A/N: Welcome to my latest story: Potential Man. Here we go with this one. Next three chapters are up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) already if you want to see them early. Since I just started a new story, there's a cheeky discount on said patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) page for anyone interested.
Itadori was my first choice. He was always down for a fight, and I could always phrase any new abilities I showed as new ways I was learning to use the Ten Shadows. He was ignorant like that, and in this situation, his ignorance would prove useful. Except he and Maki were yet to return. Since I'd convinced everyone to wait three days before moving, she had decided that while Okkotsu and I worked on my domain, it would be better if they went to recruit Hakari.
I couldn't exactly argue against that since I had been the one raising a stink about gathering allies. So they had taken the train and gone out to search for him in his illicit fight club. I knew Panda was somewhere with them, and I didn't have a strong enough personal relationship with him for something like that. Inumaki wasn't an option even if I knew where he was; our fighting styles were just too different. So, I decided to do something a tiny bit reckless.
There was a place crawling with opponents, and I knew that Kenjaku had no business there since he hadn't bothered making it a colony in the Culling Game. I left a note for the others with Shoko and took a car down to Shibuya. The assistant managers were still hanging about the school since no one was really going on missions these days. With that context, it had been quite easy to convince one of them to give me a ride to Shibuya. He was probably bored. Well, either that or he was a spy for the higher-ups and would report everything I did to them. Well, that was just his luck. What were they going to do about a student deciding to exorcise some curses? That was what we were here for.
"Wait here for six hours. If I'm not back by then, assume that I am dead and move on with your life," I told him as I stepped out of the car. He nodded, not seeming to truly pay attention to me. His gaze was fixed on the city—the ruined city. The buildings were decimated for the most part. There was a scar in the middle of the city where Sukuna had opened his domain and killed so many people. If not for Kenjaku cursing the whole of Japan shortly after, it was probably going to qualify as the largest act of jujutsu terrorism. Well, that or Mahito's insanity. It was difficult even now to piece together just what Mahito had done.
The moment I stepped into the city proper, I felt an itch build at the back of my neck. Danger. Of course there was danger; this is what I had come here for. Cursed techniques grew in response to adversity. I was here to speed-run learning about my own. No Ten Shadows, despite my senses telling me to unleash the Divine Dog for protection. The shadows themselves would have to be my tools.
Megumi's reflexes saved my life in the first few seconds. I could feel the shadows of the buildings around me, the stillness of the wind, the cursed energy of the spirits reasonably close, and the faint sense of danger as an itch in the back of my neck. None of that prepared me for the ground beneath my feet to suddenly explode outwards.
I was jumping once the shaking began. Its mouth was wide open and gaping as it tried to swallow me in one fell swoop. Thankfully, I was just a hair faster and managed to escape in time. I rolled on the floor to break my fall, and the second my shadow was on the ground, it separated and elongated into two tendrils that snaked along the pavement. The cursed spirit looked somewhat similar to a purple lizard with a head an order of magnitude too large for its body. That probably explained why it moved underground instead of on the surface.
The ground began to shake again as it started to unearth more of its body. Wrong choice. I twisted with my cursed energy, and the tendrils snaking along the floor shot out from beneath the spirit—two thin and sharp shadows that pierced straight through its head in two places. I dissolved the shadow as the cursed spirit slumped and began to vanish. I stepped forward, moving further into the city.
The next creature I fought, I managed to see coming. It was a flyer. It screeched as it approached, and I felt my body struggle to move for a second. A flex of my cursed energy shattered the technique while I dodged out of the way at the last second. The spirit had lowered itself and nearly ran me through with a beak that was spiraled and pointed. Needless to say, I would not have been having a good time if that had connected.
It flew back, looping around to finish the job it had failed the first time. I sent cursed energy to my ears, just as I would if I were facing a Cursed Speech user. As expected, it released another screech as it approached. This time, I was insulated from its effects. The second it was close enough and no longer shielded by the shadows of the buildings, I connected my shadow with its own. I forced the creature down to the ground and then pierced it with three tendrils from my shadow. It, too, began to dissolve.
Those had been Grade 2 curses, I figured. Strong, yes, but nothing that even Megumi would have had trouble with. The goal here was to push myself and my technique so I had the complete knowledge needed for a Domain Expansion. I needed stronger opponents, and I could tell they would be closer to the center of the city.
I started moving, walking forward at first, and then, when I sent cursed energy coursing through my body, I began to run. And as I ran, I thought. A cursed technique, also known as an innate technique, was a unique ability engraved in a sorcerer's soul from birth. Not every sorcerer had one, and not every innate technique was useful.
Even then, not every innate technique was well-suited for the sorcerer to whom it was granted. Some techniques fit their sorcerers like gloves; others fit like desert ponchos. Mai's technique was an example: a powerful ability to create anything the user could imagine, but based entirely on the user's cursed energy. It was found in the body of a woman who had so little cursed energy that her ability to even see spirits was adjudged to be a miracle. I wondered if Maki's death would unlock Mai's potential the same way Mai's had unlocked Maki's in canon. I doubted it. That was enough about them.
This was about me. I'd called my technique Cursed Shadow Manipulation while I was within Megumi's soul, and back then, it had felt like a good name. It was a good technique for me as well. It allowed me to strike from a distance and do damage to multiple targets at the same time, while also granting me the benefit of controlling my enemies' movements. It was a powerful technique, but it didn't feel complete. Did that make sense? When I tried meditating on it to form my domain, all I got was a vague sense of wrongness. Maybe something like Cursed Technique Reversal would help, but even that didn't feel right.
Feelings were everything in jujutsu, and they were also nothing at the same time. That was one lesson Gojo had taught early on. Running as quickly as I was, I didn't manage to react in time as I passed an intersection and got completely T-boned by a cursed spirit moving at full speed. I managed to twist my body as we moved so that when our momentum stopped against a building, it was my back that hit the stone and not my side.
I felt the wind knocked out of me. I punched out on instinct more than anything else, but the punch did nothing to the creature as it pushed me further against the building with its head.
Oh, fuck this. My shadow had merged into the building's thanks to the position of the sun. I took control of both. Dozens of tendrils tore through it from beneath, and it slumped against me before beginning to dissolve. How hadn't I managed to feel that one coming? Fuck it. I placed my hands against my knees and then pushed myself to the side to roll away from the creature that slammed down where I had just been standing. This one was humanoid in that it had two hands and legs, but everything beyond that was disastrously monstrous.
It shot forward in my direction. Fast, I thought. I jumped backward again, and I felt the wind pressure from its hands reaching out to grab me push my hair back. I formed a sign with my hands on instinct and tried to stab it through with my shadows, only for said shadows to fail to break through its skin as it kept coming at me. I rolled to the side to avoid the next attack, and before it could twist, I pushed back and scored a clean right hook to the left of its chest. It didn't budge, and I only saw a blur of green before I was rolling across the ground.
I kept my progress and stabbed my hand into the ground, reinforcing it with cursed energy. My momentum came to a sharp stop and I looked up at the creature as it raced forward, heading right for me. The shadows around me darkened as I kneaded my cursed energy through them. It made the mistake of coming straight at me and not varying its attack pattern.
It froze as it came under my thrall. For the first time, I struggled to control a target's movements after possessing it with my shadow. It felt like it was resisting my control. It was not immune, as I made it jump in place; it just took more energy to get it to make each movement. Sensing the oncoming attack, I twisted, forming a seal with my hands.
The humanoid cursed spirit raced in front of me and took the attack head-on. The giant reptilian one smashed into it and both of them hit the ground. I formed another seal in that time. The shadows around the two of them thickened, and dozens of tendrils stabbed through the reptilian one. This time, using even more cursed energy, my shadows managed to pierce the humanoid one. Both of them began dissolving.
I breathed a sigh of relief before shooting myself forward to avoid a globule of liquid that fell from the top of the building. The acid-like liquid began eating through the asphalt. I looked up, catching sight of the spirit as it raced down at me. Four legs, massive frame, two heads. Another Grade 1, I realized. The humanoid one was a Grade 1 as well, but it was more likely on the lower end of the spectrum.
My shadow snaked out, creeping along the building and aiming to ensnare it. Right before it was about to make contact, it jumped, completely avoiding my shadow and landing on the other end of the street. The head to the left opened its mouth, and I was dodging before I even truly knew why. The acid raced from its mouth like it was being shot from a water gun this time. There was less of it, but it moved faster to make up for that.
The acid tracked my run as I took the long way around the street, aiming to loop back and reach the creature. Once I was at a 180-degree axis from the head—like I predicted, its neck could not bend that far—it had to move its body. As it did so, I sent my shadow racing forward.
It jumped to the side to avoid my shadow, abandoning its attack. Its head shifted to aim at me and I jumped to the side to avoid the acid. Except that instead of acid from the head to the left, it was the head to the right that spat out, and I felt the heat of the fire before I even realized I'd been tagged by it. Fuck.
I didn't need to look at it to know it was bad. The upper left side of my body stung like all hell, and I couldn't stop to scream or even think about the pain. I was fully focused on avoiding the next attack. I sensed a spike of cursed energy behind me and managed to lift my burned left hand in time, tilting my body enough that the blade that passed through my arm buried itself in my right shoulder and not my neck. Another cursed spirit. This one stood on two feet and had blades for arms.
Its second hand moved, poised to remove my head from my shoulders. There was a rough squelch as I slid backward and rolled out of the way of the attack. I jumped to the side as I felt another spike of cursed energy. I just about managed to avoid the next spray of acid, with only a bit of it splashing on top of my left foot. I hissed in further pain. There was something going on with the left half of my body. It was like the fire that had burned it was still burning it even after. It didn't behave like normal fire; it had disappeared seconds after inflicting the burns, yet it still felt like my left half was on fire.
Movement hurt. Whether it was my left side, my right shoulder, or my foot, I knew that my dodging options were quite diminished already. Both cursed spirits were moving in now. They could sense weakness.
I threaded my cursed energy into my shadow and split it into two tendrils. Each one arced out for my opponents. These were clearly Grade 1s; they dodged out of the way of the grasping shadows. They'd been watching me fight the other spirits, most likely, and only came now that they felt well-placed to land kill shots.
They kept coming, circling me even as I felt my wounds take their toll. Mobility was fucked. There was no chance I was going to manage to get out of here intact without killing them. There were other cursed spirits, lower-ranked monsters just waiting at the edge of my senses, waiting to see if I would attempt to escape. No, there was only one option.
Both of them moved at me at the same time, one from each direction.
I buried the pain that welled up as I forced my injured left hand to come in contact with my intact right. They came together, clasped like in prayer, and I took a hold of my will and manifested it. "Domain Expansion: Dance of a Million Shadows." The words came to me from somewhere deep within my soul. Even as it formed, I could tell I'd made some sort of mistake. It wasn't complete. We were contained in a barrier, and within the barrier, there was nothing but darkness. At least for anyone who did not call the shadows home the way I did. The shadows did not seem to exist in that there were none at all. It was just darkness. Was that a good way to imagine it? It was probably morec orrect to say that all the darkness was a single shadow. My shadow.
I felt the location of both the cursed spirits one second, and the next, they weren't there. My shadow had eaten them up in a matter of seconds. Already destroyed. I slumped to my knees as the domain shattered around me. I looked around. The sun had begun setting already. How long had I been in this place? Trying to sense the shadows around me was a bust. It was like my cursed technique didn't even exist at all. So this is what cursed technique burnout felt like. It wasn't nice. It was an emptiness that ached. But then, on the other hand, there was a silver lining.
I formed a deer's antlers with my hands and from my shadow rose the Round Deer. Only my technique was burned out. Megumi's felt normal—accessible. I wondered if this was because Megumi and I had separate souls initially or if it was a feature of every person with two cursed techniques. Could Gojo still use the Six Eyes after using his domain? Possibly.
The Round Deer's presence was balm for my soul. The burns healed faster than the rest of my wounds. Now that I was no longer in combat, I could tell that the cursed energy of the spirit itself had infected me somewhat. For all my wounds, though, today had been a win. I had a domain now. I just had to practice with it and test a few theories for the next two days, and when the time came, Naoya Zenin would regret his last few seconds of life.
A/N: Why did MC struggle with the cursed spirits? He was consciously limiting himself to only his technique. Imagine how much more dangerous his shadows would be if he could have shikagami hounding your every move in addition to them. Without the ten shadows, he's basically Shikamaru but not as smart. Any competent fighter would just avoid the shadows and it's his job to find other ways to get them. This pair of creatures just had too many advantages along with his self-nerf woking in their favour. Next three chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early. Since this is a new story, so there's a discount for the rest of the month on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga): feel free to check that out as well.