Even now, Hajime Kashimo could still recall why he had agreed to Kenjaku's offer.
["I'll agree to it..."] ["So long as you can let me have a battle with Sukuna..."]
He wanted to fight Sukuna not because Sukuna was Sukuna, but because Sukuna was the strongest.
Hajime Kashimo had challenged everyone of his own era, exhausting his entire life, yet never once found anyone who could give him a truly satisfying fight. That was why he wanted to leap across the ages to seek out Sukuna.
Yes.
He was the one who hadn't eaten his fill.
He was the one yearning for his opponent to satisfy him.
By any measure, it was he, Hajime Kashimo, who ought to be the one saying something like "I hope you can satisfy me." Yet now, it was Mahiru who stood before him and said something like "Can you let me have my fill of fun?"
"Words like those..."
Are you saying I'm not giving you enough of a thrill?
Are you saying that, on the contrary, it's you who's been yearning for me?
Saying words like that right in front of me...
Don't tell me—are you saying I'm not enough to fill you up?!
"That's a line I should be the one saying!——"
BOOM!!!—
Forget tactics.
Forget strategy.
Bring it all out—pour out every last ounce of his power!
Hajime Kashimo, who had lived his whole life on a whim and always done exactly as he pleased, felt his dignity as the one being challenged shaken after Mahiru spoke those words—and at the same time, the yearning that leaked through her words gave him the feeling that he'd met a 'kindred spirit.'
Whether it was the fury of being provoked or the stirring of meeting someone who could empathize with him, both urged him to unleash everything.
He had already sworn to save [Mythical Beast Amber] for Sukuna.
And so, everything else belonged to the girl before him.
"Just this one move!!—"
And so the incandescent thunder erupted with an intensity never seen before.
"Hey, why are all the lights coming on over in that part of town?"
In Tokyo, a second before the thunder roared, there were still people gazing out at the distant neon-lit blocks in puzzlement. "Don't tell me the power's all coming back on... huh?"
The next second, they were even more bewildered.
Because the city's lights were spreading.
As if diffusing outward, they swept across the entire city at breakneck speed, from far to near.
—And then, they went out.
The whole city went dark all at once.
The emergency transformers that had only just been repaired were blown apart by the colossal voltage before the wires could even melt through, bursting into showers of sparks. The lights that had filled the whole city a moment ago vanished in an instant, returning everything to darkness.
In a sense, the entire power grid of Tokyo could not withstand the lightning Hajime Kashimo unleashed in that moment.
"Holy crap."
Standing directly in front of Hajime Kashimo, Mahiru's mouth fell slightly open.
Because Kashimo's output had already exceeded Mahiru's expectations.
She, Fushiguro, and the others had already been wearing Hajime Kashimo down together for a long while now—so how could this guy still go berserk and put out this kind of power?
She just didn't get it.
This guy kept hollering about 'having his fill of fun' and 'a worthy opponent,' and then pulled a colossal amount of Cursed Energy out of his crotch—who even knows what was going on.
It felt like he was overdoing it, frankly.
"Get back." Mahiru's expression turned serious as she reached out, pulled Yuji back, and stood in front of him.
Credit where it's due—was this really the man who, 400 years ago, had fought his way through nearly every master under heaven? He truly was terrifyingly strong.
Although Hajime Kashimo's combat record in the original work wasn't all that impressive, that was only because he'd been tangled up by someone who couldn't be killed and had a very high combat IQ, and ended up thrown into the sea.
But right now, on Mahiru's side, there was no sea.
She had set traps too, but the traps had already begun to melt; the modern conductive materials and her spider silk were starting to be unable to withstand such an enormous current.
With a backhanded motion, the girl mobilized her bunnies to carry Fushiguro and Yuji out of the way.
—Time to get properly serious!
The girl's face took on an expression brimming with genuine fighting spirit. "Fushiguro! Close the Domain!"
"?" Fushiguro Maki was first shocked by Hajime Kashimo's Cursed Energy, and then baffled by Mahiru's order.
Release the Domain... wouldn't that let Hajime Kashimo see through the trick?
Confused as she was, Fushiguro obeyed the order and began to dispel the Domain. The black liquid all around started to disperse, revealing the metal walls that had been scorched to the point of melting.
"Cursed Spirit! You've made the wrong decision!" Hajime Kashimo laughed heartily. "But I respect you for it!"
As the Domain vanished, he also felt that 'current-absorbing' effect fading along with it. He didn't realize this was because the conductive system had collapsed; he assumed the blue-haired Cursed Spirit was genuinely trying to level the conditions of the fight so they could have their 'satisfying battle to the fullest.'
So you want to go head-to-head with me!
To smash each other's strongest blows against one another!
The exhilaration in Hajime Kashimo's heart reached its peak.
From the bottom of his heart, he felt that coming to duel the blue-haired Cursed Spirit today had been an absolutely correct decision!
—Coming to the modern era was the right call!
"Bring it on!"
Hajime Kashimo undid the hand seal formed by both his hands.
Miyakogakuro was no longer needed, so he simply canceled it.
"Bring it on!!—"
He gathered all the electricity and Cursed Energy in his body, channeling it entirely into his fist.
"FIGHT!!——"
And Mahiru, watching Kashimo release Miyakogakuro, suddenly broke into a smile.
The moment Kashimo lowered his hands, Mahiru's own hands rose up instead.
A hand seal.
A halo of light appeared above her head.
It made Kashimo's eyes go wide.
—In fact, if it came to a duel, Mahiru's best choice would have been to fight in the middle of a crowd. Kashimo was a 'raw-stats caveman' with no Domain of his own; as long as Mahiru could be sure to open her Domain before Kashimo whittled the crowd down past a certain point, she could utterly suppress him.
It was just a pity that Mahiru wasn't keen on sacrificing innocent people.
Perhaps... she could try doing as Fushiguro did and use a building as the outer shell of her Domain? The idea seemed feasible, but reality was a sad thing—Mahiru's Domain was simply too powerful; it would blow an ordinary building apart.
So in the end, was her only option to forgo using her Domain altogether?
"But... that would be such a shame..."
If you were to ask Mahiru what the top 10 things she most wanted to do upon transmigrating into the world of Jujutsu Kaisen were... then unleashing a Domain Expansion right in front of Kashimo and listening to Lao-Kashimo's 'wait, wait a sec'—well, that ranked right at the very top!
If she didn't get to show off a Domain Expansion in front of Hajime Kashimo at least once, she'd feel her whole transmigration had been for nothing!
And so!
"Domain Expansion!"
What? No crowd to serve as a medium?
No problem—the bigger the crowd, the stronger the Domain, but even with few people around she could still deploy it; it would just be a weakened Domain, that's all!
What? Not a single person nearby? That's fine too!
That very afternoon, Mahiru had not only taught Fushiguro Maki how to deploy a Domain, she'd also made herself master a jujutsu technique she'd never gotten around to learning before—the Spirit-Calling Technique.
The Spirit-Calling Granny was dead, and Mahiru had successfully pulled off a nesting-doll trick with the Spirit-Calling Technique, grasping the very core of the Spirit-Calling Technique.
She had once fashioned a human body to house the soul of Kaori Itadori.
And when she lacked a crowd to serve as the vessel for her Domain, she could also forcibly use other people's corpses together with the Spirit-Calling Technique to manufacture a 'spirit-summoned crowd' around herself, for the purpose of Domain Expansion.
Resurrecting others for use in a Domain was an act of blasphemy.
But if the ones being resurrected were enemies Mahiru had killed before, then dragging them back out to kill all over again was perfectly acceptable!
"Wh... wait, wait a sec..." Realizing what Mahiru meant to do, Hajime Kashimo's eyes went wide. "You aren't..."
Weren't you unable to deploy a Domain without a crowd?
Weren't you going to go toe-to-toe with me head-on?
...Just what are you trying to pull here?!?
It was only then that Hajime Kashimo noticed something was off about his surroundings.
Because things had moved so fast, Fushiguro's Domain was still only halfway through collapsing, but he could already see the scene outside.
Melted metal walls, conductive spider silk crackling with arcs of electricity...
So the current-absorption hadn't been the black-haired girl's Domain effect at all?!
Going on and on about some genius girl... so it was you, blue-haired Cursed Spirit, who'd been bullshitting me this whole time?!
"Why you...!"
You bastard!
Hajime Kashimo wanted to curse out loud, but where was the time for that?
How was a villager from 400 years ago supposed to know the city's schemes ran this deep? By the time he caught on, it was already too late.
Hajime Kashimo had only just released Miyakogakuro, and his ultra-powerful attack was an arrow already nocked on the string—impossible to call back.
And what's more, the girl was certainly not about to give him the chance.
Because the vessels were few and the range small, the girl simply dusted off a signature trick she'd known long ago.
A 0.2-second Domain Expansion.
No sooner said than done—the instant the girl's voice fell, several zombie-like withered arms burst up out of the earth around her.
The awakened dead began to howl ferociously.
This time, the ones raising their voices in unison were departed spirits returned to the mortal world.
Wasteland, gravestones, withered trees, crows.
Dozens of the dead, as if answering a summons, azure ghost-fire burning in their eyes, struggled and clawed their way up from underground.
The blue-haired girl, a halo above her head, stood in their midst, having become the sole sacred presence amid all that twisted scenery.
"Myriad Sounds... in Chorus Heaven."
—0.2 seconds.
The sight of the departed spirits bursting from the ground looked slow, but in fact it took only 0.2 seconds.
This 0.2 seconds did not refer to a wind-up, but to the length of time the Domain existed within this world.
For Mahiru, this was a lightweight form of Domain Expansion.
With a smaller burden, she could cut out the cumbersome wind-up.
It couldn't be called invincibly fast, but it was easily faster than the current Kashimo—letting the Domain's guaranteed-hit effect take hold on her opponent before he could reconstruct Miyakogakuro.
"You tricked me!!..."
BOOM!!——
Under the influence of the Domain's guaranteed-hit effect, Hajime Kashimo's body slipped out of his own control within those 0.2 seconds, turning around and hurling that single blow—into which he'd concentrated every ounce of his body's power—backhanded into the sky.
Because the Domain Expansion lasted such a short time, a whole series of lethal Techniques like Idle Transfiguration would have struggled to deal Hajime Kashimo a fatal wound, so the guaranteed-hit effect Mahiru chose was 'Cursed Speech.'
In any case, once Hajime Kashimo had fired off this one blast, he'd be completely drained.
The girl loaded a command directly into the Domain, making Hajime Kashimo fire this attack up into the sky.
And so the incandescent lightning shot straight up into the heavens, and everyone within a few hundred kilometers could see a white fissure tearing the night sky apart.
Those nearby felt as if their eardrums were about to rupture from the sheer volume of the thunderclap.
As the lightning faded and the heat gradually subsided, Hajime Kashimo's whole body gave out; he half-knelt on the ground, panting violently while gritting his teeth to hold himself up.
Grinding his teeth, he lifted his head to look at the blue-haired girl not far off.
"How utterly despicable..."
Although Hajime Kashimo hadn't been averse to information warfare before—after all, all's fair in war...
But you can't just pile deception on deception on deception on deception, can you?
Fooling me once or twice would've been one thing... but how is it that, looking back, there wasn't a single true word in any of it?
Even Hajime Kashimo, who'd always been a good sport about losing a bet, couldn't help wanting to curse his head off.
Didn't you say you wanted to have your fill of fun?
Didn't you say you were eighty-percent full?
Where did your eighty-percent full go?
"The eighty-percent full was referring to my wallet." Mahiru patted her pocket with a grin.
For now, the girl still had no idea that half of Tokyo's transformer boxes had been blown out.
At the moment she still had some of her Techniques tripped like blown fuses, but she'd long since set up safeguards all around.
When it came to dealing with Hajime Kashimo, she had him completely in the palm of her hand.
This time it was truly a case of a few ounces deflecting ten thousand tons.
Mahiru had defeated Hajime Kashimo—the strongest of strong foes—without even expending anything significant.
All one could say was that Kashimo had suffered the same setback as in the original work: his personality was too much of a battle-junkie, and his Cursed Energy traits were too dependent on the battlefield terrain.
Mahiru knew this guy would never, to his dying day, use his Technique on anyone other than Sukuna.
That said, she hadn't really meant to push Kashimo to a dead end.
"How about we have a talk?" Mahiru met Hajime Kashimo's gaze. "I think... you and I might not necessarily be enemies."
In the original work, Hajime Kashimo had helped the protagonist group fight Sukuna.
Now Mahiru wanted to make a friend too.
She guessed he'd been duped by Kenjaku.
Have a proper heart-to-heart—who knew, maybe she really could recruit him?
That was what the girl was thinking, but the next second, she suddenly sensed an ominous fluctuation of Cursed Energy appear in the distance.
The girl's eyes narrowed sharply, and she raised a hand to summon a new Heavy-Armed Darting Hare before her.
BOOM!!——
It was at this very moment that an azure beam of Cursed Energy came blasting in from afar, slamming directly into the armor in front of Mahiru and knocking the girl back.
Ishiryuu!
Mahiru instantly knew her opponent's identity.
The Ishiryuu of now was a great deal stronger than when they'd last crossed blades; clearly, he had already recovered his full power.
Cutting into the fight all of a sudden—so he'd been keeping an eye on things all along?
The attacks and ambushes hadn't stopped yet.
From afar, a crimson ray shot toward Mahiru.
It was [Piercing Blood].
It was Choso!
After Kenjaku had stolen the precious cursed objects from Jujutsu High's storehouse, Choso—an important character from the original work—had finally made his appearance as well.
"Jogo!" Mahiru shouted.
In fact, an instant before Mahiru called out the name, a scorching sun had already appeared.
A girl with short white hair, one hand stuffed in her pocket, appeared on the battlefield as if by teleportation, snapping the fingers of her other hand so that a barrier of flame rose up in the path of [Piercing Blood].
As before, the high temperature would destroy the blood.
This [Piercing Blood] was more precise and concentrated than any Mahiru had seen before, but Jogo's flames were likewise stronger than the borrowed flames Mahiru had used.
The flames blocked the 'Piercing Blood.'
At the same time, two more figures collided in midair.
Toji Fushiguro, wielding Playful Cloud, struck first at the figure that came swooping in on the night wind.
"Hm?" Toji frowned.
The feel of the hit was strange.
In his eyes, the pink-haired woman he'd attacked gritted her teeth and yanked at the canvas of space, actually wrenching his attack off course.
Oh... he remembered now.
So this was that woman called Urogi Kyoko?
"Ushura Bullet!" Urogi Kyoko was startled by this man who had no Cursed Energy whatsoever about him; the sneak attack had nearly finished her off. Gnashing her teeth, she smashed space apart with a backhanded blow, blasting the man away.
Its power, too, was greater than before.
Urogi Kyoko had likewise recovered her full strength.
Yes, that's right—behind Hajime Kashimo, Kenjaku had sent several people to keep watch.
And on the other side, Mahiru had in fact brought along several hatchet men of her own.
In this battle, from start to finish, Kashimo was the only one who believed it to be an honest, aboveboard duel—the only one who'd been fired up, the only one taking it seriously.
Ah, the village bully—naive at heart, really.
Nothing to be done about it.
____
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