"Kugisaki! We'll have one second! I'll throw you that deer's antler! Make sure you attack its soul directly!"
Fujiwara Sora didn't answer. Instead, he gave Nobara Kugisaki another task. At this point, Nobara Kugisaki had no other option either. She could only pin her hopes on Inumaki.
"Inumaki! Can you do it?"
Amid the rubble, Inumaki nodded slightly.
He took off his mask, once again revealing his stitched-up mouth.
Then, in a horrifying sight, Inumaki Yaki tore out every thread sealing his mouth shut.
Blood flowed, but Inumaki didn't seem to care. Staring straight ahead, he slowly uttered a command.
"Don't move!"
The world seemed to freeze. Nue's claws were only a few centimeters from the back of Inumaki's head, while Max Elephant's trunk was right against Fujiwara Sora's ear.
Bang!
Fujiwara Sora moved, sweeping through like a gale. Within a single second, he first took one of Round Deer's antlers, then blasted Nue away before severing Max Elephant's trunk.
Time was up!
An antler hurtled toward Nobara Kugisaki's face. In a panicked scramble, she caught it.
Meanwhile, Round Deer began healing again.
Great Serpent opened its mouth once more and swallowed the panting Fujiwara Sora. Before he disappeared into its belly, Fujiwara Sora looked at Nobara Kugisaki.
"Hurry! Attack that deer!"
His voice vanished, and Round Deer launched its first attack. The two Divine Dogs moved at the same time.
Clink!
The nail from the Straw Doll Technique took effect, stopping Round Deer in its tracks. But the Divine Dogs and the other shikigami kept moving.
They each picked a target. Nue set its sights on Inumaki, while the Divine Dogs and Max Elephant, its trunk now restored, charged straight at Nobara Kugisaki.
"I'm done for! I'm going to die! I don't have Fujiwara Sora's freakishly tough body!"
Fear drove Nobara Kugisaki to pour every attack into Round Deer. Under that barrage, Round Deer, like Rabbit Escape before it, left the battlefield entirely as Naomitsu recalled it.
"I'm going to die! Mr. Naomitsu! Please don't kill me!"
Above her, the elephant's trunk loomed larger in Nobara Kugisaki's eyes as it drew closer. In another second, she would be flattened into a meat patty.
Yet Naomitsu made no move.
He was serious about this test. In battle, cursed spirits wouldn't listen to their pleas for mercy.
"Don't move!"
Once again, Inumaki exerted his power. But he wasn't doing well. His mouth was covered in blood.
Naomitsu narrowed his eyes, watching the thread Inumaki clutched in his hand-the one that had stitched his mouth shut.
"Is that a cursed tool? One specifically for Cursed Speech?"
Inumaki's Cursed Speech hadn't originally been that powerful. But once he removed the thread from his mouth, his overall strength underwent a visibly dramatic transformation.
By all rights, after that previous use of Cursed Speech, Inumaki should have collapsed from overuse or even been left on the brink of death.
Yet now, he could still keep going. He was nowhere near his limit.
"He actually did it!"
Nobara Kugisaki stared at Inumaki, dumbfounded. She almost wanted to make a little doll of him and stick nails into it, just to see whether he was even human.
"Nice work, Inumaki! Leave the rest to me!"
Fujiwara Sora climbed out of Great Serpent's belly again. This time, without Round Deer to heal them, it would be a one-sided slaughter.
Still, with Naomitsu present, Fujiwara Sora merely crippled the shikigami rather than killing them all.
Even so, that counted as completing Naomitsu's task.
"Waaah! It's finally over!"
As the last shikigami was dealt with, Nobara Kugisaki plopped onto the ground. Too exhausted to care how she looked, she gasped for breath.
Just moments ago, she had nearly died.
"Kugisaki, hurry and check on Inumaki. Something seems wrong with him."
At Fujiwara Sora's prompting, Nobara Kugisaki turned her gaze toward Inumaki Yaki.
His mouth was full of blood, and his cheeks and jaw kept twitching. Those involuntary muscle movements looked deeply unsettling.
"Shouldn't we get him to a hospital right away?"
Fujiwara Sora pressed a hand to his forehead in exasperation and looked at Naomitsu.
"We're jujutsu sorcerers, remember? Can't we just ask our teacher?"
A short distance away, Naomitsu summoned Round Deer again. This time, instead of attacking, Round Deer approached Inumaki and used Reverse Cursed Technique to heal him.
"The wounds won't disappear?"
The blood around Inumaki's mouth disappeared under the Reverse Cursed Technique. But the wounds themselves remained.
"What...?"
"This is a unique trait of the Inumaki Clan, much like the Gojo Clan's Six Eyes. In the Inumaki Clan, it's called a 'heaven-born cleft.'
"Unlike an ordinary cleft lip, because the Inumaki Clan possesses Cursed Speech, everyone born with this cleft is an omen of misfortune and death."
The speaker was Utahime Iori.
Naomitsu looked back, unsure how she knew all this. Then again, Inumaki Yaki's presence here was already strange enough.
"Don't look at me like that. The principal sent me. He said he was worried you'd get someone killed. We could hear that commotion all the way down the mountain."
By "commotion," Utahime Iori meant Max Elephant's earlier strike.
"Kugisaki, stitch Inumaki's mouth shut. You've passed this test. Take a couple of days to rest."
Naomitsu chose to ignore Utahime Iori. As expected, she got angry again.
"Do! Not! Ignore! Me!"
Naomitsu picked at his ear and watched Nobara Kugisaki work.
Kugisaki was a natural at sticking nails into little paper dolls, so she was quite skilled with her hands. The stitches she put in Inumaki's mouth were very neat.
"Wow, that's pretty good. Kugisaki, from now on, stitching Inumaki's mouth will be your job."
Nobara Kugisaki's face darkened. "Why do I keep getting a bad feeling about this...?"
"It's fine. At least with Inumaki around, you won't have to worry about your safety. He's the strongest Cursed Speech user, after all," Fujiwara Sora said, patting her shoulder reassuringly.
"I'm heading back!"
To escape Utahime Iori's yelling, Naomitsu hitched a ride on Nue and glided down the mountain behind the school, abandoning both the mess and his students.
"Don't you dare learn from that guy! Do you hear me?"
Unable to keep Naomitsu in line, Utahime Iori could only vent her frustration on the three students. They repeatedly agreed with strained smiles.
"Don't head back yet. Help me clean up this part of the mountain first. We can't let next year's new students see it looking like this."
"Huh???"
After their grueling battle, the three didn't even get a chance to rest. Dragged along by Utahime Iori, they began another round of hard labor, filling in the ground and moving trees.
They worked until nightfall before the four of them descended the mountain. At the school gate, they spotted Naomitsu holding ice cream, chatting and laughing with a young high school girl.
"That guy..."
Don't get the wrong idea. The young high school girl was Tsumiki Fushiguro.
Naomitsu had run into her by chance that day. Since he had just been paid, he bought her some ice cream while he was at it.
Before you continue