Jujutsu Sorcerers are not heroes.
They save people as a result, but saving people is not their primary purpose.
They are Jujutsu Sorcerers.
Those who make a profession of exorcising Cursed Spirits.
That was why they accepted a certain amount of sacrifice...
But because they were human, it was only natural that they still tried to minimize the damage.
A three-kilometer radius around an abandoned apartment complex, left to rot because even disposal cost money.
Jujutsu Sorcerers from Jujutsu High and the Assistant Directors surrounding the area cast a veil.
Under the descending curtain of darkness,
several sorcerers immediately prioritized evacuating civilians.
Fortunately, no one lived in the condemned apartment building itself, but the surrounding area was different.
It was an active residential district.
So there were sorcerers assigned solely to civilian evacuation.
Mai was one of them.
"All right. It's okay, so please come this way. It might get a little noisy, but just think of it like a movie shoot."
"Y-Yes, okay."
With a pleasant smile, Mai started moving the civilians closest to the apartment first.
She even smiled warmly as she did it.
She knew exactly how abandoned people felt.
She knew how fear took hold of them.
That was why she could act like this.
Thanks to that, the middle-aged women moving with her,
along with the young men and the older men, relocated without panicking too badly.
The civilian evacuation zone had already been established.
There were sorcerers stationed there to guard it as well.
Yaga Masamichi and Shoko Ieiri were positioned nearby too.
They had been assigned to command and support roles for the operation.
"All right, all right. One ma'am coming in~"
"W-What?! A panda is talking...?"
There were moments during the process when people froze in shock at the sight of Panda guarding the shelter.
Because Panda talked.
Still, oddly enough, the fact that Panda talked eased some of the tension.
People were used to talking animals from animation, after all.
"Panda. I'm counting on you."
"Yeah. Same to you. You've got your hands full."
"Better than fighting."
Mai smiled at Panda, then sprinted back toward the civilian sector.
The area assigned to her was wide, and there were still plenty of people left.
"Everyone, this way!"
Some sorcerers were guiding people with loudspeakers as well.
It was the Zenin Clan's jujutsu unit, Hei.
Just as Inumaki used a megaphone, they were using loudspeakers too.
There were enough of them that even if enemies showed up, they could cover one another.
'What a racket.'
Even amid all that, Maki moved with quiet precision.
There was almost no wasted motion in the routes she used to gather and evacuate people from each designated section.
Boom!
Just as Mai was leading the second group out, flames exploded in midair.
A massive meteor invisible to civilian eyes.
A serpent and a tidal wave swallowed it whole.
The meteor could not be seen, but the serpent and the wave were visible to anyone.
Because they were not jujutsu, but a Noble Phantasm.
'At this rate, maybe three more runs.'
There were plenty of sorcerers assigned to evacuation.
Mai did not need to cover every sector by herself.
That let her focus entirely on clearing her own assigned zone.
And even that was already nearing the end.
Boom! Boom!
Cursed Techniques burst across the sky, fire rained down, and explosions rolled one after another.
'Ugh, so loud.'
Even so, Mai calmly kept her attention on evacuating civilians.
She was used to situations like this.
And of course, she had already factored in the possibility that someone would try to ambush her in the middle of it all.
Thanks to Koyanskaya of Light's Spartan training under Assassin.
"Haa..."
Mai let out a sigh, drew the gun strapped to her thigh, and fired behind her.
She did not even look back.
Pfft!
The pink pistol fitted with a suppressor gave a cute little cough.
But the bullet that burst from its muzzle was anything but cute.
It was vicious. Ruthless.
The pistol was a Mystic Code imbued with anti-Magecraft rounds.
When it fired a bullet, that bullet inherited the magical effect as well.
In other words, it could punch through techniques.
"Kyaah?!"
"All right, everyone. Just follow this road straight ahead. Looks like a villain showed up, so hurry, but don't run so hard you trip over yourselves."
While something that had been hurtling toward her let out a shrill scream,
Mai smoothly sent the three civilians on their way.
Her relaxed voice. Her composure. Her smile.
With all three working together, the civilians ran quickly without losing their heads.
"Y-You... what are you?!"
When Mai turned around, a grotesque figure pushed itself upright.
It looked like an insect-type Cursed Spirit, but the texture was different.
'That's not a Cursed Spirit's Cursed Energy.'
Mai toyed with her gun and tilted her head.
The nature of its energy was different from the Cursed Spirits she was used to seeing.
So she thought it over for a moment, and the answer came quickly.
So quickly, in fact, that it barely deserved to be called thinking.
"So you're an incarnated sorcerer, then?"
"Forget that! Answer me first! How did you pierce my armor?!"
The insect armor shrieked in outrage.
If it had simply been penetrated, that would have been one thing.
But the way it had come apart felt grotesque, like threads being unraveled.
"Why would I?"
Still tilting her head, Mai fired again without hesitation.
Fast and vicious, but this time the insect armor dodged with a sharp burst of speed.
"Oh, yeah? Then die!"
The insect armor lunged at her in a fury.
With its wings spread as it flew in, it looked exactly like some monstrous bug.
'Female. Hysterical. Sharp instincts.'
Yeah. The exhausting type.
Mai finished the calculation in an instant and sprang onto the wall beside her.
This was a residential district.
The terrain was overflowing with things she could use.
The moment Mai landed on top of the wall, she fired.
Three shots in rapid succession.
"Tch!"
The insect armor spat out its irritation and leaped.
All three shots missed.
The target was moving.
Of course standing still and firing would not guarantee a hit.
Normally, you waited for an opening and struck from a blind angle.
Or you aimed true and prayed luck would carry the shot in.
But there was another way to make a bullet connect.
Change its trajectory.
A ricochet.
"Aaaagh!"
One round struck the ground, bounced off a wall, and punched straight through the insect armor's backside.
An embarrassing place to get hit.
And a crippling one.
The soft fat there gave some protection, but made the bullet hard to remove.
In every sense, it was an inconvenient place to take a shot.
'Nice.'
Mai fired again at the falling insect armor.
A relentless shot aimed straight for the opening.
The silent bullet tore through the woman's shoulder and thigh.
Cleanly. Precisely.
If it had been an ordinary round created with [Construction Technique], she could have deflected it with ease...
But this was no ordinary bullet.
It was not something that merely carried Cursed Energy.
"Y-You insignificant little wench, how dare you!"
The insect armor thrashed and screamed.
Insignificant little wench.
The wording sounded like some pampered noble lady at first glance, but there was another way to read it.
A human from long ago.
Speech steeped in the values of another era.
The insect armor peeled away, revealing a human form beneath.
A young woman.
Her name was Yorozu.
Originally, she should have been the incarnated sorcerer dwelling in Fushiguro Tsumiki's body.
"Just drop dead already."
Yorozu formed the mudra of [Threefold Affliction] and circulated her Cursed Energy.
Then she spoke.
"[Domain Expansion]. [Threefold Affliction]."
In an instant, black walls stained the world on every side.
High above, under the open sky,
a Special Grade Cursed Spirit and a far more vicious monster landed on the apartment rooftop.
The Cursed Spirit was the volcano-headed Jogo.
The monster was Ibuki-douji, who had swallowed Jogo's maximum technique whole.
"You... what are you?"
"Hm? How rude. We hardly know each other, so we're not close enough for you to start with 'you this' and 'you that,' are we?"
Ibuki-douji smiled sweetly.
She had no real intention of provoking him, yet it came out sounding exactly like a taunt.
Under normal circumstances, Jogo would have exploded in anger.
But he could not afford that now.
The difference in rank.
The pressure pouring off her felt as if the very atmosphere were crushing him. Even breathing was difficult.
He had been born from humanity's fear of the earth, but in the end he was still only a Cursed Spirit.
He was not a being that could stand beside a divine spirit.
"You speak with astonishing arrogance."
Jogo felt the gulf between them, but he did not know Ibuki was a divine spirit.
The higher-ups had not known either.
So naturally, he had no way of knowing exactly what she was.
It was only natural.
Kadoc had only shared that information with a portion of the sorcerers.
It had never reached anyone connected to the higher-ups.
"Ah, sorry. Maybe it's because you're Master's enemy. I just can't bring myself to look on you kindly."
Ibuki-douji smiled as she leveled the sword in her hand.
The divine blade, [Kusanagi-no-Tachi].
Her Noble Phantasm, the blade that could raise serpents and tidal waves with a single swing.
And even now, she was holding it back heavily.
If she released it at full power, the surrounding area might be swept away with everything else.
'Should I just switch Spirit Origins entirely?'
Summer Ibuki-douji.
For a moment, she considered changing into her Berserker Saint Graph and using that Noble Phantasm instead.
Berserker, like Saber, also possessed an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm, but its nature was different.
It was more heavily focused on water.
"An enemy, is it? Well, if you're baring your fangs because I am your enemy, then so be it."
Jogo laughed and produced several Firepower Bugs.
He intended to send them in from all directions and attack while surrounding her.
His maximum technique had been nullified, so now he would probe, test, and look for an opening.
Then, once his teammates created one, he would drive the knife in.
In a frontal battle, his odds were poor.
The matchup was bad too.
So he planned to stir the field with low-cost techniques and speed.
He thought it was a strategy with real potential.
Right up until the moment Ibuki, standing across from him, closed the distance in a single breath and swung her sword.
"Gh?!"
Slice. He tried to block the razor arc with his arms, and both were severed at once.
Purple blood poured from the clean cross-sections.
For a Special Grade Cursed Spirit, reacting in time to defend had been impressive enough.
His durability simply had not been enough to withstand the blow.
It did not hurt.
For a Special Grade Cursed Spirit, restoring lost limbs was hardly difficult, so it was not even a major wound.
The shocking part was something else.
He had been on guard.
And even so, he had still allowed a clean hit.
"You stepped back a pace while blocking. Not bad. You've got some skill."
An arrogant smile curved across Ibuki-douji's lips.
Even her tone had grown heavier.
Not the warmth of a familiar older sister, but the majesty of a divine spirit.
It was also a declaration.
That she intended to crush him without mercy.
Little by little.
Little by little.
Ibuki-douji's body swelled, growing until she stood nearly three meters tall.
Her height and bulk became several times greater than Jogo's already small frame.
The pressure she gave off was greater still.
As Jogo regenerated his severed arms, he swallowed dryly.
Cold sweat slid down the back of his neck.
'I'm... scared?'
Jogo's eyes shook with disbelief.
At himself, for feeling fear.
He could not adapt to Ibuki-douji's sudden transformation.
"Let us continue. Try to withstand it."
Ibuki-douji's frigid voice blew across the rooftop like a winter wind.
Her eyes were just as cold as her voice.