The screaming hadn't stopped.
As Yuji and Sukuna moved through the Southern District, the scale of the attack became clearer. Plumes of dust rose from multiple points across the city's skyline, each one marking where a viola had erupted from beneath the streets. He could count at least eighteen emergence points now, spread across the Southern, Eastern, and Northwestern Districts.
Ganesha Familia had mobilised in force near the Colosseum with their tamers engaging three violas simultaneously. He could sense the clash from here, the adventurers' attacks bouncing off the creatures' hides as the violas whipped their vine appendages through market stalls and storefronts.
A group of Guild personnel had formed a defensive line near the western gate, evacuating civilians while a pair of Level 3 adventurers bought them time against a single viola that had erupted in the middle of a residential street.
It wasn't enough.
The violas were stronger than the ones from Monster Feria. Their hides were thicker with their attacks being more ferocious. They weren't operating as individual creatures and instead moved in pairs. They were moving in patterns, herding civilians toward dead ends and cutting off escape routes with deliberate precision.
Whatever was directing them had learned from last time.
"They're everywhere." Sukuna observed, keeping pace beside him. Blood was still seeping from the wound on his shoulder, but he'd torn a strip from his kimono and tied it off without breaking stride. "Someone's eager."
Yuji agreed. Whatever, or whoever was pulling the strings, was demonstrating that they could attack the surface whenever and wherever they chose. The timing was calculated to coincide with Aiz's Floor 24 expedition, splitting the city's strongest forces between two fronts.
Another explosion, closer this time. A building on the adjacent street partially collapsed as a viola rammed through its ground floor, sending civilians scrambling from the upper windows.
Yuji stopped running.
"What are you doing?" Sukuna said, slowing beside him.
Yuji looked up.
Babel stood at the centre of the city, its massive tower rising high above every other structure in Orario. From its peak, you could see the entire city laid out in every direction, all the way to the outer walls.
From up there, he could see everything.
"I need a vantage point." Yuji said.
"So take one."
Yuji looked at Sukuna. Then he grabbed him by the back of his kimono collar.
"What are you—"
Yuji's legs tensed, and he launched upward.
The ground beneath his feet cracked from the force of the jump, sending a spiderweb of fractures through the cobblestone. The two of them shot into the air, rising above the rooftops of the Southern District in a single jump with the wind howling past their ears as the city shrank beneath them.
Sukuna's reaction was immediate and filled with indignant irritation.
"Unhand me, you insolent—"
The second jump came mid-air, Yuji kicking off nothing but compressed cursed energy beneath his feet, redirecting their trajectory toward Babel. The tower rushed toward them as they cleared the city's middle district in a wide arc, the entirety of Orario spreading beneath them.
Sukuna stopped protesting. Not because he'd accepted the situation, but because his eyes had caught the view beneath him.
From this height, they could see it all. The fifty violas, scattered across the city, each one surrounded by dust and debris and fleeing civilians. The Ganesha Familia fighting a losing battle near the Colosseum. The Guild's defensive line buckling near the west gate with smoke rising from at least four separate fires. Adventurers engaged in isolated skirmishes across different districts, uncoordinated as they never anticipated an attack to the city itself, instead of within the Dungeon.
They landed on the roof of Babel with enough force to crack the stone beneath their feet. The tower shuddered once, then settled.
Sukuna ripped himself free from Yuji's grip and stepped back, fixing his kimono with a look that promised violence at a later, more convenient time.
"If you ever carry me like a sack of rice again—"
"Shut up for a second." Yuji said.
He closed his eyes.
His awareness expanded outward, spreading across the city like a wave. He could feel every viola, fifty points of their pulsing energy, scattered across a city of hundreds of thousands.
He mapped each one carefully.
Near the Colosseum, entangled with Ganesha Familia. In the Northwestern District, dangerously close to the residential quarters. Near the west gate, pushing through the Guild's defensive line. In the Eastern District, rampaging through the merchant quarter. Near Daedalus Street, close to the orphanage. In the Southern District, where they'd already been, and more were emerging near the central plaza, fresh from the ground and not yet engaged by anyone.
Fifty violas spread across the city, each one too much for a group of Level 3 adventurers to handle, and he doubted a Level 4 could fight them one on one.
He opened his eyes.
"Stay here." He said to Sukuna.
"I don't take orders from you, Brat."
"I'm not ordering. I'm telling you that what I'm about to do is going to be loud, and I'd rather not have to explain why a newly descended God got caught in it."
Sukuna studied his face for a beat. Whatever he saw there made him step back and fold his arms across his chest.
"Make it interesting, at least." The King of Curses said.
Yuji raised his right hand.
Four hundred years of mastering Sukuna's technique, the very power that had been engraved into his body from the moment he became a vessel. He'd spent decades refining what the King of Curses had used as a bludgeon into something precise, controlled and surgical.
Dismantle was designed for targets without cursed energy. The violas were spirit-derived constructs, puppet creatures powered by magic stones with no cursed energy of their own. They were exactly what the technique was built for.
He could feel each of them through the threads, twelve points of light in his mind's eye, burning against the backdrop of the city. He knew their positions. He knew their dimensions. He knew the exact composition of their bodies, down to the thickness of their hides and the location of their magic stones.
Orario was large, and the distances that the Viola's were positioned were numerous at different points around the city instead of being concentrated together.
He would need precision and range, taking them out one by one would take too much time and risk more people dying before he was finished.
"I can't afford any collateral damage here." Yuji muttered quietly, with Sukuna raising a brow before feeling the familiar growing sensation of Cursed Energy building up from Yuji.
With the time Yuji has spent in this world thus far, he has always kept his Cursed Energy repressed. His control over his Cursed Energy had been honed over centuries that not a single trace of it could be seen. Few could rival him now when it comes to his control over Cursed Energy.
With the sole exception of Gojo Satoru.
He extended two fingers, his left hand resting on his outstretched right arm
"Crimson Fists that Refuse to Yield"
People throughout the city paused, a spine-chilling instinct crawled up their bodies as they turned towards the centre of the city, towards Babel.
"Sixfold Chains of Salvation"
They could all feel the negative energy that composed of Cursed Energy building up from the top of Babel. They all felt the familiar feelings of fear, grief, anger, hatred and envy from that single source.
"Sever the Shadow that Hungers for Peace"
But the ominous presence it exuded was what froze everyone in their steps, including the Viola's. They all felt paralyzed at the sense of dread and malice that Cursed Energy represented. Not even monsters in the Dungeon could have them freeze in place.
Sukuna watched on with an ever-growing smirk that grew wider and wider, a growing sense of laughter bubbled in his being as he waited.
Lifting his hand up into the sky, Yuji pointed his two fingers into the air as he completed his chant, the binding vow activating.
"Crimson Salvation Severance"
The air around him fractured.
Fifty invisible slashes transformed with his blood, combining and taking the form of red blades. They all erupted simultaneously from his position atop Babel, each one threading through the air above Orario with a precision that defied the distance. They moved faster than sound, faster than sight, cutting through the sky in perfectly straight lines like scissors cutting through the air towards each viola.
The effect was instantaneous.
Near the Colosseum, the violas that had been overwhelming Ganesha Familia's tamers split apart. The cuts were clean, bisecting each creature through the exact centre of their bodies and severing the magic stones within. One moment they were thrashing, the next they were falling apart in two halves, their magic stones cracked and dark. The tamers stumbled back, weapons raised against threats that were already dead.
In the Northwestern District, the violas that had been cornering a group of fleeing families came apart mid-lunge. Their vine appendages, severed at the root, fell to the ground into a piled heap. The bodies followed a moment later, collapsing into piles of bisected flesh that dissolved into black mist before the civilians could even process what had happened.
Near the west gate, the violas that had been pushing through the Guild's line split vertically from top to bottom. The two halves toppled in opposite directions, crashing into the buildings on either side of the street with enough force to shake the foundations.
In the Eastern District. Near Daedalus Street. The central plaza. One after another, across the entire breadth of Orario, the violas came apart.
Fifty creatures. Fifty cuts.
It took less than a second to kill them all.
The city went quiet.
Not truly quiet, there were still screams, still fires, still the groaning of damaged buildings and the distant ringing of the Guild bells. But the sounds of combat, the crashes and roars and the wet tearing of vine appendages, all of it stopped at once. Those who witnessed what happened to the Viola's didn't understand how it happened, but they all had a feeling that whatever was at the top of Babel, whatever was exuding that presence making them recoil, was responsible for killing them.
However, that same presence receded, completely disappearing as if it never existed in the very first place.
On the rooftop of Babel, Yuji lowered his hand.
Behind him, Sukuna had watched the entire display without moving. His arms were still folded, his posture still casual, but his eyes and smirk conveyed something entirely different.
"All this time." Sukuna started. "You've been refining my technique for centuries. Of course you would. Compared to blood manipulation, it is superior in every aspect."
Yuji didn't respond.
"Seems you also combined the two techniques into your chant. I didn't even consider if it was possible, unless an abomination like you was made." Sukuna smirked and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"In my hands, Dismantle was a cleaver. In yours..." Sukuna's voice trailed off, and something passed across his face that Yuji had never seen on the King of Curses before.
Respect. Grudging, reluctant, and immediately buried beneath layers of pride, but unmistakable.
"You've turned it into a scalpel." Sukuna finished.
Yuji turned away from the city and walked past him toward the tower's edge. "I'm heading back. I need to check on—"
"Go." Sukuna said, sitting down on the cracked rooftop. "I'll find my own way down. Unlike some animals, I prefer to walk."
Yuji paused at the edge.
"Your shoulder."
"I said go, Brat."
Yuji dropped off the edge of Babel and was gone.
Sukuna sat alone on the rooftop of the tallest structure in Orario, the wind pulling at his torn kimono, blood drying on his shoulder. Below him, the city was slowly coming back to life, the sounds of relief and confusion replacing the screams of moments before.
He looked down at his hand.
A lifetime ago, that technique had belonged to him and him alone.
And the Brat had taken it, refined it, and used it to save people.
The very idea should have disgusted him.
It didn't.
"Hmph." Sukuna said to himself, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
The wound on his shoulder fixed slowly and mended itself, the familiar positive energy of reverse cursed technique flowing through his body.
He stood, dusted off his ruined kimono, and began the long walk down Babel's staircase.
Below, the city of Orario was picking up its pieces, unaware that the thing responsible for the attack was still alive, still growing, and now more motivated than ever.
Deep beneath the Dungeon, the corrupted spirit coiled in on itself.
It had felt each of its extensions die. Not the slow, struggling death of being overwhelmed by adventurers, but the instant, clean severance of something that cut through the world itself. Fifty puppets, deployed to test the surface's defences, erased in a single heartbeat.
By the void-thing.
It has felt that accursed energy bellowing out from the surface, causing it to freeze still, which in turn, resulted in its puppets doing the same.
The corrupted spirit's body contracted further, pulling away from the middle floors entirely. Its remaining extensions in the middle floors went dormant, its control over the demi-spirit incubation sites retreating to only the deepest chambers.
For now.
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Authors Note:
Man took a bit to come up with a chant for Yuji ngl. Each of the chants have its own meaning behind them and I'm sure you can see which parts of yuji they each refer to, but I wanna hear your impressions of them.