The thick, oppressive static of raw cursed energy in the shattered forest clearing grew so suffocating that the leaves on the surviving branches began to curl and wither under the strain.
Aoi Todo slowly turned his towering frame away from Oden, his face twisted into an expression of dark, unadulterated fury that seemed to darken the very atmosphere of the woods. The massive veins bulging on his forehead throbbed with a violent, dangerous rhythm, and his knuckles popped with a sound like snapping timber as he clenched his fists into heavy blocks of bone and muscle. He glared at his own classmates, his eyes narrowing into dangerous slits that radiated pure, unyielding hostility.
Noritoshi Kamo stood his ground at the edge of the clearing, though his fingers trembled slightly against the polished wood of his fully drawn hunting bow. He adjusted his stance, trying desperately to inject the rigid, unyielding authority of the traditional Kamo clan into his cracking voice.
He knew Todo was completely unhinged, but the sheer gravity of their secret instructions left absolutely no room for internal mutiny or theatrical hesitation. They had a dark job to do, and a dangerous Special Grade anomaly was standing right in front of them, completely exposed. Kamo exhaled a sharp, ragged breath, trying to appeal to whatever structural loyalty Todo might still possess for the Kyoto institution.
"Todo, control your absurd temper and listen to basic strategy for once in your miserable life!" Kamo shouted, his voice vibrating over the rushing wind. "This is not a playground for your personal delusions, nor is it an arena for your petty rivalries! This is an absolute execution order handed down directly by the highest executive branches of the conservative jujutsu higher-ups! Oden is a threat to the natural order of our society! We have been given a strict, non-negotiable directive to eliminate him here and now, under the perfect, undeniable cover of a chaotic tournament accident! Stand down and let the team fulfill our duty to the conservative elders who rule our world!"
Right beside him, Kasumi Miwa stood with her hands white-knuckled around the hilt of her sheathed katana, her legs shaking so violently that her uniform trousers fluttered against her shins. Tears of absolute panic and overwhelming psychological stress welled up in the corners of her eyes as she looked at the monstrous, aura radiating from Todo's tensed frame. She pleaded with him, her voice cracking into a desperate sob as she begged him to listen to Kamo's words.
"P-Please, Todo-san! Kamo-kun is telling the truth!" Miwa stammered, her chest heaving as she tried to maintain her balance. "The higher-ups were completely terrifying during the briefing! They explicitly said that if we fail to execute this mission today, our entire careers as sorcerers will be permanently ruined! We will be branded as failures or accomplices! We don't have a choice in this matter! Please don't turn your back on us and fight your own team!"
Mai Zenin didn't bother pleading or wasting her breath on tears. She stood a few paces back, her revolver raised with a lethal, steady grip, her teeth bared in a snarl of sheer frustration as she kept her sights locked onto Oden's torso. A few yards behind her, the massive, mechanical bulk of Ultimate Mechamaru whirred to life with a mechanical groan, its wooden and metallic joints popping as a dangerous accumulation of crimson cursed energy began to crackle violently within its heavy arm cannons. The puppet's raspy, synthetic voice scraped through the air, warning Todo that his continued non-compliance would be logged as active treason against the school.
Todo didn't care about their warnings, their tears, or the terrifying authority of the conservative elders who ruled the jujutsu world from the shadows. He raised his flat right palm into the air, the heavy aura around his skin flaring to life with an aggressive hiss as he prepared to initiate a devastating series of spatial swaps to physically break his own team before they could even lay a single finger on his opponent.
"I already told you pathetic, spineless cowards that I don't give a single, solitary damn about the higher-ups or their miserable politics!" Todo roared, his voice echoing across the mountain. "To interrupt a sacred, beautiful communion of martial spirits with your underhanded, state-sponsored assassination tactics... you are an absolute insult to the very concept of strength!"
"Hey, Todo. Relax a little bit, will you? You're going to give yourself an absolute aneurysm before we even get to the best part."
A calm, incredibly lazy voice suddenly sliced straight through the raging storm of tension. Oden casually stepped forward from the shattered remnants of the cedar tree, sliding his hands deeply into the front pockets of his dark Tokyo hoodie. His crisp white cloth blindfold remained securely tied across his eyes, fully masking his Serpent Eyes mutation, yet his head shifted smoothly, tracking the exact physical positions of Kamo, Mai, Miwa, and Mechamaru with terrifying, precise accuracy.
Oden tilted his head to the side, a sharp, incredibly arrogant smirk spreading across his lips as he digested their desperate explanations. He laughed softly, a quiet, thoroughly relaxed sound of pure amusement.
"So, the wrinkled old men back at headquarters went entirely behind Gojo-sensei's back to put a direct hit out on me," Oden chuckled softly, shaking his head in mock pity. "Honestly, I can't say I'm surprised. Those fossils are terrified of anything they can't put on a leash."
"Don't waste your energy beating up your own teammates, big guy," Oden said, his smirk widening beneath his hood. "It's a complete waste of a good warmup. Let's just ignore these uninvited guests entirely and continue our fight exactly where we left off. After all, it's not like these guys actually matter. They're far too weak to disrupt a real fight anyway."
The absolute, casual disrespect of the statement hit the Kyoto students like a physical blow to the chest. Kamo's face instantly flushed with a deep, burning rage, and Mai's grip on her gun tightened so violently that the metal of the cylinder creaked under her fingers. Their collective pride, carefully cultivated through years of elite clan training and traditional upbringing, was instantly shattered into pieces by a single sentence from a guy who wasn't even using his actual eyes to look at them.
Todo paused, his raised hand freezing in mid-air as he stared at Oden for a fraction of a second. Then, a massive, manic grin split across his rugged features. He threw his head back and burst into a loud, booming laugh that echoed across the mountainside, thoroughly delighted by the sheer, unadulterated weight of Oden's arrogance.
"AHAHAHA! Splendid! Absolutely spectacular, Oden!" Todo cheered loudly, slamming his fists together with an echoing crack. "A true man of culture doesn't let the buzzing of insignificant insects ruin the rhythm of his soul! You want to ignore them?! Fine! Show me the true, unyielding depth of that arrogance! Go entirely all out, my brother!"
Oden pulled his hands from his pockets, his posture dropping into a loose, incredibly fluid combat stance. "Of course. You do the exact same, Todo."
Without a single millisecond of delay, the clearing erupted into a spectacular display of chaotic, fast-paced violence. Noritoshi Kamo released his drawn bowstring in a blind rage, sending three high-velocity arrows coated in a dense, crimson shroud of Blood Manipulation straight toward Oden's chest. Simultaneously, Mai emptied half her cylinder, the cursed-energy-infused bullets spiraling through the air toward his blind spots, while Mechamaru unleashed a roaring, concrete-shattering beam of pure energy from his mechanical palm.
Oden didn't even shift his core footing to avoid the incoming onslaught. Through the near-360° awareness of his Blind-Spot Suppression and the extreme motion perception of his Predator Reflex Sight, every single attack was rendered in perfect slow motion within his mind.
'Let's see how fast this little rabbit can run in the woods,' Oden thought to himself, a faint smile playing on his lips.
Oden whispered smoothly. "Lethal Rabbit."
A tiny, blindingly white rabbit shikigami materialized at his heels for a microsecond. Instantly, an absolute, absurd wave of extreme acceleration coursed through Oden's entire frame. He completely vanished from the physical plane, leaving a violent sonic pop and a vacuum of displaced air in his wake. Mai's bullets, Kamo's blood arrows, and Mechamaru's energy beam slammed harmlessly into the empty dirt, completely obliterating the soil and creating a massive crater where he had been standing a fraction of a second prior.
Oden reappeared directly in front of Todo, his left fist completely shrouded in a dense, rippling ocean of cursed energy.
Clap!
Todo's hands slammed together, the distinct, sharp sound of Boogie Woogie echoing through the trees. In an instant, Oden was violently swapped with a loose stone in the air, while Noritoshi Kamo was suddenly yanked into the exact spatial position Oden had just occupied. Kamo didn't even have time to gasp before Todo's earth-shattering right hook slammed directly into his crossed forearms. The sheer kinetic impact sent the Kamo heir flying backward through a thick patch of bamboo like a discarded ragdoll, his bow snapping into splinters.
Mid-air, Oden twisted his body with effortless, liquid grace, completely unfazed by the sudden spatial disorientation. As Mechamaru reloaded his arm cannons to fire a secondary barrage of micro-missiles, Oden landed flawlessly on the fractured ground and blitzed across the clearing like a dark phantom. Mai fired directly at his face from point-blank range, her eyes wide with desperation, but Oden merely tilted his head slightly to the side, letting the bullet graze past his hood before he casually tapped the side of her wrist with the flat of his palm. The minor influx of his massive cursed energy shattered the bones in her forearm instantly, sending her revolver spinning into the deep brush as she collapsed to the ground, clutching her arm in agony.
Mechamaru swung a massive, iron-reinforced wooden fist downward, trying to crush Oden into the dirt from behind. Oden didn't even bother looking up at the incoming shadow. He extended his right hand toward the massive puppet, channeling a brief, concentrated burst of his Soaring Dragon. He unleashed a miniature, high-pressure blast of compressed wind that completely tore Mechamaru's mechanical arm right off its iron hinges in a violent shower of sparks and splinters. The massive puppet staggered backward blindly, its internal gears grinding in useless failure.
In a last, desperate bid to fulfill the higher-ups' dark mandate and save her classmates from complete annihilation, Kasumi Miwa emerged from a blind spot in the foliage. Her face was a mask of absolute terror, but she threw her entire soul into her ultimate technique, stepping into the clearing with her hand on her sheathed blade.
"New Shadow Style: Simple Domain. Batto Sword Drawing!" Miwa screamed at the top of her lungs, her blade erupting from its sheath in a blinding, hyper-accelerated arc aimed straight at Oden's exposed throat.
It was a beautiful, technically perfect strike, executed with the absolute maximum speed her body could muster. But Oden was already moving before the blade had even cleared the wooden scythe. Without shifting his core weight away from Todo's incoming trajectory, Oden casually raised his left hand and extended his index and middle fingers with surgical, terrifying precision.
Clang!
The sharp, metallic ring of steel meeting absolute resistance echoed through the woods. Miwa's eyes went completely wide, her breath catching entirely in her throat as she realized Oden had caught her hyper-accelerated katana blade barehanded, pinning the razor-sharp edge flawlessly between his two fingers without a single drop of blood being drawn. His massive cursed energy reserves formed an invisible, impenetrable barrier around his skin.
"Nice form," Oden remarked lazily, his blindfolded face turning slightly toward her. "But you're putting way too much emotional weight into the swing. It makes your trajectory incredibly easy to read."
Suddenly, a strange, bubbling purple liquid began to rapidly ooze from the fuller of the blade, hissing violently as it came into direct contact with Oden's cursed energy barrier. The higher-ups had explicitly coated the Kyoto team's weapons with a rare, highly concentrated curse poison designed to liquefy a sorcerer's internal organs within seconds of a physical graze.
Oden let out a quiet, mocking chuckle, entirely unbothered by the deadly chemical bubbling just inches from his fingers.
"A poisoned sword? Seriously?" Oden scoffed, his tone dripping with deep amusement. "Kasumi Miwa, right? You're far too nice of a girl to be playing around with underhanded tools this dirty. Besides... poison is completely, utterly pointless against me."
Before Miwa could even attempt to pull her weapon back, the small pale snake wrapped tightly around Oden's neck uncoiled with lightning speed. It slid effortlessly down his dark sleeve, its mouth unhinging as it clamped its fangs directly onto the steel blade. Utilizing the primordial, recursive absorption properties of the Infinite Snake authority, the small shikigami began to rapidly inhale the purple liquid, safely sucking every single molecule of the lethal poison directly out of the metal and into its own endless, internal void, rendering the sword completely inert and clean within a matter of seconds.
Miwa's hands lost all their strength, her katana slipping from her numbed fingers as she collapsed entirely onto her knees in the dirt. Her eyes stared blankly at the ground, her spirit completely broken by the absolute, crushing realization of the power gap. It wasn't a fight. They weren't even an inconvenience to him. The absolute despair of realizing they were being treated like minor background noise while he played around with Todo crushed their collective resolve entirely.
Oden casually stepped over the discarded weapon, walking over to stand directly next to Todo at the center of the shattered, spiderwebbed clearing. The remaining Kyoto students lay completely embarrassed and incapacitated around the perimeter, unable to mount another cohesive assault.
Todo stood tall, his massive chest expanding as he looked down at Oden with an expression of profound, almost religious revelation. He crossed his thick arms, nodding his head slowly as his mind reached an absolute conclusion.
"Oden!" Todo declared loudly, his deep voice carrying a strange, solemn weight. "I have officially made my final, cosmic decision! I hereby grant you a grand, historic exception! Even though your personal preferences regarding the upper proportions of a woman represent a tragic, heartbreaking disagreement against the natural order, I accept you! You are, without a single shadow of a doubt, my best friend and my beloved brother! Besides, it is a good thing for brothers to have something to eternally fight over! It builds character!"
Oden chuckled lazily, adjusting his hoodie as the aura around him settled back into a relaxed hum. "Sure, whatever works for you, big guy. I'm just glad we got the peanut gallery out of the way."
However, Todo's manic expression suddenly shifted, his sharp eyes narrowing into a look of intense, clinical analysis as he stared at the lingering aura of cursed energy still rippling wastefully around Oden's frame.
"But as your older brother, it is my sacred duty to point out a fatal flaw in your current state," Todo said, his tone turning dead serious. "Oden, your raw volume of cursed energy is an absolute marvel, easily rivaling the endless oceans of Yuta Okkotsu. But your efficiency... your efficiency is utterly lacking. You are throwing around massive, wasteful tides of power to achieve results that should only require a fraction of that output. You are relying entirely on the immense scale of your technique rather than the absolute concentration of your core essence. Tell me, my brother... have you ever experienced the spark of true divine inspiration? Have you ever hit... a Black Flash?"
---
Far away from the chaotic, torn-up battlefields of the southern forest sector, yet still well within the massive, sprawling traditional boundaries of the Tokyo Jujutsu High gates, sat an old, abandoned concrete storehouse. The building was heavily shrouded by thick, overgrown weeds and ancient protective talismans that had long since lost their spiritual potency, making it a perfect blind spot for any wandering security crows.
Inside the dim, dust-mote-filled shadows of the warehouse, an old, heavily wrinkled woman sat hunched over a small wooden stool. It was Granny Ogami. Her ancient, sinister eyes gleamed with a mixture of profound greed and dark anticipation as she looked up at her heavily built, silent grandson standing directly in front of her.
"Are you completely prepared, my boy?" Granny Ogami cackled, her voice sounding like dry parchment rubbing together.
The large grandson offered a slow, deliberate nod. "Yes, Grandma. The vessel is perfectly stable. I am ready whenever you are."
Granny Ogami reached into the folds of her traditional dark robes, pulling out a macabre, carefully sealed wooden box wrapped in decades-old, blood-stained binding cloth. She carefully unwrapped the seals, revealing a preserved, petrified fragment of human flesh and hair. A legendary, high-grade relic belonging to a terrifyingly powerful sorcerer from a bygone era of jujutsu history.
"To think... to think those hypocritical, wrinkly old fools sitting on the Jujutsu Higher Ups council actually managed to unearth a pristine physical relic of him just to secure a single student's execution," Granny Ogami whispered, her ancient face twisting into a grotesque, mocking sneer. "How deeply, utterly terrified they must be of this Oden Uzumaki brat to resort to hiring people like us."
She placed the relic gently onto her grandson's open palm, her fingers trembling with dark excitement.
"With the astronomical, generational fortune we are receiving from the authorities for this single operation, we can permanently leave Japan behind, drop entirely off the jujutsu radar, and live like absolute royalty for the rest of our days. The elders were truly, beautifully generous with their funds this time."
Granny Ogami raised her hands, her fingers instantly weaving into a complex, forbidden ritual hand sign as she began to chant the dark, rhythmic incantations of her innate technique.
"Séance Technique: Shape of the Dead."
A sudden, violent tempest of crushing, heavy cursed energy erupted from the grandson's body, blowing the thick layers of dust off the concrete floor. The boy's physical frame began to violently convulse and expand, his muscle fibers tearing and density multiplying tenfold as his original facial features dissolved entirely. His hair rapidly shifted, lengthening and hardening until it formed a massive, iconic, and thoroughly menacing pompadour that defied the very laws of gravity.
The young boy's eyes violently snapped open, no longer carrying the dull, compliant expression of the grandson. Instead, they burned with a wild, untamed, and thoroughly insatiable hunger for conflict.
It was Ryu Ishigori.
The legendary historical sorcerer raised his massive, newly manifested hands, flexing his thick fingers as he looked around the dim, unfamiliar concrete storehouse with a look of deep, analytical amusement.
"Hah... well, isn't this an unusual, entirely unexpected flavor of reincarnation?" Ryu remarked, his voice smooth, carrying an immense, vibrating resonance that made the concrete walls hum. He cracked his thick neck loudly, looking down at his temporary physical form. "It seems that tricky fellow Kenjaku hasn't even begun his grand theater production yet, has he? What an odd time to be dragged back into the sun."
Granny Ogami stepped forward, her wooden cane clicking loudly against the stone floor as she offered a deep, respectful bow to the resurrected titan.
"Welcome back to the living world, ancient powerhouse," Granny Ogami croaked, her eyes glinting with malice. "I have summoned your peerless physical form to fulfill a highly lucrative contract. There is a Special Grade student named Oden Uzumaki currently roaming the forest sector nearby. Your only instruction is to locate him and eradicate his existence entirely."
Ryu Ishigori smiled, a dangerous, predatory glint flashing across his features as a massive, unparalleled tide of raw cursed energy output began to radiate from his frame, completely dwarfing the standard sorcerers of the modern era. He reached up, casually adjusting his massive pompadour as his appetite rumbled.
"A Special Grade brat, huh? I see..." Ryu chuckled, his tone dripping with deep, dangerous anticipation. "Well, if I'm being dragged out of the grave before the main feast even begins... I have to ask, granny... can this kid act as my dessert?"
---
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