Arrogance

The next morning, the first faint rays of sunlight appeared.

Behind Jujutsu High lay an abandoned clearing hidden by weeds and ancient trees.

"Huff... hah..."

With a military backpack full of rocks strapped to her back, Asakura Yuki struggled through frog jumps along the rugged mountain path.

Sweat had long since soaked through her gray tracksuit, outlining her increasingly toned figure.

"One thousand nine hundred ninety-eight..."

"One thousand nine hundred ninety-nine..."

"Two thousand!"

Asakura Yuki's whole body went limp, and she collapsed in a heap, greedily gulping down fresh air.

Over the past month and more.

Under Yagami Jue's devilish, hellish training.

She had gone from a weakling who spent ages catching her breath after an eight-hundred-meter run to a "little monster" who could do two thousand frog jumps with twenty-five kilograms of rocks on her back.

Though she still had no cursed energy, her physical fitness had already far surpassed that of an ordinary adult man.

"Not bad. You're still alive."

A cold voice came from above.

Asakura Yuki struggled to lift her head and saw Yagami Jue sitting on a thick branch, idly holding a foxtail stem between his teeth.

"Yagami..."

Asakura Yuki struggled to her feet. Though she was so exhausted she wanted to throw up, her eyes shone brightly.

"I can already feel how to properly engage my muscles!"

"Could you... teach me real fighting techniques today?"

Yagami Jue leaped down from the tree, as light as a feather.

He looked Asakura Yuki up and down, a barely perceptible hint of approval flashing in his eyes.

"You've still got a long way to go."

"Your body might be stronger than an ordinary person's now, but against a cursed spirit, you're still a piece of tofu that'll crumble at a touch."

"Still..."

Yagami Jue changed his tune.

"Since you've been working so hard, I'll teach you something practical today."

Asakura Yuki's eyes instantly lit up, her face full of anticipation.

Just then.

Heavy panting came from farther down the mountain path.

"S-sorry! I'm late!"

Junpei Yoshino ran up, gasping for breath, with a schoolbag on his back.

The moment he saw Yagami Jue, he bowed ninety degrees and held out a black bank card with trembling hands.

"Th-this is the ten million I took from home..."

"The PIN is on the back of the card."

Junpei's voice was trembling.

To get this money, he had secretly withdrawn the fixed-term savings his mother had spent half her life building up.

If he hadn't witnessed Yagami Jue's godlike, demonic power firsthand last night.

He would never have dared do something like this.

Yagami Jue's eyes lit up, and he snatched the bank card.

"System! Check the funds! Top up!"

[Ding!]

[Detected 10 million Japanese yen in the bank account. Top-up successful!]

[Current account balance: 1.36 billion Japanese yen!]

At that beautiful notification sound, Yagami Jue's grin grew even more brazen.

"At least you know what's good for you, kid."

Yagami Jue casually tossed the empty card back to Junpei.

"All right. Since you've paid your tuition, let's get started."

Junpei stared blankly at the empty card tossed back to him and swallowed.

"Um... are we going to learn some powerful jujutsu?"

"Or will we unlock our potential through meditation, like in the movies?"

Junpei's eyes sparkled. He was already imagining himself mowing down enemies left and right.

"Jujutsu?"

"Meditation?"

Yagami Jue walked over to a granite boulder half a person's height and sneered.

"The thing I hate most is all that flashy bullshit!"

"There's only one way to get stronger here!"

Bam!

Without winding up at all, Yagami Jue casually slammed a fist into the hard granite!

Boom!

The granite boulder, weighing several tons, instantly exploded into a shower of rubble as though it had been blasted apart with C4!

Fragments shot in every direction like bullets, striking the surrounding tree trunks with dull thuds.

Junpei and Asakura Yuki crouched down with their hands over their heads, their faces filled with horror!

"Holy shit! What kind of human can fucking do that?!"

Junpei stared at the rubble scattered across the ground, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.

These weren't movie special effects!

That had been a real, solid rock!

"Did you get a good look?"

Yagami Jue dusted off his hands and looked down at them like a god of war.

"This is the truth!"

"Cursed techniques, domains-all of it's fucking bullshit!"

"As long as your fists are hard enough and you're fast enough, you can punch through space itself! Why would you fear any monster?"

Yagami Jue turned and pointed at two slightly smaller rocks on the ground.

"Starting today, your task is to pound these two rocks into powder with your fists every day."

"No tools allowed."

"If you don't finish, you don't eat."

Junpei and Asakura Yuki exchanged a glance, each seeing despair in the other's eyes.

Punch rocks with their bare fists?!

Did he want them to destroy their hands?!

"Yagami..."

Asakura Yuki timidly raised her hand. "Won't that break our bones...?"

"Break your bones?"

Yagami Jue sneered.

"If they break, wait for them to heal. Once they've healed, keep punching."

"Only through constant destruction and rebuilding will your bones become harder than steel!"

"What? Scared? If you're scared, get the hell out of here!"

Yagami Jue's gaze turned utterly cold in an instant, and the terrifying bloodlust of someone who had killed a Special Grade erupted from him.

It bore down on the two of them until even breathing became difficult.

Junpei gritted his teeth.

The faces of his tormentors flashed through his mind, along with the terrifying laughter of that stitched-up monster from yesterday.

"I... I'm not scared!"

Junpei rushed up to a rock, raised his scrawny fist, and slammed it down!

Bam!

"Agh!"

A scream rang out.

Junpei clutched his scraped, bleeding fist, tears welling in his eyes from the pain.

But he didn't give up. Instead, he gritted his teeth and raised his fist again.

Watching Junpei, Asakura Yuki took a deep breath too.

She walked up to the other rock.

If I don't want to be a burden anymore...

If I want to stand in the same world as him...

Her gaze hardened with resolve, and she brought her fist down.

Watching these two "disciples" desperately torture themselves, Yagami Jue leaned against a tree and yawned.

These two idiots are actually doing it.

He grumbled inwardly.

Back then, my bones only survived because I had the system boosting my stats.

But whatever. This world has Reverse Cursed Technique anyway. If they wreck their hands, they can just go to the infirmary and have Shoko Ieiri fix them.

Yagami Jue couldn't be bothered to care whether they lived or died.

His mind had already drifted to the upcoming plot.

Going by the timeline, the Kyoto Sister-School Goodwill Event should be coming up soon, right?

I heard the higher-ups really splurged on this event and prepared quite a few Special Grade Cursed Tools as prizes.

And that so-called "Special Grade Cursed Object-Cursed Womb: Death Paintings" is sitting in Jujutsu High's forbidden storehouse too.

At the thought, Yagami Jue's eyes gleamed with naked greed.

That's all cold, hard cash!

I've got to find a way to get my fucking hands on all of it!

Just as Yagami Jue was plotting how to make money.

An outrageously arrogant burst of laughter suddenly came from outside the woods.

"Hahahaha! And here I thought that 'Zero-Cursed-Energy Killer God' was doing something earth-shattering."

"Turns out you're just playing house with little kids out here?"

Yagami Jue's gaze turned cold, and he looked toward the voice.

Three students wearing Kyoto Jujutsu High uniforms were swaggering toward him.

Leading them was a burly boy with a pompadour and a brutish face.