[Culling Game Third Update Announcement…]
[…Dear Culling Game Players, this version update has been implemented in order to broaden the channels through which you can obtain points. The condition of "gaining points by killing" has been expanded: from now on, inflicting "grievous injury" on a person, or subjecting a person to torture that "drives them to despair," will also grant points.]
[…We hope that all of you enjoy a pleasant gaming experience…]
Black clouds pressed down on the city and swallowed the sky.
From the first rattle of raindrops on the eaves to the moment the whole world drowned in the sound of rain, only two or three seconds passed.
By the time Takata registered it, the downpour was already sheeting down, and the windows that looked out on the world outside were plastered over with water.
So dark. It was the middle of the day, and yet it was this dark.
Takata blinked, thinking that.
Inside the room, Nitta Akari, the Assistant Supervisor, was still explaining how important the work they were about to do would be.
"The points Mahiru brought us bought us breathing room, but time has moved on, and now those points are running short again." The young woman with short golden hair had been on the road for days, and the dust of travel still clung to her. "So we have to get the points factory built as fast as we can…"
Looking out through the beaded glass, Takata could make out a white tower.
Soon they would be inside that tower, slaughtering weakened Cursed Spirits to produce points.
It was supposed to be an experimental factory.
Takata was one of the volunteers who had signed up of her own accord.
Right now, everyone in the room except Nitta Akari was a volunteer.
After parting ways with Mahiru and the others, Takata had thrown herself into her idol career. She worked hard, her fan count climbed higher and higher, and everything was on the rise.
She was happy. She could bring joy to more and more people.
Until the Culling Game began.
It was a disaster that swallowed the whole country. Naturally, she stopped performing; their agency shut down outright, and society all but rebuilt itself from scratch under the catastrophe.
And the instant the Culling Game started, Takata used the points she had come by through sheer coincidence to become a Jujutsu Sorcerer.
The girl wasn't strong. But she was honest and kind.
Through the disaster she kept singing to comfort people trapped in their pain, and she fought Cursed Spirits too, shielding ordinary people from the harm they caused.
Low Grade 3? Or maybe high Grade 3?
That was the sum of Takata's combat ability.
Still too weak.
If only she could get stronger, or do more for everyone. That would be wonderful.
So Takata had signed up for this trial run of the factory.
"Since this is the factory's first run, and to guard against accidents, Yuji Itadori of Jujutsu High will be on site as our safety officer. If any of you notice anything abnormal at all, tell him directly. He'll be right behind you the whole time…"
Nitta Akari gestured to the pink-haired boy beside her, who had only just arrived and was soaked through by the rain.
Exhaustion sat plain on his face.
"Relax, everyone. Leave it to me if anything happens."
Even so, his smile was bright as sunshine.
Takata remembered this boy. The way Todo, Itadori and Mahiru had clowned around below the stage back at the idol convention hall was still vivid to her.
Back before any of this had happened, those had been good days.
Thinking that, Takata met Itadori's eyes. He clearly recognized her too; they looked at each other, traded a smile, and let that stand for a greeting.
He really was something, this boy.
Takata thought so.
The first time she met Mahiru, Itadori and Todo, she'd had no idea they were Jujutsu Sorcerers.
It was only later, when the earthquakes struck and Mahiru first appeared online as the blue-haired Angel of the relief effort, that Takata realized with a shock that the blue-haired girl goofing around under her stage was that powerful, that mysterious, that dazzling a presence.
And now Nitta Akari was telling her that Itadori was a sorcerer as well.
So that was how it was.
That whole group under her stage had already belonged to another world. They must have been fighting to protect ordinary people this entire time.
Truly amazing.
And surely exhausting.
Three days ago the blue Cursed Spirit called Mahito had attacked sites all across Japan.
Japan held twelve consolidated human strongholds in total: four that the United States helped manage, and eight managed by Jujutsu High.
Mahito had sent out twelve clones at once and torn through every single stronghold.
At Mahiru's stronghold, Jogo destroyed Mahito's clone. At the Tokyo stronghold, Yuta Okkotsu destroyed it.
Takata had been lucky enough to be standing nearby when Yuta Okkotsu did it, so she'd witnessed the crushing power of a Special Grade Sorcerer firsthand.
But wiping out one round of Mahito's clones hadn't improved anything.
Killing the clones did pay out the corresponding points, and yet the original body sending them out seemed entirely unaffected.
The next day he released eighteen clones and wrecked sites all over Japan. These were even stronger than the ones before.
The first day's clones died quickly. The second day's not only carried denser Cursed Energy, they also bore traces of the Idle Transfiguration Cursed Technique in their flesh, letting them repair themselves after being destroyed. In other words, far harder to kill.
On the third day, yesterday, Mahito's clones began showing extreme damage resistance. Flatten one like a lump of clay and the meat paste would squirm and mold itself back into a body. Anyone with weak Cursed Energy output, or without an attack that struck the soul, simply couldn't touch Mahito.
With an enemy that troublesome, the sorcerers had to be getting busier and busier.
I'd better give it everything I have too.
Takata quietly clenched both fists.
Thunder rolled overhead.
Outside, lightning tore across the black curtain of cloud, and even the air trembled.
Nitta Akari drew a deep breath. "In that case, let's move out. Watch your footing out there."
They filed out into the rain in a line, dove into the white tower of light, and ran up the spiral stairs to the hall at the very top.
By rights Mahiru should have been present today, but something else had come up on her end, so once she had every piece of the factory prepared, she left behind an instruction manual and handed the whole operation to Itadori.
Today was only a trial run, but Mahiru had already run the system herself several times beforehand. Ninety-nine percent chance nothing would go wrong.
Nitta Akari hurried back and forth across the hall, walking each volunteer through the work.
"All of you are at least at the level of a Grade 3 sorcerer, and the Cursed Spirits will come through weakened, so killing them should be easy," she said. "You've also been issued matching cursed tools. Use them and you'll get twice the result for half the effort."
Standing at her assigned post, Takata looked up at the glass cage in front of her and felt a thread of nervousness she couldn't account for. It might be a small thing, but the girl truly felt she was contributing, with both feet planted on solid ground. That left her a little excited too.
"Is everyone ready?" Nitta Akari stood in the middle of the hall and swept her gaze around, confirming that each person was in position. "Check your cursed tools once more. Are they working? Are the cursed seals on the glass cages in front of you intact? I'll start the factory in five seconds. Five, four, three, two…"
Following the startup procedure Mahiru had taught her, Nitta Akari brought the factory online.
Cursed Energy began to flow.
Far beneath the white tower, the wellspring of the Cursed Spirit tide gushed out swarm after swarm of Cursed Spirits, and the tower's pipes carried them up.
Here they came.
Takata's expression sharpened.
Filthy but feeble Cursed Energy came crawling up through the pipes. A hatch opened in the glass cage in front of her.
Listening to the noise of the Cursed Spirit drawing closer, Takata took a deep breath and tightened her grip on the dagger-shaped cursed tool in her hand.
The spirit comes up, and then you stab it…
The spirit comes up, and then you stab it…
No need to be nervous. You wait for it to come up and you stab it, that's all. You can do this…
With a clang, the Cursed Spirit's shrill laughter swelled all at once, and Takata clamped down on the dagger and drove the point into the spirit surging up into the cage.
A wet thunk.
"…?" Takata's eyes went wide.
The spirit had come up. She had hit it. The feel of the blade sinking into flesh sat in her palm, vivid and horribly wrong.
But the girl froze.
Because the Cursed Spirit in the glass cage wasn't dead.
Blue-haired, grotesque, stitched together seam by seam, the twisted Cursed Spirit had pressed its huge face flat against the glass wall, its sickening grin sprawling wide and crooked.
"Wha—" Takata's mouth fell open.
"Get back!" The pink-haired boy shot to her side like a loosed arrow. One hand hauled the girl backward while the other, wrapped in Cursed Energy, slammed a fist into Mahito.
BOOM!
The two Cursed Energy attacks collided, and the blast ripped apart the glass wall and the quiet air behind it.
"Hahahaha!!" The stitch-faced Cursed Spirit threw its mouth wide in an overblown grin. "How nostalgic! Yuji Itadori! What a nostalgic kind of pain!!"
The air detonated.
Mahito's strike and Itadori's canceled out, and both of them were hurled apart.
Mahito came off worse. His whole body sailed backward and slammed into the white wall.
Itadori only staggered back a few steps, holding his stance, and wiped a hand across the side of his face.
A few streaks of blood came away with it.
"A clone?" Itadori frowned.
He knew Mahito could use Idle Transfiguration too.
Lately Mahito's clones had shown more and more of a tendency to wield his Cursed Technique, so Itadori had been guarding against Idle Transfiguration the whole time. It just didn't seem like he'd used it.
In the original story, Mahito couldn't use Idle Transfiguration on Itadori because Sukuna lived inside him.
Sukuna wasn't inside Itadori anymore. The boy could be hit by Idle Transfiguration now.
"What's this? Is that all you've got these days?" Mahito laughed so hard he could barely straighten up. "But me, I'm not what I used to be!"
He charged, both hands stretching into claws.
Itadori spun and threw a punch, meeting him head-on.
"After you killed me that once, I came back to life!" Mahito shouted through the fight, laughing all the while. "And thanks to that 'Chaos and Harmony' Cursed Technique, I came back stronger! The way I am now, even if your attacks can reach the soul, you can't do any real damage to me!"
He hadn't finished speaking when Itadori's fist broke through his guard and landed square on him, blasting Mahito away again.
But Mahito was laughing in midair, without a mark on him. His shape twisted, becoming an enormous python that came coiling toward Itadori again.
Itadori set his teeth and clenched his fist, gathering Cursed Energy.
Black lightning erupted along his knuckles.
"You're nowhere close to Mahiru!"
The boy swung with everything he had.
— Black Flash!
Black lightning carried monstrous force straight through the python's body and pulped it.
That single punch shook the whole tower. Cracks spidered through the floor, and the burst of Cursed Energy tore the ceiling off the hall entirely.
Rain poured in from above. The wind of the punch howled through it.
Only when the air had settled a little did Takata open her eyes.
She looked at the puddle of pulped flesh on the floor and got out, "That thing… it's finished, right?"
The words had barely left her when the pulp began to squirm under Itadori's wary stare and gather itself back into shape.
"That hurts! You brute, my soul hurts so much!" Mahito's words were a complaint, but his voice was all laughter.
The meat pooled back into a human shape.
Itadori's blow had clearly destroyed the vast majority of his body. Even with his monstrous capacity for survival, only those few scraps of flesh were left, and the figure they formed was far shorter than before, like a dwarf.
Not dead?
Itadori's breathing hitched for a moment.
This was his first time fighting one of Mahito's clones, but he'd heard from his fellow sorcerers that the clones shouldn't be anywhere near this strong.
Today's clone was tougher than yesterday's, and harder to kill.
The Mahito clone in front of him was delighted. "What's the matter? Aren't you supposed to be able to attack the soul? Why is your attack such hard work?"
Itadori said nothing; his frown only deepened. Because he'd caught a note in the downpour outside that didn't belong.
Thump-thump-thump-thump…
Like something enormous beating at the air overhead, over and over.
It sounded like… a helicopter?
Huh?
Itadori's head snapped up, and he squinted against a glaring searchlight.
It really was a helicopter! That sound came from rotor blades!
Several large military helicopters hung in the air, their searchlights trained straight down on this spot.
"Hm?" Mahito made a puzzled noise.
Takata stared up at them, dazed.
Helicopters? Why would there be helicopters here?
The people aboard moved fast. Ropes dropped, and soldiers slid down them into the now roofless hall at the top of the tower.
Mahito frowned, clearly bracing for a fight.
Itadori was confused, and he kept his guard up. "Who are you people?"
The soldiers who had come down were armed and loaded. The captain at their head spoke.
"We're with the Third Force of the United States. We're here to help you exorcise that flesh spirit in front of you."
With a click the captain flipped the safety on his rifle, raised it, and put the muzzle on Mahito a short distance away. The soldiers behind him leveled their weapons on Mahito at the same moment.
"You sorcerers have a hard time hurting this stitch-faced Cursed Spirit, but that's all right, no need to worry," he said. "We've already developed a weapon that counters him. Leave the rest to us."
The rain hissed and hammered down outside.
"So, did you ask?" In Yaga's office at Jujutsu High, Mahiru sat on the sofa with her arms folded. "What's the Beautiful Country saying?"
Yaga shook his head. "They still haven't agreed to let you into their base."
"…" Mahiru narrowed her eyes. "What are they hiding?"
Mahiru was very good at this sort of scheming and counter-scheming, but being good at it didn't mean she liked it. How nice it would be if the Beautiful Country had nothing shady going on.
She looked out at the storm and let out a quiet sigh.
If the Beautiful Country really did have something in mind… then right about now would be the time for them to start moving, wouldn't it?
She'd have to be more careful than ever.
____
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