[The other night, Satoru wasn't attacked at all…]
Akira Zenin sat in the car heading from Tokyo Jujutsu High back to the Kyoto campus. For once, he wasn't resting with his eyes closed. Instead, he gazed out the window.
In the driver's seat, Tanabe, freshly retrained, focused on the road with meticulous seriousness.
"So when you went back to Kyoto, why did you drag me along?"
Megumi Fushiguro looked at Akira Zenin helplessly. At least Tsumiki's safety wasn't a concern. Mimiko and Nanako were with her every day.
But once he left, there was no telling how the teachers at Jujutsu High would run wild. Who knew what the school would look like when he got back.
"Megumi, you'd better stand tall at this exchange event~~"
"Aren't you from Kyoto?"
"If you don't perform well, how are you going to become Clan Head?"
"You…"
"Anyway, I'm not doing it.
I'll give you special training during this time. Make sure you shine at the exchange event."
"…Sigh."
Akira Zenin watched the sunset sink into the forest outside. Slowly, he closed his eyes.
Clunk. Clunk.
The car jolted as if it had rolled over a few stones.
Akira Zenin opened his eyes and glanced back.
The temperature inside the car spiked instantly. Pillars of fire roared up, swallowing the entire vehicle in flames.
A volcano-headed Cursed Spirit wearing a top dotted with black spots stepped out from the side. Its single large eye stared fixedly at the blazing fireball.
After Kenjaku's warning, it didn't believe Akira Zenin would die that easily.
Sure enough, when the flames dispersed, a black sphere remained.
All the magma and fire had been dragged into the shadow that wrapped around the car.
"Megumi, did you see that? The Ten Shadows Technique has plenty of ways to protect yourself~~
You can use a Piercing Ox shadow, turn yourself into a shadow, or like just now, wrap your body in shadow and redirect the attack into it."
Akira Zenin patted Megumi Fushiguro on the shoulder, slipping into lecture mode out of habit.
"Everything you just said except the first one is insanely hard to pull off! And shouldn't we be exorcising the Cursed Spirit first?"
Megumi Fushiguro wasn't particularly shocked by a Cursed Spirit like Jogo. After all, once you're used to Akira Zenin's presence, Jogo's volcanic Cursed Energy doesn't feel quite as overwhelming.
Jogo stared at the two of them, replaying his conversation with Kenjaku from the day before.
[There's actually a shortcut to your plan. Kill Akira Zenin. Release that abnormal Cursed Energy of his. You won't even need the rest of the plan. The golden age of Cursed Spirits will arrive on its own.
But there's too little information about him. The other Cursed Spirits all have their own tasks. And here, only you might survive testing him.]
Akira Zenin didn't move. Instead, he lowered his head and looked at his shadow.
"Want to come out and play?"
At his voice, the shadow trembled slightly, then stilled again. Faintly, it sounded as though wheels were slowly turning.
"Well, looks like I'll have to handle this myself."
Akira Zenin shook his head and looked up at Jogo.
"Has the lava cake in your head gone bad? And you still dare stand in front of me like this?"
For some reason, even though his tone was flat and almost devoid of spirit, Jogo instinctively took half a step back.
Jogo remembered what Kenjaku had told him that morning.
[If you enjoy too many benefits, you have to pay the price. He definitely has a weakness we've overlooked. Besides, the amount of Cursed Energy doesn't equal output…
Also, his mental state isn't good. Use that to keep him tied up.
And one more thing. If someone can't wake up for a long time, their temper gets worse. Don't let him die too easily.]
"What else am I supposed to do, then? Let someone else take the risk?"
Jogo, who still hadn't been beaten into caution, stepped forward again. The instinctive half-step back earlier filled him with shame, and he muttered under his breath as if pumping himself up.
"Mere humans…"
More than a dozen volcanoes erupted into being at once. Streams of magma, along with countless ember insects, poured down and swallowed them.
Megumi Fushiguro and Tanabe were sealed inside a layer of shadow. The magma and insects aimed at them sank into the shadow and vanished.
Akira Zenin, on the other hand, braced himself head-on, forcibly reinforcing his body with Cursed Energy as he endured the blasts and pillars of flame.
"How… is that possible?"
"Oh, I just reinforced myself with Cursed Energy."
"No. There's a limit to how much Cursed Energy can strengthen the body. A human body can't possibly withstand that level of Cursed Energy!"
"Ah… maybe it's because my Cursed Energy is a little special now~~"
About three years ago, when Akira Zenin realized his Cursed Energy had become excessive and his body was starting to fail, he began using Mahoraga to adapt.
He kept watching how Mahoraga adapted to an overload of Cursed Energy, searching for a way to apply that process to himself.
Over those three years, Akira Zenin remodeled his Cursed Energy once a year. So far, he had completed three rounds.
First, Cursed Energy Compression: learning Mahoraga's method and compressing Cursed Energy as far as possible.
Second, Barrier Segmentation: using a honeycomb-like Barrier to split the Cursed Energy into multiple portions, then storing it by exploiting the spatial difference between inside and outside the Barrier.
Third, Barrier Flow: setting those honeycomb Barriers in motion to form a "pan-Barrier," again using the inside-outside spatial difference to store Cursed Energy.
"Alright, alright. Enough talking. I'm tired…"
Akira Zenin lowered his head and formed the hand sign for [Nue]. But he deliberately pulled back his shadow, so there was no hand shadow beneath the gesture.
"Piercing Ox."
"Huh?"
Megumi Fushiguro stared at Akira Zenin, completely thrown. What kind of nonsense was this supposed to be?
But he quickly followed the logic. Akira Zenin had first removed the medium for manifesting [Nue], then carved the [Piercing Ox] technique onto [Nue] itself, and finally engraved them together onto his own body.
Wouldn't that just make you blow yourself up?
Black lightning coiled around Akira Zenin's body. He raised his right hand and shaped it like a pistol.
"Compound Expansion. Heavy Lightning."
...
The moment Akira Zenin's voice reached him, Jogo's eyes went wide, fixed on that right hand crackling with black current. He tried to flee.
He couldn't move.
He looked down and saw his lower half was gone, leaving behind a perfectly smooth semicircular cross-section.
[He hasn't even fired yet.
Where did my lower half go?
What is this?]
Before Jogo could sort it out, a black, pillar-like bolt of lightning speared down through where his lower half had been and slammed into the distant woods.
A massive explosion bloomed, and yet there was no sound at all, as if even noise had been erased. The trees vanished completely. In their place was a smooth, hemispherical crater.
Only then did the sound arrive, along with a scorching wave of air that blew Jogo's upper body straight toward Akira Zenin.
Akira Zenin glanced at his right hand, now blown apart.
"It got a little out of control…
Well, it was my first time using it. I've never practiced."
He flicked his wrist toward Megumi Fushiguro. As his hand moved, his palm rapidly regenerated.
"Megumi, did you see that? Playing with the Ten Shadows means thinking a little differently~~ Want to learn that move?"
"So the 'different thinking' is blowing yourself up…"
Megumi Fushiguro imagined the scene: he finally learns the technique, but his Cursed Energy isn't enough, so he has to go up and start throwing punches with the [Piercing Ox] technique, with nothing to show for it except maybe a little crackle of electricity.
"Uh… you might not have time to summon [Round Deer], but you could at least learn Reverse Cursed Technique."
Megumi Fushiguro crossed his arms, shook his head, and stayed silent. He had a feeling Akira Zenin learned Reverse Cursed Technique the same way he learned everything else, by developing dangerous techniques until something finally worked.