If you were to ask Inumaki what she thought of that blue-haired Cursed Spirit — the truth was that she felt genuinely, deeply grateful to it.
Because it had helped her overcome the side effects of her Jujutsu Technique.
But if you asked her whether she wanted to help the blue-haired Cursed Spirit, or help hunt it down — Inumaki, in her heart, honestly didn't care either way.
After all, even though she had once been spirited away by the blue-haired Cursed Spirit, she'd never actually had any real chance to talk with it, and had no idea what kind of person it truly was.
So Inumaki's all-out effort right now was, more than anything, for the sake of protecting that blue-haired girl who was supposedly about to become their junior.
Song and Cursed Speech fused as one.
The white-haired girl's longsword came down with the force of a thunderclap, and Kamo Noritoshi had no choice but to summon his blood, condensing it into a blood-armor to bear the blow.
The sword was, in truth, a relatively low-grade cursed tool.
A low-grade cursed tool, aside from being able to wound Cursed Spirits and being somewhat more durable than an ordinary weapon, was really not so different from a mundane blade.
By rights, it should not have posed much of a threat.
And yet Inumaki's attack, at this moment, was displaying a terrifying level of force and mastery.
One slash — and the blood-armor cracked.
It didn't cut clean through. But as the next line of lyrics came surging from Inumaki's lips, she launched into a relentless chain of slashes, pressing him down without pause.
The blade-light wove a tapestry of afterimages, strikes raining in from every direction, suppressing Kamo Noritoshi on all sides, forcing him to cover his body's vital points with both arms and let the blood-armor absorb the punishment.
And right now, Inumaki had fallen completely into a flow state.
The rhythm, the melody, the atmosphere carried within the lyrics — all of it was flowing into the girl's body.
At the same time, her physical capabilities had spiked dramatically, reaching the same level as Kamo Noritoshi's "Crimson Scales — Surge."
This was, frankly, extraordinary — because Inumaki had never been trained in hand-to-hand combat, and her physical combat ability had never been anything to write home about.
The boost this fusion of song and Cursed Speech was granting Inumaki was, in fact, even greater than what "Crimson Scales — Surge" provided.
Inumaki kept pressing Kamo Noritoshi, attack after attack, holding him in relentless suppression.
Right now, she held the advantage.
But even so, she couldn't help but feel a private chill of alarm — Kamo Noritoshi's defense was simply too formidable.
Blood Manipulation was a Jujutsu Technique with extraordinarily high skill multipliers across the board — offense and defense alike, without exception.
In the original work, Kamo Noritoshi had tanked a supersonic flying kick head-on with his blood-armor. And previously, when Mahiko had faced the blood-armor defense of a puppet, she had chosen to use flame techniques to evaporate the water content from the blood, rather than simply hammering straight through it.
His defensive capability was genuinely, sincerely remarkable.
If only there were some song that could specifically target blood — that would be ideal.
Unfortunately, Inumaki had never come across such a song, and hadn't been able to find one.
And on top of that — Inumaki's Cursed Speech was not without its blowback.
Even though Mahiko's modifications had made her Cursed Speech far more flexible, it still carried the risk of blowback from overuse, or from using it against a target whose power far exceeded the technique's limits.
For example, right now — she had applied her Cursed Speech to herself, using song to temporarily boost her own physical combat ability, but she couldn't sustain it for very long. She couldn't even hold out for the full duration of the song she was singing.
Previously, the blowback of Inumaki's Cursed Speech took the form of physical injury — her throat would explode, blood would fill her mouth. But now, before those physical injuries arrived, the first blowback Inumaki faced was a loss of her musical sense.
Put simply: she would go off-key, her articulation would blur, her lung capacity would drop — and singing would become harder and harder.
Under the sustained pressure of her unrelenting assault on Kamo Noritoshi, the white-haired girl could feel herself running more and more ragged.
Not to mention — she had never actually practiced singing a day in her life.
These past few days of crash practice had gotten her through maybe one or two songs, a line or two at a time.
Whoosh——
And of course, her teammates knew full well the limits of Inumaki's Cursed Speech.
Taking advantage of Inumaki's suppression of Kamo Noritoshi, Maki Zenin and Panda had already charged in once more from both sides, bypassing the two combatants and driving straight toward the others.
"Nishimiya — take her away from here." Zen'in Mai had already reloaded her revolver.
"Mahiko — I'll take you with me for now." Nishimiya Momo grabbed her broom with one hand and reached out for Mahiko's hand with the other.
With Mahiko here, none of them could fight without restraint.
Only once Mahiko was clear of the field could they stop worrying about catching the girl in the crossfire.
"?" Mahiko came back to herself and looked at Nishimiya Momo. "Do we really have to go?"
But I haven't had nearly enough to watch — what am I supposed to do?
It had been pretty boring before, and watching you lot fight each other was the only interesting thing going on. If you take me away, what do I look at?
"You can watch from up in the sky." Nishimiya Momo pulled Mahiko over and positioned her in front of herself, both of them facing each other as they mounted the broom together and took flight. "Up above is the VIP spectator's box."
…Fair enough.
Mahiko twitched her nose.
Nishimiya Momo smelled wonderful — like very expensive perfume.
And as Nishimiya Momo carried Mahiko skyward, down below, Panda and Maki had already arrived — and the scene shifted into a pair of two-on-two matchups.
The matchmaking results for today's bout were as follows…
Zen'in Mai: "Miwa, go fight Maki — she has no Cursed Energy, she's weak."
Miwa Kasumi: "Huh? Really? But she almost took my head off with that staff just now?"
And so —
Zen'in Mai vs. Panda.
A very nervous Miwa Kasumi vs. Maki Zenin.
And then, the moment Miwa Kasumi barely got into her draw-and-slash starting stance — before her blade had even cleared the sheath — and Maki had already jabbed her with the staff hard enough to send the sword flying from her hand… she knew she'd been had.
"Zen'in Mai, you idiot!" Miwa panicked and scrambled back. "She's incredibly strong!"
"You were just being careless," Maki said, casually flicking the tip of her staff to send Miwa's disarmed sword sailing off into the far distance, then stepped past Miwa without breaking stride. "A person as guileless as you is going to get into serious trouble one day."
That Miwa Kasumi had been one-shotted the moment they engaged was, on one hand, genuinely because she hadn't known the true extent of Maki's strength and had underestimated her — but on the other hand, it was simply because Miwa could not have beaten Maki under any circumstances.
Never mind that Mahiko had once sent Maki flying like a speed bump — in reality, when it came to pure hand-to-hand combat and fighting ability, Maki Zenin, at this particular point in time, ranked comfortably in the upper-middle tier among all the students.
Miwa Kasumi was, at best, lower-middle tier. Naturally she couldn't win.
"Tch." Zen'in Mai clicked her tongue. "Miwa, can I count on you for anything?"
Things were getting troublesome — she was being pinched from two sides at once.
But fortunately, this location was one Zen'in Mai had chosen herself in advance.
Construction Technique users were weak in direct combat.
But she could craft traps for herself in advance.
"Hm?"
Panda, charging at Zen'in Mai, had been trying to figure out how to dodge her revolver's shot — after all, he didn't have Maki's reflexes to hard-dodge bullets at close range.
But the very next second, Panda felt something wrong beneath his feet.
He glanced down —
And found that without him ever noticing, the rubble under his feet was concealing a large iron net.
No time to react.
The instant Panda stepped on it, the net snapped shut — binding him completely, squeezing him into a big round ball.
"That's dirty!" Panda bellowed. "A trap?! You had a trap set up?!"
Constructing things consumed enormous amounts of Cursed Energy. A net this size couldn't possibly have been built entirely from Cursed Energy — only certain key components within it, such as the steel-wire fibers, had been constructed with it.
But for the present moment, this net was more than enough to hold Panda for ten seconds, maybe thirty — entirely sufficient.
Now came the one-on-one segment: Maki Zenin versus Zen'in Mai.
The distance between them had closed to within a few strides — close enough for Maki's staff to reach Zen'in Mai.
And Zen'in Mai had already raised her revolver and taken aim at Maki.
"…Tch." Zen'in Mai clicked her tongue, shifted the muzzle, and aimed at Maki's right arm.
She pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Clang!
The bullet was blocked by the staff's shaft — sparks flew.
Zen'in Mai's eyes went wide.
The closer the distance, the shorter the time Maki had to react to the bullet. And a staff was not exactly a convenient weapon for deflecting things — somewhat clumsy in that regard — so by any reasonable calculation, blocking a bullet fired at close range with it should have been even harder.
So Zen'in Mai had been highly confident she would land the hit.
She had even deliberately aimed away from vital areas.
But her bullet had been blocked all the same.
And what had blocked it was not the staff Maki had already been holding — it was the longsword she had been carrying on her back, which she had only just drawn.
——That was Inumaki's Cursed Speech!
It turned out that Inumaki's Cursed Speech just now had not only been applied to herself — she had simultaneously included Maki Zenin within its range of amplification.
Maki Zenin already possessed supreme martial mastery, and now, boosted by the song, she had ascended to an even greater peak — the sword in her hand could cut down any number of bullets the moment they came close enough.
Pak.
While Zen'in Mai stood there in shock, Maki had already knocked the revolver clean out of her hand with the staff.
Then, she looked up.
Toward Mahiko's position.
The staff came down and struck the ground with a sharp crack, and Maki vaulted off it like a pole-vaulter, launching herself in the direction of Mahiko.
But up in the sky, Nishimiya Momo had been watching Maki's speed and altitude, and had already calculated that Maki couldn't reach them.
After all, by now they had risen quite high — at least six or seven stories up.
A single pole-vault, even for Maki, would probably only carry her to the fourth or fifth floor's worth of height.
She couldn't reach them, let alone grab Mahiko and carry her off.
And so Nishimiya Momo allowed herself to relax completely.
But in that same instant——
She was suddenly seized by a wave of dread.
She whipped her head around, looking in another direction entirely — and locked eyes, in mid-air, with Inumaki, who was still in the thick of her battle with Kamo Noritoshi.
Nishimiya Momo saw——
Inumaki was smiling.
"Music! Next!"
Inumaki abandoned her suppression of Kamo Noritoshi, slapped the player on her belt, and the BGM changed on the spot.
The traditional-style melody instantly transformed into a modern orchestral arrangement.
It was an Irish nursery rhyme, adapted by a celebrated band.
The meaning of the lyrics — 「Master wisdom, and you shall climb ever higher.」
Climb. Higher.
"?" Nishimiya Momo went blank for just a moment.
The Cursed Speech activated.
The speed and momentum of Maki Zenin's upward leap surged instantly — and she crossed a distance that should have been impossible to cross, arriving before Nishimiya Momo and Mahiko.
"Let's go, Mahiko." Suspended in mid-air, Maki smiled and extended her hand toward Mahiko. "Lunch is on me."
Maki Zenin, this woman, was just impossibly, devastatingly cool.
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Samsara Game: Starting in The Long Dark with My Waifus
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter for everyone