"If I can control liquid filled with my cursed energy, then... as long as I turn part of my body into water, just like I did inside my domain yesterday...
Then in theory, I should be able to do this..."
In the dim corridor, Kaede raised both arms.
He pressed his palms together, fingertips aimed at the violent curse ahead, taking on a stance almost like the opening form of some old inherited technique.
At that exact moment, his once-balanced torso and limbs visibly thinned, as if part of the mass of his body had simply been drawn out of him.
Then, a high-pressure water jet compressed to its absolute limit erupted from in front of his palms.
The stream tore through the mold-stained air with a sharp shriek, punching brutally and precisely through the human-like head of the centipede curse.
Black, foul-smelling fluid and shattered shell sprayed out behind it.
But this low-grade curse, born from mingled resentment, did not die immediately from having its head pierced.
Instead, it let out an even more horrific scream than before. Its huge body dropped into a wild death-throes frenzy, the remaining barbed limbs slashing madly toward the boy in front of it like a storm of blades.
Kaede did not retreat. Instead, he kicked off the ground and stepped directly into the curse's attack.
Raising both arms wrapped in that amplified water membrane, he cut cleanly into the middle of the chaotic barrage.
Bang. Bang.
Heavy impacts rang out in rapid succession.
The sharp barbs scraped violently across the surface of the water film, kicking up surging ripples and white foam, but they still could not cut cleanly through that flowing defense.
"So it doesn't just neutralize techniques. It neutralizes cursed energy itself... If that's true, then my domain isn't limited to suppressing sorcerers. It can suppress the cursed energy of any hostile target?"
Using the moment of defensive breathing room that bought him, Kaede twisted his body sharply at close range.
He raised one leg and stomped hard on the curse's armored back, using that leverage to stabilize his footing while both hands shot out and locked around one of the thick limbs whipping toward him.
With a teeth-grinding mix of shell cracking and muscle tearing, he ripped the spiked appendage straight off the curse's body.
Black, tainted blood burst out.
Kaede did not hesitate for even a second. He spun and threw the severed limb behind him toward the orange-haired girl.
Then he drove off with both legs and withdrew quickly toward the wider space at the side of the corridor, completely giving up the primary attack line and position.
The heavy severed limb traced an arc through the air before landing on the dust-coated concrete floor with a wet thud.
Nobara Kugisaki's eyes lingered for a brief half second on Kaede's suddenly thinner frame and the high-pressure water jet that had pierced the curse.
Her brow tightened hard, her mind already tearing through the situation.
Using water as an attack was not unheard of, but for a body itself to suffer visible physical loss the instant the attack was launched, that went completely against normal sorcerer logic.
Still, battle instinct did not leave her much time to dig into her new classmate's secrets.
Looking at the severed limb at her feet and the companion who had already withdrawn to a safe distance, Nobara's lips curved into a wild, feral grin.
"Not bad. I've got no clue what kind of weird self-destructive trick that was, but now it's my turn."
The girl moved cleanly, planting her foot hard on the still-twitching severed appendage.
With her left hand she pressed the rough little straw doll on top of it, while her right hand raised the hammer and set a nail against the doll's chest.
Pale blue cursed energy flared over the hammer and nail like burning fire.
"This sends you straight to hell. Straw Doll Technique: Resonance!"
Thunk!
The hammer crashed down. The nail punched through the straw doll and into the severed limb beneath it.
A powerful current of cursed energy, one that ignored physical defenses entirely, exploded through the connection between the severed appendage and the main body of the curse.
The massive curse, just about to lunge again, suddenly froze.
A heavy internal burst sounded from inside its chest.
Black, hedgehog-like spikes of cursed energy burst outward from within, punching through the body and turning it into a shredded sack full of holes.
The curse did not even manage one final scream. Its huge body rapidly collapsed in the air like melting wax, breaking apart into black ash that scattered and vanished.
The corridor fell silent again.
Nobara lowered her hammer, her breathing slightly uneven.
Then she turned, her light brown eyes filled with undisguised curiosity, and stared straight at the black-haired boy standing off to the side, openly sweeping her gaze across the body that had become noticeably thinner.
"Hey. What was that just now? Your body... shrank.
And that water shot had way too much penetration. What exactly are you paying to launch attacks like that?"
"It's basically an expanded use of my technique. If you want to understand it, it comes down to cursed energy manipulation..."
Kaede turned his head slightly toward the outside.
"Mm. Sensei set up a veil earlier, and it still hasn't dropped.
So that means the curses haven't all been exorcised yet."
Nobara listened to that infuriatingly calm explanation, and her brow still did not fully relax.
She stuffed the used straw doll back into her pouch and brushed a streak of dust off her cheek with her thumb, letting out a light snort.
"So using part of your own mass as the price for cursed energy manipulation? What a reckless way to fight.
If you burn yourself down to nothing in this dump, I'm not cleaning up your body."
Her words were sharp, but she did not press the matter any further.
A sorcerer's abilities could vary wildly, and probing too deeply into someone else's technique was taboo in itself.
As long as he could provide real combat value, that was enough.
She followed Kaede's line of sight and looked out the window. Above them, the sky was covered by a translucent barrier like an inverted bowl of ink, the light bending strangely at its edges.
It was the veil Gojo had put up before they entered, meant to hide sorcery from normal people and seal the area off.
Normally, a veil only fell once the targets inside had all been exorcised or the caster chose to remove it.
Nobara pulled her gaze back. The caution in her eyes did not lessen. If anything, it deepened.
She tapped the head of the hammer lightly against her palm with a dull knock, her mind already reassessing the situation at full speed.
"It really hasn't gone down. The one downstairs, the guy called Itadori, looks like some brainless feral gorilla, but there's no way he'd take this long against low-grade curses on strength alone."
The girl turned to face the deeper darkness ahead in the corridor. That part of the floor was still unexplored. A few broken wooden doors stood half open, like cracks into a pit waiting to swallow the light.
"That only leaves two possibilities. Either there are too many of them downstairs, or... that centipede from before wasn't the only real threat in this building."
The instant she finished speaking, a faint sound came from behind the half-closed security door at the end of the hall.
It was not the sticky scrape of a curse crawling against the wall.
It was a stifled sound, pressed almost to nothing, the sound of a human child trying not to cry.
"Wuh... don't..."
The voice was so weak it could almost have been drowned out by the wind outside, yet in the dead corridor it hit like a thunderclap.
Nobara's whole body tightened instantly. Her back, relaxed a second before, arched at once like a leopard catching the scent of danger.
She did not charge blindly. Instead, she dropped her center of gravity right away, pulling three fresh nails from her waist pouch with her left hand, pale blue cursed energy already slipping between her fingers.
If civilians were being held hostage, then using broad, destructive force was the worst possible option.
Curses might not possess human intelligence, but the more cunning ones understood perfectly well how to use human fear and human bodies as shields.
She tilted her head slightly and lowered her voice, speaking just loudly enough for Kaede beside her to hear as she laid out a quick plan.
"There's a live civilian in there. Listen to me. Put away that high-pressure water blast of yours.
If that disgusting thing's using a kid as a shield, your attack will kill them too."
Her eyes turned sharp and cold. Pressing herself close to the peeling wall, she moved step by step toward the door the sound had come from, motioning for him to stay with her.
"Get ready for close combat. I'll force it to open up, and you pull the hostage out.
Don't screw this up, newbie."
"If someone's being held, then yeah, this is going to get complicated. Judging from the child's presence, I think the curse is probably right next to them.
Which means your plan probably won't work. Once we go in, wait a second first. Observe before you move."
Kaede spoke quietly, then kept following.
At that, Nobara's grip on the hammer in her hand tightened for just a moment.
Ordinarily, if some classmate she had barely met tried to shoot down her plan to her face, she probably would have snapped back without hesitation.
But that short bit of teamwork a moment ago had already made one thing clear. The guy behind her, the one whose frame had visibly thinned, was not some empty-headed pretty face.
"Tch..."
The girl let out a dissatisfied little click of her tongue and bit down on her lower lip.
Her mind immediately started reevaluating the situation along the line he had suggested.
If the curse really was lurking almost flush against the hostage, then rushing in could easily get the hostage torn apart in an instant, or worse, walk them straight into a trap.
"Fine. We'll do it your way. We look first, then move. Stay close. Don't fall behind."
Nobara drew a long breath and abandoned the motion she had been about to make to smash through the door outright.
Her left hand settled silently on the rusted doorknob, and with a teeth-grating metal scrape, the heavy security door slowly opened wide enough for one person to slip through.
Behind it was a broad abandoned office, cluttered and chaotic. Desks and chairs had toppled and piled over one another, forming thick blocks of shadow in the weak light.
In the farthest corner of the room, pressed against the wall, was a little boy, no older than six or seven, hugging his knees and burying his head deep in his arms, trembling as tiny sobs shook through him.
Kaede stepped into the room without a sound, his dark red eyes sweeping along the edges of the walls.
The stench in the room was so thick it felt nearly solid.
But the strange part was that aside from the crying boy and the debris everywhere, there was no visible curse body anywhere in sight.
"Why is this different from what I remember?" Kaede frowned slightly as he looked around.
Nobara bent her back slightly and edged forward two cautious steps.
Her gaze shifted constantly between the boy and the shadows around him, and the palm gripping her hammer had started to gather a faint sheen of sweat.
The room was so quiet that the only sounds left were the child's crying and their own breathing.
Then, inside that suffocating silence, everything changed.
The white wall behind the boy, stained in broad patches of dampness, suddenly began to writhe like boiling mud.
Large sheets of paint peeled away, and a massive mouth, made from countless twisted human faces fused together, bulged out of the wall without warning, taking up almost half its surface.
"GRAAAAH!"
With a deafening roar soaked in hatred, several tentacles made of gray-white flesh burst out from that mouth like snakes lunging from a burrow, their edges lined with jagged bone teeth.
One shot straight down toward the child on the floor from above, while three others screamed through the air at terrifying speed, driving themselves separately toward Nobara at the doorway and Kaede beside her.
"Damn it. It was hiding in the structure of the building itself!"
Nobara's expression changed instantly. A curse that could blend itself fully into dead material like that was far beyond the usual low-grade type. The thing was monstrously cunning.
She swung her hammer up without holding anything back, smashing it straight into one of the bone-edged tentacles lunging at her.
CLANG!
The impact exploded through the room like a steel beam taking a direct hit, sparks bursting in all directions.
That tentacle made of rotten flesh was far harder than it looked. The recoil alone threw Nobara back several steps, splitting the skin at the base of her thumb and nearly knocking the hammer from her grip.
"Tch... this really doesn't match what I remember from the original. I thought I could handle this without opening my domain.
So is everything in the original really changing now just because I'm here?"
At the same moment, the other two sharpened tentacles swept in from left and right like an enormous pair of shears, closing hard on the black-haired boy.
Kaede threw both arms up in front of him at once.
The instant the serrated edges of the tentacles struck the amplified water membrane coating his arms, the room filled with a shrill metallic screech, like saws biting into steel.
This hidden curse hit far harder than the centipede from before. Under the pressure of the blow, the membrane-clad arms were driven inward so hard they visibly caved.
"Again..."
Kaede's body lurched uncontrollably under the impact, both feet being shoved nearly a full yard backward across the dust-coated floor, black skid marks ripping into the surface beneath his soles.
And the tentacle that had wrapped toward the little boy had already tightened like a meat grinder, hoisting the child entirely off the ground.
The next moment, it started dragging that tiny body straight toward the abyssal mouth spread across the wall.
In an instant, the situation plunged completely out of their control.