Why.
Why was this guy here.
"Ain't you even a little sorry for your cousin when he ends up like this?"
I didn't kill him.
I just cut off his legs without killing him.
The bastard who should be rotting in the mansion by now, crawling around on the floor.
"Why are you here?"
"Ah, that? I bit my tongue off and killed myself."
He killed himself with an attack that didn't contain cursed energy, and became a curse on his own?
I had considered the possibility....but this embodiment of pride actually committed suicide?
"I figured I'd rather do something than die as a legless cripple like this, so I went and did it, man."
"A special-grade jujutsushi turning into a curse after killing himself? You don't even have any pride? You're a disgrace to the Zenin clan."
"I didn't plan to go this far either....
I heard your old lady hanged herself and died, though?"
"....!"
Everything else I had dismissed as nonsense, but I couldn't possibly ignore that.
Mom was dead.
After leaving the Zenin clan, she had hanged herself and killed herself.
And after seeing that, Naoya hardened his heart and bit his tongue to become a curse.
-Mom... killed herself?
"Why....."
Even if I had cut ties with her myself, blood was blood. There was no way it wouldn't send ripples through my heart.
She lured us to Father. She didn't even step in when we were getting beaten.
And after all that, why. Why would she do something nobody even told her to do, after it had already come to this.
I was confused.
"Huh? Huhuhuhuh?"
"......."
"No way, no way. You're shaken? That's a shock. Heh heh."
As if he had been waiting to see that expression, Naoya twisted his body like a rope and laughed.
His skull-like face didn't show emotion, but the sneer still came through.
"I came here to kill you, you know? You think you can beat me now, all restless like that?"
Right.
The past is the past.
Mom dying was shocking, but...I had to focus on the enemy in front of me.
Maki gripped her sword tighter and leaped into the air.
Her heightened sixth sense never lost track of Naoya's movements until the instant he closed in.
Charging straight in, she swung four slashes aimed at Naoya's torso.
-Pchit!
Naoya quickly retreated, and one of his arms was severed halfway.
I was aiming to split his torso open.
Maki clicked her tongue inwardly.
'Estimated grade is special-grade. His body's toughness and structure have become far superior, and....he can stay airborne. He can probably use his technique from when he was alive too.'
Having fallen into being a curse, Naoya had compensated for most of his weaknesses.
If I thought about the previous fight, I'd get killed.
"Aah... that hurts. Curses hurt properly too, don't they? I caught a whole lot of them, but were those guys hurting this much too...?"
Naoya muttered to himself, and the exhaust port on his rear spat out fire.
With a hiss and the sound of compressed air being expelled, Naoya vanished from sight.
His strangely jerky movement flickered into view, and Naoya's fist shot in after closing the distance in an instant.
-Thud!
-Projection Sorcery. So he can still use it.
Even after blocking it, a numbing shock remained.
What the hell kind of body was this?
"I can do things I couldn't before."
Projection Sorcery cannot set movements that are "impossible" for the user's body.
But what if the body was a curse with an inhuman form?
You could stitch together disconnected motions, skip them, and even use attacks from angles that would be impossible unless you accepted the penalty.
'Already this fast?'
Before even building up acceleration, Naoya was moving at a speed that, in life, would have required stacking his technique three times to reach.
Naoya, now the "fastest curse" instead of the "fastest jujutsushi," charged at Maki once more.
-Whoosh!
A straight-line attack.
Sensing the tremor in the air and reading its path, Maki thrust her sword straight toward Naoya's front.
-Clang!
Right before being cut, Naoya twisted and took the blade on his body as he rolled through it.
The charge was a feint, a smokescreen to build speed.
As the attack went nowhere, Maki immediately reached out with her free hand and grabbed Naoya by the hair.
-Bang!
Using the force of the pull against him, she slammed Naoya into the wall.
Then, from that grappling position, she drove a knee into his torso, cracking his armor with a sharp snap and sending his body flying upward.
'I can't deal a fatal wound, but my hits still land.'
He was still in the slow opening phase before acceleration.
I had to restrict his movement before he built up speed.
-Sis.
'I have to do this. You won't even be able to react, and you'll get taken out.'
Mai wouldn't be the one to step in.
No matter how much stronger she got, the matchup was bad. Mai's body wasn't as tough as Maki's, strengthened by Heavenly Restriction.
If she pulled out a firearm, she wouldn't land a single shot and would get cut down in one hit.
'That guy's definitely going to try to end it by accelerating to top speed. Count on me then.'
-Got it.
I didn't think he'd make the same mistake twice, but I had to bet on it here.
In terms of speed, Naoya clearly had the advantage.
Even if I took the initiative, the longer the fight dragged on, the worse it would get, so there was no choice but to aim for a counter.
-Swish!
Maki kicked off the wall and leaped upward, and one slash from her sword shaved off the top of Naoya's head.
Once more.
-Whip!
Dodging the attack, Naoya spread his arms like a net and seized Maki's body.
Her vision flipped under the violent force, her back slammed down, and he accelerated again.
-Rrrrriiiip!!!
Her clothes were torn apart as she was dragged across the ground.
Naoya was moving with Maki pinned to the floor at near-sonic speed.
As he low-flew with the intent to grind her to pieces, the repulsive force made Naoya's arm lurch.
-Thud!
"You damn bitch..."
"Shut up, trash."
Using the sword she was holding to stop herself, Maki grabbed Naoya's arm and kicked upward into his face at the same time.
Even if Naoya had the edge in speed, he couldn't match Maki in strength.
His arm was like a rope with no real joints, but even a freely moving rope is subject to tensile force.
With a force that exceeded its tensile strength, Naoya's body shot upward and the arm she had seized was torn off at the shoulder.
-Crack!
If he had been human, it would have been a fatal injury, but curses were different.
The arm he had thrust toward the diving Maki had already grown back anew.
'Yeah... still a monster.'
Even if Naoya had gotten stronger, that didn't mean Maki had gotten weaker.
She was still strong. Now that she was used to this power, maybe even stronger than that man Toji.
But was that enough to satisfy her?
She had abandoned being human to obtain this power.
She had poured everything into it, body and soul, with nothing but revenge in sight.
It wouldn't be worth it if she stopped at just this much.
So far, the only pattern Naoya had shown was the simple combination of acceleration and charge.
But he probably hadn't expected this.
That after becoming this body, I could also attack from range.
"I can do this too."
An application of Projection Sorcery that was only possible on the user himself and on "others."
The ability to fix whatever it touched in place for one second.
As the target of that technique expanded,
-Clatter!
a frame that caught "air" lined up in front of Maki.
Before Maki could even dodge, Naoya smashed the first frame with all his strength.
-Crash!
"!"
Fixed air loses its kinetic energy.
Then what happens if the energy accumulated in that state is delivered all at once?
-BOOMBOOMBOOM!!!
Dozens of frames shattered, and the air that had been stopped moved, triggering a chain of explosions.
The shockwave devastated everything in all directions, and Maki's body was shoved back, lifted into the air.
"Damn it....!"
-Sis!
The shockwave itself wasn't much of a threat, but her stance had collapsed.
Naoya rushed through that opening, and the horn-like protrusion on his head brushed past Maki's arm.
-Slash!
Terrifying speed.
Even though it only grazed the blunt part, a bit of flesh was torn away.
'If he charges straight in, he'll get countered, so he's trying to wear me down with small attacks?'
-Whoosh!
Naoya, still building speed as he charged, now aimed below Maki.
Dropping his altitude until he was almost touching the ground, he shot forward like a rocket.
Just before impact and the moment her leg was about to break, Maki dodged with a tumble and, spinning around, unleashed a slash at Naoya.
-Slash!
"Damn it!"
Too shallow.
Even shallower than before.
As he kept gaining speed, she couldn't tell how fast he'd become if she let him continue like this.
'Sorry, Mai. I'm going to have to gamble.'
Pretend to rush in carelessly, and catch him off guard.
Wait. Until he can't hold back and comes at me.
Even now, Naoya was accelerating and leaving blurred afterimages as he charged. When he came in, that would be the moment his head came off.
-Whoosh!
'Here he comes!'
Charge.
Naoya slammed into Maki's torso, where she had deliberately left her abdomen wide open.
-Crash!
"Kgh!"
Her breath was knocked out, but he hadn't reached her organs.
The target was the intake port where he drew in air.
Planting her feet and holding on with sheer force of will, Maki grabbed Naoya's body before he could fall away and drove her sword down.
-Thud!
"It hurts! You little bitch!"
As Maki's sword pierced the intake port, Naoya started thrashing to tear himself free.
-Bang! Bang! Bang!
With Maki hanging from the top of his head, Naoya smashed into every wall he could find.
Under the pressure of the impact, Maki's clothes were already torn open down her back, and her steel-like skin was scraped raw against the stone, turning red.
After silently enduring the impact, just as she tried to grab the sword and twist it, Naoya's body, which had only been charging forward, suddenly spun around.
As force was applied in the opposite direction of the cut, the sword, which had been hanging on by a thread, snapped, and Maki was thrown off.
'I was going to carve out his throat whole.'
-No choice. Now....
'Yeah. It's coming.'
She'd stabbed around inside the intake port, so he must be furious by now.
This was about the time he'd want to finish me off.
"I'll kill you....!"
As expected, Naoya left Maki behind and flew around in circles in midair, building speed.
His sluggish limbs slipped into the opening, leaving only the nimble, hard main body to pour everything into acceleration.
Naoya stepped into a world beyond sound, a speed no human could even hope to reach. By now, only wind pressure and sound remained; he was beyond what the naked eye could follow.
The afterimages Naoya left behind warped as wind swept through the entire barrier.
-Whooshwhooshwhooshwhooshwhoosh!!
It would be power that couldn't even compare to his final moments as a human.
He wouldn't take the same hit twice.
But I have a way too.
'Mai.'
-Yeah.
Switch.
Mai, the original owner of the body, woke up, and a lance over 3 meters long for mounted combat formed in her hand.
At the same time, spiked iron shields she had created separately floated up around her.
Before Naoya, who might charge at any moment, could close in, she switched again.
-Click
From between the shields, Maki held the lance and waited for Naoya to charge.
'When he reaches top speed, I'll pierce him from the other side.'
A counter that would run him through from head to toe.
I can do it.
I already experienced it once.
-Come on.
In response to that taunt, the direction of the wind changed.
In the instant it took to blink, Mai instinctively thrust the lance in her hand.
Naoya's head, which had reached this place beyond the speed of sound, collided with Maki's lance.
One point versus one point.
Speed versus strength.
The result was-
-KRAK!
Naoya's victory, having broken past Mach 3.
The lance couldn't withstand the repulsive force and shattered, and before long Maki was flying through the sky.
'Huh?'
-Sis! Sisiiii!!
Even as her organs were damaged and blood burst from her mouth, Maki couldn't let go of her confusion.
Why. How.
I had only just become strong.
'Why for a piece of trash like this....!'
"You kidding me? I lost to something like this?"
With Naoya's sneering voice as the last thing she heard, Maki's consciousness cut off.
"Oh, how scary, how scary."
Even though she couldn't move a muscle, Maki had been glaring straight at him until the moment she passed out.
Her bloodshot whites were eerie, ruining her beauty.
Mocking her while putting on a show of exaggerated fear, Naoya reached out and closed Maki's eyes for her.
"You ain't dead yet, are you? It'd be a shame to rush this."
He chuckled and lifted the unconscious Maki up.
He would kill her, but shouldn't he enjoy it first?
He hadn't forgotten the resentment from ending up as a curse in the prime of his life.
"You're gonna take responsibility for this."
What was inside was Maki, but the body itself was Mai's.
The plump, beautiful body he had coveted for so long.
Even if he no longer felt sexual desire in this body, he could still enjoy himself.
-Clatter
With the other arm transformed, Naoya extended a grotesquely writhing tentacle toward the sisters.
Split into multiple branches, each one had a structure fit for ravaging a woman's body, and even the dead Ougi would have looked at it and gone, "Ah, this is a bit much."
It was like....the manifestation of the fantasies of people who go wild for that sort of genre in eroge.
Was the reproductive function still intact?
Thinking of Cursed Womb: Death Paintings, maybe it was possible.
That would be pretty fun in its own way.
'Before I kill you, I want to hear you cry in a sharp little voice.'
Just as Naoya was gathering the remnants of his human self and trying to trample Maki's femininity-
-Twitch
Maki, no, "Mai," opened her eyes.
"Huh?"
-Crackle!
Maki had passed out, but Mai inside had seen everything.
How Naoya had kneaded her body with those lewd hands, and what he had been trying to do.
She had stayed still to buy time to recover, but she couldn't endure that outrage and rose back up to the surface of consciousness.
"Huhuhuh?"
"How dare you! Touch my sister's body!"
Only she was allowed to touch her sister.
She would never hand that over to anyone else.
Before Naoya could react, Mai built something in her hand and quickly shoved it into his intake port.
"Eat this, you bastard!"
A green, round sphere about the size of a hand.
What Mai shoved into Naoya's body was a grenade.
-BOOM!
Naoya's upper body exploded and scattered in all directions.
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