"If you had a chance to choose: ① win over the girl you adored in your youth and grow old together, or ② enter the Culling Game and fight Sukuna with a full set of lightning skills..."
"Choose, my ass. The other video offered me a hundred million, and you're giving me jack shit."
The young man grabbed his keyboard and unleashed a torrent of furious typing, sending his warmest regards to these idiotic clickbait videos.
"Choose this, choose that, all fucking day. What's the point of choosing? I get nothing afterward, and then you slap a label on me anyway."
"Come kill me offline if you've got the guts, you little clown."
He finished typing the line, hit send, and set his message notifications to vibrate.
Closing his laptop, he stood up and gazed out the window.
His eyes widened in shock.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling window of his fifteenth-floor apartment, a hundred-ton truck fully loaded with steel coils hurtled toward him in blatant defiance of physics, carrying the fury of some unknown will.
"Huh? It's the aloof-looking Hundred-Ton King, my senior?! And he's chasing me?!"
Σ(ﾟ∀ﾟﾉ)ﾉ☆♡
Catch me, and my life is yours♡
☆( *ˊᵕˋ)✩︎‧₊
Has the affection meter already appeared?!
✧(◍˃̶ᗜ˂̶◍)✧
It's maxed out on our first meeting?!
⁄(⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)⁄
I never knew you'd had a crush on me for so long, senior.
ヽ(〃∀〃)ﾉ
"Catch me, and my life is yours!"
"That just means getting fucking flattened into a 2D character..."
In a daze, one chased while the other ran, with no hope of escape even if he sprouted wings.
Those were the dying quips of the young man named Xia Xia.
"Am I still alive?"
Xia Xia woke up. Beautiful. Apparently, there had been no obligatory free-fall tribute sequence. He had landed safe and sound somewhere unfamiliar, on what looked like concrete.
Wait, concrete?
Why can't I move?!
The next second, agonizing pain struck.
Every bone and limb seemed to tear apart at once. Shattered bone fragments and something else turned his body into a flattened, ragged sack in an instant.
"Uh?! Aaargh!"
Hungry? Then eat.
He watched in utter horror as thick blood poured from his mouth in great mouthfuls, mixed with pieces of organs and other things that ought to have stayed inside his abdomen.
[Xia Xia was killed. His internal organs became external organs. Cause of death: falling from a height.] [Dropped 591 platinum, 60 gold, 15 silver, 3 copper.]
Unbelievable. Still couldn't escape it?
Already resurrected, Xia Xia stared at the glowing screen before him in a pure-white, otherworldly subspace.
It hurt. It hurt so much.
The good news: he had transmigrated with his body. The bad news: his mortal flesh had delivered a high-speed elbow drop to the earth from a rooftop. A king descended from the heavens and landed with a resounding splat.
"So, I got sent into the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, the Culling Game has already started, and now I'm supposed to elbow-drop Sukuna and finish off the King of Curses?"
"Are you fucking kidding me?!"
"You're a system, right? You're intelligent, right? Tell me what I'm supposed to do! I'm an ordinary guy! How am I supposed to survive inside a Culling Game barrier?!"
No one answered.
Xia Xia stared fixedly at the glowing screen before him. It displayed his stats, along with an unbelievably stupid chibi portrait.
Only when he followed his instincts and touched the screen did he learn the truth. A second later, he laughed in exasperation.
[Name: Xia Xia] [Trait: Softcore Character (only drops money upon death; additionally grants return by death in reality)]
Terraria's getting in on this too?
The stats panel was astonishingly bare. Great. An immortal body, free just for logging in.
There was no system, and the screen had no intelligence.
This was the innate cursed technique he had awakened after being dragged into a Culling Game barrier as an ordinary person. Its effect was to run a simulated life, then claim one of the most exceptional attributes from that life.
There were two types of simulated life. One was a projection of reality, with no conditions or limits, which he could start whenever he liked. The other was Cause-and-Effect Reversal, which could only trigger upon meeting an important figure. It let him enter a stretch of history associated with that person and play a nonexistent cameo character.
When the simulation ended, he could bring back a cursed technique, experience, physical abilities, or something else-including cursed tools and even cursed objects-as long as he met certain conditions.
The principle was that, because he had the potential to follow the path taken in the simulation, meeting certain conditions allowed him to draw on some of that power ahead of time in reality, claim it for himself, and then default on the debt.
A rule-based, causality-manipulating technique. This magnificent innate cursed technique was named-Borrowing the False World to Preclaim the True.
"Isn't that an innate divine ability???"
As for the powerful passive [Softcore Character], perhaps it was a privilege he enjoyed as a player. Of course, compared with the panel, this thing seemed more like Xia Xia's actual awakened innate cursed technique.
Fine. Since I'm here, I might as well make the best of it.
Xia Xia was fairly resilient. Within a few short seconds, he had accepted that his ordinary life was over. As an orphan, he was invincible.
He couldn't use Cause-and-Effect Reversal, so he would try projecting reality a few times to test the waters. There were no conditions and nothing to lose, anyway.
"Start!"
[Your spawn point or bed has been destroyed.] [A new spawn point has been located.] [Simulated Life begins now.]
Good. This time, his spawn point wasn't a hundred meters in the air. He didn't know why, but at least he could now stand properly on the ground instead of turning into Xia Xia sauce.
The streets of Tokyo were bustling.
Especially now that some lunatic had taken it upon himself to envelop the entire city in a barrier, plunging it into fear of the unknown.
Izumino was an ordinary office worker. He had previously lived a miserable life on the verge of death from overwork, but now he felt fantastic.
He had become a man with superpowers.
The world was broken anyway. Why think so much? Better to enjoy himself while he could. All the problems that had once troubled him could now be solved. Just now, for instance, he had hunted down a careless little girl. Listening to her wails, he felt hope reignite in his life.
There was no reason. The strong were meant to mercilessly torment the weak. This world had always been a hunting ground where the strong devoured the weak.
Izumino's superpower allowed him to control invisible hands that could tear anything apart-even living people.
"Oh, looks like we have another customer."
Izumino turned to look at the young man whose eyes still held such clear, pristine stupidity.
Like an accomplished salesman, he extended a hand toward Xia Xia and made his pitch in a calm voice laced with suppressed emotion:
"Would you like to hear about our new product?"
"Limbs torn apart, flesh and blood flying everywhere!"
In response, precisely the right amount of contempt appeared on Xia Xia's face.
"Just a monkey who only recently acquired a cursed technique."
Rather than running away, Xia Xia strode toward Izumino, voicing his disdain.
"You're the challenger here!"
As he spoke, he met the invisible giant hands extending from behind Izumino head-on, like a knight charging at a windmill. That indomitable spirit was enough to excite even a twisted piece of trash like Izumino.
"Don't be too delicious, dear customer."
Fifteen seconds later...
"My ass... my ass hurts..."
"Dear customer, your ass doesn't hurt. It's up in the tree."
Izumino lowered his head and looked at the "half a Xia Xia" on the ground, struggling to keep a straight face. But out of respect for his prey, and thanks to an office worker's basic training in suppressing laughter, he listened seriously to Xia Xia's last words.
While he was at it, he carefully used his invisible hands to stuff the young man's scattered intestines and organs back into the remaining half of his body. If nothing else, there ought to be some aesthetic appeal left. He enjoyed hunting, but torture held little interest for him.
"Just... make it quick..."
Xia Xia's voice was barely a breath.
"All right."
With impeccable professionalism, Izumino snapped the young man's head off in one swift attack, ending his suffering.
"Though you lacked flavor, sir, your courage was truly commendable."
[Xia Xia was murdered, brutally dissected. Killer: Izumino (Invisible Hand).] [Dropped 591 platinum, 60 gold, 15 silver, 3 copper.] [No rewards carried out.] [Resurrection countdown...] [Current spawn point saved. As no other spawn points exist, the player will respawn here upon the next resurrection. Timeline locked.]
Looking utterly bewildered, Xia Xia got up in the pure-white space and casually felt his lower half... still there.
That fast?
Fifteen seconds. Before he could even react, he had become a bisected 2D character, just like Gojo.
Though Gojo could never have gone down as pathetically as he had. The man had traded blows with Sukuna. His had been an honorable death in battle.
No, seriously, why? How is this fair?
Am I playing Jujutsu Kaisen or Re:Zero-Starting Life in Another World? Why can all these bizarre cursed techniques just barge in? An invisible hand, for fuck's sake-how is that not dirty?!
And this was the unavoidable first trash mob right outside his real-world spawn point, some random extra the original story had never even mentioned.
It's fine. That round didn't count.
Lag, dead touchscreen, stuck keys, shaky hands, accidental taps, low frame rate, high latency, plateauing, couldn't get a feel for it, bad mindset, off my game, just woke up, no stand, tired from playing, no cooling fan, stuttering and dropped frames, cold hands, sweaty hands, too noisy around me, delivery arrived, hands frozen stiff, on the toilet, misread the move, just messing around, in class, no finger sleeves, no headphones, screen too slippery, phone too hot, tendonitis flaring up, weather too cold, opponent was cheating, haven't played in ages, Mom called me, headphones died, low-battery warning, didn't adjust sensitivity, first match after logging in, just came back and forgot how to play, faulty buttons, couldn't hear while on a call, skin felt wrong, charging threw me off, someone called, someone messaged and I tapped it by accident, not used to the new button layout, eating while playing, was replying to a message, too noisy here, shoulders sore from sitting too long, phone isn't as good as a tablet, just got hacked.
Pull yourself together. Let's try again.
He would die a few times to gather intel. Information was a ninja's lifeblood, and the foundation of any battle.
But clearly, dying for no good reason wasn't a pleasant experience for Xia Xia. He was only pretending to take it lightly. Inside, he wasn't calm at all:
"God fucking damn it. All these feral jujutsu sorcerers should die."
"One day, I'll lock every last one of you savages in a zoo."
Before you continue