Rescue and Adjustment

New chapter is live.

Settle in, take your time, and let's see what waits in the dark 🖤

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Just as Nanami had once said, growth was not merely surviving life-or-death situations a few times.

It was despair piling up again and again, until a person slowly became unlike the self they had once imagined.

Only after enough disappointment and despair would reality become clear.

Yuji staggered to his feet.

The light in his eyes had gone out completely, leaving only numbness behind.

Like a corpse without a soul, Yuji Itadori dragged heavy steps into the darkness.

...

11:07 p.m.

In less than two hours, Shibuya, once prosperous and crowded, had become a ruined place that looked as if war had swept through it.

Broken walls and rubble were smeared with blood. From beneath the wreckage came faint cries for help, so weak they were almost inaudible.

The air was full of scorching exhaust.

On the ruins, transfigured humans cheered and jumped with delight.

A hell for humans.

A paradise for curses.

Mahito walked with light steps, completely at ease.

The earlier earthquake had forced sorcerers and curses on the underground platforms to flee through various exits to the surface.

"All special grades, but the gap is terrifying."

Mahito folded both hands behind his head and muttered softly.

"Dagon's presence is gone. That fire earlier should have been Jogo..."

He shook his head, and seriousness flickered briefly in his eyes.

"I do feel a little sad."

"Well, whatever."

"Better to enjoy the moment."

With that complaint, Mahito tossed several miniaturized transfigured humans from between his fingers.

The grotesque transfigured bodies, resembling cursed spirits on the outside, were horrors ordinary humans could see with the naked eye.

As someone pushed aside the rubble in front of them, their expression froze just as they began to feel lucky about being rescued.

"Idle Transfiguration."

...

At the edge of the surface barrier.

Kento Nanami's injuries were too severe, so the escaping team sent him back to the rear medical area.

Shoko took the chance to treat the light wounds on Maki and Nobara with Reverse Cursed Technique.

Megumi only had the issue of depleted cursed energy and did not need treatment.

After learning that Yuji was still inside the barrier, the three rested briefly and set out again.

As for White Zetsu...

On a collapsed pile of rubble, White Zetsu sat with one leg crossed over the other, smoking a cigar.

He leisurely spied on the life-and-death battle below.

"Black Flash!"

A cursed spirit had learned it without a teacher.

In the instant Yuji hesitated against the transfigured humans, a black-red ripple slammed hard into his face.

Boom!

Blood and fragments of organs sprayed from Yuji's mouth as he crashed into a wall, nearly losing consciousness.

"Ha... hahahaha!"

Extremely excited laughter rang through the street.

This was the second time Mahito had approached the core of cursed energy.

The first was when he awakened Domain Expansion while facing Yuji and Nanami together.

The second was this moment, when he used Black Flash.

"Yuji Itadori, deciding to kill you..."

"Was the best decision I ever made!"

Mahito charged toward Yuji in the rubble with a crazed expression, cursed energy surging around his fist.

Jogo and Hanami had both died in the plan to revive Sukuna.

Without Sukuna, curses would have no chance to rise.

Mahito understood all of that.

Even so, he could not control himself.

The desire inside him was overwhelming.

He wanted to kill Yuji Itadori here, now, in this moment.

Boom!

Stones flew as Yuji barely dodged Mahito's full-force punch.

Idle Transfiguration was a killing technique that directly touched the soul.

Because Yuji was the vessel sealing Sukuna, Mahito did not dare use Idle Transfiguration to touch his soul.

And because Yuji happened to be able to attack Mahito's soul directly, Mahito regarded him as his natural enemy.

"Soul Multiplicity: Body Repel."

A transfigured monster stitched together from dozens of human souls rushed toward Yuji like a worm magnified a hundred times.

Human hands and feet covered the underside of its body as it crawled across the rubble, hideous and savage.

Yuji braced his stance and cracked the ground beneath him for a meter.

He had just blocked one wave of transfigured humans when Mahito rushed in from the right and punched him hard in the face.

Splurt.

A long vertical scar spread from Yuji's cheek to his neck, and blood sprayed.

At the instant Mahito punched, he had transformed the flesh on the back of his hand into a sharp dagger.

Seeing Yuji's dark, tense expression, Mahito grinned wide and kept laughing.

"Yuji Itadori, you are me."

"You feel anger, grief, and despair when humans die and your companions are hurt."

"And for us, killing humans is instinct."

Mahito was full of enthusiasm, his laughter wild.

"If you cannot understand that, you will never defeat me."

Disgust filled Yuji's face. He wiped away the red sliding down his face and clenched his fist.

"You talk too much."

The words fell.

One fist and one palm struck at the same time.

Boom!

Air rolled outward as the human and the curse both flew back.

Without using Idle Transfiguration, Mahito's hand-to-hand combat ability was almost equal to Yuji's.

Ignoring the pain in his chest, Yuji rushed forward the instant he landed.

In the rubble, Mahito split into two figures.

Yuji stopped in that instant, his expression turning extremely ugly.

On the pile of stones, Mahito's main body and clone each held a blood-covered ordinary human.

They were survivors from the rubble earlier, still breathing faintly.

"People are useful as long as they have weaknesses."

Using human bodies as shields on both sides, Mahito grinned and punched toward Yuji's vitals again and again.

This time, they were not even transfigured humans.

They still looked completely human.

Yuji dodged repeatedly. His fists always stopped at the last instant before striking.

Whips, axes, blades, swords, staffs...

Mahito changed the shape of his soul again and again, each strike tearing off another piece of Yuji's flesh.

Watching his natural enemy flee in such a miserable state, Mahito laughed without restraint.

...

Good.

Good.

Be tortured to death little by little.

Swinging the humans in his hands like rag dolls, the killing intent in Mahito's eyes grew brighter.

His main body and clone, one in front and one behind, pushed the two near-death humans toward Yuji.

If Yuji did not catch them, the force of hitting the ground would definitely kill them on the spot.

He knew it was a trap.

Yuji still reached out instinctively.

He had not yet recovered from the fact that Sukuna used his body to slaughter humans.

He could not watch innocent people die in front of him.

"Haha."

Mahito laughed softly, malice blooming to the extreme in his eyes.

Main body and clone.

Both hands became four blades.

The instant Yuji saved the civilians, Mahito stabbed hard toward multiple vital points.

"Straw Doll Technique!"

Nails screamed through the air and shot into the clone's head.

Mahito sensed the attack, but relying on his technique's indifference to bodily damage, he did not dodge.

He refused to waste even a millisecond of the chance to kill Yuji Itadori, and his blades fell even faster.

Thud.

The instant the blades touched skin, Yuji and the two humans sank directly into the shadow beneath their feet.

Mahito turned with a dark expression and looked at the newcomers.

A short-haired woman holding a hammer.

A female sorcerer wearing glasses with weak cursed energy.

Spiky-haired Fushiguro.

And Yuji, who had appeared at Fushiguro's feet.

White Zetsu, watching from above, shook his head and slowly rose.

The script had deviated.

The actors had made a mistake.

The stage director had to enter and adjust the scene.

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