Fire and volcano.
The energy pulsing beneath the ground where humans had set foot.
A thousand years ago.
Four hundred years ago.
Human beings had always feared the disasters of the earth—things beyond imagination—and sometimes even worshiped them as gods.
From that fear was born the curse of the earth, Jogo.
He had lived long enough to stand apart from the other curses in both age and strength.
It was only because his opponent was Gojo Satoru that this didn’t stand out more clearly; in truth, his combat power was roughly equivalent to eight or nine of Sukuna’s fingers.
The oldest and strongest curse.
That was the title attached to Jogo.
“One down first.”
Boom!
Jogo vanished in an instant, reappearing in front of Nanami as flames erupted and swept across his upper body.
A blast unleashed with the clear intent to kill.
Yet contrary to his expectation that Nanami would simply burn and collapse, Nanami’s sword flashed through the flames.
“!”
Whoosh!
Jogo leaped back with swift speed and caught a glimpse of it.
The black scale armor wrapped around Nanami’s body. It had protected him from the searing heat of the flames.
It hadn’t blocked everything; the exposed skin had been horribly blistered, but it wasn’t a fatal wound.
“Hah, hah!”
“If I’d been any later, Nanami would’ve died!”
It was Junpei’s save, throwing [Black Scale] over Nanami with lightning-fast reflexes.
Even that would have been impossible without his experience with [Black Flash].
With no time to catch his breath, Jogo’s hand reached for the next target.
“Again...”
Papapap!
The target was Naobito, who had lost one arm.
He was the most seriously injured after Nanami, so the judgment was sound, but Naobito’s Projection Sorcery was still intact.
Dividing one second into twenty-four frames, he slipped away in a blur and shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Everyone! Run from this place!”
They couldn’t win.
Even if he were in perfect condition, victory against this monster would be far from guaranteed. Now, after expending nearly all his strength fighting the octopus, it was hopeless.
If they faced that monster head-on, they would be doomed no matter how many people they had.
And Junpei was thinking the exact same thing as Naobito.
“We can’t win....!”
After back-to-back battles with Uraume, Zenin Toji, and Dagon, Junpei’s cursed energy was on the verge of running dry.
The sensation he had gained from [Black Flash] was slipping from his grasp too, and it seemed impossible to move like he had before.
He could summon Pointing Lamp Jaw only one more time. If it landed properly, it wouldn’t be impossible, but...
That firepower was no joke.
At that level, both in nature and in technique, it might even burn through Pointing Lamp Jaw whole and still keep coming.
And if what he’d heard was true, that curse was the strongest of the four natural disasters.
What mattered here wasn’t victory, but survival.
Without hesitation, Junpei called out [Black Scale] and dragged Maki and Nanami close, carrying them with him.
By then, Naobito was already shouldering Megumi’s limp body.
The sorcerers were showing signs of retreat.
But Jogo, his head cold with rage, had no intention of letting them do as they pleased.
Pshhhk!
With a flick of Jogo’s hand, countless vents burst from the pillars supporting the avenue and spewed flames.
A wide-area attack that blocked off every possible escape route.
Just as everyone was about to be helplessly swallowed by that firepower,
“Tiger Burial!”
From Megumi’s shadow, where he had squeezed out the last of his cursed energy to form hand signs, a giant tiger sprang forth.
Grrrrrrr!
At the same time as its roar, a translucent barrier wrapped around the sorcerers.
The flames that tried to invade the barrier lost their momentum and drifted uselessly through the air, while the sparks that wriggled and surged in an attempt to break through the boundary died out.
“A simple domain...?”
The final shikigami of the Ten Shadows Cursed Law, Tiger Burial.
Its ability was barrier technique and a simple domain.
By spreading a “barrier” over the surrounding radius centered on the shikigami, it momentarily “stopped” any technique that tried to invade it.
To subdue Tiger Burial, which could “stop” all kinds of techniques, one needed a high-level technique or a quality cursed tool.
Megumi had solved that with Junpei’s [Black Scale].
He had prepared the Black Scale, which could be turned into a cursed tool, in advance and used a loophole by carrying out the subjugation ritual to cut down Tiger Burial.
It was an abnormal method, but the effect was excellent.
Now fully under Megumi’s control, Tiger Burial was doing its job, even creating openings in the battle with Dagon earlier.
Fwoooosh!
But even neutralization had its limits. The gap between Jogo and Megumi was simply that wide.
Jogo’s flames still wrapped around the area without showing any sign of dying down. Worse, the inside of the barrier was growing hotter and hotter by the second.
If Megumi’s cursed energy were completely exhausted and Tiger Burial’s summoning broke, they’d all be roasted alive together.
“...So this is how it ends.”
Megumi was the first to feel the end approaching.
The expression on the volcano-headed curse beyond the flames was calm, as if to say it was just waiting to see how much longer they could hold out.
Even after pouring out a technique of this scale and power, the bastard still had room to spare.
They had struggled so hard just to survive and try to win.
Maybe there was never going to be a beautiful ending where everyone went home together.
But rather than letting them all burn to death here, it would be better if just one person sacrificed himself.
“Junpei. Use your [Black Scale] to cover everyone and get out first. While the barrier is still holding.”
“What about you?”
“I won’t die alone.”
Even in death, he would win.
No—he would win by dying.
The stance of the craftsman in Megumi’s clenched fists slowly changed.
Naobito’s expression hardened as he realized what Megumi intended to do.
“You’re planning to use ‘that’?”
“It’s the only way.”
“.....I see.”
He had thought this boy would become the head of the clan.
What a waste of talent, to fall here. How cruel fate was.
Suppressing his lament, Naobito barked at the sorcerers who were still reeling.
“Fushiguro is staying behind. Everyone, prepare to get out before you’re caught in this.”
“But....”
“Don’t be ridiculous! What can we do against that monster?”
“......”
Maki, who had been about to argue, shut her mouth tightly.
He was right. There was nothing she could do.
The helplessness of running away and leaving the aftermath to a junior made her teeth ache.
“Get out! Hurry!”
And then, as everyone gathered in one place, leaving Megumi bleeding from the nose,
“No.”
Junpei stepped forward, gathering every last bit of cursed energy he had left.
“I can’t watch another precious person die in front of me.”
-[Pointing Lamp Jaw].
What he chose was not escape, but a showdown.
He poured in even the cursed energy he would have used to summon [Black Scale] while fleeing.
“!”
A huge maw burst through the flames and swallowed Jogo whole.
----------------------------
Darkness so deep he couldn’t see a single inch ahead.
Inside it, Jogo conjured a small orb of flame to light the surroundings.
“My output is being suppressed. A simple domain...?”
The sticky cursed energy clinging to his body felt deeply unpleasant.
He had thought he could burn it away in no time, but to think it would swallow him as a final struggle.
As Jogo clicked his tongue, a light flickered nearby.
Blink
“You’re playing tricks.”
The lights multiplied before long, surrounding him.
He didn’t know what they were thinking, but he had no intention of indulging them.
Taking one deep breath, Jogo spread both hands and unleashed a massive burst of flame around him.
Boom!
Kyaaaah!
The lights were swept away by Jogo’s flames without a single one left behind.
Amid the chilling screams, a low verdict was delivered.
Both the correct answer and the wrong answer had been destroyed.
However, checking multiple answers on a test is counted as wrong.
Wrong answer.
Papapapat!
Countless maw-like shikigami were created again in the darkness and rushed toward Jogo.
A silhouette flickered beyond the wavering flames.
Jogo sensed killing intent in an instant and hurriedly pulled back.
Crunch!
“Ghk!”
He dodged most of them, but his body was too heavy for his feet to keep up.
Even if they didn’t land directly, a few of the maws brushed past him as they flew by.
In the pain of flesh being ripped away, Jogo wrapped his body in a thin barrier.
“Extension!”
A judgment only Jogo could make, unlike Dagon, whose battle experience was still thin.
The maw shikigami, blocked by the thin layer of barrier spread within the simple domain, lost their power and fell away.
After enduring one wave of assault, Jogo quickly cut away the bitten flesh before the poison could spread further.
“So Dagon got taken out by this thing!”
No matter how recently Dagon had evolved into his mature form, he wasn’t weak enough to be beaten by some half-baked attack.
But this power and this absurdity were beyond expectation. For a moment, it even overlapped with the image of Gojo Satoru.
If the attack was lethal and came with poison on top of it, then it made sense that Dagon had fallen.
Blink
As Jogo gathered his thoughts, the next wave approached.
This simple domain, which was almost a true domain, would probably continue until he died or picked the correct answer.
Even if he held out with Extension, it would only buy time.
And yet,
The foolishness of using up the countermeasures for an opponent’s domain before the opponent had even deployed one.
A mistake made by Junpei, who had little experience fighting domain users.
This was an act of disrespect toward Jogo, and then some.
“Domain Expansion.”
As Jogo muttered, his hand signs formed, and the barrier spread inside Pointing Lamp Jaw widened its radius.
Gaiwan Iron Mountain
The image that rose up was fitting for him.
Fire and lava. Simple, but powerful and threatening all the same.
Firepower that could break through the neutralization of the technique flowed out at the peak of sorcery.
Gururururuk!
A volcano boiling with lava unfolded inside Pointing Lamp Jaw, blasting apart everything in sight.
Not just the lights charging at him, but even the simple domain itself.
Boom!
The maw of the shikigami, unable to withstand the intensity, burst apart whole and created a barrier that covered the surrounding area.
Inside the volcano, Jogo laughed heartily as distorted human faces came into view.
Seeing their eyes filled with despair made him feel quite good.
“It’s over all at once.”
Normally, they would have burned to death just by stepping into the domain.
Looks like wrapping themselves in cursed energy for protection meant they weren’t completely useless after all.
As a kind of respect for his opponents, Jogo decided not to toy with them and instead end their lives in one blow.
Rumble-rumble-rumble!
A burning boulder of monstrous size came crashing down over their heads.
And at the same moment,
Smack!
The sudden ambush of someone he hadn’t noticed struck Jogo across the head.
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