Actually, there was still one important matter—that is, the matter of Naobito Zenin and Mechamaru.
The two of them were said to be gravely wounded; to sustain their lives, Mechamaru had stuffed both himself and Naobito into a hibernation pod.
By rights, Mahiru should have gone to look for them now—Mechamaru hadn't told Mahiru his location, but from the very start Mahiru had given Mechamaru a clone that could detect his position.
After thinking it over, though, in the end she didn't go in person.
She handed a special clone, meant for locating Mechamaru, to the people of Jujutsu High, and let them go find Mechamaru and Naobito themselves.
In essence, it was the same thing.
Now that the important, magical little trinket had been obtained, the next step was to begin the spirit-calling.
But spirit-calling required a human body to serve as a "vessel." Mahiru didn't want to sacrifice some other ordinary person for her spirit-calling, so she began mulling over the idea of finding some materials herself and molding a body for Kaori Itadori.
This was basically Nüwa creating humans.
Making a person, of course, called for a private place to do it.
And so Mahiru once again brought Mai and Maki to that place they'd been before—the abandoned hot-spring hotel.
"Why are we back here again?" Mai looked at the hotel before her, puzzled.
"...There's something inside." Maki's gaze turned wary and grave. "Careful—it's a very strong enemy."
Maki had sensed a threat. Of course, the reason she felt threatened was that, just as the three of them stood at the door, a girl with short white hair came walking out from inside, carrying a huge armload of garbage.
"...?" Jogo swept a glance over the two standing behind Mahiru, his eyes going dull and fishlike. "What's the meaning of this? Where did these two come from?"
"These are the underlings I recruited." Mahiru tilted her nose up smugly. "Well? Impressive, aren't they?"
Jogo fell silent, then rolled his eyes, turned, and walked off with the garbage in his arms.
Meanwhile, behind Mahiru, Maki and Mai still hadn't recovered from their "bracing for battle" state.
"...So you're all Cursed Spirits?" Mai swallowed hard.
In the past, whenever Jogo appeared he would conceal his presence, but just now he hadn't, so both Mai and Maki had figured out Jogo's identity.
This was... a Cursed Spirit of overwhelming strength.
But—hadn't this guy once been an idol on stage?
A super-powerful Special Grade Cursed Spirit... who had actually once stood on a stage as an idol, shouting "Minna-san daisuki"??
"You've got to be kidding?" Mai no longer knew what expression she was supposed to make.
"So, from now on this hot-spring hotel is going to serve as our base." Mahiru raised a hand and introduced it. "It's in a remote spot, and the terrain is well suited for setting up barriers... it's a really comfortable place, you know!"
As the little group's numbers grew, and with the Cursed Spirit identities of Jogo and the others becoming hard to keep hidden any longer, they definitely needed to establish a base of their own.
This place was just right for it.
"And there are quite a lot of rooms, too!" After all, it had been an inn before.
The place was quite old and run-down, though, so before heading to the Zenin estate Mahiru had told Jogo and the others ahead of time to come over and tidy up and make some repairs first.
Seeing Jogo carrying a huge armload of garbage, she figured he was probably in the middle of clearing out the trash.
How diligent... Mahiru hummed a tune as she walked into the hotel.
Then, in the lobby just past the entrance, she saw a towering, sky-high mountain piled up out of snacks.
"...?" Mahiru froze. What was going on?
Why were there so many snacks? "Did you guys rob a supermarket?"
"The aunties and uncles gave them to us!" Kin-chan jumped out to argue. "Big Sis Mahiru, not everyone is as wicked as you!"
"Who would just go around handing out this many snacks for no reason."
Kin-chan put her hands on her hips, pleased with herself: "Because the aunties and uncles have lots of them!"
Although this hot-spring hotel was remote, it was only remote compared to Kyoto and Tokyo. There were still towns in the surrounding area.
And as it happened, that town had been struck by the earthquake and had suffered fairly heavy damage.
Because the disaster was so widespread, much of the relief effort had been concentrated on the big cities, so naturally no one came to the rescue of the villages and towns out here—and just as the people were sinking into despair over this, three girls appeared.
"Big Sis Jogo! How come they're pinned under the houses?"
"No idea—maybe they sleep better that way."
"But they're crying... they look so sad."
"They cried because they slept so well."
Hanami's face filled with exasperated lines: "They're obviously calling for help..."
And so the three girls set about rescuing people as a matter of course, saving whomever they passed wherever they went. For two Special Grade Cursed Spirits plus the cursed fetus of a Special Grade Cursed Spirit, lifting buildings to save people was simple enough.
What's more, after Hanami's Technique had been adjusted by Mahiru, she could manipulate an ultra-wide-area forest realm. Her efficiency at rescuing people was incredibly high.
When the villagers and townsfolk discovered that these three colorful beauties before them all possessed magic-like powers, they couldn't help but be astonished. The old folks said Hanami was a local earth god; the adults said they had superpowers; some children said they were magical girls...
On hearing this, Jogo was greatly alarmed. "How can these kids see through my Technique?"
...In any case, all three girls had become famous.
Mahiru had told them that if some unavoidable situation forced them to expose their abilities, then they needn't hide themselves—Mahiru would come and clean up the mess for them—so they had even fewer reservations.
Now that the three girls had made a whole circuit rescuing the surrounding villages and towns, the villagers all regarded them as gods or heroes passing through, and because Kin-chan had once eaten snacks the villagers brought, the villagers began ferrying snacks here in an endless stream, calling them "offerings to the gods."
"You three really are..." Mahiru carefully arranged her words. "Uh, full of surprises."
She realized that while she could even scheme against Kenjaku, she was utterly unable to predict these three's course of action. It was downright absurd.
"We were just bored with nothing to do, that's all." As Jogo, having dumped the garbage, walked back in from outside and passed by Mahiru, he gave a "hmph." "After all, a certain someone never takes us along for anything."
Still, since these three Cursed Spirits were willing to do good deeds... that wasn't bad either.
Though it was impossible to tell whether they truly bore any goodwill toward humans... at the very least, these three really did do as she said.
"Are these two rooms over here okay for the two of you to stay in?"
Mahiru gestured as she assigned rooms to Maki and Mai. Neither girl minded either way.
"But if possible, I need a certain amount of space to experiment with cursed tools," Mai added.
Mahiru ran back and forth around the hotel grounds, and in the end assigned a warehouse at the back of the hotel to Mai.
The hotel itself wasn't very large, but there was plenty of room to expand all around it.
Mahiru stroked her chin, her mind running wild with fancies; she felt these spaces could be used to build all sorts of interesting things.
"Hanami, come here—I'll teach you barrier techniques!"
The first thing to build, though, was still a barrier for defense and concealment.
The kind of defensive barrier that stays in existence at all times—just like the barrier around Jujutsu High.
But Mahiru knew that she herself surely wouldn't be staying at this stronghold very often afterward.
And since this was a stronghold, she was bound to store some important things inside it in the future.
Mahiru hoped that whether or not she was at this base, there would be someone able to use barrier techniques and reinforce and repair the barrier in good time.
So she called Hanami over.
Because the several Disaster Cursed Spirits could all perform Domain Expansion, Hanami learned barrier techniques very quickly.
Hanami had another advantage—this hot-spring hotel sat amid forested mountains, and by combining her tree-controlling Jujutsu Technique with barrier techniques, she could make the barrier technique and her own Technique amplify each other several times over.
It took Mahiru about half an hour to teach Hanami the barrier technique.
Hanami learned extremely fast, quickly grasping the knack of it.
As Hanami spread out the barrier, every tree and every blade of grass throughout the forested mountains became a node the barrier used to sense and reinforce itself.
The effect of this barrier was extremely powerful.
"Amazing!" Mahiru praised sincerely.
"Speaking of which, could I add some [Labyrinth] effects to this barrier?" Hanami asked with a smile,
just like in those folk horror stories...
The legendary hot-spring inn that can never be found... Countless people once ventured into the forest to explore, and countless people lost their way in it... and only the purest, most innocent girl can find, deep in the mountain woods, that legendary hot-spring inn where the fairies are said to dwell...
"Pretty cool, isn't it?" Hanami smiled. "Or, I could cook up some other versions of the rumor? Like, there's a fire-breathing evil dragon in the forest, a little fortune-telling witch, or maybe a monster that gets whoever it touches pregnant..."
Uh? What kind of bizarre premises are these... no telling where Hanami had even learned them.
"Why is it always in these weird areas that your creative urges kick in." Mahiru smacked her lips, at a loss for words. "Do whatever you want, just don't go too overboard."
Leaving Hanami's side, Mahiru ran back into the hotel and found a small hot-spring pool.
She first moved the fish Kin-chan had been keeping in it over to another pool, and only then began pulling out from her shadow space the materials she'd prepared for making a "human."
"Heave-ho..."
She used Idle Transfiguration to twist the materials, shaping them into the form of a doll.
This doll had no distinguishing physique and no real facial features—not even any facial organs.
Once the spirit-calling was carried out, the vessel's appearance would shift toward that of the one being summoned, so for now she only needed to make a rough mold.
"Next, it's time to put in the hair..."
Mahiru began taking out the hair.
And just then Mai happened to pass by, and so she stood at Mahiru's side, watching.
She watched as Mahiru kneaded those few strands of hair with Idle Transfiguration, then stuffed them inside the doll's body.
Right after, Mahiru began chanting an incantation; the Spirit-Calling Granny's Jujutsu Technique activated, and a surge of Cursed Energy appeared upon the doll before her.
Then the doll's flesh began to wriggle and transform, growing hair and continually shifting toward female bodily features.
At last, as the fluctuations of Cursed Energy gradually steadied, a quietly sleeping girl with long black hair appeared in the pool.
"Is this... Itadori's mother?" Mai wore a subtle expression.
"?" Mahiru, for her part, was a bit dumbfounded.
Because... the girl before her looked so very young...
"How... she seems like a middle schooler!"
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