She should have realized it long ago, really.
It was only that the people of Jujutsu High refused to believe it.
The United States military had manufactured that many Cursed Energy bullets, purchased Cursed Techniques related to Jujutsu Sorcerers for every single soldier, and armed their entire force to the teeth.
How many points it cost to equip one person with a single Cursed Technique, how many points a single Cursed Energy bullet cost — nobody understood that better than Mahiru.
So who, exactly, was footing the bill for that staggering expenditure of points?
"They must have their own points factory," Japanese officials had once speculated, offering that as an explanation.
But how could that be possible? Even Mahiru hadn't managed to build such a factory yet — how could the United States possibly have built one that fast?
Right. So of course, it was innocent ordinary people footing that bill.
Control in the name of protection. Oppression in the name of management.
They threw ordinary people into factories to produce goods for them, while at the same time siphoning off the points that rightfully belonged to those people — points meant to sustain their very survival — and funneling them into the military.
Worse still, if she let herself imagine the ugliest possibility — maybe the U.S. military was even deliberately pushing these ordinary people into debt, forcing them to take out loans just to keep the funding flowing!
Of course. She should have seen it sooner. The reason those factory workers Yuta had rescued had no points left at all was that the U.S. military had skimmed every last one of them off!
So the girl grew furious.
Furious beyond restraint.
She despised anyone who behaved like an animal, and what the United States was doing now had crossed so far into that territory it made her physically sick.
"I'll give you ten minutes," Mahiru said, her eyes fixed on the two people before her. "If you can't give me an answer that satisfies me within those ten minutes, then I will..."
She didn't finish the sentence.
The man's figure, wreathed in Cursed Energy, was already closing on her in an instant.
"Cursed Technique!!" the man roared, pushing his Cursed Energy to its absolute limit. "Chill Wind Curse!!" Ice crystals condensed across his knuckles.
He threw everything he had into a single punch aimed straight at Mahiru.
There was no turning back now.
On the surface, Mahiru had granted them ten minutes to explain themselves, but in truth, those ten minutes made no difference at all.
Because they had nothing whatsoever they could offer as an excuse.
Given the reality of the situation, there was no dodging Mahiru's accusation.
And given the orders from above, if Mahiru had truly uncovered whatever was being hidden in the base, they were to strike first, as fast and hard as possible.
That was the man and woman's real duty.
They were expendable pawns.
The sacrifices meant to absorb the first wave of Mahiru's fury and assault the instant war broke out between the United States forces and her.
BOOM!! — White rabbits surged up out of the shadow beneath her feet, piling layer upon layer in front of her, swelling in an instant into a thick white wall that blocked the man's strike.
When the blow failed to land, the man showed no surprise.
He'd known that punch could never hurt her — it had only ever been meant to draw her attention.
Using some uncanny footwork, he circled behind her in an instant.
"Chill Wind Curse—!" He held nothing back, and the freezing wind swept out at once.
An ice-blue tornado tore up from the ground and engulfed Mahiru completely.
For a Semi-Grade 1 sorcerer, this Cursed Technique of his was quite formidable. Chill Wind Curse worked much like Rime's Ice Condensation, letting him pin down an opponent's movement with brutal efficiency. Thanks to that trait, he could even use his Semi-Grade 1 strength to trap Grade 1 sorcerers of real ability.
That was precisely why he'd been chosen to take on Mahiru.
"Liz!" the man bellowed, veins bulging on his neck. "Hurry! I can't hold this much longer!"
Liz gritted her teeth, hesitated for one heartbeat, and charged in anyway.
Lightning crackled and gathered in her hand.
The ice-cold tornado before her howled and roared, its sound deafening and shrill, countless ice crystals spinning within it. The Cursed Energy churned chaotically along with the vortex, making it impossible to see what was happening inside.
Watching that tornado, a strange thought suddenly rose in her.
Like the moment before a lottery drawing — people know full well their odds of winning are next to nothing, and yet they can't help hoping anyway...
In that moment, staring at the frozen tornado, she knew it was unlikely — and yet some part of her still hoped, still wanted to believe that blue-haired Cursed Spirit might actually be trapped inside it.
Yet she hadn't let that hope harden into anything like certainty. The two of them — maybe, just maybe, this time they really could... they really could kill this blue-haired Cursed Spirit.
Liz raised her hand, jaw clenched: "Thunder Curse!!..."
But before she could unleash the attack, her pupils contracted. Because she'd suddenly seen it — a terrifying pulse of Cursed Energy, blazing like the sun, rising up out of the ice-cold tornado, dazzling as the sun itself.
"I see. So this is your answer?" Mahiru's voice drifted out from within, flat and utterly unreadable.
Terror flashed across both the man's and the woman's faces at once.
BOOM! — The Cursed Energy detonated, tearing the cover right off overhead. The entire base shuddered, and everyone saw a pillar of deep blue Cursed Energy light shoot straight toward the sky.
How could that ice storm possibly have contained Mahiru?
They weren't remotely in the same league.
The blast sent Liz flying, and she slammed hard into the ground, coughing up mouthfuls of blood from the Cursed Energy damage.
But she hadn't been standing very close to Mahiru, so she was still alive.
As for the man, he wasn't nearly so lucky...
The woman sat sprawled on the ground, lifting her head in a daze.
A long, dark object spun down out of the sky and thudded to the ground right in front of her.
It was... the man's arm, torn to shreds.
"What... what was that..." the woman's lips trembled as a bitter, hopeless smile crossed her face. "We were never even in the same league..."
Splat.
Mahiru touched down and casually tossed something that looked like a cloth doll onto the ground. It was the man's "body" — transformed by her Idle Transfiguration into a lifeless puppet, stripped of any ability to fight.
In her anger, the girl honestly no longer cared whether she killed them or not. If she killed them, so be it — as far as Mahiru was concerned, these Americans all deserved worse than death.
Still, out of sheer muscle memory, she'd spared the man's life. Though "spared" was a generous word — she'd left him with nothing more than that.
The towering blaze of the Cursed Energy beam slowly guttered out.
Before the tremors in the ground had even fully settled, alarm sirens blared across the entire base.
"Heh. Looks like you were prepared for this," Mahiru said, tilting her head back to watch a swarm of helicopters lift off almost without delay, a mocking laugh in her voice.
"All personnel, be advised — Emergency Protocol Three is now in effect!!" the base commander's voice sounded in every soldier's ear. "The enemy is a blue-haired Cursed Spirit rated at nation-ending threat level. All units, enter full combat readiness — repeat! Emergency Protocol Three is in effect!"
The protocol had been prepared long in advance. So had these soldiers, standing by fully armed and ready.
Ever since Mahiru had arrived, the U.S. officers had already braced for the worst-case scenario. And now that she really had uncovered their secret, there was nothing left to do but go to war.
Given the choice, they'd have preferred not to fight her at all.
But Mahiru's repeated demands to enter their base and inspect it had made a clash between them inevitable from the start.
The military had three contingency protocols in total — One, Two, and Three — corresponding to three scenarios: Yuki Tsukumo attacking the base, Yuta Okkotsu attacking the base, and Mahiru attacking the base.
In all of Japan, these were the only three people who warranted their own dedicated contingency plan. Anyone ranked as a Special Grade Sorcerer possessed the strength to topple an entire nation single-handedly.
When they'd first drafted Protocol Three, the military hadn't even known Mahiru could resurrect herself. They'd simply been too afraid not to prepare one. And now, it seemed, their foresight had proven crucial.
"All units, move out! Kill her!"
Kill Mahiru!!
Mahiru looked up.
The first thing she saw was the helicopters overhead. Their cannons were already opening fire on her.
Every spinning round carried Cursed Energy, carried the Simple Domain technique woven into it, and they poured down like a rainstorm, swallowing her position in an instant.
Then, the very next second—
Before she could even react, several streaks even faster than the bullets tore across the sky and slammed straight down onto her position.
Massive fireballs erupted skyward, swallowing her form completely.
Fwoosh—fwoosh—fwoosh—fwoosh—fwoosh—
With the technological boost the Culling Game provided, they hadn't stopped at loading Simple Domain into their bullets — they'd infused it into every modern weapon at their disposal.
That included their long-range missiles.
Now, on this battlefield, every missile blast and every scorch of cannon fire could inflict specialized damage on Mahiru's body. That was exactly why they'd dared to go to war at all. What they held in their hands were weapons built specifically for this Cursed Spirit.
Ten kilometers away, a U.S. missile battery was running at full power.
Missile launchers fired without pause, heedless of cost, as if trying to empty their entire arsenal at once. In just half a minute, they'd launched over a hundred Simple-Domain-loaded shells.
"General, should we keep up the bombardment?" In the command post, a young officer turned to the old man beside him. "Isn't this well past the point of overkill?"
"No. Continue. Stick to the protocol as planned," the old man said, brow furrowed, his voice grave. "No — given the current situation, we need to commit even more firepower, not less."
By all rights, they should have been conserving firepower.
Because by going to war with Mahiru, they'd effectively burned every bridge with the jujutsu world. If this conflict dragged on, they'd inevitably end up fighting Yuta Okkotsu and Yuki Tsukumo as well.
Facing down the other two Special Grades, they'd need a substantial ammunition reserve. Logic said they should be rationing their shells.
But the old man's instincts, honed over seventy or eighty years as a soldier, told him he had to go all-out right now. Any hesitation, any slackening, and it would be the end of him.
But why?
The girl was right there inside his base — a fish already trapped in a barrel. They'd treated her as a hypothetical enemy for years and drawn up a plan down to the last detail.
And yet, watching her disappear beneath the barrage now, he still felt an overwhelming unease — as if everything he'd done amounted to nothing at all.
"All units, spare no cost — kill her!!" the old man barked the order. "Don't worry about running dry before we can deal with the other two Special Grades! If we exhaust our ammunition, we can withdraw from Japanese territory for the time being. But no matter what — right now, Mahiru, the backbone of Jujutsu High, must die!"
Nearly a hundred kilometers out at sea, two U.S. aircraft carriers stationed in coastal waters roared to life, launching more than a dozen fighter jets one after another.
At every U.S. base, every missile launcher fired up. Countless missiles climbed into the sky.
Missiles beyond counting streaked across the sky alongside the fighter jets, carving countless trails through the air.
It really was a spectacular sight.
So thought one pilot in his cockpit.
How many years had he spent in the military? How many drills had he taken part in? He'd never once witnessed a show of force this massive.
The flight paths of missiles and jets wove a dense, tangled web across the sky. At the distant heart of the bombardment, fireballs kept rising one after another, and the ground rippled and rolled like it had turned to liquid.
It was terrifying. Who would ever have guessed that all this horrifying commotion was aimed at a single person?
Ha... if you told him this was a war against Godzilla, he'd believe it.
"Black Crow One, on station, ready to release ordnance." "Black Crow Nine, on station, ready to release ordnance..."
Listening to his squadmates' voices over the headset, he flipped open the safety cover on his missile release button.
"Black Crow Four, on station..."
He'd been about to press the button and fire.
But the next second, his pupils shrank violently.
The relentless bombardment had already blanketed the target zone in smoke and fire, the plumes billowing skyward into one massive mushroom cloud.
And in that moment, he saw an enormous hand reach out from inside that mushroom cloud.
"What... is that—?!"
A towering, humanoid monster — bigger than Godzilla itself — tore the smoke of the mushroom cloud apart with both hands and stepped straight out of it.
You've got to be kidding me?!
"Evade, evade!!"
The jet's alarms blared instantly, and he wrenched the stick back into a steep climb.
The monster tilted its head back and opened its cavernous mouth. A pillar of fire blasted out, instantly melting two fighter jets into scattered pools of molten metal.
It was Jogo's Cursed Technique.
"Ha..." In the command center, the old man's mouth curled at the sight of the towering beast. "Well, isn't that just..."
In that instant, the old man understood, with the most visceral clarity, why — even as all of Japan was mired in the catastrophe of the Culling Game — Jujutsu High had still found the spare time to test Mahiru's abilities and formally rank her Special Grade.
As it turned out, her Special Grade strength had never needed testing at all.
A display like this... anyone who saw it would never doubt for a second that she could wipe out an entire nation.
Getting into one argument and summoning an actual Gundam — wasn't that taking things a bit far?
____
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🔥 New history: DanMachi: Collecting Goddesses Right from the Start! — posted on The_Mikudayo