Chapter 94: It's All Fun and Games Until You Bully Your Wife
The only response Hikigaya Hachiman received was the thunderous roar of the giant beast. Hagoromo Gitsune was in no mood for dialogue. The sheer volume of her roar shattered the thick ice surrounding them, her aura flaring with terrifying intensity.
"Don't even think about it!"
Hagoromo Gitsune was still fuming over the "blood trade" Hachiman had forced upon her with his previous massive attack. To her, this was a grudge match between mortal enemies; being "fed" by Hachiman and Yukino's combined presence only made her attitude worse.
However, as angry as she was, she hadn't survived a millennium by being a mindless brute.
'That kid's destructive strike earlier was clearly a close-quarters technique'
Fearing another melee engagement, she immediately widened the gap. Being too close to Hachiman made her feel instinctively unsafe. While she was a master of close combat, it was foolish to engage a specialist in their own field when she had powerful techniques at her disposal.
Furthermore, her massive "Full Form" made her an easy target in the narrow mountain valleys.
She activated a teleportation technique to leap to a neighboring peak, while barking instructions to Yukino: "The moment you sense another high-intensity destructive technique from him, transport us back to the Ghost Post Office immediately!"
"Understood," Yukino replied.
Though a nagging sense of familiarity tugged at her, the man before her wore a strange golden mask and possessed blood-red eyes more terrifying than a Cursed Spirit's. She didn't recognize him.
Besides, his attack had nearly killed them both; Yukino wasn't the type to forgive a death threat just because of a "feeling."
She gave Hagoromo Gitsune her full blessing to retaliate.
The blizzard intensified. With a howl of freezing wind, the white fox vanished into the storm.
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Senseing Hagoromo Gitsune's retreat—though her curse remained locked onto him—Hachiman shook his head.
'I was just saying hello, not trying to kill you. Why so angry?'
"Fine, I'll find the answers myself."
His "Sixth Sense" was still screaming. Every instinct told him that if he got serious, he would regret it.
He was certain this spirit had some connection to him, but her refusal to communicate left him at a loss.
He didn't think he knew any spirits—the only one he'd ever spared was Rika Orimoto.
'Did someone I know accidentally bond with a Cursed Object?'
He wondered. He knew ancient sorcerers could reincarnate by taking over a human vessel, but his mind hadn't yet made the jump to Yukino. In his mind, she was still shopping in Shibuya.
'Regardless, once she switches back to her human form, I'll just pull off that mask and see who she is.'
BOOM! In the distance, a blue sphere—[Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue]—erupted, crushing spirits into dust. Gojo and Geto were officially going at it. Hachiman had seen Geto get swatted by the enraged Hagoromo Gitsune earlier and thought it was well-deserved.
'Trying to absorb a spirit that powerful without checking your own strength first? Talk about overconfidence.'
Even the legendary Cursed Spirit Manipulation couldn't handle a "disaster-level" entity like this one easily.
Suddenly, eight sharp ice spikes rained down on Hachiman. He flicked his sword upward, shattering them into powder ten meters away. But the sky seemed to produce an infinite supply of them. Soon, the mountainside was peppered with ice pillars that smashed through solid granite like nails.
Hachiman didn't counterattack; he simply wove through the terrain. He looked like he was taking a leisurely stroll through a rain of arrows, but in reality, he was moving so fast the ice couldn't touch him. He was testing something.
My swing was slow by 0.2 seconds. At full power, Hachiman could swing 30 times a second. He had felt a distinct lag.
'Is it a mental delay? A debuff?'
"It's not poison... it's a technique effect." Ever since his encounter with Fujiwara no Yoshifusa, Hachiman was wary of these ancient entities. If the opponent wasn't revealing their technique through a "Binding Vow," it meant they didn't need to—or their power was just that overwhelming.
Hagoromo Gitsune clicked her tongue in annoyance.
'How did this freak grow up so fast?'
Her current technique was a trap for melee fighters. Melee sorcerers pride themselves on reflexes and usually prefer to punch or slice projectiles.
Hagoromo Gitsune had imbued these spikes with a technique that increased the victim's perception. Shattering one spike increased reaction speed and perception by 20%.
After breaking five, Hachiman's perception was doubled. This sounded like a buff, but for a sorcerer, it was a disaster. His brain was processing 2x faster, but his body's physical speed hadn't increased. This created the "Slow Motion" illusion—the brain thinks the body is moving through molasses.
At higher levels, she could make a second feel like a century. This "Super Sense" delay was how she usually tortured melee masters to death. But Hachiman stopped breaking the spikes and started dodging instead.
'He's not falling for it?'
She was shocked. Most young sorcerers would try to smash everything in sight.
"Fine, that was just a probe anyway."
She was truly wary of his "hand-waving" ability that erased techniques. To counter his [Izanami], she decided to overwhelm him with sheer volume. If he could only erase three things at a time, she would give him a thousand.
Hagoromo Gitsune clasped her paws together and began a deep, guttural incantation to maximize the output of her Special Grade cursed energy.
"Curse of the Frozen Tomb, End of the Shattered Path... Frozen Pillars that pierce the sky..."
The sky crackled with lightning, and water vapor in the clouds literally froze solid. As a top-tier Special Grade, she could control the weather, creating a blizzard spanning a 15-kilometer radius that could last a thousand years. Birds fleeing the disaster were frozen mid-air and fell like statues.
Satellite images showed the area completely swallowed by a white-out. Within a 3-kilometer radius of Kurofune Prison, massive ice pillars—each 50 to 100 meters long—formed a dense, terrifying forest in the sky.
"I'll see if you can wave away a mountain," she thought.
"Is this too much?" Yukino asked, feeling Hagoromo Gitsune had poured 60% of her energy into this one attack.
"It's us or him, girl," the fox replied coldly.
"Mercy to the enemy is cruelty to yourself."
As the "Ice Prison" formed, the Association's satellites detected the shift and ordered an immediate evacuation of all personnel. Even towns 10 kilometers away were at risk. In Tokyo,
200 kilometers away, Togawa Sakiko watched the temperature drop and looked toward the horizon with a worried expression.
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In the frozen wasteland, Geto Suguru looked up at the "Sword of Damocles" hanging over their heads. "Hahaha... is the power I wanted really this terrifying?" Even his [Uzumaki] couldn't match this level of raw cursed energy.
"Satoru," Geto coughed, vomiting blood laced with freezing venom from his previous wound. "Can your [Hollow Purple] destroy all of that?
I'm done fighting. I'm leaving." The venom was eating his life force, and the more he used his cursed energy, the deeper it rooted itself.
"Wait!" Gojo began to form a seal to finish things, but a massive hand burst from the ground, grabbing Geto and pulling him into the earth.
"Good luck, Satoru." Geto escaped, but Gojo knew his friend was in for a rough time with that frost venom.
"Damn it... why is it so cold?"
Even with [Limitless], Gojo could feel the bite of the frost. If his barrier was being bypassed, the others were in serious trouble. In the distance, evacuation vehicles exploded as their tires froze and shattered, or they slid off cliffs. Even the fires of the explosions were snuffed out by the cold.
Hachiman looked up at the sky, now completely blotted out by giant ice pillars.
"Trying to win with numbers?" He instantly realized her plan. She was trying to bypass [Izanami] by providing more targets than he could process.
"Naive!"
Hachiman hated revealing his techniques, but in this "Teaching Game," he decided to use his own area-of-effect power. He planted his sword in the snow and began his own incantation.
"My technique... An epic of blood and iron, a hymn of human courage..."
Seeing him ditch his sword, Hagoromo Gitsune grew anxious.
'Is he not going to slice them?'
She tried to create even more pillars, pouring every drop of energy she had left into the sky.
Hachiman sliced his own palm with his blade. Blood dripped into the white snow, sizzling like acid. But that small puddle began to multiply and expand with impossible speed. Within seconds, the snow beneath him became a literal sea of flowing, blackish-red blood.
The blood-sea swallowed the ruins of the prison. It was a "Void Space"—a Blood Sea that glowed with a sinister, crimson light, turning the dark sky into a bloody night.
"Fall! Infinite Ice Prison!"
Hagoromo Gitsune waved her paws, and the forest of giant ice pillars plummeted. The sound of their descent was like the sky itself screaming. Each pillar, carrying the weight of a mountain, accelerated with terrifying kinetic energy.
Hachiman, standing in the center of his silent blood sea, raised his hand and clenched it.
"Devour them."
The blood sea surged. From the depths, a massive, ancient brass door slowly rose. It was covered in mysterious runes, looking solemn and primordial.
The door creaked open. The sea flowed backward into it, and from the crack in the door, a colossal eye appeared. It was composed of thousands of tiny, bloodshot eyes—a gaze filled with pure malice.
When that 300-meter-wide eye locked onto her, Hagoromo Gitsune felt her scalp go numb. "Smash it!" she screamed, sending her pillars down.
But the "Eye of Destruction" seemed to squint.
'Is it... laughing?'
Suddenly, millions of small, black, transparent hands erupted from the giant eye. Like a gateway to hell opening, these "ghosts" surged into the sky. They were incredibly agile, snatching the falling ice pillars.
When the black hands touched the ice, the pillars didn't smash them—they were eaten. The hands corroded the ice on contact. The sheer number of hands far outweighed the pillars. The sky, once a frozen hell, was now a demon-infested nightmare.
This was the power that negated all jujutsu.
After Hachiman's psychic meltdown, his power had evolved. This brass door—the foundation of his [Angel Mode]—was his ultimate counter.
Hagoromo Gitsune was broken. Her hard work was being treated like an all-you-can-eat buffet. In a desperate final move, she fused the remaining pillars into three "Mega-Glaciers," each a kilometer wide, falling like asteroids.
Hachiman sighed.
'Just say you want me to use [Izanami].'
But he stayed with his current technique.
"You can fuse? So can I."
The millions of black hands merged into two sky-blocking, pitch-black giant hands. These hands had mouths in their palms. They gently "hugged" the falling glaciers, and when the hands closed, the kilometer-wide ice mountains vanished instantly. Not a single shard remained.
The sky returned to a quiet, bloody red. The giant hands retreated into the brass door, which shut with a heavy thud. The blood sea began to settle.
Hagoromo Gitsune stood in silence. Even as a Cursed Spirit, she realized she couldn't fight someone who transcended her understanding.
This wasn't Jujutsu anymore.
"We should retreat," she started to tell Yukino.
Suddenly, a voice whispered in her ear.
"That was a nice warm-up. Got anything else?"
She spun around, but saw no one.
"Up here," Hachiman said, sitting cross-legged right on top of Hagoromo Gitsune's massive head.
To be sat upon like a mount was the ultimate humiliation.
"GET OFF ME!" She swung a massive claw at her own head.
SHREEEE—!
She felt the contact. She had hit something. But when she looked at her palm, her brow furrowed. "What is this?"
She was holding the shredded remains of three iron puppets wearing strange armor—[Sons of Horus]. They turned to ash and blew away.
"Three times," Hachiman's cold voice echoed. He held up three fingers. "[Izanagi] activated."
His technique [Izanagi] dictated that if his puppets were destroyed three times, the enemy's technique would enter a state of "Meltdown."
'Is this kid a descendant of the Fujiwara family?!'
Hagoromo Gitsune's [Frost Moon] technique vanished instantly. Her cursed energy seized up, and she couldn't even maintain her "Full Form." She shrunk down and crashed to the ground, the blizzard stopping and leaving only a clear, starry night.
Hachiman prepared to say, "You've lost," but he saw her eyes through the mask—they were filled with a primal, murderous rage, looking at him as if he were the one who killed her father.
"FUJIWARA!" She lunged at him with her bare claws.
Hachiman frowned. He dodged the strike and drove the pommel of his sword into her unprotected stomach. Without cursed energy protection, the blow nearly made her vomit her stomach acid. She doubled over, yet she still tried to claw at his heart in a suicidal trade.
"Madwoman." Hachiman showed no mercy, using his elbow to knock her back. She hit a tree with enough force to crack the trunk and coughed up a pool of blood.
"I don't like bullying the weak," Hachiman said, looking down at her.
This hurt her more than the physical pain. To be pitied by a descendant of the Fujiwara was a fate worse than death.
"Let's go back to the Post Office," Yukino urged internally, seeing the battle was lost.
"NO!" Hagoromo Gitsune screamed. She could no longer use her techniques, but she still had her claws.
As long as she had blood, she wouldn't quit. "I can still fight!"
Suddenly, a cold blade was at her throat. Hachiman held his sword to her neck. One push and she would be decapitated.
"You're quite arrogant for a loser..."
Hagoromo Gitsune grabbed the blade with her bare hand, letting the sharp edge cut her palm. Her golden eyes glared at Hachiman.
"Don't look down on me."
Yukino sighed and prepared to force a teleportation. But suddenly, she received a new notification. A mail from her [Courage and Strength] bloodline sequence:
[Challenging the strong with your life is a hymn of courage!]
[Celebrate! This is my reward for your bravery!]
Outside, Hachiman suddenly smelled the acrid scent of sulfur. On the chainsword being held by "Hagoromo Gitsune," a distinct bloodstain appeared, creeping upward and igniting into a roaring, crimson flame!
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