Next Target, 200PS!
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100 Chapters In!
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"You..."
Haruno Yukinoshita was just about to ask something else. But the very next second, she noticed that as Kai walked forward, the front half of his body suddenly vanished. It was as if he had stepped through an invisible barrier into another dimension.
Before she even had time to scream in shock, Kai grabbed them both and pulled them inside.
"Where are we?"
The previously dark, dead-silent night had instantly transformed into a bright, sunlit day. The glaring sunlight forced Haruno and Soyo to squint, shielding their eyes with their hands.
It took them a long moment to finally adjust. Gradually, Haruno made out their surroundings.
People were everywhere. Workers bustled about, completely absorbed in their tasks. What had just looked like an abandoned, half-finished building was now a thriving, chaotic construction site. Everyone seemed to be pouring every ounce of their strength into building this place.
"That guy! That guy! And that one over there!" Haruno pointed with a trembling finger. "Those are the workers who had accidents earlier!"
"Why are they here??"
Haruno immediately recognized several of the men. They were the exact same workers who had suffered fatal or severe accidents on this very site not too long ago. While the others were unfamiliar faces, they were all wearing Yukinoshita construction uniforms.
"Do they... not see us?"
The warmth of the sun and the bustling crowd had managed to chase away a fraction of their terror. At that moment, Soyo also noticed something incredibly strange.
Several workers brushed right past them, completely ignoring their presence. It was as if the girls were entirely invisible.
Moreover, their faces were completely blank. Their expressions were dead and devoid of any human emotion.
This eerie, unnatural scene immediately caused the panic that had just started to subside in their hearts to spike all over again. As if on cue, both women turned to look at Kai.
In a situation like this, Kai was the only person in the world they could possibly rely on.
"It's a Domain," Kai explained calmly, scanning the surroundings.
Just as he had suspected, there was an invisible Domain set up here. The missing students from Jujutsu High were undoubtedly trapped inside this Domain, completely cut off from the outside world.
"A Domain?"
Obviously, neither of them had any idea what that meant.
"When certain Cursed Spirits grow powerful enough, they awaken this specific ability. For an ordinary person, once you're trapped inside a Domain, you can forget about ever leaving."
"These people... they're probably trapped here forever. Day after day, year after year, repeating the exact same tasks over and over again until the end of time."
Listening to Kai's explanation made their blood run cold.
'Day after day, year after year?'
Those simple words carried an endless, suffocating despair. If they were the ones trapped here forced to do the same thing for eternity, they would definitely lose their minds.
Ignoring their horrified expressions, Kai rubbed his chin, his expression turning thoughtful.
Generally speaking, Cursed Spirits are born from human fear directed toward a specific concept or object.
"This Cursed Spirit... it seems to have been born entirely from people's fear of work." Having said that, Kai shot Haruno a meaningful look. "I couldn't tell from looking at you, but it seems the Yukinoshita family is quite ruthless when it comes to exploiting their workers."
"What??" Hearing that, Haruno instinctively snapped back. "The Yukinoshita family runs a legitimate corporation!"
"..."
Kai didn't say a word. He just looked at her with a quiet, knowing smile. The existence of this supernatural horror was proof enough. The Cursed Spirit wouldn't lie.
Eventually, under Kai's piercing gaze, Haruno awkwardly averted her eyes.
"I-It's just that..."
"This plot of land is incredibly important to the Yukinoshita family, so the workload was admittedly a bit heavy. But we paid them significantly higher wages, and we provided full overtime pay!" By the end, Haruno's voice was tinged with genuine desperation.
And it was the truth—
The Yukinoshita family wasn't some black-hearted sweatshop. They didn't treat their employees like disposable slaves. While the workload was massive, they had never skimped on compensation or benefits. If they had, they would have been shut down by the authorities ages ago.
"Well!" Kai shrugged, not bothering to press the issue.
"Humans aren't machines. Even if you throw money at them, a crushing workload will inevitably breed fear and resentment toward the job. And fear... is the best fertilizer for breeding Cursed Spirits."
"If I'm not mistaken, this Cursed Spirit was born directly from the collective dread and exhaustion of the workers here. That's why its Domain is themed around this exact concept—forcing anyone who enters to work endlessly, without rest. Even after they die, their souls are permanently imprisoned here, doomed to repeat this labor for all eternity."
Haruno wasn't an idiot. She perfectly understood what Kai was implying.
"..."
For a long moment, she was utterly speechless. Put like that, it really was the Yukinoshita family's fault.
However, strictly speaking, the crushing workload Haruno had personally endured recently had started to make her dread her own job as well. She never expected it to manifest into something this horrifying!
"Sigh!" She couldn't hold back a heavy sigh. "Mother is just far too impatient!"
As the current head of the Yukinoshita family, Haruno's mother was relentlessly obsessed with establishing a permanent foothold in Tokyo. She wanted to ensure no one could ever dismiss them as rural upstarts again.
It wasn't like Haruno hadn't tried to advise her mother against this reckless pace, both openly and subtly. But it was useless. The head of the Yukinoshita family was fiercely dominant and refused to listen to her daughter's opinions.
Especially since, in her mother's eyes, this was a matter directly concerning the future survival of their family.
"There's no need to blame yourself," Kai said casually, noticing Haruno's lowered gaze.
"The number of Cursed Spirits is only going to increase from here on out. What happened here is definitely not an isolated incident. Even if the Yukinoshita family didn't exist, there would always be other reasons and other fears breeding Cursed Spirits."
"After all... you don't think a concept like 'fear' will ever be completely eradicated from this world, do you?"
Thinking about it, he was right. Fear was a fundamental human instinct. It was impossible to eliminate.
That was exactly why Cursed Spirits could never be permanently wiped out. The entire purpose of the Jujutsu society was merely to maintain a delicate balance between Cursed Spirits and ordinary humans. Completely eradicating them was nothing more than an impossible fantasy.
"..."
'I don't feel comforted by that at all.' Haruno raised her eyes and shot Kai a faint, resentful glare. She genuinely didn't know what to say anymore.
"Then... can these people still be saved?"
Regardless of the circumstances, these men had died because of the Yukinoshita family's ambitions. Deep down, Haruno was a kind person. She couldn't just turn a blind eye to their suffering.
"It is impossible to revive the dead." At the very least, not right now.
"..."
Haruno knew it was a foolish hope to begin with. She wasn't exactly disappointed, just deeply disheartened.
"Regardless..." Just as the atmosphere grew heavy and silent, Soyo suddenly spoke up. "If we don't resolve this situation right now, it's only going to claim more victims in the future, right?" As she spoke, Soyo looked up at Kai.
Stripped of her manipulative little schemes, Soyo seemed quite gentle and resolute.
"Exactly!" Meeting Soyo's gaze, Kai suddenly smiled.
"Then we're leaving this to you!" Haruno rallied her spirits and looked at Kai with seriousness.
"Well, I am a Jujutsu Sorcerer, after all. Even if you didn't ask, I'd still deal with it."
'You two are making it sound like I only showed up here because of you.'
Shrugging, Kai took a long stride deeper into the Domain. Haruno and Soyo immediately scrambled to keep up.
Now that they fully understood exactly how lethal this Domain was, they didn't dare stray more than a few inches from Kai's side.
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"Are we looking for something?"
After a long while of aimlessly wandering through the construction site without Kai making a single move, it became obvious he was searching for something specific.
"First things first, if you want to break a Domain, you have to find the actual location of the Cursed Spirit casting it."
To forcefully shatter a Domain from the inside, you either had to kill the Cursed Spirit maintaining it, or use Domain Expansion yourself. A more refined, more powerful Domain would completely overwrite and destroy the weaker one.
Kai didn't possess a Domain Expansion yet.
Sadako, the Cursed Spirit he had subjugated earlier, did have one.
Unfortunately... her Domain didn't seem to be anywhere near as powerful as this one.
'How useless!' Kai criticized her silently. But then again, this just proved that the Cursed Spirit running this place was incredibly valuable and worth consuming.
"Besides, did you forget the actual reason I came here? Even though they've been missing for a few days, I still need to see with my own eyes if those students are really dead."
He wasn't about to just start blowing things up before he even tried looking for them.
"I see!"
If an ordinary person were trapped here for several days, they would definitely be dead. But since they were Jujutsu Sorcerers... things might be different.
Haruno nodded thoughtfully. "So, are we just going to keep wandering around like this?"
It felt entirely aimless. Even though these 'workers' couldn't seem to see them, just having them brush past gave both girls severe chills.
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