Cursed spirits were born from humanity's negative emotions and the cursed energy people leaked in their daily lives.
Although schools were places for teaching and nurturing students, and should therefore have been brimming with positive energy, cursed spirits did not care how much positive energy there was. They only cared whether there was enough negative energy.
At that moment, Chinatsu stood at the entrance to the school cafeteria, her head tilted slightly upward as she studied the building and felt the waves of chilling cursed energy radiating from it.
She could not help planting one hand on her hip and raising the other to her forehead, letting out a helpless sigh.
After a brief silence, Chinatsu pulled herself together and prepared to enter the cafeteria.
What? The door was locked?
Then brute force it was!
A layer of cursed energy wrapped around Chinatsu's hands. With her strength enhanced by it, she easily wrenched the door free of its lock and calmly stepped inside.
Chinatsu's azure eyes gleamed in the dim cafeteria. She did not even need to look around for the cursed spirit. The moment she entered, it charged straight at her and swung a fist at her forehead.
BOOM!!!!!!
A deafening crash rang out. The shock wave sent the cafeteria's tables and chairs flying before they landed in a chaotic heap on the floor.
Yet Chinatsu simply stood there, perfectly composed despite the impact, tilting her head to look at the cursed spirit in front of her from an angle.
Its overall shape was humanoid, but it was so grotesque that no one would have mistaken it for a human.
It strained its clawed hand, trying to smash Chinatsu's head to pieces. Unfortunately for it, a layer of Limitless Defense separated them, preventing either its claws or the shock wave they produced from affecting her in the slightest.
"Such a warm welcome? You're almost making me blush," Chinatsu said with a slight smile, tilting her head.
Before the cursed spirit could react, Chinatsu clenched a fist and swung it straight into its head, sending it flying with a tremendous racket.
At the school gates, in the security office.
The guards naturally heard the repeated crashes, but none of them intended to get up and investigate. Their superiors had already given them instructions beforehand.
"Are they doing renovations?"
"Who cares? We don't have to worry about it."
"True enough."
The guards continued taking it easy, while Chinatsu, who had just punched the cursed spirit in the head, looked suddenly flustered.
"Crap, why did I punch it? Doesn't that make the [Blue] I just mastered look like nothing but decoration?" Chinatsu looked down at her clenched fist and grumbled in exasperation.
Fortunately, her punch had not killed the cursed spirit outright. Its grotesque body slowly crawled up from the floor.
Unlike human jujutsu sorcerers, cursed spirits could heal and regenerate their bodies as a matter of course. Unless they suffered enough damage in an instant, they would gradually recover from it.
Chinatsu studied the cursed spirit with her azure eyes. Just as she was mentally assessing its grade, the creature, now back on its feet, began spitting out broken phrases.
"Tastes awful... tastes awful... pig feed... I want takeout... AAAAAH!!!"
Those words left Chinatsu utterly stunned. The instant she heard it speak, the words "Special Grade" even flashed through her mind, but she dismissed that possibility almost immediately.
It was not speaking intelligently. It was merely copying the words of students whose negative emotions came from the cafeteria's terrible food.
This was just too ridiculous...
Chinatsu genuinely had not expected the first cursed spirit she exorcised in this life to have been born from such mundane yet absurd negativity.
Come to think of it, the real culprits were the people who made the cafeteria food so atrocious. Unless the cafeteria cleaned up its act, another cursed spirit like this would be born.
There were only two ways to erase cursed spirits from this world entirely.
The first was to turn everyone in the world into a jujutsu sorcerer, since sorcerers could control the cursed energy within their bodies and keep it from leaking out as it did from ordinary humans.
But that was extremely difficult, because becoming a jujutsu sorcerer required talent. No amount of resources spent training ordinary people would help. Spreading the knowledge might even cause panic and increase the number of cursed spirits instead.
Compared with the first method, the second was somewhat simpler: kill every non-sorcerer in the world and create a world inhabited only by jujutsu sorcerers.
But that method...
Chinatsu was pondering this crucial part of the future plot, but the cursed spirit before her was hardly going to stand idle while she thought.
The cursed spirit: An opening!!!
An intense surge of cursed energy erupted from its entire body, like a sports car with the accelerator floored.
When normal people discovered their attacks had no effect on an enemy, they would either turn and run or try a different move.
But the dim-witted cursed spirit simply thought it had not put enough cursed energy into its last attack and decided to increase its output.
Brute force solved everything?
Sheer strength could overcome any technique?
Who did it think it was, the protagonist?!
The cursed spirit stamped its foot and charged at Chinatsu with a hideous grin. Faced with such a reckless creature, she successfully resisted the urge to clench her fist and punch it again this time. Instead, she opened her palm toward the oncoming spirit.
"Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue!"
If the cursed spirit was a sports car going full throttle, then the moment Chinatsu unleashed Blue, an enormous truck suddenly appeared ahead, barreling straight toward it.
The cursed spirit's pupils trembled. It frantically tried to turn its steering wheel and change course, but it was already too late. It slammed straight into Blue.
Like a miniature black hole, Blue continuously unleashed a tremendous attractive force that compressed everything toward its center. Even with every trick at its disposal, the cursed spirit could only struggle against it for a little longer.
Chinatsu swept her arm aside. In the instant Blue vanished, the cursed spirit could no longer withstand the gravitational pull. It was finally torn to shreds and reduced to nothing.
Grade 2 Cursed Spirit, successfully exorcised!
Chinatsu raised both arms and stretched, letting out a breath before turning and strolling lazily toward the school gates, ready to head back.
Meanwhile, Satoru Gojo was still riding in a private car on his way to the assignment site in Kagoshima...
Before you continue