Megumi Fushiguro charged into the Academy. He encountered no cursed spirits at first, but as he pressed forward, the pressure grew steadily heavier, as though he were mired in mud.
It was cursed energy so dense it seemed impossible to disperse...
Damn it, had the cursed spirits here really changed this much in such a short time?!
What were those idiots thinking, leaving something that important somewhere anyone could take it?!
Megumi Fushiguro kept sprinting toward the greatest concentration of cursed energy.
Just then, a cursed spirit burst through a classroom door and attacked in an instant.
"Stay out of my way!" Rather than striking with his fists or feet, Megumi Fushiguro brought his hands together in a gesture. The spilling moonlight cast his shadow onto the floor.
Divine Dogs!
The darkness beneath his feet surged, gathering as though granted life. In an instant, it formed two vicious dogs with bared teeth.
One white, one black.
They stood on either side of him.
Roar! Roar!
"Tear them apart!"
The Academy's hallways had long since emptied for the night. The students had all gone home, and the teachers had finished another day of wage slavery.
Silence. Not a sound.
Though it would have been stranger to hear anything in an empty Academy...
But an uninvited guest broke that stillness, humming as he stepped lightly through the main entrance.
As for what happened to the school's locked iron gate, don't ask. The answer would only make the principal cry.
Kamo Xu casually snapped the iron bars and swaggered into the grounds that belonged to the students.
He raised his head, slowly looking toward the fourth floor.
"Ah... there are still people here. It's good to be young, wanting to explore every last place."
Through his senses, Kamo Xu could tell that the two people were in serious trouble. Hideous cursed spirits already crowded their surroundings.
Hmm?
Another presence of cursed energy was advancing rapidly, accompanied by two clean, pure sources of cursed energy, closing in on the most deeply cursed part of the Academy.
A jujutsu sorcerer?
"Well, this really is... I can't let someone else steal my credit."
He pushed off and sprang into the air, leaving a small crater beneath his feet from the tremendous force, heading toward those same two people.
Inside the school building, a short-haired girl trembled all over, clamping both hands over her mouth for fear of making even the slightest sound.
She hid behind a wall, huddled into a miserable little ball...
"What... time... is it...?"
A bizarre figure emerged in the distance. Absurdly short, spindly limbs supported a bloated torso, and its horse-like face bore a pair of bulging frog eyes.
It glanced about aimlessly, searching for its delicious meal.
"The short hand points to eleven..."
What was that? What on earth was that thing?!
Hearing the monster's movements fade into the distance, Sasaki instinctively leaned out to check whether it had left.
She saw no sign of its grotesque figure. Just as she breathed a sigh of relief, a stranger's voice sounded behind her.
"Oh? A girl, too. And you actually managed not to scream in fright."
"Ah!"
Sasaki let out a quiet cry of fear, then suddenly remembered something and hurriedly covered her mouth again.
With tears welling in her eyes, she slowly turned her head...
A man was smiling at her. He was handsome, and although his hair was spiky, it had been neatly groomed, with the excess lengths of black hair tied into a simple ponytail behind his head.
He wore a trench coat over a tight black combat outfit that perfectly outlined muscles as exquisitely sculpted as an ancient Greek statue.
On a scale of ten, he would probably score a nine. An undeniably gorgeous man.
What puzzled her, though, was the eyepatch covering one of his eyes. Only a single dark eye remained visible, gazing kindly at Sasaki.
This man was Kamo Xu!
For a moment, Sasaki couldn't process the scene before her. First a sudden disaster, then an incredibly handsome man appeared right in front of her.
Was she dreaming?
"Sa... saki..."
A voice came from the man's shoulder, weak and exhausted, as though its owner had drained his kidneys dry. His eyes rolled back as he dangled pitifully from Kamo Xu like an accessory.
"Iguchi!" Sasaki finally noticed her fellow club member. He was safe too.
Hearing her call, the young man managed to lift his head and give her a thumbs-up. "I'm... fine."
Kamo Xu set the somewhat old-looking boy down from his shoulder and placed a hand on each of their heads.
"Thank goodness, you're human." Kamo Xu smiled and spoke gently. "Impressive. Most people would have screamed their heads off and gotten eaten in a situation like this. You held out until now. That perseverance deserves praise."
Reverse Cursed Technique flowed from Kamo Xu's palms into the pair, clearing away the curses clinging to them one by one. With that, he no longer had to worry about their condition.
Sasaki and Iguchi had no idea what had happened. They only felt the warmth of the hands on their heads, along with a slight itch where he touched them.
"Don't go touching strange things again. I'll be taking... this."
Once he had more or less finished healing them, Kamo Xu lowered his hands and waved a purple finger in front of Sasaki as though performing a magic trick.
Huh? When did he...?
Sasaki instinctively pressed a hand against her skirt pocket. It really was gone!
"All right, go down the hallway behind me and leave through the main entrance. The cursed spirits along that route... well, those weird things. I've already cleared them out."
Kamo Xu stood and offered the pair a final bit of reassurance. Smiling, he stepped past them toward the direction the cursed spirit had just gone. "Leave the rest to the adults. You kids can go home now."
"Um!" Seeing that Kamo Xu was leaving, Sasaki called out hurriedly, "Thank you! Could you tell me your name?"
Without turning around, Kamo Xu waved a hand. "It doesn't matter. If you really need something to call me... call me a jujutsu sorcerer."
A jujutsu sorcerer...
So cool...
Leaving the two ordinary people behind, Kamo Xu continued strolling down the long hallway.
He now carried the Sukuna-brand lethally poisonous bone-in chicken foot. As Kamo Xu toyed with it, he casually grabbed a cursed spirit by the neck, squeezing it while listening to its howls.
"Ah, so this is Sukuna, the King of Curses."
"At last we meet. I've spent quite a while looking for you this past year..."
His smile was radiant, his excitement like that of someone reunited with an old friend after a long separation. But the veins bulging on his hand, and the cursed spirit shrieking ever more shrilly as its flesh was crushed, suggested otherwise.
Eat it...
The words suddenly surfaced in Kamo Xu's mind. He froze, then burst out laughing.
"That confident, huh? Trying to seduce me the moment we meet? Are you a whore?"
Eat it.
Holding the finger, Kamo Xu turned the thousand-year-old piece of cured meat over and over, feeling the desire within his body with keen interest.
Grow stronger. Eat it, and you can grow stronger...
Don't you want to become stronger than the Strongest? Swallow the King of Curses' cursed energy, and you'll be the next king!
Eat me!!!
"Will you fucking shut up?!"
Kamo Xu abruptly tightened his grip, and the pitiful cursed spirit finally stopped wailing.
Strange purple blood dripped from his fingertips, with scraps of cursed spirit flesh caught between his fingers...
"Know your place, you damned curse. Don't make me throw you into a cesspit for forty-nine days to pickle you, then feed you to a dog!"
"A thousand-year-old blight like you should've died ages ago. Yet you've got the nerve to cling to life like this, neither human nor ghost. How are you any different from a dog with a broken spine?!"
"You mother****ing ****, you ******!"
Before you continue