This wasn't the first time Mahito had met Mahiru, but every previous time, he'd used a clone, and Mahiru had never once used Idle Transfiguration in front of him. So Mahito had never managed to form a clear picture of just how strong she really was.
What, you're saying Mahiru hits hard?
So what if she does? She just has a bit more Cursed Energy, that's all.
What, you're saying Mahiru has an Open Domain?
So what if she opens it? As long as he chickened out and ran the moment a Domain clash started, it wouldn't really matter.
In Mahito's own eyes, he didn't think there was any fundamental difference between himself and Mahiru.
She was just... another version of himself.
Just someone with a bit more Cursed Energy, a slightly stronger Domain.
Watching the phantom Kenjaku tiptoe around Mahiru in wary deference, and hearing that she'd once killed him, had filled Mahito with smug satisfaction. In his mind, if Mahiru had killed Kenjaku, that was as good as him killing Kenjaku himself.
Then he'd discovered that the phantom Kenjaku looked down on him, and that had irritated him all over again. That idiot just couldn't see it — he and Mahiru were basically the same person. So stupid. So dense...
Mahito had figured that coming back stronger this time would finally wash away his past humiliation.
Only just now, experiencing Mahiru's Idle Transfiguration firsthand for the first time, did he finally understand something very important...
Mahito stared up at the girl above him, mouth hanging open. "You... you're not me?..."
Mahiru let out a short laugh. "You're not worth spit." She clamped one hand down, Idle Transfiguration engaging, and twisted Mahito's body in an instant.
"How is this possible?!" Mahito screamed. It was nothing alike!
They were both using the exact same Idle Transfiguration, but in precision, in raw power, even in that subtle, delicate feel when touching a soul — his technique and the blue-haired girl's technique were nothing alike.
It was practically a difference in caliber.
An absolute gulf between them!
When technique met technique, he'd expected some kind of tug-of-war, a back-and-forth struggle. Instead it was like ice meeting fire — it just melted away. Splat.
The Mahito in front of her got squeezed into a white ball and popped like a balloon.
Huh? Mahiru blinked, caught off guard for a moment.
A clone again? That was a strange feel to the attack.
Mahiru was certain that attack hadn't killed Mahito, but she was equally certain that clone hadn't been an ordinary one.
She thought it through, sorting the information.
In the original work, only the main clone — the one carrying the vast majority of Mahito's soul energy — could use Idle Transfiguration. But now, it seemed, with the Culling Game backing him, Mahito's reserves of Cursed Energy and soul energy had grown enormous, letting him split off plenty of clones that could still use his technique.
Troublesome...
Mahiru kept her Domain Expansion active while her eyes swept the area, searching for Mahito.
Even if it was just a clone, the trace of Cursed Energy from wherever it had split off shouldn't be far. Her Domain already covered several nearby factories — a huge range. She'd find him soon...
Her eyes sharpened.
Far off, she spotted an unpleasant smear of Cursed Energy fleeing at speed. Found him.
BOOM!!—
The girl's form blurred into motion, streaking toward Mahito like a bolt of lightning.
Mahito, who'd been slithering through the dirt in the form of a snake, jolted in fright the instant he saw Mahiru barreling straight at him. He burst out of the ground, snapped back into human shape, and bolted.
"You... how the hell did you find me so fast?!"
"...Seriously, is that guy embarrassing himself on purpose?" On a distant hilltop far away, Rime was secretly watching the battlefield, sneering. "There's absolutely no need to help him."
"..." The phantom Kenjaku stood beside her, at a loss for words. "...Then don't."
That Mahito couldn't beat Mahiru made sense, but that he'd be this pathetic — that, Rime hadn't expected.
"He's not going to die no matter what happens anyway," the phantom Kenjaku said. "Just leave him be."
To the phantom Kenjaku and the others, Mahito was never really "one of them."
They knew Mahito couldn't die here, and they knew that even if they stepped in, they couldn't kill Mahiru either — so they just let him take his beating.
But Mahito was desperate. "Help me! I need help!!" he roared.
The girl closed the distance in an instant.
Mahito howled, "I need help!!"
"Fine, I'll give him a hand," the phantom Kenjaku said, raising a hand to tap the system panel. "Cursed Energy, incoming."
The Culling Game connected to Mahito instantly.
His body filled up with Cursed Energy in a flash, like a flood pouring in.
Light blazed in Mahito's eyes, and his presence shifted abruptly.
A terrifying pillar of Cursed Energy shot skyward like a beam of light. With the Culling Game's help, his Cursed Energy instantly surged several tiers above Mahiru's.
The girl blinked, mildly surprised.
Mahito turned to face Mahiru, laughing. "How about now?!"
"As long as the numbers are big enough, I don't care who you are — brute strength wins!!"
"Soul Multiplicity!!..."
BOOM!!
The explosion faded, smoke clearing. Mahiru landed lightly, looking down at Mahito, who lay in a crater with his body nearly flattened. She curled her lip in disdain. "Cute act."
Mahito was in such bad shape he was drooling. "Uh... how... how is this possible... you..."
A huge surplus of Cursed Energy was certainly useful. But time was tight, and the Culling Game couldn't pump too much into Mahito all at once.
Sure, Mahito's Cursed Energy had suddenly jumped to one or two times Mahiru's. But in front of Mahiru, that one-or-two-times edge amounted to nothing at all.
After all, both Mahiru and Mahito were equally vulnerable to attacks capable of striking the soul directly. And across the whole world of Jujutsu Sorcery, what was the single deadliest technique for attacking souls?
Idle Transfiguration, of course!
Between Mahiru and Mahito, whichever side was even slightly stronger would have that edge amplified without limit — by the nature of the technique itself, and by the nature of the soul.
Right now, in front of Mahiru, Mahito was purely and simply her captive.
A one- or two-fold edge in Cursed Energy? In practice, it made no difference whatsoever.
Mahiru waved a hand. The armor of the Heavy-Armed Darting Hare materialized and hauled Mahito up off the ground.
That last strike had already beaten Mahito to a pulp. The Heavy-Armed Darting Hare held him dangling, swinging in its armored grip.
The girl stepped closer. "Any last words before you beg for mercy?"
"Ha ha..." To her surprise, Mahito coughed twice, then began chuckling low and sinister. "Ha ha ha ha..."
The girl frowned. "What's so funny?"
"You're strong, I'll admit it — you really are stronger than me. Even that Yuta Okkotsu guy, or that Yuki Tsukumo, didn't have this easy a time of it against me. You're basically my natural predator." Mahito laughed and lifted his head, sticking out his tongue with brazen, mocking glee. "Nyeh nyeh nyeh! But what good does that do you? You can't kill me no matter what, and I can keep attacking you, keep harassing you, forever. What exactly are you going to do about it?"
The girl's brow furrowed deeper.
She turned her technique on him again, scanning the Cursed Spirit's entire body.
Then she noticed something surprising — this Cursed Spirit's soul wasn't whole either.
He had plenty of Cursed Energy, plenty of soul strength — nearly on par with his main body — but the body in front of her was still just a clone.
"Ha ha ha, you figured it out, huh? I can't die! The part of me that decides whether I live or die is still back in the future world!" Mahito roared with laughter, taunting her shamelessly. "You can wreck this body all you want — I'll just be weakened for a while! Back in the future world, that miraculous technique keeps feeding me a constant stream of Cursed Energy and soul, automatically. I'll recover in no time and come right back!"
That "miraculous technique" was presumably Chaos and Harmony.
"What can you possibly do? Nothing! You can do absolutely nothing!"
"All you can do is watch me come back again and again, while I slowly kill every single person you care about, one by one!"
"Ha ha ha ha!!..."
Mahito laughed like a madman. Anyone who didn't know better, hearing the noise, would have assumed he was the one winning, not Mahiru.
But Mahito's words didn't provoke Mahiru at all. If anything, she looked delighted, arching an eyebrow.
"Oh? So you're saying your main body heals itself automatically after taking damage too?"
"That's right! That's right!"
"Oh? Then what if I used Nobara Kugisaki's technique to attack you remotely?"
"Won't work either! Won't work either!"
Mahito still hadn't noticed things were starting to go sideways. "Ha ha ha! My soul is protected by [that technique] right now! My soul energy keeps getting replenished, endlessly! Unless you shut down the entire Culling Game, I'll never die! So! ...So?"
"Uh..." Something seemed to click for Mahito. His mouth twisted, eyes going wide as he stared at Mahiru. "So..."
"Oh my, that's wonderful. Everyone in Japan owes you a heartfelt thank-you, Mr. Mahito." The girl clapped her hands together, breaking into a bright smile. "Meeting you has truly been our honor..."
"No! No! You've got it wrong!" Mahito's entire body started to shake, his expression collapsing into confusion. "What I just said — there's a problem with that..."
But the girl only smiled without a word, her palm sliding through empty air, and everything went black for Mahito. When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the future world.
The consciousness inhabiting that clone had been erased.
Looking around, he found himself in a pure white space. This was the border between life and death, the path every soul had to pass through when leaving the world. Above his head, a warm-colored ring of light hovered, steadily pouring Cursed Energy and soul energy down into him.
That ring of light was the joint product of the Culling Game and the technique called Chaos and Harmony.
As long as that ring existed, he could regenerate endlessly.
If Mahiru wanted to finish him off for good, she'd have to destroy that ring first.
"Ah..." But looking at that halo of light, Mahito's mouth split open in sheer terror instead. "AAAH!!—"
He screamed. He howled.
He bolted like a madman, slamming through the door of the spatial Barrier, running and screaming like he'd lost his mind.
Thud.
He hit the ground, hair disheveled, utterly wrecked.
He looked up and saw the phantom Kenjaku standing in front of him.
"What's gotten into you?" The phantom Kenjaku looked baffled. "Did getting beaten up once traumatize you that badly?"
Mahito shook his head, trembling.
Then a sudden fury seized him, and he grabbed the phantom Kenjaku's leg, teeth grinding.
"You... did you forget your own doing?!"
"What?" The phantom Kenjaku genuinely had no idea what was going on.
"That Mahiru — her Idle Transfiguration is way beyond mine! Our two techniques share the same root, our souls are made of the same stuff — so once she got hold of the corpse she just killed, she can make MORE copies of my corpse out of it! Don't you get what that means?!"
"Uh... so what?" The phantom Kenjaku was genuinely at a loss. "She can produce copies of your corpse... so what?"
"Damn it! You idiot! After your idiotic update, torturing people gives points now too, doesn't it?!... AAAARGH!!..."
Under the phantom Kenjaku's startled gaze, the furious Mahito kept cursing and shouting, then his eyes rolled back and his whole body convulsed like he'd been electrocuted.
"Nnnghhh! Aaaaargh!..."
His body began to twist and warp, as though hundreds upon hundreds of invisible nails and hammers were chiseling into him.
Mahito had already lost every last bit of his ability to use techniques.
The phantom Kenjaku's jaw dropped.
Realization hit him.
"Oh no!!" This was bad. Really bad!!
Mahito's main body was already bound to Chaos and Harmony — a bond that couldn't be canceled or destroyed.
On Mahiru's end, with a flick of her small hand, she could use the corpse of Mahito she'd just intercepted to create countless more corpses just like it.
The girl could manufacture endless copies of "Mahito's corpse," hand them out to countless people, and let all of them use Nobara Kugisaki's technique together, unleashing countless Straw Doll Techniques on Mahito at once.
—Because in the last update, the phantom Kenjaku had just made it so that "maiming and torturing people" produced points, all to stir up chaos inside Japan!
From now on, anyone who wanted points wouldn't need to kill a Cursed Spirit — wouldn't even need to kill a person. All they'd need was a little hammer to whack Mahito's corpse!
He was done, done, so done...
He opened the system panel and looked — sure enough, Mahiru had already listed a cursed tool item in the Little Blue Shop, named "Nobara Kugisaki's Mysterious Little Point-Earning Drum."
And this cursed tool, along with its accompanying miniature technique, had already sold over ten thousand units in the Little Blue Shop.
It had barely been any time at all, and it had already broken ten thousand!!
The phantom Kenjaku buried his face in his hands and threw his head back. "No! My carefully laid plans! My inescapable net!"
And so, in the "modern world," the people of Japan found themselves in the middle of a bizarre festival.
"One! Two!" "Thud! Thud!"
"One! Two!" "Thud! Thud!..."
Across the vast square, tens of thousands of people stood in neat rows, red headbands tied around their foreheads, drumsticks clutched in their hands.
Everyone chanted together, keeping time with the rhythm and music, all pounding drums in unison.
"That's it, everyone, keep going!!"
The blue-haired girl stood on the highest platform, waving a little conductor's flag, a red headband tied around her own head, cheering everyone on.
"Thud! Thud!" [Points +1] *n
"Thud! Thud!..." [Points +1] *n...
Roughly ten thousand people filled the square. In the space of an hour, each of them landed nearly a thousand strikes.
In just that one hour alone, Jujutsu High's chronic points shortage was largely resolved.
So really, they owed him thanks after all... Mr. Mahito had made a truly great sacrifice for the people of Jujutsu High.
____
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🔥 New history: Zenless Zone Zero: The Retired Void Hunter — posted on The_Mikudayo