3. Pray to the Gods
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Kyoto.
Somewhere deep in the mountains.
Satoru Gojo passed through a vermilion torii gate and crossed the shadow-draped depths of the forest.
Amid the rustling of the trees, Satoru Gojo arrived at his destination: an ancient, imposing structure—
the Jujutsu Headquarters.
In other words, the old mandarins’ headquarters.
A barrier surrounded the place, making it impossible for ordinary people to find their way in. It also blocked signals, preventing the location from being exposed.
Only special equipment could maintain communication.
The old mandarins, so afraid of death, had gone to tremendous lengths to ensure they would not be wiped out in one fell swoop.
Gojo sneered at the thought.
An assistant supervisor was waiting by the entrance.
“The higher-ups are waiting for you inside,” the man said quietly.
The curse outbreak in Roppongi had been reported to the higher-ups by the windows.
But Gojo had not killed the person who caused the outbreak. Instead, he had brought him back to the Jujutsu High, much to the higher-ups’ displeasure.
“They have already been keeping a close eye on you. They will certainly use this incident as an excuse to make trouble.”
The assistant supervisor spoke in a low voice as he led Gojo into the old building.
Gojo gave an indifferent, “Mm-hm.”
Neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
Or perhaps he simply did not care.
Even if the higher-ups tried to make trouble, what could the old mandarins actually do to him?
They were nothing more than a bunch of wrinkled, rotten oranges. At most, they could attack people with their stench.
Of course, he had not come here to be reprimanded.
On the one hand, he was here to intimidate them and make certain they did not lay a hand on Hiroki Ieiri.
On the other hand…
Jujutsu High was about to receive its second problem student. Naturally, he had to show him off a little!
Come to think of it, the first problem student, Yuta from the previous year, had been his student too.
Teacher Gojo’s luck with students was truly excellent!
Gojo stroked his chin, the corners of his lips curling upward as he strode inside.
After passing through a winding corridor, he arrived at a pitch-black room.
More than a dozen shoji doors stood within. Human silhouettes were stamped upon them.
The higher-ups sat behind those doors.
Gojo stood at the very center, surrounded on all sides by the silhouettes behind the shoji. It was as though he were standing before a judgment held from on high.
An old, chilling voice rang out:
“Gojo, this time, you will not be allowed to act as you please. Hiroki Ieiri—his existence is an aphrodisiac to curses! He cannot be allowed to live!”
“We have voted unanimously: Hiroki Ieiri is hereby sentenced to death!”
•
The dungeon.
Comments drifted across the screen.
[Good heavens…]
[Still, the old mandarins weren’t wrong about Hiroki being an “aphrodisiac.”]
[From that bird’s-eye view, seeing so many curses surging one after another is incredibly overwhelming.]
What Hiroki Ieiri could not see was—
Outside the perimeter of Jujutsu High.
Over the deep, dense forest, the sky that had once been veiled in green was suddenly shrouded by a layer of pitch-black cursed-energy mist.
Curses of every shape and kind surged toward their clearly defined target, scrambling over one another in their impatience.
There were masked curses resembling the demons of ancient legends;
monstrous curses covered in fangs and barbs;
and shrieking clouds drifting through the air, scorched by their own flames.
Gloomy, eerie, and extraordinarily diverse.
The sight was colossal.
Nearly ten thousand demon-like curses, each with a different appearance and possessing varied abilities.
Like maggots swarming over one another, they advanced toward Jujutsu High—slowly, yet with terrifying speed.
A tide of curses descended upon them.
It placed Jujutsu High under unprecedented pressure.
The sky turned ashen, permeated by an ominous, despairing atmosphere.
The cursed energy radiating from the endless stream of curses was so dense it nearly blotted out the heavens.
Unfamiliar cursed energy entered the domain. The piercing alarm continued to wail without pause.
“Woooo—”
The sound was utterly heartrending.
[My scalp is crawling! Does anyone else feel this?!]
[That mass of curses looks like both maggots and cockroaches. I’m going to throw up!]
[Don’t say that! Aaaah!]
[The gliding perspective from the edge of the curse tide all the way to the one at the very front is making my heart race. The scale of this curse tide is horrifying!]
[The curses are evolving—even reproducing…]
[Aaaaah!]
[Teacher, hurry and save them! Everything goes wrong the moment you leave!]
[Jujutsu High can hold out for a few minutes at most before it’s swallowed by the curses rushing in!]
[Catnip is terrifying.]
[There are enough curses here to drown Jujutsu High. I don’t even want to imagine what will happen once they find Hiroki…]
Masamichi Yaga breathed heavily, his brows tightly furrowed.
He controlled every cursed corpse at his disposal, trying to halt the advance of the curse tide.
But there was no question—
It was like an ant trying to shake a tree.
His strength was draining rapidly. Countless cursed corpses had already been expended, and his cursed energy was being wrung dry.
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Yet the invasion of the curses was not delayed by even the slightest degree.
And it was not only Yaga.
The students, too, fought with everything they had, but their efforts were no more than a cup of water poured onto a raging fire.
“Principal Yaga!”
Megumi Fushiguro grabbed the leg of his shikigami, Nue, and flew over with it.
“We can’t hold them back at all. In another ten minutes, those curses will occupy the whole school!”
They had only been able to delay the tide because Jujutsu High covered such a vast area and was situated deep in the mountains amid steep terrain.
Nobara arrived as well. “The key must be the person in the dungeon, right?! We should go there first, find him, and then figure out what to do!”
At that, Yaga’s expression darkened, and his voice grew especially hoarse.
“Hiroki Ieiri is immortal.”
“悟 told me that his rapid regeneration isn’t because he has mastered reverse cursed technique. It’s because he carries a curse of immortality.”
That meant that as long as he remained immortal, he would continue attracting curses.
“What?!”
Everyone cried out in shock.
[An immortal curse?!]
[That is a lot of information.]
[If he’s immortal, he can keep attracting curses, causing them to gather, multiply, and evolve.]
[Hiss…]
[The curse tide will never recede.]
[Couldn’t Gojo just fire off a Hollow Purple and wipe out every curse here? If one isn’t enough, use several. They’re all gathered together anyway, so it would make an area attack convenient.]
[One Hollow Purple from Gojo really could level every curse here, but…]
[But as long as Hiroki remains, a new wave of curses will keep multiplying without end.]
[The curses will grow stronger, and ordinary people will suffer. Gojo can’t keep watch over him every second, can he?]
[It’s over.]
[This is a hopeless situation.]
Hmm. A hopeless situation…?
In the dungeon, Hiroki Ieiri sat cross-legged, reading the comments with great interest.
Strangely enough, ever since he had crawled out of the coffin, he had developed a peculiar habit—
he had become fond of experiencing the sensation of surviving against all odds.
After all, death was not an endpoint for him, Hiroki thought.
The weightlessness of falling from a building…
Extreme cold…
His heart being pierced…
Hiroki had experienced them all.
How fascinating.
Perhaps some part of what made him a normal person had been destroyed. Still, in his own estimation, the damage was not too severe—
because his consciousness, at least, still belonged to the realm of humanity.
He had not become the kind of emotionless monster that existed in his own imagination.
And now, he was trapped in a hopeless situation.
He had crossed into an unfamiliar world and encountered unfamiliar monsters.
He had become…
a piece on an unfamiliar chessboard.
Yet Hiroki did not feel afraid. The “fun” he had been seeking had been placed before him, and his interest was piqued. His laughter grew lighter and freer.
He abruptly rose to his feet.
The game had begun.
A beautiful smile still rested upon his face as he paced along the dungeon wall.
His fingertips brushed across the layers of talismans inscribed with cursed script.
Seal. Strangle. Isolate…
He recited the words silently.
He could read every talisman and understood their functions with perfect clarity.
The fingers hanging at his side began to move, tracing the characters upon the talismans.
Again and again, from slow and steady to gradually faster.
Again and again.
Faster and faster.
Ten times, twenty times, a hundred times…
“You…”
“Bzzzz—”
The air within the dungeon stirred without wind.
A violent, razor-sharp gust surged straight into their faces.
Megumi, who had hurried to the entrance, had no choice but to raise his arm and shield himself from the freezing wind, like snow swept down from a mountain peak.
Megumi: “?!”
He lowered his arm and quickly looked inside.
In the dim, frigid dungeon stood the golden-haired, blue-eyed boy.
He turned toward Megumi, and a yellow talisman hovered before him.
Megumi was astonished, but there was no time for idle conversation.
“Hiroki Ieiri, how much do you know about your ability to attract curses? Can you stop it?!”
“I don’t know.”
Hiroki smiled.
He did not miss the frown on the hedgehog-haired boy’s face, nor the undisguised anxiety in his eyes.
“But perhaps I’ve found a method that might be able to suppress it.”
Megumi had no time to waste. “Then you…”
Suddenly, a black-haired man in a suit came rushing around the corner.
He was a member of Headquarters.
Originally, he had been sent by the higher-ups to “interrogate” the criminal responsible for the curse outbreak while Gojo was away. He had not expected to be trapped by the curses.
The curse tide that blotted out the heavens had nearly devoured his entire sanity.
Fear took control of his body.
The man’s terrified, malicious gaze fell upon Hiroki Ieiri.
“If the source were removed, the curses’ agitation would subside…”
As he spoke, cursed energy surged through his palm, and his technique locked onto Hiroki.
Megumi: “Don’t!”
The man in the suit assumed those words were directed at him. Instead, they became his stimulant.
But unfortunately, that was not what Megumi meant.
“Guh—ah!”
A grotesque, blood-smeared arm of flesh reached out from the shadows.
Moving too quickly for the naked eye to follow, it slammed the man in the suit against the wall.
With a heavy crash, he struck the wall and fell to the floor, silent and unmoving.
The one who had attacked him was…
[The Demon King!]
Megumi’s entire body tensed.
At some unknown point, another curse had appeared inside the dungeon.
Long black hair spilled down his back in loose waves. His features were pale and beautiful.
The eerie arm of flesh had extended from his sleeve.
For one brief moment, the dungeon fell silent.
Megumi swallowed. Cold sweat slid down his skin.
This oppressive presence was unmistakably—
a special-grade curse!
Even meeting its gaze sent chills through him.
[The Demon King is rather possessive of his food, isn’t he?]
[Pfft. What do you mean?]
[He killed a human twice and acted as if nothing had happened. But the moment someone else attacked, he showed himself.]
[So he believes only the authorities are allowed to set fires?]
[I always feel like something’s wrong with him.]
[He definitely isn’t plotting anything good.]
[Crude, but not inaccurate. Still, that’s an awfully crude way for a young lady to put it.]
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Another icy presence mingled with Hiroki’s breath.
He raised his head and realized that, without him noticing, the curse had already come to stand before him.
The man whose fate was unknown lay at Hiroki’s feet, like the corpse of a mouse a cat had brought to its master.
“Do you like it?”
The tone was strangely intimate.
Yet the curse’s gloomy gaze seemed to solidify into strands of entwining black hair, slowly winding around Hiroki’s calves, clinging to him so tightly that he could not break free.
[Hiss…]
[What is the Demon King trying to do? Something is seriously wrong with him.]
[He’s giving off more and more of that vengeful-female-ghost vibe.]
Hiroki smiled. “I don’t like it. Please take it away. Thank you.”
He refused with impeccable politeness.
Then, ignoring the disobedient curse, he turned to Megumi and asked:
“Where is the place with the densest cursed energy inside Jujutsu High?”
Megumi answered, “It should be the Tombs of the Star Corridor…”
Then he realized.
“The method you mentioned just now—is it related to the Tombs of the Star Corridor?”
“That’s right.”
Under Megumi’s gaze, Hiroki extended his hand. A yellow talisman slowly floated above his slender, pale fingers.
“The method is—
to seal myself away.”
He smiled, then changed the subject.
“But I have too little cursed energy. It won’t be enough to perform the sealing. I’ll have to borrow some from someone.”
Megumi stared blankly. “…Borrow?”
How was he supposed to borrow it?
Hiroki asked, “Do you know the Kagura dance?”
[Wait a moment. I’m looking it up.]
[Kagura is a Japanese ritual and prayer ceremony.]
[People pray to the gods for protection. Sometimes, the one praying may also receive a fragment of divine power to protect themselves.]
[Why is Hiroki bringing this up?]
[Is Hiroki planning to borrow cursed energy from a “god”? Who? Tengen?]
It was not only the comments. Megumi asked the same question.
Hiroki already had someone in mind.
The black-and-crimson, mandrala-like demon stood not far away.
“Naturally, from that god…”
“I hope the ‘deity’ will answer my prayer.”
In the dim, yellow-lit dungeon, the golden-haired boy devoutly offered his prayer to the curse.
[Aaaaaaaaaah…]
[He really knows how to play!]
[You can practically watch the Demon King’s face darken. He can’t keep himself composed.]
[You little devil. I know you. You’re about to be completely hooked, aren’t you?]
[Someone is treating him like a god!]
[And it’s Hiroki—the person he had such a high initial impression of that he wanted to turn him into a demon the moment they met!]
[The Demon King is happy again.]
[Give him a title: Happy Brother!]
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