At those unexpected words, Sugawara Kazukazu stared blankly at the child before him, whose body held not a trace of cursed energy.
He had brought Alluka along purely out of selfishness.
He liked soft, tender children. They reminded him of his younger sister, who had died young.
But the feeling of being enveloped in bone-piercing cold made Sugawara Kazukazu suspect something was wrong.
Seeing that Sugawara Kazukazu remained silent,
Alluka lowered her eyelids slightly. An innocent smile, as harmless as a gentle breeze, appeared on her childish face, and she opened both hands and held them out to Sugawara Kazukazu.
Once again, she asked in a wheedling tone, "Sugawara Kazukazu, will you hold my hand?"
Alluka kept smiling, yet her slightly curved gray-blue eyes shone with a chilling light.
Sugawara Kazukazu suppressed the bloody taste rising between his lips and placed his hand in Alluka's small palm.
"All right."
He was already dying. Why think so much about it?
It was only a child asking for affection.
Sugawara Kazukazu's hand was broad and thick, carrying the intense warmth of an adult man. But as he took her hand, a few drops of thick, dark-red blood accidentally smeared onto Alluka's skin.
Alluka paid no mind to the stickiness in her palm. The moment Sugawara Kazukazu finished speaking, she made another wheedling request.
"Sugawara Kazukazu, will you praise me?"
Her voice was soft, carrying a guileless innocence, but the eerie feeling surrounding her grew stronger.
A strange magnetic field formed between her and Sugawara Kazukazu.
Beside them, Uraume watched this unfamiliar Alluka, hesitating to speak.
Sugawara Kazukazu gave a laugh. Fighting the dull pain in his body, he managed to say, "Alluka is the best."
After saying that, he collapsed face down and began vomiting. Mouthful after mouthful of blood spilled from his throat. Every cell in his body spasmed with pain, and Sugawara Kazukazu's vision repeatedly went black. The feeling of approaching death brought back memories of his past.
But Alluka gave him no chance to watch his life flash before his eyes. She made her third request.
"Sugawara Kazukazu, will you hug me?"
In a daze, the man lying on the ground stretched out both arms. An embrace smelling of blood settled around Alluka's sides.
Her white clothes were stained crimson.
Sugawara Kazukazu only hugged her lightly before his arms lost their strength and fell to the ground with a thud.
In an instant, Alluka's features became bottomless hollows. Her skin turned deathly pale, gleaming eerily beneath the moonlight.
An endless, icy chill enveloped the two others present, like venomous snakes crawling across their skin.
The air seemed to freeze in place.
That monster, her body as stiff as a rusted clockwork mechanism, stared unblinkingly at the man on the ground.
"Sugawara Kazukazu, do you have a wish?"
Her voice suddenly took on an indescribably eerie quality.
An uncontrollable tremor traveled from Fujiwara Kazukazu's spine to his fingertips.
The haze in his eyes vanished completely, as though this were his final rally before death.
The world before him began to distort and lose its color. One black silhouette after another appeared before his eyes.
Within his family, he had never been particularly outstanding.
Because of his cursed technique, he could not even manifest his innate domain.
His little sister had fallen ill and died during their journey into exile.
Ostracized, ignored, mocked...
He had thought he had made peace with that treatment. Had he been harboring resentment all along?
In an instant, a hatred that felt as though it were carving out his heart and gut surged within him.
"I want to be strong, incredibly, incredibly strong! Strong enough to exorcise every curse in Tōsandō!"
Sugawara Kazukazu's lips trembled several times. Using the last of his strength, he shouted out all his resentment and anger.
Extreme negative emotions seeped out through Sugawara Kazukazu's body from deep within his heart, like pitch-black sludge.
"Sure."
Cold and eerie, like a monster, Nanika slowly spread her lips into a smile. After softly agreeing to grant Sugawara Kazukazu's wish, she disappeared.
Alluka returned to her original appearance. She cheered and tried to throw herself into Uraume's arms.
"Little Ume."
Her body swayed. She wanted to seek affection from the familiar Uraume as she always had, but the white-haired boy grabbed her and pulled her over.
"Alluka, what did you do to Sugawara Kazukazu?"
Uraume held Alluka's hand stiffly, staring at the scene ahead. At some point, a fine layer of cold sweat had broken out across his back.
"Huh?"
Alluka blinked and followed Uraume's gaze.
Pitch-black cursed energy, thick as black mud, appeared out of nowhere in the cramped space. That cursed energy, far beyond special grade, poured into Sugawara Kazukazu's body without restraint.
The man crouched on the ground like a wild beast. At some point, his eyes had taken on a scarlet tint.
Something strange seemed to writhe beneath Sugawara Kazukazu's pale skin. Fine cracks appeared across his body, one after another. As those cracks joined together, his body swelled like an inflating balloon, its limbs flailing.
Bones, shredded flesh, and fat were broken apart and fused back together.
Along with the sounds, his power soared, just as his body grew.
Cursed energy so blue it was almost black continued surging through the space like a tide. By now, the abandoned Buddhist temple was saturated with this cursed energy that had appeared from nowhere.
And Sugawara Kazukazu's transformation had not stopped.
When the cursed energy had swollen his body into a giant several people tall, a pair of scarlet, bloodshot eyes on his uneven body swept over Uraume and Alluka from above. Then the monster ignored them and walked blankly outside.
Alluka tilted her head in confusion.
"Kazukazu said he wanted to be strong, so Nanika granted his wish!"
A jujutsu sorcerer's cursed energy came from their own negative emotions. The instant Sugawara Kazukazu asked to become the strongest in Tōsandō,
Pain, grief, resentment, anger...
Cursed energy carrying vast amounts of negative emotion invaded his body like a virus. When that negative energy reached its critical point, his reason was lost entirely amid those extreme emotions.
Now, Sugawara Kazukazu was like a curse himself, carrying his obsession with him as he went off to challenge nearby curses to single combat.
Neither Alluka nor Nanika understood why Sugawara Kazukazu had become like this. They only knew they had helped fulfill his wish.
Uraume's lips moved several times before he asked with some difficulty:
"Was it that child just now?"
Alluka had already returned to her harmless appearance, but the unknown being whose features had been pitch-black made Uraume realize they were not the same person.
"That's right~"
Alluka's eyes curved into a smile, and she gently took hold of Uraume's arm.