't this many when I saw it before."

"Is that so?" Shoko Ieiri watched the butterflies in the sky and the man on the ground constantly trying to hunt them down, though no one knew what she was thinking.

"So Ijichi said that butterfly... no, that swarm of butterflies is a Jujutsu Sorcerer's Shikigami?" asked a man with a toothpick in his mouth.

"Mm." Shoko Ieiri nodded and brought her cigarette to her lips for a drag.

"Didn't you quit smoking?" asked a bespectacled middle-aged man standing nearby.

He was Shoko Ieiri's superior, her former teacher, and the current principal of Jujutsu High.

"I did," Shoko Ieiri replied lightly. "It just reminded me of some... school days."

Half an hour earlier.

Two figures walked into the first-floor lobby of the mall where Haruta Shigemo had died.

One was a middle-aged man with a toothpick in his mouth, his face practically screaming that he did not want to work. He carried a katana in one hand.

The other was a black-and-white panda.

They were Special Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer Atsuya Kusakabe and the Cursed Corpse named Panda.

"Ah, this is the place Ijichi said it happened." Panda pointed toward the second floor.

Kusakabe walked into the lobby and looked up at the second floor.

"A curse user who wasn't killed with Cursed Energy..."

In this world, Jujutsu Sorcerers killed by non-Cursed Energy attacks could potentially become Cursed Spirits.

And Haruta Shigemo's cause of death had been "excessive blood loss."

He had died because his abdomen exploded and he received no treatment. The Fortune-Collecting Mother Insect had also used no Cursed Energy when it emerged from its cocoon in his stomach.

Therefore, to ensure safety, Ijichi had specifically notified Kusakabe, who had been wandering around the perimeter, to deal with it.

"Why didn't Ijichi finish him off back then?" Kusakabe asked around his toothpick.

"I heard he was too scared to move. By the time he came to his senses, the other guy had already bled to death," Panda answered honestly.

"I see." Kusakabe understood. "A Grade 3 curse user, huh? Even if he becomes a curse, he probably won't be that strong."

"Grade 2 at most."

"Not necessarily," Panda replied dramatically. "I heard his internal organs were eaten hollow by insects, then he was forced to stay conscious while undergoing an experiment that modified his body."

"And because of his technique, he had seven lives, so at first he just kept refusing to die."

The toothpick in Kusakabe's mouth nearly fell to the floor.

"Ah... I see."

"Then, based on what you're saying, it wouldn't be impossible for him to become a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit."

The two soon stopped on the first floor and looked up at the corridor above.

"As expected, there's plenty of Cursed Energy up there," Kusakabe said, biting down on his toothpick.

"Mm-hm." Panda nodded and raised his front paws, which wore blue boxing gloves.

At that moment, beside Haruta Shigemo's mangled corpse on the second floor.

By then, his corpse had already become completely different from before.

Somehow, green vines had grown from his wounds again. Those vines connected his exploded abdomen and ruptured intestines, linking together his scattered limbs.

A flower bud the size of three or four human heads had grown from his chest.

It looked somewhat like a chrysanthemum, but not quite. Beneath the flower were writhing vines formed from a mixture of plant matter and flesh.

Perhaps Haruta Shigemo's luck had simply been too bad, or perhaps he had been too weak.

Such a painful death, such intense resentment, coupled with the negative emotions brought by the massive deaths in the nearby Shibuya Incident.

Yet even under such extreme conditions, the Cursed Spirit created from him had still failed to become a Special Grade.

"A Cursed Womb?" Kusakabe and Panda both sensed the birth of the Cursed Womb.

Rather than taking the stairs, the man and panda simply jumped from where they stood, kicked off the walls, and leaped onto the second floor. From the edge of the corridor, they saw the flower bud that was about to bloom.

"So he really became a Cursed Spirit." Katana in hand, Kusakabe slowly approached. "Then let's take care of him quickly while he's still a Cursed Womb."

"Got it." Panda swung both paws behind him.

Kusakabe slowly lowered his stance and placed a hand on his sword hilt, taking an iaijutsu posture as he aimed at the Cursed Womb before him.

"Hah..."

He slowly exhaled, then forcefully drew his katana.

At that exact moment, the vines on the ground moved as well.

Several vines stretched across the space between him and the flower, while others lashed rapidly toward Kusakabe and Panda.

With a snap, Kusakabe's blade was knocked aside.

Immediately afterward, whips woven from several vines struck him in the stomach, forcing him two steps back.

Panda was no exception. Another vine sent him flying off the corridor.

The man and panda were knocked from the second floor, flying backward before landing steadily on the first floor.

The flower finally bloomed.

It resembled an enlarged chrysanthemum. In the place where its pistil should have been sat a man with only an upper body.

The man grew out of the flower, possessing only a torso. His hair hung over his face, obscuring his expression.

"That's the target," Kusakabe said to Panda. "The flower... is it rooted in place?"

"If it's rooted in place, it'll be easy to deal with." Panda raised a paw as though raising his hand.

"Yeah." Kusakabe had just started to nod when he saw the disheveled half-bodied man in the center of the flower raise both hands and form a hand sign before his chest.

A mass of plants rapidly spread outward from the flower. Grass and flowers sprouted from the ground, while creeping vines covered the walls.

There was no time to mourn Haruta Shigemo's death. Next to arrive on the battlefield was...

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