The three people who looked like they might collapse at any moment rested after receiving Nobara’s intensive treatment.
Why didn’t Yuta use [Cursed technique reversal] on the others too, since he could do it?
Surprisingly, that seemingly endless amount of cursed energy had run dry. Forget having any to spare for other people; he was in no condition to properly heal his own body.
"Here, a towel."
"Thanks, Nobara."
Along the way, Mai had switched places with Maki, because her Heavenly Restriction gave her high natural recovery.
How to describe the feeling of hearing pseudo-scientific nonsense like, "Even if your guts burst, they’ll stitch themselves back together in five minutes"?
Anyway, once they’d returned to a clean state, they gathered in the conference room at Megumi’s summons.
"Yuta-senpai. First of all, thank you for your hard work. And Maki-senpai, too, Choso."
"I’m ashamed."
"No.... It was shocking, but this wasn’t an impossible outcome. Could you tell us what happened?"
That was the first thing Megumi asked as soon as he sat in the seat of honor.
It wasn’t exactly the most appropriate thing to say to comrades who had just returned from the brink of death, but he needed to know.
Even if the mission failed, there were still things that had to be done. What they needed right now wasn’t comfort, but an analysis of why they lost and a report on the power they had witnessed.
"What happened was....."
Yuta, after struggling to begin, started sinking back into the memories of the past seven days.
Even after entering the barrier and being separated, Yuta had calmly prepared to regroup.
He hadn’t been without emotion when he was split from his allies, but that was because he clearly understood what role he had been given.
"The mission to exorcise Kenjaku is insurance. To keep that bastard from pulling any tricks once we’ve gathered 1,000 points."
He probably wouldn’t make any reckless moves while keeping an eye on them, but Kenjaku was not someone they could simply leave alone.
He had gone to the trouble of preparing Angel’s incarnation in the first place because he had some other scheme in mind, hadn’t he? A guy who succeeded in opening the Culling Game wouldn’t just sit quietly and watch from the perspective of an observer no matter what happened.
The Kenjaku-extermination squad’s role was to clear the surrounding area so the juniors’ plan could succeed safely.
"If I’m being honest, I’d like to gather the 1,000 points myself, but it’s too dangerous."
Yuta didn’t intervene in the fight between the ranked players that broke out at dawn on the second day.
He only watched the situation unfold while focusing on rescuing people who were trying to escape before getting caught up in it.
Shamefully, he still couldn’t compare to Gojo Satoru or Yoshino Junpei.
He was confident he could beat all of them one-on-one, but things would never go that easily. The instant one side went down, the others would pile in with successive reinforcements.
"They must have already burned through a lot in Shibuya, and during the higher-ups incident too...I hope their bodies and minds both have some room left."
He felt sorry for Yoshino, who would have to take on all those monsters by himself.
If only he had been there. If only he’d been a little stronger, then the juniors wouldn’t have had to go back out onto the battlefield again.
When the melee ended and things settled into a lull, Yuta set up his own base in a sparsely populated area.
The purpose was to make it easy for the other allies to find him by following the traces he left behind. Maybe not Choso, but Maki would be able to track him easily with her heightened senses.
After interrogating a suitable player to understand the barrier’s rules, Yuta traveled around the seven starting points and left markers.
Swish!
In the process, he also ran into a group of players plotting to overthrow the neutral zone.
He gave the players who had joined in without knowing any better a proper beating, but he had no choice but to kill the ringleader, who had been actively inciting them.
The man, who had been covered head to toe in dangling receipts, hurled curses at Yuta as he died.
"I just...wanted to see something interesting..."
"What am I supposed to do about that?"
"Since you killed me like this...you..."
The last words of a sorcerer become a curse. Before he could spit out anything even worse, Yuta hurriedly cut his throat.
Was his name Raji, or Reji?
Other than the fact that he was unusually weak for an incarnated player, he wasn’t really worth remembering.
Still, getting 15 points and avoiding the risk of having his technique stripped away was a relief.
"Oh, Yuta!"
"Kusakabe-sensei, it’s been a while. Though it’s only been three days."
"Please, take me with you! This place is hell!"
When he went to Gotoku, he ran into Kusakabe and Todo’s group.
Like Yuta, they were working on rescuing civilians, and they seemed to be having a hard time with the search mission.
They also looked noticeably filthy, which was a bonus.
"Sure. You can come along if you want."
"Ooh!"
"Wait. We can’t go."
"Why!"
"The odds are high that the master and Kenjaku are moving separately. Even if we’re not part of the main mission, it’s a waste to bunch this much power together in one place."
Todo, who for some reason strongly disliked Yuta, flatly opposed it, and the idea of joining up fell through.
Kusakabe’s deeply disappointed expression was quite memorable.
Honestly, he’d only offered because Kusakabe was clinging to him so hard; he hadn’t really planned on going together.
And so, for six days, he roamed the entire Culling Game barrier, rescuing non-sorcerers and leaving markers.
Yuta, who had worked harder than anyone, finally reaped the results.
"Maki-san!"
"So you were here."
Whether it was lucky or not that he hadn’t run into any of those people even once in all that time, he couldn’t say.
Once Maki joined him, finding Choso was easy.
That was because Choso, the hybrid of curse and human, had a distinctive presence.
The unique smell of blood he always gave off was detected by Maki’s superhuman sense of smell, and they were able to find him quickly.
"That sounds a little dog-like when you put it that way."
"Are you angry?"
"No."
A short, businesslike exchange followed.
It was like the casual conversation of people who had known each other a long time, yet with a strange back-and-forth laced with subtle discomfort.
That inexplicable awkwardness had been hanging in the air ever since they met.
"Maki-san...you’ve changed somehow."
The cause was mostly Maki, who kept answering in a stiff, almost mechanical way.
Even if she didn’t show it, Yuta seemed a little hurt. Sorry, but she couldn’t help it.
After all, this was the first time she’d had a body like this and been left alone with him.
Under her cold mask, Maki was fretting over how Yuta might see her.
"I mean, I did die once... Why is this guy so unfazed?"
Her body had died in the Zenin clan.
Her soul was living inside Mai, but socially speaking, the person called Zenin Maki was practically dead.
Before entering the Culling Game, things had been so hectic that she’d brushed it off, but now that they were actually face-to-face, she didn’t know what to say.
And Yuta’s attitude toward her, treating her no differently than usual, was a little strange too.
-Big sis, you actually have a cute side to you.
"Shut up."
"Huh?"
"I wasn’t talking to you.."
Lately, she thought she’d gotten used to it, but sometimes while having a conversation in her head, the words would slip out of her mouth.
Anyone else would think she was a complete lunatic.
After landing a mental flick on Mai, who was being annoying, Maki reassured Yuta, who was staring at her with wide eyes.
"That was Mai, right?"
"She kept acting up."
"It’s amazing every time I see it...two souls coexisting in one body."
"......."
There he goes again.
That dazed look, like he didn’t even know what he’d just said.
Was he oblivious, or did he really not care?
"I’ll have to ask this airhead directly if I want an answer."
With a sigh, Maki asked the question she’d wanted to ask all this time.
"You don’t have any thoughts about this mess?"
"Huh?"
"Isn’t it weird? Your dead older sister clinging to your little sister’s body and living as a split personality?"
She didn’t hate it, and in fact there were even some good points...but it was impossible to deny that it looked bad.
There had never been a case like this in the long history of jujutsu.
It felt like she alone had become a monster cut off from everyone else.
After seriously pondering Maki’s question in his own way—at least, that was how it looked to Maki, though it couldn’t have taken even two seconds—Yuta gave his answer.
"Is that really so important?"
"What?"
"No matter what form you take, Maki-san is still Maki-san."
"......."
"It’s a shame about what happened...but you’re still the person I admire. If you have Maki-san’s face, Maki-san’s memories, and you speak and act like Maki-san, then you’re Maki-san. Even if you’re using Mai-san’s body, that doesn’t change."
He looked like he genuinely had no idea what the problem was.
That doglike expression he often made.
Seeing him casually spout embarrassing things and then wait for other people’s reactions made Maki regret all the times she’d needlessly agonized over it in the past.
She hadn’t seen him much since he’d gone to Africa, but Yuta was still exactly the same as she remembered.
It wasn’t a normal reaction, but for some reason, she found that comforting, and so Maki shut her mouth.
He’d said it himself; there was no reason to argue further, and Mai would probably just tease her for it anyway.
"If we’re talking about the continuity of the subject, I know that too. It’s just that the appearance is a little weird."
"Ah, well, I’m not really in a position to talk. Right, Rika?"
-Yeah! I like Yuta!
When Yuta called out with a smile, that familiar "Rika" popped out of thin air.
As he stroked her head with his ringed hand, "Rika" reacted with a girlishness that didn’t match her appearance.
Watching the two of them hug tightly with satisfied expressions, Maki and Mai’s faces simultaneously soured.
"He’s a good guy...but every time he does that, it creeps me out a little."
The real Orimoto Rika had exhausted all her power and passed on during last year’s Night Parade of a Hundred Demons.
That thing was nothing more and nothing less than a shell that inherited Rika’s memories and appearance.
And yet Yuta pampered that fake as if it were the real Rika, and sometimes even engaged in embarrassing displays of affection.
Maybe the "continuity of the subject" he’d mentioned applied to that fake too.
At this point, Yuta’s madness was more frightening than Rika’s obsession.
What kind of expression was the real Rika making somewhere, watching this? Was she grinding her teeth because her place had been stolen? Or was she grateful that he loved even the fake?
Since they were both similarly cursed and stuck in place, she somehow felt like she could understand it.
-Big sis.
"What."
-I can’t take it anymore. Show that curse brat our love....
"Please just stay quiet! And we already did that yesterday!"
As they walked and bickered with Mai like that, they eventually found their target.
"You’re here."
"Yeah."
Choso, who had been crouching down, stood up as if he’d known they would come and welcomed them.
This time, since they weren’t really close enough to exchange much, not many words passed between them.
"Let’s go right away."
"Now?"
"I already know the location. If I’d charged in alone, it would’ve been a pointless death, so I held back."
-It’s just around here.
At those words, Yuta and Maki swallowed hard.
Finally.
They could face the mastermind behind all of this.
"I won’t let sensei lose another friend."
Yuta Okkotsu.
"Let’s finish this fast and go."
-Okay.
Maki/Mai.
"For Mother and my younger brothers...!"
Choso.
"I’ll bring Kenjaku down."
The Kenjaku-extermination squad.
Their full-scale mission begins.
And at that very moment, far away, there was a curse spirit watching their movements.
"Maki-chan, Blood Manipulation, and now Yuta too. What should I do...."
Once hailed as a prodigy of the Zenin clan, now a fallen man drowned in vengeance.
A new special-grade vengeful spirit with a clearly defined self, comparable to Jogo or Mahito.
As he prepared to undergo metamorphosis anew inside his cocoon, he licked his lips with his tongue.
"Long time no see."
The Culling Game player.
[Zenin Naoya (curse spirit)-8 points]
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