Once our preparations were complete, we called Itadori Yuji in.
Since he was staying in the same dorm, he arrived almost immediately.
"Uh... excuse me."
A moment later, Itadori Yuji carefully opened the door and stepped inside.
At the moment, it was 9:40 in the morning.
A perfectly reasonable hour to be awake and starting the day.
"Thanks for coming. Now, come over here and lie down."
"Yep."
BB guided Yuji with practiced gentleness and had him lie on a bed that looked like a piece of medical equipment.
It was a bed enclosed by a massive circular frame.
Its basic shape resembled an MRI machine.
Beside it sat a panel, a computer, and a spread of control devices.
"Do I just lie here?"
Itadori asked, staring up at the ceiling.
There was nothing to see to either side anyway, so looking up was as good as anything.
BB nodded while operating the machine.
"That's right. Just stay still there. When you wake up, it'll all be over, so relax."
"I appreciate it, but... do I really not have to do anything?"
"Don't worry about it. You've already done more than enough just by carrying Sukuna inside your body."
As BB answered with a smile, I stepped toward Itadori.
Time to make him swallow the rest of the fingers.
"Yuji. You're going to eat all the remaining fingers. Can you handle that?"
"Yeah. Maybe it's because I'm used to it now, but I think I'll be fine even if I eat the rest."
Yuji sat bolt upright and nodded.
He was brimming with confidence.
I held out the wooden box to him.
Inside it were all of Sukuna's remaining fingers.
"I'm counting on you."
"Right."
The instant Yuji took the box, he boldly swallowed the fingers.
Thankfully, not all at once.
His Cursed Energy surged, then stabilized.
The markings on Yuji's body flickered in and out, appearing and vanishing over and over.
Then, after he swallowed the final finger—
Yuji frowned.
"I ate them all, but wow, they taste seriously disgusting. I never want to eat that again."
"There aren't any left now, so you won't have to."
I smiled at him.
With this, the twenty-finger Itadori that had never existed in the original story was complete.
Strictly speaking, that made him nineteen-finger Sukuna, since the one finger Kenjaku sealed away still remained elsewhere...
But that made no real difference.
The moment a Sukuna at roughly nineteen fingers died,
the remaining finger would lose the soul sustaining it and collapse as well.
In the original story, they called that resonance.
It was also the reason Sukuna's fingers had caused several incidents through mutual reaction.
"So that's it, right? I ate them all?"
"Yeah. Good work. You won't have to deal with this annoyance anymore, and Sukuna's definitely going to die, so don't worry."
"Then I won't have to hear all that noise anymore. He's been quiet lately, but before that he was really loud."
Now that I thought about it, that was a little strange.
Even if struggling would have been pointless, he hadn't resisted at all.
He hadn't created a single variable, so there was no answer to be found there.
Maybe he'd simply given up on life that quickly, but it didn't feel like that was all.
He'd probably made some kind of preparation inside his soul.
Or maybe not.
'Either way, it doesn't matter.'
We could have beaten him even in a straight fight, but that wasn't our goal.
Our goal was Sukuna's exorcism.
Why would I go out of my way to face Sukuna at full condition when there was an easier path?
That wasn't my style.
'I killed him after smothering him in debuffs from the very start.'
Just like when I took down Kiara in the game, I piled on every debuff I could.
I brought every ounce of firepower available to bear.
After that, I even tried an Arts stall setup with no buffs at all.
The kind of healing-and-endurance party people liked to brag about.
But it took far too long.
Several hours just to kill one?
The real problem was how absurdly long Noble Phantasm animations took.
Anyway. Raiko and Ushi-gozen alone were more than enough to kill Sukuna.
That was sufficient.
Since Master had to dive in as well, I would be diving too, but...
It would be over soon.
"Master. You're ready, yes?"
"Yeah. Stick to the plan and drown him in every debuff possible. Enough that a single hit will kill him."
I met BB's eyes, then placed my hand on the panel.
Raiko and Ushi-gozen, who had been waiting off to the side, stepped forward and did the same.
Two Servants at either side.
Three hands lined up on the panel.
BB operating the controls beside us, and Itadori lying on the bed.
All preparations were complete.
"Dive. Start!"
The instant BB's bright, adorable voice rang out with force,
my consciousness cut off, and I fell asleep.
After that unfamiliar human had scraped at his temper with deliberate malice,
Sukuna had thought long and hard.
'Death, is it.'
He was trapped in here, unable to move.
Imprisoned.
The binding force Yuji used to confine Sukuna was truly powerful.
Even as his strength increased, he still couldn't seize control of the body.
One finger. Then two.
The more fingers he absorbed and the stronger he became, the more keenly he felt his own helplessness.
Even so, he waited for the chance that would someday come.
He waited for the opening that would someday appear.
Itadori, steeped in the cursed object known as Sukuna, had drifted far from the life of an ordinary human.
His structure had become closer to that of a Cursed Spirit.
In other words, he would not die of old age.
Time was infinite.
But Kadoc, his enemy, also possessed infinite time.
One look was enough to tell he was no ordinary human.
His lifespan truly was without limit.
Immortality had been humanity's dream since ancient times.
Sukuna had found it interesting as well.
'It pisses me off.'
Sukuna passed the time chewing over his rage and bitterness.
The Servants gathered around Kadoc were monsters, each one comparable to Sukuna at his peak.
Or perhaps even beyond that.
Ibuki-douji, the divine spirit he had seen first, and Shuten-douji in particular, had exceeded even his imagination.
Unlike him, a monstrous human, they were true monsters.
"Hm?"
Above him stretched dense darkness. Below him spread a pool of blood.
And in that space rested the gigantic bones of a beast.
Sukuna sat within his innate domain and felt something wrong.
Nineteen.
Without question, power equal to all his fingers except the one said to have been sealed had gathered here.
And yet... that power was weakening without end.
It felt as though the world itself were crushing him.
"What is this...?!"
Startled, Sukuna muttered to himself and widened his eyes.
From the strength of nineteen fingers to eighteen.
From eighteen, steadily lower still.
Sukuna reacted at once, manipulating his Cursed Energy.
His control over it was so refined it rivaled Gojo, wielder of the Six Eyes.
Even while unleashing brutally destructive techniques with abandon, his losses were nearly zero.
As if that weren't enough, the sheer volume of his Cursed Energy was also at the highest level.
The greatest reserves, the greatest efficiency.
Sukuna more than deserved the title King of Curses.
And yet even so, he could not stop the leakage of his power in the slightest.
Even when he brought his hands together and deployed the barrier technique [Hollow Wicker Basket] to block a domain's sure-hit effect, it was useless.
'So it isn't even a domain?'
In a situation like this, a domain's sure-hit effect would normally be the most likely answer.
That was why he had tried it, but it had accomplished nothing.
To begin with, defensive techniques in jujutsu could only defend against phenomena that fell within the framework of jujutsu.
They were poorly suited to dealing with an unknown situation like this.
If anything could have helped, it would have been a cursed tool with a special effect.
At minimum, something Grade 1 or above.
But Sukuna, as he was now, had nothing but his bare body.
And so he could only watch helplessly as his strength bled away without end.
"Ghh...!"
By the time bloodshot fury filled his eyes and his whole body burned with rage,
Kadoc appeared.
Raiko and Ushi-gozen stood beside him.
All three were ready for battle.
"Looks like it worked."
"You...! How did you enter an innate domain? No, not just that—how did you enter the soul's innate domain itself?"
"You heard everything while you were inside Yuji, didn't you? We prepared that much."
Without explaining further, Kadoc walked toward Sukuna.
He was far weaker than the original Sukuna.
Far weaker than even when we'd first met him.
The Sukuna before us now was not the King of Curses.
He wasn't even at the level of a low-grade Jujutsu Sorcerer.
He could still use jujutsu, but he had been reduced to something endlessly feeble.
Pathetic, really.
'In terms of presence, he's way below Ijichi.'
Kadoc observed Sukuna's level closely and precisely.
Letting his guard down was dangerous, but Sukuna had been degraded to the point where carelessness felt almost inevitable.
A boost from some forced Binding Vow?
That kind of thing only worked if the base body was strong enough to support it, and even that was no longer possible.
On top of that, even now, while we had dived into this mental landscape, the Cursed Energy nullification technique was still active.
As things stood, Sukuna had no hope.
He couldn't gain the inspiration for a slash that cut the world itself.
He had weakened to the point that he couldn't even handle proper jujutsu.
"You..."
Growling, Sukuna aimed a finger at Kadoc.
Then he fired [Dismantle], one of his techniques.
The King of Curses' techniques were broadly divided into blades and flames.
Of the two, the one Sukuna used most often was the blade.
An invisible blade of Cursed Energy that severed the target.
That was [Dismantle].
But it didn't work.
Sukuna's Cursed Energy kept dwindling.
From one-tenth to one-hundredth. From one-hundredth to one-thousandth.
And even now, it was still falling.
If his technique had been more unusual, if it could create some unforeseen variable, maybe things would have been different...
But the King of Curses was terrifying precisely because he was simple.
And now that simple strength had been shut down.
For Sukuna, there was no answer left.
"Refreshing."
His technique couldn't cut flesh.
It couldn't even split skin.
It was nothing more than a gust of wind.
After confirming that, Kadoc stepped right in front of Sukuna.
Standing before that devil's face—the same one I'd seen in Jujutsu Kaisen—felt strangely surreal.
The current Sukuna wasn't threatening at all.
Even if he could still deploy a Domain Expansion, it wouldn't matter.
The technique itself had weakened, so a domain that merely granted sure-hit would accomplish nothing.
At best, it would turn a breeze into the weak setting on a fan.
"Any last words?"
"Last words? How arrogant."
"You lived arrogantly too. You were born and devoured your own twin. You hated the world that abused you, so you killed even more cruelly than it ever did."
"You...?!"
For an instant, Sukuna's eyes flew wide.
Even history did not know it.
And yet this man knew, with impossible precision, a past Sukuna himself had never revealed.
Kadoc spoke on, calm as ever.
"You trampled everything while you were strong, so now you get trampled the same way—helplessly. Because you're dangerous."
"Human? No, I am—"
"A curse? If you wanted to claim that, then instead of incarnating through a cursed object, you should've become a Cursed Spirit outright."
Kadoc cut him off and clicked his tongue.
It was naked contempt. A deliberate provocation.
Normally, Kadoc—
or rather, the someone who had become Kadoc—wasn't the sort to grind another person down like this...
But Sukuna was an exception.
The petty, vicious appeal he'd shown in the original work.
The way he abused Binding Vows.
I couldn't shake the conviction that something like him should never be allowed to exist.
'Looks like he has nothing to say.'
A Jujutsu Sorcerer's last words became a curse.
A vicious curse, potent enough to shape the course of another's life.
But Kadoc already stood outside that law of the jujutsu world.
He had gone so far as to materialize the soul itself.
In other words, even if Sukuna's final words became a curse, it wouldn't matter in the slightest.
The rank of their souls was different.
Screeeech!
White light gathered at the fingertips of Kadoc's lowered right hand.
The sound was like metal being scraped raw against metal, clawing at the ear.
By then, Raiko and Ushi-gozen had already moved to guard his sides.
Useful in Grand Order for inflicting stun, and in Magecraft a plain but effective curse.
The light was none other than Gandr.
Kadoc leveled his right hand at Sukuna.
This was no ordinary Gandr. He had concentrated an enormous amount of Magical Energy into it.
'Absurd. A thousand years of waiting, and it ends this emptily...'
Seeing that light, Sukuna gave up.
Just like the many humans he himself had slaughtered.
Thud.
The soundless Gandr punched a massive hole through Sukuna's upper body.
Raiko and Ushi-gozen drew in the same breath.
Lightning coiled around their blades as they swung at Sukuna.
Crackle! Violet lightning erupted where Sukuna had stood.
Like a colossal pillar.
Then, at last, the lightning faded, leaving behind the acrid stink of scorched air.
Not even ashes remained where Sukuna had been.
"It's over."
Raiko sheathed her sword and looked around.
Black ceiling. Pool of blood. Giant bones.
The elements symbolizing Sukuna's innate domain were collapsing at speed.
"Naturally. The owner of the domain is dead. In that case, we should return on our own as well."
Ushi-gozen murmured the words as she slid her blade back into its sheath.
Compared to the scale of our preparations, it was an astonishingly hollow end.
The preparation had been long, but the conclusion came like lightning.
Today's battle was a perfect example of that truth.