Fushiguro Megumi, Itadori Yuji, and Yoshino Junpei versus Hanami.
In this festival, where the participants were all skilled to a certain degree, no one moved rashly.
A single moment of carelessness could lead to a fatal wound.
“The vessel of Sukuna is still immature as a jujutsushi. His attacks are pretty heavy, but there’s no major problem there. Put him aside... The real issue is those two.”
Without letting its guard down, Hanami studied Megumi and Junpei.
For all its confident intrusion, the other side seemed to understand the gap in ability all too well, but there was no sign they intended to run.
On the contrary, the man with his bangs covering one side of his face had cursed energy rippling around him, as if he was dying to fight right now.
“Their total cursed energy is weaker than mine. But I don’t know what kind of technique they have, so I can’t afford to be careless. Let’s see what you do.”
The first to break the silence was Junpei.
“You can talk?”
“That’s right.”
“A special-grade vengeful spirit born in the forest...”
Mahito’s face, bragging proudly about his companion, was still vivid in his memory.
He hadn’t known it then, but now that he thought about it, it was a revolting sight.
To treat human lives like pebbles rolling around on the street, and yet cherish his own companions all the same.
What a ridiculous, disgusting joke.
“You’re Mahito’s companion, aren’t you?”
“And if I am?”
“That ragged special-grade curse... and a companion of his.”
“What are you two talking about...?”
When the answer came back in the affirmative, a smile full of malice curled at Junpei’s lips.
“I’m curious what kind of face Mahito would make if I killed you.”
Could someone like you feel the pain of losing someone precious?
If possible, I hope you savor that grief for as long as you can.
With those words, the battle began in a spray of water.
------------------------
Sharp stalks shot out from the masses of roots Hanami had summoned into the air.
A killing blow packed with force and speed.
And yet no one was struck by the attack meant to kill.
Junpei, riding on a moonlit wave, dodged in an acrobatic posture, while Megumi and Yuji each knocked the roots aside with a sword and a fist.
The distance closed in an instant, and Megumi’s Divine Dogs - Totality aimed for Hanami’s head.
Slash!
Rather than abandon its balance and dodge completely, Hanami chose to trust its defense and let the attack slide off.
The claws of the Divine Dogs, sharp enough to tear through steel, grazed Hanami’s head and left a small scratch.
Clicking his tongue softly, Megumi was given information from the earlier exchange by Yuji.
“Aim for the branch in its eye. That spot’s defense is weaker.”
“Easy for you to say!”
Without Yuji’s speed and power, close combat with Hanami was difficult.
Of course, attacks from a distance were useless too if they couldn’t pierce Hanami’s defense.
“Tan!”
Thud!
A high-speed projectile struck Hanami’s shoulder, but it didn’t penetrate deeply and bounced off.
Yuji pressed the attack without giving it a moment to breathe.
Hanami exchanged several blows with Itadori while keeping an eye on Megumi and Junpei’s positions.
“This side isn’t much of a threat.”
“Itadori, get back!”
As soon as he retreated, Nue, summoned by Megumi, released lightning and electrocuted Hanami.
Being sturdy didn’t mean electricity wouldn’t run through you.
Hanami’s body went briefly numb, and Megumi seized the opening to swing his blade toward Hanami’s eye.
Slash!
“Yes!”
Cursed energy poured into the quality blade, cleanly severing the branch.
It was clearly damaged.
Still not enough, apparently, because Hanami’s fist slammed into the floating Megumi, but that too was blocked.
“[Moonlit Wave].”
Ripple
“Nice, Yoshino!”
After confirming that Megumi, having absorbed the damage, had tumbled out of [Moonlit Wave], Junpei launched a quick assault.
The thorns on the moonlit wave couldn’t break Hanami’s defense.
But if he injected them at point-blank range into the weak point where Megumi had cut the branch, there was no way that thing would hold up.
“Kan!”
The tendrils of [Moonlit Wave] coiled together and transformed into a massive thorn.
The thorn, dripping ominous cursed energy, spun violently toward Hanami’s eye, but before it could land, Hanami’s left arm, wrapped in cloth until now, came into view.
Clack!
The thorn that had come so close was caught in Hanami’s left hand. It screeched with the sound of friction, then stopped.
“So that thing was hiding its full power.”
“We can’t afford to take it lightly.”
As Hanami’s pitch-black left arm planted itself on the ground, an enormous mass of tree roots burst up from the earth.
The sheer mass shook the ground, sending tremors across the area.
Yuji and Megumi, caught nearby, barely managed to steady themselves on the writhing roots, while Junpei, farther away, summoned [Moonlit Wave] and flew toward it.
“What is this range...!”
“Look around you. It’s all forest! There’s plenty for it to control!”
As he shouted that, Hanami emerged from the center of the roots and fired seeds.
At first glance they looked like tiny, insignificant attacks, but in truth they were weapons made for fighting jujutsushi.
The moment they lodged in the body, they would suck out cursed energy and swell larger.
Megumi, trying to wrap his body in cursed energy for defense, suddenly remembered the scene from moments ago.
He hadn’t had time to hear the explanation, but there had definitely been sprouts growing from Nobara and Panda’s bodies.
And the attack aimed at him then had clearly been blocked by Yuji’s bare body, without using cursed energy.
Having finished his thought, Megumi quickly struck the seed away with the flat of his blade and deflected it.
“We can’t let those touch us, right?”
“I don’t really understand how it works, but after getting hit, Kugisaki and Panda-senpai couldn’t use their strength!”
“You’re sharp. And you haven’t even begun your [technique].”
Yuji and Megumi collided once more with the surging Hanami.
While Hanami blocked Yuji’s kick with its arm, Megumi and the Divine Dogs surrounded it from front and back and thrust their blades in.
Hanami used the roots to bind the Divine Dogs’ legs and trip them, then knocked Megumi’s blade aside before throwing a straight punch—only for [Moonlit Wave] to block the way again.
Predicting the obstruction, Hanami stopped its hand for a split second, and in that instant [Moonlit Wave] was released. The thorn from [Moonlit Wave], summoned again, smashed into the back of Hanami’s head.
Hanami hurled a clump of roots upward to intercept Junpei, who was darting around in the air to interfere, and beneath that, Yuji lowered his stance and closed in.
Hanami, as if by habit, tried to trade flesh for bone, but sensing a weight different from before, it pulled back.
Thud!
Even Yuji himself looked a little surprised by the punch he had just thrown.
As his cursed energy control improved, the gap between his body and his cursed energy was beginning to close.
Yuji’s original [Convergent Fist] was a technique born from his bad habit.
His body was too fast and too strong for his immature cursed energy control to keep up with, so the same strike landed twice in succession.
Until now, Yuji’s physical ability had been so exceptional that it was enough to crush mediocre opponents, but it didn’t work against Hanami, whose defense was monstrous.
After all, the technique merely split the impact into two blows; the power of the technique itself wasn’t especially high.
But now that he had realized ordinary attacks wouldn’t work on Hanami, his skill was right on the brink of growth.
He didn’t even know the exact reason his attacks weren’t landing, but his gifted body was leading him toward a higher level regardless of his own will.
To put it another way, it was like being right before the shell breaks.
“That last one was...”
“So you’re maturing as you fight, despite being immature.”
The one at a disadvantage if this dragged on was itself.
Hanami immediately returned the roots they were standing on to its own cursed energy.
Yuji and Megumi, now deprived of footing, fell. Above them, sharp tree roots lunged down like fangs.
“Damn it! My Nue can only carry one person!”
Megumi, who had summoned Nue, could cling to it, but Yuji couldn’t.
The one who saved Yuji as he tried to block with his arm was Junpei.
“Yuji!”
“Oh, Junpei! I knew I could count on you!”
Lowering his altitude, Junpei leapt off [Moonlit Wave] and, at the same time, summoned [Moonlit Wave] in midair to shove Yuji aside.
[Moonlit Wave], having pushed Yuji away, was pierced by the roots instead, but with its regenerative power, it wasn’t a serious injury.
Hanami, whose carefully built strategy had gone to waste, glared irritably at the cause of it all—Junpei.
Though its eyes weren’t visible, so the meaning didn’t really come through.
The man had been throwing out attacks with a strange sense of wrongness from the start.
A variable that couldn’t break through defense, but kept supporting the front line at just the right moments and making itself a nuisance.
Hanami found him truly, truly annoying.
“I see now. You’re the ‘toy’ Mahito was talking about?”
Mahito had said that when he came into contact with the vessel of Sukuna, he happened to obtain a ‘toy’ and used it in his plan. He’d also said it hadn’t gone well.
The information it had heard about the technique. The strange hostility toward Mahito.
That man had to be the one.
If Hanami were its usual gentle, quiet self, it would have continued the battle in silence.
But it was already emotionally stirred by the excitement of battle, something it was feeling for the first time, and with the added calculation of provoking Junpei into attacking, it ended up saying something it shouldn’t have.
It was different in nature from Jogo’s provocations, but because its tone was so soft, it was all the more suited to stoking anger.
Junpei’s expression slowly twisted.
“...”
“Junpei isn’t a toy!”
“Ignore it, Yoshino.”
Of course Junpei wasn’t stupid enough to fall for that level of provocation. But he couldn’t help feeling angry.
Both his mother and himself had been treated like toys.
That was too far to just brush off and let go.
“You’re right. I am a toy. I was used without even realizing I was being played with.”
“Junpei...”
“But you know what?”
You are curses. Curses born from the human heart.
Things that feed on the negative emotions seeping out of people, no different from trash in a back alley.
Born from humans, yet never acknowledged as truly existing, and when you die, you leave nothing behind—meaningless garbage like that.
“If I’m a toy, then you’re the dregs. The kind of dregs that rot in a sewer for so long they won’t come off!”
I’ll show you your place.
“[Black Scale].”
------------------------
Once the battle began, Junpei had to keep chewing on his own helplessness.
Ranged attacks couldn’t pierce Hanami’s defense. But if he tried to close in and target a weak point, his own physical ability was far too weak.
No matter how much [Moonlit Wave] could ignore physical blows, if the gap in power was too great, it was meaningless. Junpei’s body wasn’t sturdy enough to see or block attacks coming from [Moonlit Wave]’s blind spots.
That didn’t mean [Moonlit Wave] could close in and stab its thorns into Hanami either.
There was a way to enter [Moonlit Wave] entirely, but if he focused only on defense, that would eventually amount to defeat.
“At my current level, I can’t beat that curse. I need a new inspiration.”
Even while supporting Yuji and Megumi whenever he could and interfering with Hanami, he never stopped observing.
How do I crush it completely?
How do I destroy it without leaving even the slightest opening?
His imagination, driven by pure killing intent, kept flowing through his head.
He concentrated like that for several minutes.
Then, at last, he reached the Zone.
“It’s just like back then.”
His first request with Nanami.
Back then, he had definitely not been normal.
The core of cursed energy he had grasped between exhaustion and pain. His head, ready to burst with exhilaration.
The feeling that the world and he himself were connected as one.
That sensation still hadn’t left his mind.
He recalled it once more.
This time, heavier and sharper.
What he needed was overwhelming hardness, and vibration.
“If it’s now, I can do it!”
Junpei’s cursed energy condensed into something hard and sharp, building a new form.
Among the sea creatures that live in the deep ocean, there is one whose hardness is beyond comparison.
Chiton.
The chiton, which absorbs iron sulfide and wraps it around its body to protect its fragile core, never breaks even under a predator’s attack.
Cursed energy modeled after that bizarre, beautiful miracle of nature covered Junpei’s arm.
One by one, scales with a dark crimson sheen emerged, and beneath them, the writhing foot of a mollusk could be glimpsed.
The change, which didn’t stop even after fully enveloping Junpei’s arm, eventually took the shape of a certain weapon.
Something every horror movie fan would know.
A prized possession often seen in the hands of the slashers Junpei loved most and watched most often.
Vreeeeeeeeeng—
A chainsaw made of black scales roared with a deafening howl.
“One and many. [Black Scale] changes its form according to my will. And because it’s made of my cursed energy, every one of them carries poison.”
Hanami’s expression stiffened at the sight of that vicious weapon.
That thing...
If it hits, it’s dangerous.
“Get ready. Let’s see who’s harder.”
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