K-waaaaaaaaah—!!
In the center of a tornado that seemed ready to punch a hole through the gym ceiling.
Descending majestically through the driving rain and wind, the wind god, Quetzalcoatl, landed softly on the gym floor and spread its arms wide.
"You foolish humans, to be torn asunder by My divine winds..."
The arrogant voice of the ancient Cursed Spirit cut off abruptly.
"...????"
It had manifested with a grand display, imagining thousands of humans screaming in awe and terror. However, all that greeted its vision were bizarre wool dolls sitting in the empty stands and three fifteen-year-old boys staring blankly up at it.
Feeling awkward, the Cursed Spirit cleared its throat in embarrassment and turned to Geto, who was standing at the very front of the trio.
"Child... where exactly is this?"
"Uh... this is Tokyo Prefectural Jujutsu High School..."
Suguru Geto. As a user of Cursed Spirit Manipulation, he had seen and subjugated countless curses, but in the face of the suffocating Cursed Energy density of a genuine Special Grade that had just descended, he found himself stuttering, instinctively overwhelmed.
It was then.
"Hey, Geto! Wake up! Is now the time to be having a peaceful chat with a monster like that?!"
Satoru Gojo shoved Geto's shoulder and lunged forward.
"Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue!!"
A deep blue sphere, a center of pure attraction, formed above Gojo's palm. Holding that mass of immense suction like a Rasengan from a certain manga, he charged recklessly toward the wind god's face.
"Hyaah!!"
I didn't hesitate either.
Zzzzzzzzzt—
With the Dharma Wheel summoned above my head, I drew the Cursed Blade Muramasa from my baseball bag. Spraying white Positive Energy (Reverse Cursed Technique) explosively over the blade, I dove into the spirit's blind spot opposite Gojo.
"How impudent, you mere infants!"
Seeing the two lethal strikes surging toward it, the Cursed Spirit's eyes narrowed viciously.
K-booom—!!
An explosive gale erupted from the spirit's entire body. Slamming into that monstrous barrier of wind, Gojo, the Geto standing behind us, and I were all sent flying into the air like dry leaves.
The Cursed Spirit didn't miss that split-second opening and reached out toward Gojo's blue sphere—'Blue'.
K-grinddddd—!!
Terrifying winds, compressed tens of thousands of times over, poured down, perfectly neutralizing and grinding away Blue's attractive force.
"Ugh!"
Crash—!!
Geto groaned as he was slammed into the gym's concrete wall while mid-air. However, his gaze quickly sharpened as he regained his senses.
"Go!!"
The moment Geto's command fell, thousands of low-grade Cursed Spirits, resembling a swarm of insects that had been waiting in the corners of the gym, surged forward like a tide to engulf the wind god.
However.
"Sigh, how tedious."
The wind spirit lazily waved its hand once.
S-sliceee—!!
With that single, simple gesture, tens of thousands of invisible air blades tore the atmosphere to shreds. The swarm of low-grade spirits Geto had released were obliterated without even a chance to scream, vanishing as if they'd been put through a literal industrial blender.
The three of us landed and quickly reformed our line, standing side-by-side.
"Its defense is no joke. Let's go in all at once."
"Right! Match the timing and carve it up from its blind spots simultaneously!"
Just as we were about to boil our Cursed Energy once more in coordination...
The spirit stroked its bizarre chin with a grotesque hand and muttered lowly.
"Even mice can be a nuisance if there are three of them... Hmm. Dealing with all of you at once would be quite the bother. I shall separate you and crush you one by one."
An ominous current began to whirlpool around it. The spirit raised both arms high toward the ceiling and let out a thunderous shout.
"Maximum: Samadhi Gale!!"
Whirrrrrrrr!!
Rumble-rumble-rumble!
An overwhelming tornado, threatening to tear the very space apart and blow it away, swallowed the interior of the cramped gym, vibrating the entire structure.
"Aaaaagh!"
"Dammit—!!"
Screams erupted from Geto and me simultaneously.
This wasn't a level of physical force that could be avoided or endured. Caught in the spirit's Maximum Technique, Geto and I felt our bodies begin to dissolve as if we were being teleported—melting away from the space itself!
"Hachiro! Suguru!!"
Only one person remained.
Clad in the barrier of the Limitless, Satoru Gojo stood perfectly fine on the gym floor, not a single hair out of place even amidst that savage Samadhi Gale.
"...Ho?"
Immediately after the winds died down.
Deep interest flickered in the old Cursed Spirit's eyes as it saw the white-haired boy standing firm despite the raging storm.
"The physical wind did not touch him. What an exquisite technique."
The spirit grinned at Gojo and shouted while weaving a grotesque hand sign.
"Wind-Cloud Child!"
Flash—!
In an instant, its massive body split into three, creating perfectly identical clones.
Two of the clones vanished from the gym like a streak of wind, seemingly heading out to hunt down the two 'mice' from before.
In the center of the shattered gym.
Now, only the old wind god, presumably the main body, remained in front of Satoru Gojo, looking down at him with leisure.
The sound of wind was deafening. Having been swept up by its technique and launched high into the void, I was currently plummeting toward the ground from hundreds of meters up at a terrifying speed.
"Shit...! It can ignore physical structures and teleport people?!"
Just as the speed of the fall made it hard to even keep my eyes open.
The air in front of me twisted, and one of the wind spirit's clones, decorated with disgusting feathers, slithered into existence.
"Where do you think you are going?"
With a wave of the spirit's hand, dozens of invisible, thin threads of wind wrapped around my body like snakes.
Slice, sh-slice!
"Gah!"
The wind threads tightened slowly, starting to sharpen against my flesh and uniform. At the exact moment blood began to splatter into the air from the horrible abrasions all over my body—
"Who said anything about going anywhere?!"
An icy, clear white light—the Positive Energy of the Reverse Cursed Technique—exploded from my entire body.
Vroooom—!!
The shredded wounds healed in an instant, and even the ominous wind binds constricting my body were annihilated without a trace by the Positive Energy. Freed from the restraint, I drew the Muramasa at my waist without hesitation and swung the blade at the floating clone.
Slash—!
The clone, sliced diagonally, vanished into white smoke with a final death rattle.
However, despite cutting the damn thing down, the horrific physical reality of free-falling from hundreds of meters in the air remained unchanged.
Aaaaagh!
'Everything stings!'
'At this height, even guarding with Cursed Energy won't leave me unscathed. The Dharma Wheel... no, I'll hit the ground before it turns.
I have to be prepared to shatter at least one leg...!'
Despawning the Dharma Wheel that was eating my Cursed Energy, I concentrated every ounce of energy I had left into the tip of the foot I intended to land on, squeezing my very soul for output.
It was then.
Breaking through the clouds of the pitch-black night sky, a massive black silhouette, dozens of times larger than me, dived in like lightning.
K-booooom—!!
'Is that? Another clone? God damn it!'
'Wait...?'
'No, it's a dragon.'
The secret weapon of Suguru Geto, boasting the highest level of hardness and flight capability.
It was the Rainbow Dragon.
Gliding in, the Rainbow Dragon caught my falling body extremely gently between its large mouth and snout.
"Phew... huff..."
Settling onto the Rainbow Dragon's massive head, I finally exhaled the breath I'd been holding.
"Insane. To think a day would come where I owe my life to a disgusting Cursed Spirit. Miracles really do happen."
I let out a hollow laugh and patted the hard scales of the Rainbow Dragon as if to thank it. Following its master's will, the dragon began to dive toward the ground at high speed.
Below us, in the open space outside the shattered gym.
Suguru Geto was engaged in a fierce brawl against the final wind spirit clone.
Whoosh— Slice!
Using his superior taijutsu, which ranked at the very top even among sorcerers, Geto was narrowly dodging the clone's wind blades. He was clearly trying to maintain distance to induce the long-range attrition warfare that was his specialty as a Cursed Spirit Manipulation user.
But the Special Grade clone was no pushover.
"Where do you think you're going!"
Every time Geto tried to step back to measure the angle, it stuck to him with sickening speed, spraying wind blades. Under that insane pressure, Geto's black uniform was being torn to pieces, and red lines were constantly etched across his cheeks and forearms.
Looking down at the scene from atop the Rainbow Dragon, I gripped the Muramasa in reverse and sheathed it deep into its scabbard.
'Stay low.'
I shoved Cursed Energy like crazy into my crouched thigh muscles. Due to the energy compressed beyond its limits, my thigh muscles expanded abnormally as if they were going to burst through my uniform pants.
Like an extremely compressed spring.
The target was the wind spirit below, currently pressuring Geto.
"Now."
K-booom—!!
Using the Rainbow Dragon's hard head as a springboard, I lunged out into the air with explosive recoil.
An ultra-high-speed descent, combining the acceleration of falling toward the earth with the explosive release of leg strength. Just before reaching the spirit's crown, I drew the sword I'd been holding in its sheath.
"Battō!!"
A flash crossed the air.
Before the wind spirit clone trying to take Geto's head could even register the trajectory plunging from the sky, it felt its vision spinning as its head fell to the ground.
Thud— roll, roll.
The spirit's neck, severed cleanly, rolled across the floor.
"...Whew."
I landed lightly and sheathed my blade. Behind my back, Geto approached while gasping for air.
"Thanks, Hachiro. That could have been quite troublesome."
"I should be the one thanking you. I almost had a leg shattered if it weren't for your Cursed Spirit. By the way, how the hell did you know where I was falling from in that pitch-black sky?"
At my question, Geto wiped the blood from his forehead and gave a cheeky grin.
"Oh, that? While I was dodging this guy's attacks, I caught a glimpse of the sky. I saw a small whirlpool where the air currents were twisted up in the clouds. I predicted you'd be flying in from that direction and sent up the Rainbow Dragon, since it can move most freely in the air."
I was speechless.
While fighting a life-and-death, point-blank brawl against a Special Grade spirit, he checked atmospheric changes in the sky, located his ally, and deployed the most optimal Cursed Spirit?
'This guy... when it comes to combat sense, he's a genuine monster that makes my head spin.'
I marveled internally as I finished sheathing my sword.
"That was perfect combo play. Now that the clones are handled, shall we head back to the main body?"
"Yeah. Let's get back to the gym where Satoru is."
We hopped lightly back onto the head of the Rainbow Dragon as it descended once more.
Geto familiarly took his place on the broad crown, and I gripped the dragon's thick horns tightly from behind.
Toward Satoru Gojo, the massive flying Cursed Spirit began to soar through the night sky once again.
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