Awakening

Maki and Akutagawa Shang hurried forward to check the two children's injuries.

The two children, a boy and a girl, were both still alive, but their condition was grim. Red scars had already crept across the boy's face, and one of his eyes had even turned black. The girl's symptoms were worse. Red scars completely covered half her face, and her lips were deep purple. Her life could be in danger at any moment.

"They should be our mission targets, the two children taken by the curse," Akutagawa said.

Maki nodded.

"Cough, cough." Coughs kept coming from the little girl's mouth.

Maki crouched down to check their current condition.

"The curse has already eaten into both of them. They could die at any moment. If we leave them like this, they probably won't last until help arrives."

As Maki spoke, her standing figure suddenly swayed. Her legs buckled, and she fell toward the ground.

"Maki! Are you okay?"

Akutagawa Shang reached out and caught Maki before she hit the ground.

"Heh, so I couldn't hold out after all? What a pain. If only I were as lucky as you, able to use cursed energy to resist the curse eating into me... I don't have any cursed energy to fight it..."

Her voice grew fainter and fainter, the last few words barely a mumble in her mouth. Then she lay weakly on the ground and lost consciousness completely.

At some point, the cursed spirit had slashed a wound across her thigh. The flesh around its edges had turned an unnatural bluish purple, and something was moving inside. Tiny, densely packed things blinked over and over. Only when he leaned closer did he see clearly-countless blinking eyes, embedded one by one in the wound, still turning slowly. The sight sent his sanity plummeting.

"Hey, Maki, stay with me! Hold on! Didn't you say you'd protect me? Hold on!!"

Akutagawa Shang gathered cursed energy into his fists and frantically hammered the fleshy wall, trying to punch through the stomach lining. Each blow left a sizable crater, but the wall soon began to writhe slowly, returning to normal within seconds.

"Damn it, it's no use. This thing regenerates too fast. My current cursed energy output can't punch through this monster's abdomen in one go."

Akutagawa Shang was frantic. Three cursed people could die at any moment, while he was trapped inside the monster's stomach with no way out.

"What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Come on, you stupid brain, think!"

Damn it, if only I knew reverse cursed technique. As Akutagawa thought this, his hand, filled with cursed energy, unconsciously touched the wound on Maki's leg.

Yet the instant his hand touched the wound, the cursed energy there actually began flowing slowly toward Akutagawa Shang's palm.

"What's going on? Am I absorbing these curses?"

Akutagawa Shang felt the black cursed energy at the wound flowing steadily into him, like water being poured into an empty cup.

"So it wasn't my imagination before?" Akutagawa suddenly recalled the tiny mass of cursed energy that had attacked him earlier, only to be absorbed by him.

Wait, if I really can absorb cursed energy- A bold idea suddenly occurred to Akutagawa Shang.

"If curses count as cursed energy too, I should be able to absorb them." Akutagawa Shang tried absorbing some of the curses afflicting the two children, stabilizing their vital signs enough for them to last until rescue arrived.

After doing all this, Akutagawa Shang's hands trembled a little, but he didn't stop. He had an even bolder plan.

Gritting his teeth, he slowly reached toward Maki's abdomen.

"At a time like this, what are you up to now? Hm?" Sensing Akutagawa Shang place his palm over her abdomen, Maki slowly opened her mouth.

Because Akutagawa Shang had absorbed some of the curse's energy from her wound, Maki had now regained consciousness. Though still weak, she could at least speak.

"Do you remember what I told you before? That you aren't actually completely without cursed energy?" Akutagawa said, looking into Maki's eyes.

"You jerk, you're still teasing me at a time like this?"

"I'm telling the truth."

As he spoke, Akutagawa Shang slowly fed cursed energy into Maki through her abdomen.

The cursed energy flowed slowly through Maki's body like threads.

Feeling the strange sensation in her abdomen, Maki asked, "What are you doing?"

In the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, the mainstream method of combat involved using cursed energy and cursed techniques. But there was one unique kind of existence that traded all cursed energy for an extraordinarily powerful body: heavenly restriction. Such individuals possessed combat power far beyond that of an ordinary Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer through their bodies alone, while relinquishing cursed energy also gave them extremely high resistance to curses.

The previous bearer of heavenly restriction, Toji Fushiguro, known as the "Heavenly Tyrant," had slaughtered over half the Zenin Clan with his formidable strength after awakening. He had even come within a step of killing the strongest of the modern age. Though Satoru Gojo had turned the tables and killed him after awakening, that was still enough to demonstrate his tremendous strength.

As the new generation's bearer of heavenly restriction, Maki Zenin should originally have possessed such formidable strength as well.

But because of the twin curse, the two sisters were treated as one, and part of her younger sister Mai Zenin's cursed energy existed within her body. As a result, Maki had not completely awakened because she had not fully relinquished cursed energy. Her physical gifts were severely restricted, and no amount of training could bring her to Toji Fushiguro's level. Mai's cursed energy was also restricted because of this, leaving her able to create only one bullet a day with her construction technique. In short, two originally highly gifted sorcerers had become a pair of scrubs.

In the original story, after the Shibuya Incident, Mai Zenin's death took that trace of cursed energy away from Maki's body. Maki fully awakened as the second Heavenly Tyrant and slaughtered the remaining half of the Zenin Clan.

Then, supposing Akutagawa Shang absorbed that trace of cursed energy from Maki's body now, could he theoretically create a Heavenly Tyrant artificially within a short time?

The abdomen was the core through which jujutsu sorcerers circulated cursed energy. Damage to it would affect that circulation. The Fraudulent One had been careless and failed to dodge, resulting in Sukuna bisecting him at the waist with a single world-cutting slash. Unable even to use reverse cursed technique, he had suffered a crushing defeat.

And that tiny trace of Maki's cursed energy was hidden within her waist and abdomen.

Cursed energy entered Maki's body through his palm. Just as he had seen that little light inside her yesterday, this time Akutagawa Shang truly "touched" it.

The light trembled the instant he touched it. Then it followed the flow of Akutagawa's cursed energy, slowly rising from deep within Maki's body and entering Akutagawa Shang's.

In that instant, Maki's body emptied completely. Some restriction that had always weighed on her seemed to vanish suddenly. She stood up, her gaze instantly becoming incredibly sharp, and her entire presence underwent an earth-shattering change.

Simply put, just looking at the way she stood was enough to tell how absurdly strong she was.

Her body now felt unbelievably light.

The curse that had been steadily eating into her body was now like a hissing kitty seized by the throat of fate. Her physical discomfort vanished completely in an instant.

All her strength and all her senses returned in that instant. The world's colors grew a little brighter than before, and her senses became exceptionally clear. She could hear her own heartbeat, steady and powerful, as though something long dormant had finally awakened.

Maki raised her head. Though she couldn't see cursed energy, she could now sense where the enormous cursed spirit was writhing. It was another form of perception.

Maki shot upward like an arrow loosed from a bow, soaring all the way to the top. It was a height she had never reached before, yet now it came so easily.

"Thank goodness, it worked!"

With that, he collapsed onto the ground. He hadn't had much cursed energy to begin with. Besides, Maki's constitution was unusual, and searching for cursed energy inside her was like searching for a needle in the ocean. Had he not been exceptionally sensitive to cursed energy, able to sense its exact location within her body, success would probably have been impossible. Even so, he had now consumed a considerable amount of his cursed energy.

Maki seized the long blade stuck fast in place and used the momentum of her fall to drag its edge viciously downward along the inner wall of the Cursed Spirit Stomach. A massive wound opened in the cursed spirit's flank. Its body was forcibly cleaved open from within, and light flooded back in as purple blood gushed from the wound.

"It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!" In pain, the cursed spirit let out a heart-rending scream.

Maki looked down at her hands and clenched her fists, feeling the surging power within her.

"You **** thing, your time is up."