Junpei came to his senses to the sound of someone calling his name.
"Yoshino!"
"Damn it, why are you..."
The others looked down at him with guilt written all over their faces.
He tried to say he was glad they were alive, but there was hardly any strength left in his body.
Junpei managed to force his uncooperative back upright and faced the ruin that was his own body.
Both of his hands were so badly mangled they were beyond recognition.
His legs were broken, and mottled burns covered his entire skin.
It was the kind of grievous injury that made it a miracle he had not died on the spot.
".........."
His memory of just moments ago was blurry, yet one thing stood out with painful clarity.
Right before the attack landed, he had desperately used a binding vow to summon Pointing Lamp Jaw.
The content was.
"Protect everyone except myself... You used your own life as the risk and scraped your cursed energy clean to the bottom, didn’t you?"
Nanami bit down hard, his face heavy with self-reproach.
He could not bear the fact that he had been protected by a student younger than himself.
It had been the same when Junpei saved his life against Dagon, but this was different.
At least back then, they had been fighting together, able to coordinate their moves. This had been one-sided.
He was ashamed of the fact that he had to taste his own helplessness over and over again every single day, and angry at it too.
"I’m fi...ne..."
He had meant to say he was fine, but even that came out as a cracked, hoarse rasp.
The unimaginable heat had burned his vocal cords too.
At the sight of that pitiful state, everyone fell silent.
Then, a tremendous amount of lilies bloomed from Junpei’s body.
Fwoooosh
Nobara’s remote reversed technique, Bloom.
The card she had saved was spent here, restoring Junpei’s mangled body.
His shattered fingers grew back anew, and the burn marks etched across his body gradually faded.
Even his broken leg was soon mended, bone and flesh knitting back together until it regained full function.
Nobara...!
For a reversed technique this advanced, an enormous amount of cursed energy was required. She had probably burned through three of the four stocks she had left just to heal him.
As if her words about watching over him had not been a lie, she must be pushing herself too.
Imagining his lover sending cursed energy from far away, Junpei swallowed back tears.
"What was that just now...?"
"...A remote reversed technique? I’ve never even heard of that."
The sorcerers stared in shock at Junpei, who had somehow recovered and was standing on both legs again.
Junpei smiled brightly and answered with pride.
"I’ve got a good girlfriend."
"Damn it, at this rate I can’t even suggest you stay on as a concubine."
Even in a serious situation, Naobito tossed out a joke, only for Maki to smack the back of his head.
"Is that really the problem right now, old man? Junpei’s awake, so now we need a plan!"
"A plan?"
At those words, Junpei finally came back to himself and looked around.
They were still inside Jogo’s domain. The heat rising around them was a little weaker than before, but they were still in the middle of battle.
This was no time to be relaxing. He had been too dazed from his injuries to notice.
"What the hell happened?"
"...Look over there."
Instead of an explanation, Naobito answered Junpei’s question with a gesture.
Junpei’s gaze naturally followed the direction of the finger Naobito had pointed.
Bang!
Boom!
There, a duel straight out of myth was unfolding.
The one facing off against Jogo, who was fighting with his teeth clenched, was the man Junpei had knocked down before coming here.
-------------------------------
"Damn it! Why won’t it hit?"
Baaang!
"Ghk!"
To Junpei’s surprise, the man could not move quite the way he had before, but he was still dodging all of Jogo’s attacks and landing effective hits of his own.
In his hand was Yuun, which he had snatched from Maki while Junpei was unconscious.
"When did he take that?"
"...I didn’t even notice. It was gone before I knew it."
Replaying the scene in her head, Maki clicked her tongue.
The man had barged in the moment Junpei threw himself in front of the others. With some cursed tool she had no idea where he had picked up, he sent the curse flying far away, and in the blink of an eye he had stolen the Yuun she was holding.
It had been a speed and strength beyond perception.
"He didn’t seem that strong before..."
Junpei knew that better than anyone, since he had fought the man himself.
Subduing him had not been all that difficult. His speed and strength were absurd, yes, but without a cursed tool and fighting barehanded, he was easy prey.
So what was going on now?
The answer lay in the compatibility between Junpei, Toji, and Jogo.
Toji, without a cursed tool, could never beat Junpei. All of his attacks were blocked by Black Scale and Black Scale.
Junpei was at a disadvantage against Jogo, who boasted overwhelming firepower. No matter how strong your defense was, you could not block fire itself.
And Toji, with a cursed tool in hand, had the advantage against Jogo.
A Heavenly Restriction with zero cursed energy was excluded from the sure-hit target of a domain.
Cases like Toji’s were so rare, and had been persecuted so thoroughly throughout history, that no records remained about them.
Of course, Jogo, with all his long years of experience, had never encountered anything like this before, so he had no choice but to take the attacks helplessly.
Not to mention Toji had landed a surprise attack at the start, so the current situation favored him.
"For now, we’ve decided to stake everything on that man. Fushiguro-kun, and you too, since you’re both out of cursed energy, there’s nothing we can do."
Nanami’s expression was grim as he said it.
He disliked the idea of entrusting their lives to some unknown man, and he also knew the outlook was far from bright.
Fwoosh!
Sure enough, Toji’s body had been slowly melting under the heat of the domain ever since earlier.
He was still moving only because his technique had gone berserk, but if time dragged on, it was only a matter of time before he stopped.
And the serious injuries he had taken fighting Junpei earlier could not be ignored either.
Crackle!
Toji’s clothes peeled away, revealing his solar plexus.
Where Junpei’s Black Flash had landed, a huge bruise had bloomed.
It was the kind of injury that could easily mean a ruined organ.
"...If I hadn’t fought him."
Regret changed nothing now.
"You fought that guy?"
"Yeah. Right before I fought that curse called Dagon."
"....."
Naobito’s face looked complicated.
"Do you know who that man is?"
At Junpei’s question, Naobito glanced at Megumi and answered in a trembling voice.
There was nothing to gain by revealing his identity here and now.
To say that his dead father had returned as a killing machine would be a story not even a rotten joke could properly cover.
So there was only one thing Naobito could say.
"He’s a revenant."
---------------------------------
Pshhk!
The flames that erupted beneath Toji’s feet in a surprise attack swallowed his figure whole.
Jogo thought he had landed the hit, but Toji was already soaring upward.
In midair, the three-section staff swung toward Jogo.
Bang!
That was close!
Sweat trickled down Jogo’s forehead as he narrowly dodged the attack.
If that three-section staff hit him, he would die in one blow.
That was a lesson carved into him the hard way after he had tried to block it with confidence.
If it had been Dagon or Hanami, they might have endured a few hits, but Jogo had traded durability for firepower.
His mindset was simple: do not allow even a single clean hit.
In the exchange of blows moving at speeds too fast to see, Jogo and Toji hurled attacks at each other that should never have connected.
He’s slower than me. And yet...
Even with his feet burning from the domain’s heat, his speed kept climbing.
Whenever Jogo focused on attacking, a dangerous strike would come flying from a blind spot before he knew it.
With zero cursed energy, he was hard to sense. That bizarre body of his, one that even nullified sure-hit effects, was deeply irritating.
Get airborne first!
Jogo shot upward to create some space.
Toji followed, leaping to an unbelievable height as he charged straight at him.
"Fire Bug!"
Swarms of insects burst from the top of Jogo’s head and flew toward the leaping Toji.
He did not forget to obscure the view with smoke either.
He had already deflected the rock attacks coming at him, but could he evade all of this in midair too?
Bang!
As if mocking Jogo, Toji kicked off the air and flipped his posture, swinging Yuun at incredible speed.
Shrrrraaaak!
Afterimages trailed behind him, forming a barrier of strikes that covered every direction, and the Fire Bugs swarming in were all blown away by the wind pressure of Yuun.
Then, once again, he leaped in midair.
Bang!
Launched like a torpedo, Toji’s Yuun brushed past Jogo’s face by the width of a single finger joint.
Just when Jogo thought he had barely dodged it,
Ten Shadows Cursed Law - Crashing Crashing
Thud!
The rock Nanami had shattered, packed with cursed energy, flew at Jogo.
At the same time, Maki, who had been supporting Naobito from below, hurled him away with all her strength.
"!!"
Ssssshhk
As if the claim that he could also remain airborne was no lie, Naobito set an almost impossible movement pattern in midair.
His left hand, aiming for Jogo’s blind spot at once, lightly tapped the distracted curse as it focused on the incoming rock.
Whirrrr
The penalty of Projection Sorcery.
If you fail to set a movement during the technique’s activation, you are trapped in a frame for one second.
And that could be applied to others as well.
"You’re taking my left arm too! Hahaha!"
His remaining left arm burned away as the price of the counter, but he had no regrets.
Because he saw Toji grinning at the sight of Jogo trapped in a frame while still engulfed in flames.
Clang!
With the sound of shattering glass, Yuun slammed down into Jogo’s waist.
------------------------------
Whoooosh
As the domain dissolved, the sorcerers returned once again to the avenue.
Jogo’s corpse was nowhere to be seen.
Only Toji, half-melted, remained there, kneeling on the ground.
Toji...
Naobito offered a bitter prayer for the dead before turning back to his companions.
"Let’s go back. For real this time."
Junpei, feeling that it was truly over, felt his chest grow tight.
First Dagon, and now Jogo too. It had been a suffocating series of back-to-back battles.
They had won thanks to a hundred overlapping coincidences, but those had been moments that truly sent a chill down his spine.
Gojo-sensei, I’m sorry.
He had wanted to save him with his own hands, but it seemed this was as far as he could go.
His role was done now.
All that remained was to pass his resolve on to the comrades who would carry it forward.
Still, coming to Shibuya had not been meaningless.
He had met so many people here, and managed to save them too.
In the exhaustion of battle, Junpei slowly closed his eyes.
"Do you really think so?"
A voice that should not have been here.
While everyone was thrown into shock, the first to move was none other than Toji, who was nearly nothing but charcoal.
Crash!
The last of his strength carried him somewhere that was not the enemy’s position.
"Sorry, Megumi."
"!!"
"Guess I’m playing father one last time."
Neither the rampaging technique nor the instincts of a killing machine mattered before him.
Toji grabbed Megumi by the collar and flung him out of the avenue before collapsing where he stood.
Thrown violently outside before he could make sense of anything, Megumi saw it.
Maximum Output
Falling
The sight of a burning meteor falling from the sky and swallowing the entire avenue whole.
"No, no no no no!!!"
Megumi screamed in tears, and the back of his head struck something hard.
In his fading vision, his arm stretched out as if unable to let go of his lingering regret, then dropped limply to the ground.
The last thing he saw was the burning wreckage of Shibuya Station.
Comments (0)
Please log in to leave a comment. Login or Register