"Time for an update, fossil."
Loki appeared in Yuji's doorway that evening, holding a sheet of parchment and a quill.
Yuji looked up from his book towards her. "Already?"
"Well, I'm hoping that what I've managed to deduce is enough to get this pesky thing going. Standard practise is to update it every odd day or so after returning from the Dungeon." She stepped into his room without being invited in, closing the door behind her. "Shirt off and sit down facing away from me."
Yuji complied, setting the book down and pulling his shirt over his head. He turned in his chair and rested his arms against the backrest as Loki shuffled behind him.
She pricked her finger and pressed the drop of blood against the centre of his back.
The hieroglyphs responded immediately.
Just not in the way they should have.
Loki's fingers traced the inscription with ease, her divine senses reading the script that formed the foundation of every Falna she'd ever written. The symbols pulsed beneath her touch as she slowly finished her work.
"...Huh."
"Good or bad?" Yuji asked, hearing the exact same tone as what had happened last time.
"Hold on." Loki said, her voice losing its usual trace of playfulness as she leaned closer to his back, her eyes studying his Falna with an intense gaze.
The status was there, with the framework still in tact since she could feel the connection between it and his soul.
She frowned and started scribbling what she saw onto the piece of paper, clicking her tongue in random intervals.
Slowly the parchment filled out.
"Here, take a look at it yerself. You'll get why I'm confused." Loki said, shoving the parchment around to his front.
Straightening up, he grabbed the sheet and slowly read it.
Yuji Itadori
Level 1
Strength: I 0 ---> I 0
Endurance: I 0 ---> I 0
Dexterity: I 0 ---> I 0
Agility: I 0 ---> I 0
Magic: I 0 ---> I 0
#####: I 0 ---> I 0
Magic: [None]
Skills:
[##ri#e]
[##oo# #a##pu#####n]
[Do#### #######on]
[### Cursed ######]
[Blessed ## ### Sparks Of #####]
[Unreadable]
[Son Of ######u]
[Incomplete Record]
Development Abilities:
[Luck] - F
[Cursed] - S
[Unreadable]
"Yuji." Loki said slowly, making Yuji glanced back at her to see a look that bordered on excitement and weariness. "Not even accounting for the list of skills you have on there, not a single one of your stats has gone up, not even by a one digit."
"Yeah."
"I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation here." Loki said, sitting on the edge of the bed as Yuji put his shirt back on. "So far, you've sparred with Aiz, Bete and Tiona, as well as going down to the Dungeon yourself whenever you're in one of your walking moods."
She grabbed a pillow and propped her elbow up against it. "Zero across the board, same as the day I inscribed it. It means that whatever your starting point is now… you'll have to go further down into the Dungeon than what my kids have reached for your stats to show any improvement."
Yuji nodded at her words, "I had a feeling that would be the case, but it doesn't matter if my stats increase or not."
"Of course it wouldn't to you, ya damn fossil." Loki clicked her tongue before frowning again. "I'm not even gonna get into why I still can't make out more than half of your skills, but I've never seen an additional stat added on to someone's Falna before, ever. It has always been the same five for as long as I've known, yet you come along and there's now an unreadable sixth stat. You have any idea what it could be?"
Yuji was silent for a moment, looking at the status sheet in his hand. "If I had to guess… It probably says 'Curse'."
"'Curse'?" Loki responded with a raised brow. "Curses don't come as a stat like magic does, Yuji. I've had a few children in the past with skills related to curses, but they require a cost from them in exchange, so I forbit them from ever using it unless it is life threatening. Hell, even some weapons can be crafted from curses, but they do not get turned into a stat, Yuji."
She narrowed her eyes at him, as if trying to peer deep into his being and figure out the being that is Yuji Itadori. She didn't push yet, however, waiting for him to be the first one to initiate.
He'd known this conversation was coming at some point. The moment the Falna inscription had gone sideways, and when she felt the six souls in him refuse to take part, he'd known the thrillseaker Loki would be first in line to want details.
"Its called cursed energy." Yuji finally said.
Loki's eyes widened and a fraction of a mouth curved upwards. She sat up properly, giving him her full undivided attention.
"Where I come from, it's the foundation of what we call Jujutsu. Negative emotions such as fear, grief, anger, hatred, and envy are the foundation of cursed energy. Select people have higher amounts of cursed energy, which they can learn to control and channel their cursed energy into jujutsu."
Yuji raised a hand up, letting his cursed energy envelop his hand, causing Loki's grin to widen ever more as she realized she's come across something she's never witnessed in her entire life.
"I'm surprised that people could see this, since only those with cursed energy can perceive Jujutsu and cursed energy being used. It probably has to do with Magic." Yuji simply said, while Loki shrugged, having no idea herself.
That was when Yuji leaned forward and asked Loki very carefully. "Loki, have you ever seen or heard of something called a Cursed Spirit?"
She frowned at the weight of his tone but shook her head. "Never. I'm guessing it has to do with your cursed energy thingy?"
Yuji nodded. "I've been checking through the books in your library and haven't come across anything similar to them yet, so for now we don't have to worry about that."
Loki stared at Yuji silently before nodding. "Then what you're describing about curses, at least your version of it, is something that is generated inside of people from their negative emotions? Is that something people can learn or develop?"
Loki had her hopes up but they were crushed with Yuji shaking his head. "Not unless you were born with cursed energy or through other… unsavory means. Bottom line is if you weren't born with it, you can't do what I do."
"Tch." Loki clicked her tongue, not hiding her disappointment from Yuji as for a second she thought she might have found something to give her children a leg up. "Then, what else can you do with cursed energy? I want the details!"
"I'm not sure I have time to explain all of it-"
"We got all night, fossil! You can't leave a maiden hanging with such interesting and new concepts! Come on, pleaseeee~"
"Sigh."
-----------------------
Deep beneath Orario, far past the floors that any living adventurer had mapped, something stirred.
It had felt the presence of that girl eight years ago, the familiar magic Ariel that stirred her awake.
Its massive form, an amalgamation of spirit and monster flesh, occupied a space deep within the Dungeon that even the walls seemed to pulse with its very presence.
It did not think in the way that mortals would. Its consciousness was a soup of instinct, appetite and the faded echoes of what it once was before it turned into its current state. It wanted to consume spirit, it wanted to reach the sky, and it wanted to grow,
These desires had driven it over a thousand years before it grew dormant, only waking up once it had felt the magic of a Greater Spirit, being drawn to it, which led it to slowly make its way through the Dungeon.
The Violas, the caterpillar creatures, the jewel fetuses that paratised monsters and grew into demi-spirits. All of them were its fingers, reaching toward a surface it could feel but never touch.
It had felt the wind girl years ago, sensing the essence of a great spirit in her blood. It had sent Revis to find her, to bring her closer, to consume what remained of its kin.
But recently, it had felt something else.
Something new.
Something wrong.
The first time had been brief. A presence had touched one of its extensions on the surface, the viola that had been deployed during the human festival. The contact had lasted only seconds before the spirit severed the connection and triggered its self descrut, but in those seconds, it had felt the presence clearly.
It was cold. Not the cold feeling of absence, but one of cold opposition. The cold feeling of something that existed in direct contradiction to everything the spirit was.
If its own essence was a flame, however corrupted and twisted it may be, then this presence was the void that consumed flame.
The spirit had recoiled instinctively, as if burned through the brief moment of contact between them. It hadn't thought about why, but instinctively severed the connection before the presence could flow further along.
Since then, it had felt the presence twice more. Once, fainly, when the void thing entered the Dungeon and descended through the upper floors. The second was when it lingered on the nineteenth floor for an extended period.
Each time, the spirit's vast, formless body contracted. Its extension on the upper floors faltered.
The corrupted spirit did not understand what it was feeling. It had no framework for whatever that thing was, that was so antithetical to its very existence. In a thousan years of consuming monsters and growing, it had never encountered anything like this.
But it knew, with the deep, primal instincts it had of a creature that has been alive for a thousand years, that the thing above was dangerous.
Not because it was strong.
Because it was wrong.
And it was getting closer.
Deep in the dark, the corrupted spirit did something it had not done in centuries.
It pulled its extensions inward, not to retreat.
But to prepare.