"He's here!"
Ten minutes after Mukuro left, everyone gathered around the monitors and caught sight of their target through the visual feed shared by Mei Mei.
A colossal crow was flying in from the distance. Although they couldn't clearly see Sukuna on its back yet, the sheer, staggering volume of cursed energy radiating from it seemed to blanket the entire sky.
Even through a screen, that suffocating pressure made it feel difficult to breathe. They couldn't imagine anyone else possessing such a terrifying reservoir of energy besides the King of Curses.
"Is this supposed to intimidate us? Playing childish games, are we?" Satoru spread his hands and scoffed.
Typically, the stronger a sorcerer was, the more they tended to keep their cursed energy calm and restrained. (Yuta was the exception. His naturally enormous reserves meant he had no reason to care about such a tiny amount of cursed energy being lost.)
"Then let's do it just like we agreed. I'll go first, and nobody is allowed to interfere!"
As soon as the words left his mouth, the crackling sound of lightning rang out.
The first person Jujutsu High had chosen to send out was the battle fanatic who had willingly crossed four hundred years of time for this fight, the "God of Lightning," Hajime Kashimo!
* * *
(Flashback)
Three days before the battle.
"You're planning to waste this second life of yours?"
Originally, according to Jujutsu High's plan, Mukuro would deal with Kenjaku while another strongest, Satoru, would take the lead against Sukuna. After all, they were facing Sukuna at nearly his full strength. Only the strongest of the current era could fight him head-on. Anyone else might not even have the qualifications to step forward and wear him down.
Kashimo, however, had strongly objected. He insisted on being the first one to fight. Because of that, Satoru didn't hold back when questioning him, and his words were like a reprimand.
"You should be a little stronger than me, right? But I don't think you can beat Sukuna, especially now that he has Yuta Okkotsu's body."
Leaning against the wall, Kashimo began analyzing the situation seriously. "If it were me, even if I couldn't defeat Sukuna, I could still wear him down to some extent. By the time you enter the fight, you might have a chance of winning. As for everyone else, wait until the two of us are dead before joining in. If we want to defeat the King of Curses, everyone has to fight with everything they have."
As someone who had been reincarnated into a new body, he was different from most ancient sorcerers in one particular way. He was strangely unconcerned about death.
In fact, he could say that he had already arranged his own funeral for three days later and was simply waiting for it to come.
"What are you talking about? Gojo-sensei can beat Sukuna to pulp all by himself!" Yuji couldn't accept Kashimo's analysis and immediately argued against it.
"You've made up your mind?" Satoru simply patted his student on the shoulder before looking at Kashimo with a serious expression.
"Of course. You need to be alive to fight, after all. Didn't I come back to life this time so I could personally experience what it means to be the 'strongest'?"
The corners of Kashimo's mouth curled upward as he lowered his head and looked at his palm.
In his previous life, he had been riddled with illness before he could ever experience the absolute peak of power. How could he possibly let someone else take the first bite?
(Flashback End)
* * *
"You've fought Yuta once before, so you should have some understanding of his technique by now. We've also already told you about Sukuna's technique, so—"
Seeing how fired up Kashimo was, Panda, who had once nearly fallen victim to him, couldn't help but remind him. After all, they were allies now.
More importantly, Panda knew just how terrifying Kashimo's explosive power was. Even though it knew there was little chance of it happening, it still feared that he might cause irreversible damage to Yuta's body.
"Forget about Yuta Okkotsu or whatever. It doesn't matter. All I need is to fight Sukuna to my heart's content."
Kashimo cut him off. His eyes were filled with nothing but a surging desire for battle.
At that moment, above the skies of Shinjuku, Sukuna leaped down from the back of the giant crow and landed steadily on the empty street.
The agreed location was simply Shinjuku. They had never specified an exact spot. With both hands in his pockets, Sukuna placed one foot on a stone block by the roadside and quietly looked up at the circling crows, seemingly waiting for a response.
Boom!
Under the clear sky, thunder suddenly exploded out of nowhere.
"Here it comes," Sukuna muttered, shifting his gaze toward the sound.
Kashimo had already leaped into the air, crossing the 203-meter landmark building as he soared toward the King of Curses. He gripped his metal staff tightly, and the greeting he brought with him was a thunderous strike from above, wrapped in crackling cursed energy.
"What incredible destructive power!"
As Kashimo descended at incredible speed, countless rocks and clouds of dust were blasted into the air, blocking the crows' view. Through the livestream, everyone could see nothing but a vast white blur.
When the dust finally settled, Kashimo stood at the center with one hand gripping his long staff. More than half of its length had already been driven into the ground.
Starting from where he stood, the ground within a radius of dozens of meters had been blown apart. Thick heat rose from the cracks in the earth, seemingly telling everyone just how powerful that single strike had been.
The students on Jujutsu High's side couldn't help but gasp in amazement.
Unfortunately, Sukuna's body had stopped at the very edge of the attack's range, completely outside it. His hands, which had remained in his pockets, had not even been pulled out by that terrifying attack.
"I'm truly being underestimated. To think the vanguard is you, the loser who fell to Yuta Okkotsu."
There was obvious disdain and displeasure in Sukuna's voice.
From Yuta's memories, he had already gained a clear understanding of Kashimo's strength before his technique was released. Someone of this level would never be considered weak in any era. Yet on this battlefield, he was nothing more than a moth flying into a flame.
"Sukuna, were you born this strong, or did you become this strong later in life?"
Ignoring the other man's contemptuous words, Kashimo pulled the metal staff, still crackling with electricity, out of the ground and rested it on his shoulder. Then he asked the question that had plagued his curiosity for years.
"Who knows. At the very least, I was an omen of bad luck that frightened people." Sukuna's voice carried zero emotion.
Four eyes, two mouths, and four arms. In an ancient era that was already deeply bound by old customs, how could such an existence possibly be accepted as a "human"?
But he no longer cared.
"If you don't understand human weakness, how can you connect with people? And how could you possibly treat them with compassion?"
Taking Sukuna's response as confirmation that his strength was innate, Kashimo realized they shared the exact same affliction.
In his previous life, he had been too strong to understand those two things that had always troubled him. To Kashimo, humans were like fragile clumps of dirt.
He had always believed that he had lost part of the emotions that made him a "human."
As he continued down the path of pursuing the "strongest," he was also searching for the things he had lost.
Yet in the end, even at the moment of his death, no one had stood by his side.
Aside from strength, what had he ever truly possessed?
"Tell me, is being strong the same as being lonely? To keep wandering in pursuit of the 'strongest,' is loneliness the price the strong must pay and the punishment they must accept?"
The questions buried deep in his heart kept pouring out. Kashimo had spent his entire life waiting for someone at the very peak of strength to answer them.
"What a spoiled, greedy fellow. Fine, I'll give you a little guidance."
Sukuna rarely showed patience, but he made exceptions for the strong. He finally pulled his hands from his pockets, curling a finger toward Kashimo.
"Show me what you've got, ghost."
Kashimo blinked in surprise, then split his face into a wide grin.
The historic clash that future generations would come to call the Inhuman Makyo Shinjuku Showdown officially began.
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