Slumped on the ground, Toji Fushiguro looked at the blue-haired girl standing over him and let out a soft laugh.
"You were waiting for me?" he said. "If I'm not wrong, you set that trap for me on purpose... didn't you?"
Mahiru turned her head toward him.
"What is it you want from me?" the man went on. "Did someone hire you to kill me? Or does somebody have a grudge against me?"
Mahiru didn't answer.
She turned around, bent down, and picked up the "Ox Bezoar" that had just dropped to the ground — Toji Fushiguro's armory Cursed Spirit, the one that existed for nothing but storing cursed tools.
Idle Transfiguration activated.
The Cursed Spirit let out a shrill, ugly shriek as Mahiru kneaded it alive into a small white ball, and devoured it.
Toji Fushiguro blinked.
So this thing was after my cursed tools?
Mahiru opened her palm, clenched it, then opened it again, as if feeling for something. She caught the faintest thread of it, pushed Cursed Energy through, and a bizarrely shaped blade materialized out of empty air in her hand.
The Inverted Spear of Heaven.
Strange Cursed Energy simmered faintly along the blade, giving off an air of pure ill omen.
By swallowing the Ox Bezoar, Mahiru had gained its ability to store special-grade cursed tools inside her own body's space — and had inherited every special-grade cursed tool Toji Fushiguro owned.
She hefted the blade. Say what you will, the thing really did look odd.
To confirm what it could do, she gathered a small knot of Jogo's Cursed Technique in her other hand, then lifted the blade and drew it lightly across.
The moment the edge passed through, the technique came apart, wiped out without resistance.
"You know," Toji Fushiguro said with a dry chuckle, half joking, "if the Inverted Spear of Heaven was all you wanted, you could've just paid me to hand it over. Why go to all this trouble?"
"Because I don't have money to spare for your idiot tax," Mahiru said evenly.
She lifted her leg and drove a kick into the side of his neck, knocking him out cold, then summoned rabbits that twisted into ropes and bound him.
She stashed the man somewhere no ordinary person would find in a hurry, and spread her wings.
With one beat she was airborne, streaking toward the edge of Jujutsu High's Barrier.
Clang — clang — clang —
The alarm bell of Jujutsu High had been tolling for a long time now. Every Jujutsu Sorcerer student who'd been out in the field was racing back.
Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto hadn't returned yet, but on her way toward the edge of the school, Mahiru ran head-on into the other young students.
"What is that — ?!"
Utahime and Mei Mei came rushing up, and Utahime stared skyward at Mahiru, eyes wide.
"That's her!" Young Ijichi's eyes went round. "But why would she show up here?"
"No idea," another student said, whipping out a weapon, his face grim. "But we have to stop her!"
Several of them charged.
But how were they supposed to stop Mahiru?
The girl raised one hand without ceremony, and vast Cursed Energy came pouring out like a tide.
The students stared up at her.
If their Cursed Energy was a torch, Mahiru was the sun. If theirs was a firefly's glow, she was the moon.
Right now they felt like ants trying to shake a tree.
Mahiru flicked her hand, releasing her technique almost carelessly, and countless white rabbits welled up out of the shadows on the ground to swamp the students and pin them down.
Only Mei Mei, strong enough to cut through that ocean of rabbits, reached her. And Mahiru knocked her out with a backhanded blow, no resistance possible.
More and more sorcerers and students hurried back from outside, and without exception, Mahiru cut them down the way a cook slices melons.
The blue monster blazed with Cursed Energy like a small sun, sweeping the skies above Jujutsu High clean.
The bell rang louder and louder, and sounded more and more like a helpless scream.
At last, Mahiru reached the edge of the Barrier.
Inverted Spear of Heaven in hand, she dragged the edge along the Barrier's inner wall.
Pop —
The sound was like a soap bubble bursting.
The halo of light warped, ripples spread, and a gash opened in the Barrier.
Understand — Jujutsu High's Barrier was strong to the point of absurdity.
Even a barrier master like Kenjaku would have found it enormously difficult to force it open by raw skill. Mahiru herself had to admit her own barrier technique fell far short of breaking Jujutsu High's.
And yet that same Barrier had just been torn open with an idle stroke.
The Inverted Spear of Heaven could nullify any technique. Not even the mightiest Barrier at Jujutsu High was an exception.
Was this a cheat code? This was a cheat code.
So this was the Inverted Spear of Heaven?
A weapon that could kill even Satoru Gojo?
Mahiru couldn't help marveling. The thing was outright cheating. The mechanics made no sense at all.
This felt fantastic.
With this in hand, she couldn't begin to imagine how good her life was about to get.
"How's it going?" Beyond the gash in the Barrier stood a figure swathed in black robes, face hidden.
It was Kenjaku.
"How long can you keep Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto tied up?" Mahiru asked.
"Relax," Kenjaku answered with a smile from under the hood. "Those Cursed Spirits are the prize of my collection. They'll hold the two of them at least half an hour. And I set up extra signal jamming over that area — they won't even realize something's happened here for a good while."
"I see. Good." Mahiru let out a small breath.
The later those two arrived, the better.
Not that Mahiru feared them. It was simply that she and Kenjaku were about to break into Tengen's Tomb of the Star Corridor, and nobody could say what would happen in there. The fewer variables, the better.
Mahiru collected Kenjaku and carried her toward the center of Jujutsu High.
Their target: the Tomb of the Star Corridor.
The Tomb of the Star Corridor lay underground, at the heart of the school.
They passed through a tunnel, and the space opened wide before them.
It was an immense underground cavern, and inside it stood pavilions and terraces of every kind, exquisitely built — and completely empty of people.
Mahiru looked left and right. It was her first time here. She could feel the powerful Barrier and Cursed Energy saturating the place.
And the strongest concentration of all…
She looked toward the very center of the pavilions. There, a knot of chaotic mist glowing with white radiance hung silently in the air.
"That's the entrance," Kenjaku said.
Ordinarily, any sorcerer who wanted an audience with Tengen had to enter through it.
But Mahiru could see that the entrance was sealed now.
As mentioned before, the Tengen of this world had shut up her own Tomb of the Star Corridor and severed every connection to the outside. Mahiru guessed the reason was Sukuna, the intruder from another world, eating away at this world's Tengen through the Culling Game.
Seen from the outside now, that ball of mist gave off nothing at all.
Mahiru and the black-robed Kenjaku walked up to the light.
Mahiru raised her hand, gripped the blade, and cut down into the Barrier.
The Barrier of the Tomb of the Star Corridor was several times stronger than the one around Jujutsu High. Without the Inverted Spear of Heaven, she and Kenjaku would have needed a very long time indeed to crack Tengen's sanctum open.
But things were different now.
One stroke of the edge split that intricate, unbreakable Barrier the way a knife splits the rind of a fruit swollen with juice, and the Cursed Energy inside came gurgling out and spilling over.
Except this juice was rotten, and it stank.
A foul, twisted presence leaked out through the wound.
Both Mahiru and Kenjaku stiffened.
It was the presence of the Culling Game.
And it was thick — thicker than any [Passage] of the Culling Game they had encountered anywhere in this world.
Mahiru went still.
So the Tomb of the Star Corridor had already been eaten away this far.
Beside her, Kenjaku's expression had turned serious too.
"This is bad," Kenjaku said.
"Yeah. Careful," Mahiru said warily, and stepped through the gap.
In an instant, the space around them changed.
She had arrived somewhere new — a separate space entirely.
Countless translucent crimson hexagons, like bricks laid edge to edge, covered every surface above, below, and to either side, building out a scarlet world.
At the exact center of that world stood an enormous iron cage. Inside it, coiling everywhere, were countless blood-red spider threads. Those threads were the source of all the filth and distortion in the air.
And in the very middle of the webbing hung a small girl in white robes with long silver hair, suspended high, eyes closed, weak, unconscious…
That was…
"Tengen?" Kenjaku frowned. "But why does she look like that?"
The presence left no doubt: the figure before them was Tengen.
But her appearance was nothing like the one in Kenjaku's memory.
Kenjaku and Tengen were old acquaintances from a thousand years back.
In Kenjaku's memory, Tengen had already been a mature woman then. Now she had reverted to a slight, small girl.
Clearly these threads had been devouring Tengen without pause, sucking down everything she had accumulated across a thousand years — and by now that accumulation was nearly gone, drained to the dregs.
How wretched…
Kenjaku was almost moved.
A little later and Tengen would have been consumed entirely, erased. All things considered, Mahiru had moved in time.
Perhaps sensing the arrival of Mahiru and Kenjaku, the white-haired girl slowly opened her eyes and met their gazes.
By then Kenjaku had already pushed back her hood.
Tengen looked at the pair, went blank for a moment, then let her eyes drift up to the ring of stitches across the top of Kenjaku's head — and smiled in understanding.
"So it's you…" Her voice was very soft. "It really has been a thousand years."
"I never imagined you'd fall this low," Kenjaku said, arms folded, tone edged with mockery.
Tengen gave a short "Heh." "Come now… are you telling me this has nothing to do with you?"
"Nothing whatsoever." Kenjaku paused, then smiled. "Though it's about to."
Tengen stared.
Kenjaku didn't sound like she was lying. But apart from Kenjaku, who could possibly have done all of this? She truly couldn't imagine a second person in this world with such mastery of barrier techniques.
And what Kenjaku did in the next second was even further outside her expectations.
Kenjaku walked forward of her own accord and stepped straight into the crimson web.
Those threads were the physical body of that evil power. What Kenjaku was doing amounted to jumping into a brazier.
Had she lost her mind?
Tengen's mouth fell open as she watched, stunned.
And sure enough — the instant Kenjaku set foot inside, the web convulsed into motion, countless tendril-like strands lashing out to wrap around her like predators seizing prey.
Expel the foreign body! Devour the foreign body! Assimilate the foreign body!
This was the Culling Game's defense system at work.
No matter how strong a Jujutsu Sorcerer might be, they'd come to grief here. But not Kenjaku.
Vast Cursed Energy surged up off her, and her hands came together in a seal again.
"Domain Expansion," she said, a smile curving her lips. "— Womb Profusion."
A grotesque great tree studded with snarling ghost faces tore up out of the ground behind Kenjaku. Pitch-black sludge spread outward from its roots and swallowed the entire space in the blink of an eye.
The threads that had tried to devour Kenjaku began to tremble, twist, and melt, like ice meeting flame.
And the source from which those threads spread was being covered by Kenjaku's Domain, occupied — and then rewritten.
"Don't worry. I'll save you next," Kenjaku said, smiling, her tone playful.
Tengen's face went through several complicated shifts, and then, like someone accepting her fate and letting the current take her, she closed her eyes.
She was full of questions, but asking them had lost all meaning.
Because she was a bird in a cage now.
She understood that Kenjaku was using her body and her power to accomplish something.
She had no strength to resist. All she could do was accept that she was now nothing but a puppet on someone else's strings.
"Don't make that face. I'm only following orders," Kenjaku said with a smile. "Relax — the person behind me is very gentle, so I'll be gentle with you too."
As Kenjaku's technique ran its course, the blood-red threads no longer dared to touch so much as a hair of her.
Beep beep… beep beep…
All around Kenjaku and Mahiru, scrambled system panels began flickering into being, appearing and vanishing, opening and closing.
Kenjaku reached out, spread her five fingers, then snapped them into a fist — and every one of the disordered panels dissolved.
Then she opened her palm again, and a brand-new panel drifted slowly into place before her.
It was an account creation panel.
The Culling Game had been built upon Tengen. Tengen was its central hub.
It was precisely through the modern Tengen that Sukuna was able to operate the entire Culling Game system.
And what Kenjaku intended to do now was exactly the same trick, run in reverse.
She was going to create, inside that same Culling Game system, a second administrator account — one independent of Sukuna.
The trouble was that Sukuna currently held every permission the Culling Game had in a death grip.
An account was only the first step. Having an account wasn't the same as having authority; it merely earned you the standing to fight for it.
Even with a new administrator account created, Kenjaku couldn't seize all of Sukuna's permissions at a stroke. She'd have to pry them out of his hands a piece at a time.
"Oh, now it wants a nickname for the administrator account…" Kenjaku rubbed her chin, studying the panel for a moment, then smiled and lifted a hand to type. "Then let's call it… Miwa Ran."
The nickname served no particular purpose.
Kenjaku did it simply as a memorial.
…
And so, in another timeline — the world line of the future arc, sixty-eight years ahead — Sukuna froze.
An alert had gone off on his Culling Game account, and he'd discovered that a second administrator account was logging into the Culling Game.
Sukuna was stunned.
He knew Mahiru was in the past, and he knew she wouldn't sit and wait to die — she'd certainly find a way to counter him.
Nor was it that the administrator account displayed the name "Miwa Ran," a name he'd never heard in his life. A nickname could be anything at all, so it meant nothing.
What truly shocked him, what left him at a loss, was the faint trace of Cursed Energy bleeding through from the other end of that account.
That presence was so familiar.
Yet the intent wrapped inside it was utterly foreign to him.
"Kenjaku???"
This was Kenjaku's Cursed Energy??
Kenjaku was on the system's side, helping Mahiru wrest the Culling Game's permissions away??
No.
Wait…
What in the world was going on???
____
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