Tokyo in March was still cold, winter's tail occasionally letting that chill bite through bone.
At this turn of the seasons even curses seemed to dip into a lull, incidents dropped sharply in frequency.
One way or another, spring had come and the earth would revive.
…
Mishima Utako suddenly showed up.
"There is a named request for us," she told Soujun.
A named request means a sorcerer has made a name in prior jobs and earned enough trust that the client asks for them specifically. The pay is usually higher, the experience greater.
Of course, sorcerers are free to refuse, although it gets recorded and hurts your profile. Besides—
"This one is named by Jujutsu High," Mishima added.
"So we cannot refuse, right?" Soujun mused.
Room and board at the High are nearly free, which naturally attracts some freeloaders who try to game the system and lie flat.
Policy answers policy.
The school set monthly mission quotas and allows two compulsory assignments within reason.
"Named by Jujutsu High" is the polite label. In truth it was a compulsory request issued to the pair, or more precisely to Soujun.
Which is normal. If you enjoy the benefits as a bounty sorcerer, you owe obligations.
They packed up and headed out at once.
In the car, Mishima briefed the job:
"A Grade 1 curse extermination. A junior high has spawned a Grade 1 curse, extremely dangerous. There are already heavy student casualties. We need to get there and exorcise the target as soon as possible."
Before they even reached the site, Soujun saw the black vortex pooling over the school.
His old paranoia twitched. A bad premonition stirred.
As soon as they got out, Soujun formed the sword-hand seal and cast a barrier. "From darkness born, darker than black, filth and defilement, be cleansed."
The black veil dropped, then sank into the void. Through his link to it, Soujun felt out the inside.
Mishima stood beside him, a little puzzled, but she did not ask. She simply tightened her guard.
They had worked together enough for this kind of wordless rhythm.
They stepped into the veil.
The school grounds were very quiet. They saw no curses on the way, and went straight toward the vortex's center.
Silence spoke louder than sound. Something was wrong, but nothing showed wrong, a mood that never bodes well.
Soujun sent the Fly-Head ahead to scout. Their sight and senses were linked and shared.
Gradually they reached the core.
It was an ordinary classroom building from the outside, with nothing visibly amiss.
They exchanged a glance, entered the front doors one after the other, and found themselves in a long corridor. The classrooms that should have lined the inner wall in neat order now broke spatial rules and were piled and stacked at random.
Perception scrambled at once.
Soujun could not see the Fly-Head, but he could sense its position. He understood immediately. This was true spatial power.
He shot Mishima a look. She put her right hand on her hilt. Back to back, they edged forward.
A black hole opened under Mishima's feet. She started to drop. Soujun grabbed her by the collar, meaning to haul her up—
The hole widened and both of them fell.
Soujun looked around. He had fallen into an empty classroom. Mishima was not with him.
Specks of light seeped from his pupils as he tried to parse the space. Classroom buildings share layouts. Spatial influence is not infinite. If he stitched together what he and the Fly-Head sensed, then compared it to the layout he remembered, the anomalies would show.
A few hairs probed outward. Picking a direction, he moved. Soon he had the building roughly mapped.
He recalled the Fly-Head and went to Mishima.
She was locked in a fight with a curse.
They were evenly matched, so Soujun did not step in.
He felt another gaze probing from the dark.
He raised his caution, watched the area, and kept one eye on Mishima.
Hide as it might, the thing had to show itself. He was not in a hurry. Let us see who has more patience.
Mishima had noticed too. She was not going all out against the visible curse, keeping some in reserve in case something else sprang.
So they settled into a standoff.
One moves, one waits. One in light, one in shadow.
Soujun took a step up beside Mishima, met her eyes. She nodded, then burst forward at full power and hacked into the curse, catching it off guard.
She pressed the advantage hard, about to finish it, when—
Soujun caught a flicker in space. A phantom flashed in his view. The lights in his eyes flared, washing the air in pale glow.
The hidden shape sharpened into sight.
It was almost human in form, except the head was a locust's.
Its mouthparts worked, long narrow lips thrust out, a pair of great mandibles and a pair of lesser mandibles clacked together with a metallic ring.
Curses have the instinct to seek benefit and avoid harm.
With more cognition, they learn to avoid the strong and, of course,
to pick soft targets.
The locust curse slipped back into the void.
Soujun had it locked regardless. He watched it open its mandibles and spring for Mishima, lunging to bite her head.
Her instincts screamed, yet she did not dodge. She forced up one more surge to make her attack even more explosive. The first curse was shredded almost instantly under that blast.
With death at her back, her heart went calm. This was their plan. Kill one to draw out the other, then kill the second.
Crude, simple, effective.
Danger did not bother her in the least. When is a mission not dangerous.
And Soujun was right there.
As the curse vanished again, Soujun's black hair loosed behind him. Several strands stretched out, twined together, and knit into layered meshes, interposing between Mishima and the curse.
Steel-hard hair snapped under the charge, but the breaking slowed. The curse's form flickered. By the time it reached the last few meshes, its momentum had already dipped.
It flashed fully into view, right before Mishima's eyes.
Before it could gather force to rush again, the hair retracted and wrapped the body, tightening and grinding with a metallic scrape, then wrenched the curse toward Soujun's side.
It tore free midway.
Soujun did not mind. He never expected an easy exorcism.
He stepped to Mishima. "Good work…"
Mishima's face showed unwillingness, then she remembered something and smiled, cutting him off. "I will leave the rest to you."
Soujun blinked, then smiled too, holding out a hand. "Lend me your sword."
…
This curse hid well, moved fast, had tough flesh, and, more importantly, had intelligence.
This was not Grade 1 at all. It was much stronger, only half a step from Special Grade. A curse that can deploy a technique and has exceptional combat capability with jujutsu gets classified Special Grade.
It was a curse fetus, and a very talented one.
If it could break his hair, it could break his physical guard.
He could not afford to take hits clean.
A third arm regenerated from his back and gripped the katana.
He was not much of a swordsman, but he knew fists. Train far enough and it all connects. A weapon is the body's extension. A fist performed with a blade can still be called swordplay.
The curse flickered in midair, appearing and vanishing around him.
Its stealth had already been cracked.
Its speed was the problem. Soujun lagged a touch.
Their defenses were comparable, their strength similar.
A temporary stalemate.
Thinking it through, he realized everything he had developed so far was permanent, baseline power. He had never made rage modes or stackable buffs and did not like that path.
In a situation like this, it was awkward. The curse could not finish him, but he still could not win.
Too few trump cards.
His expression hardened. The third arm bulged and swung, blade light spraying. A gale of force rose and slowly expanded outward.
If the coverage is wide enough, no speed avoids it all.
The sword wind began to compress the space. The curse was forced into a corner, its skin splitting open into little red blossoms.
"Zzz… zzzrrk…"
The locust curse threw back its head and shrieked. A black semicircle of a domain flared, centered on itself, catching Soujun inside.
It blinked in place and reappeared right in front of him.
The mandibles lunged. Soujun slipped aside, but they tracked and tore a bite from his shoulder. White bone peeped through red.
Guaranteed hit?
A domain.
A true space tier technique.
The tide turned.
Flesh writhed over his shoulder and stymied the bleeding. Cursed energy poured out to compensate, and the wound began to mend.
The sting was there, but pain was what he endured best.
So it was fine.
The brush with death sent his blood roaring.
In a sense Mishima had a point. If you are not satisfied with your growth rate, go court death and see.
Cursed energy flowed and wrapped his skin in a thin aqueous sheen, laying a shallow shadow over him.
The curse snapped again. Soujun shifted, leaned his torso a hair,
and this time slipped it completely.
The sure-hit effect had been blunted.
Ha.
Soujun grinned, feral.
He vented the remainder of his cursed energy. His right arm's muscles swelled and hardened, cords rising clear and tight like bound steel wire. Fascia, tough and gel-like, spread between muscle groups, linking them for coordinated power. The skin turned ashen and patterned with strange textures, heavy and dense. The nails sheathed the fingertips, from plates to tapered cones, sharp and leaflike at the very tips.
A gray-white arm cuirass formed, covering the right arm completely from fingers to shoulder.
…
The curse still flickered all around, brushing past Soujun and blooming lurid red flowers on his body.
His clothes were tatters. Pits and holes riddled him, the flesh and tendons beneath writhing to clamp blood and force healing.
He remained patient. The chance would come once, and he could wait.
The curse flashed out, flashed in again, and lunged for his face, a thin smile on its own.
The yellowed mandibles swelled in his pupils.
It was smug. The human could not handle it. Its earlier caution had been needless. He was not a strong one. It licked its jaws. The man's flesh tasted so good.
More, it wanted more.
It could not wait. Crimson gleamed in its narrow eye slits, spittle stringing from its lips.
"Zzz… zz."
It opened wide.
Thump.
A gray-white hand clamped over its face, irresistible strength pinning it frozen. Its head, a basketball under Soujun's palm.
Got you.
Mandibles scraped the armor without leaving a mark.
The curse fetus thrashed, raking at the arm. Claws struck sparks off the plating and barely scratched it.
Got you.
Soujun squeezed. Knuckles rose like studs. He hoisted the curse clean off its feet.
With both feet off the ground it lost its speed edge, and its space trickery stuttered. Like a fish out of water onto a cutting board, it writhed in vain and then lay ready for the knife.
Soujun lopped off its four limbs.
Amid its screams, four hairs stretched out, their tips glowing red, and stabbed into the severed stumps. New limbs were constructed, replacing the old.
The curse's face went from rage, to struggle, to despair, then flattened into a dead calm like still water.
The strands recoiled to his crown, leaving one connected at the back of the curse's head.
…
From Mishima's view, Soujun and the curse fetus were evenly matched, then Soujun started to edge ahead. Then a black domain sprang up and cut her off from the battlefield, then it dropped again.
All that in just a few heartbeats.
When the dust settled, she raised her guard and, as the haze thinned, glimpsed a tall backlit figure, black hair loose and lifting.
Only flaw, his hair looked like a dog had chewed it, ragged and uneven.
Who else but Soujun.
He turned and smiled, teeth white and neat, a little savage. Behind him the curse fetus's crimson glow was ebbing away.
Soujun walked over, the curse trailing docilely behind him.
Mishima's first reaction was joy, then she clenched her teeth until they almost cracked, jealousy and frustration separating like oil from water.
Soujun handed her sword back and sighed inwardly.
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