Sherlock's slash had landed solidly, but that was as far as it went.
The Cursed Spirit quickly reacted. The disposable medical instruments on its head seemed to come alive and shot straight toward Sherlock.
The densely packed needles, scalpels, and other implements still bore traces of dried blood. Sherlock did not dare take them head-on. He instantly activated his Cursed Technique to put distance between himself and the Cursed Spirit, reappearing where he had first landed. He held his sword up and watched the spirit warily.
The Cursed Spirit stopped holding back, too. As though Sherlock's slash had thoroughly enraged it, its head burst apart in an instant. Countless strands of flesh sprouted from the disposable medical instruments that had clustered on its head. Like wriggling worms, they launched an all-out assault on Sherlock from every direction.
The nurse's headless corpse slumped straight to the floor, as though it had lost whatever controlled it.
"A Cursed Technique that controls corpses?"
Sherlock faced the densely packed medical instruments with an especially grave expression. After cutting several apart with his sword, he activated his Cursed Technique and vanished from the spot, appearing beside the nurse's body on the floor.
The scattered medical instruments were not difficult to handle. The controlled corpse was the difficult part, so Sherlock intended to deal with the corpse that had lost the Cursed Spirit's control first.
But the instant Sherlock appeared beside the fallen nurse's corpse, the nurse suddenly sprang to life. The fingers on one hand turned straight into scalpels and stabbed toward Sherlock's chest.
The sudden turn left Sherlock no time to react. He could only hastily block with his sword, but a scalpel still slashed his chest in that instant.
Sherlock also saw exactly how the corpse was moving. At its neck was a small, scalpel-shaped Cursed Spirit parasitizing the body!
I've been had!
Realizing what had happened, Sherlock decisively activated his Cursed Technique and teleported straight into the hospital lobby.
The moment he appeared, a wave of dizziness swept through his head. At the same time, his limbs began to go weak, as though he had a fever.
Damn it, I've been poisoned!
Upon sensing the changes in his body, Sherlock realized almost immediately what was happening. He even began considering whether to leave or keep fighting.
The Cursed Spirit was clearly difficult to deal with. The nurse he had seen was very likely not its true body, but an incarnation or a puppet.
If he wanted to destroy this Cursed Spirit, Sherlock had to find its damned true body somewhere in this hospital.
As though to confirm Sherlock's suspicions, shortly after he teleported into the hospital lobby, the entire hospital erupted into activity.
Countless headless corpses poured out from every direction and charged toward Sherlock.
The corpses had almost all been modified. Aside from the shared trait of being headless, their most prominent feature was that each one's hands took the form of a particular medical implement.
Some had syringes, some had scalpels, and some simply had rubber tubing like whips or bloodstained bandages.
The corpses themselves came in every variety: children, adolescents, women, elderly people, and young and middle-aged adults.
The scene, like a zombie outbreak, made Sherlock's skin crawl. His urge to retreat clamored wildly, but for some reason, the moment it did, the image of Masamichi Yaga standing at the lectern with a serious expression unconsciously surfaced in his mind, delivering conclusions that contradicted the textbook and were even downright irreverent.
He recalled the anticipation that damned cat occasionally revealed during his countless sparring sessions with Satoru Gojo over the past half month.
He recalled Shoko's face, its disdain tinged with concern, which he saw the instant he woke up each time that damned cat beat him unconscious.
In the end, all those images settled on that afternoon, which could be called the most relaxed and happy afternoon he had spent since coming to this world...
"Fuck it, let's do this! If I die, I die with my dick pointing skyward. If I live, I'll live forever!"
After swearing, Sherlock stopped suppressing the Cursed Energy inside him. That vast surge of Cursed Energy engulfed the entire hospital like a tsunami in an instant. The next second, Sherlock abruptly vanished.
The Cursed Technique he had named Flying Thunder God activated at full power. For a moment, countless Sherlocks appeared throughout the hospital like clones, swords rising and falling. In less than a second, Sherlock had beheaded every last one of the surging zombies.
For the first time, Flying Thunder God's so-called Yellow Flash shone with a different brilliance in the world of Jujutsu Kaisen.
After dealing with all the zombies in an instant, Sherlock himself instantly returned to his original position, doubled over uncontrollably, and began vomiting violently.
Ever since obtaining the Flying Thunder God Cursed Technique, Sherlock had grown accustomed to leaving densely placed beacons everywhere he went. It was precisely this habit that allowed him to unleash unimaginable combat power in a crisis.
With his Cursed Technique operating at full power, Sherlock's speed reached an incredible level. He appeared almost simultaneously throughout the hospital, his figure appearing beside practically every corpse.
Although this method allowed Sherlock to behead almost all the zombies and the Cursed Spirits inhabiting their bodies in the blink of an eye, the strain of running his Cursed Technique at full power also left the already-poisoned Sherlock dizzy and seeing stars.
The strain on his brain from handling multiple tasks at once, from the sense of spatial tearing as all sorts of images appeared before his eyes almost simultaneously, far exceeded anything Sherlock had imagined.
"Urgh-if I-urgh-use that move again-urgh-I'm a-urgh-dog!!!"
Sherlock practically vomited up his bile before he barely managed to calm his nearly boiling brain.
Enduring the intense pain and dizziness in his head, Sherlock braced a hand against the wall and looked down toward the ground below.
The burst of Cursed Energy just now had unexpectedly allowed Sherlock to sense the direction of the Cursed Spirit's true body. What surprised him even more was that its true body was hidden in a basement never mentioned anywhere in the information.
"Found you, bastard!"
Taking a deep breath, Sherlock pulled out the mints Satoru Gojo particularly disliked from his pocket and popped them into his mouth. The coolness of the mint cleared his head a little.
With Sayafushi in hand, he headed toward the basement.
To Sherlock's surprise, this children's hospital had only one route to the basement: the elevator shaft!
He cut open the elevator doors with Sayafushi. After looking into the pitch-black shaft and thinking for a moment, Sherlock decisively jumped down.
But when Sherlock cut through another set of elevator doors and finally entered the hidden basement, the sight before him nearly made him vomit again!