Yes! You heard that right!
"Most regrettably, we only have one of Sukuna's fingers to work with!" Mahiru stood upon the lectern, fervent and impassioned. "But I believe that everyone's hard work and rotating shifts can overcome this little difficulty!"
Let's all hammer Sukuna until even his own mother wouldn't recognize him!
—If you'll recall, before Mahiru went to the Juvenile Detention Center to rescue Itadori, Kugisaki, and the others, she had analyzed that Nobara Kugisaki would play a huge role in the battle against Sukuna.
And this was that huge role.
The fingers were a part of Sukuna's soul.
To hammer the finger was to hammer Sukuna.
And most importantly, Sukuna's fingers could not be damaged—no one could damage them, no matter who they were.
So they could hammer however they liked, for as long as they liked.
The most troublesome property of a cursed object—at this moment became their most precious resource.
Hearing the girl speak thus, the people in the classroom exchanged glances and murmured among themselves.
In truth, these people's awareness was still rather closer to that of ordinary folk.
When Jujutsu High had first taken them in, it had only informed them of a thing or two of the basics, and had not introduced much about the situation with the blue-haired cursed spirit.
As a result, their impression of Mahiru still rested upon the various "rumors" online.
And the online "rumors" about Mahiru... their impression had always been excessively positive.
"...? Miss Angel says she can grant us power?"
"Huh? ...Ah! It really is! Isn't that the Miss Angel who led the magical girls in disaster relief and saving the people?!"
"No way, are you serious? She'd actually give that much money?"
"Holy crap, it's for real! One day's pay is more than half a year of my salary!"
She really did give a lot of money.
The whole classroom boiled over with excitement, each of them thumping their chests and swearing oaths, declaring that they would absolutely hammer in earnest, hammer hard, and hammer with diligent dedication.
"Excellent!" Mahiru swept her hand grandly. "Later on we'll even select model workers—whoever hammers the most, the hardest, and with the most force gets a double bonus."
"Ooooh!! —There's even a double bonus?!"
The cheers within the room grew even louder.
The three youngsters watching from the side all felt a little mortified.
"Sukuna may be the enemy," Nobara Kugisaki said, shrinking her head down, "but isn't this a bit inhumane?"
And wasn't it just downright unethical?
Indeed, Nobara Kugisaki of course understood that her Technique was meant to be used this way.
But... if it were just Nobara Kugisaki hammering alone, fine—yet Mahiru had not only called Kugisaki in to hammer, she'd also rounded up a whole pile of buddies to hammer along together, and that was just too vicious.
"Alright, then next let's go one by one." Mahiru put her hands on her hips. "I grant you all a Technique!"
Originally the girl could not have endowed so many people with a Technique in such a short span of time, but ever since she had landed a Black Flash and her understanding of Cursed Energy had deepened, she found her command of Techniques growing ever more effortless.
On the basis of having thoroughly researched Kugisaki's Technique, she now needed, on average, just a few minutes to endow a single person with Kugisaki's Technique.
Sukuna certainly wouldn't be hammered to death.
These people's Cursed Energy was all very low; none of them could harm Sukuna.
But it hurt.
And that pain would be conducted all the way to the soul.
Even the strongest Sukuna in history, having his finger hammered with an iron mallet around the clock, twenty-four hours a day, would surely go numb from the pounding.
If, under such circumstances, Sukuna could still fight Satoru Gojo without so much as a change in expression, then Mahiru would honor him as a real man.
However, things did not develop as the girl had imagined.
She had been too confident in her level of "Technique imprinting."
Mahiru did indeed possess a stronger level of Idle Transfiguration, but the souls of different people were, in the end, all different, and this kind of variance was uncontrollable.
Techniques mass copy-pasted always manifested differently on different people. For instance....
Bzzzt—
"Miss Angel, why is the medium of my Technique an electric drill?" The college student before her held an ordinary handheld electric drill, its bit spinning emptily with an ear-piercing whine. "Did I... actually learn the Technique correctly?"
"Uh," Mahiru grinned crookedly, "not really, actually."
"Huh? Then doesn't that mean I'm..."
"But," Mahiru gave his shoulder a solemn pat, "you are the precious talent I've been craving."
An electric drill! There was even an electric drill!
Wasn't this thing even more brutal than smashing nails with a hammer?
Damn! She'd struck the jackpot in the lottery!
"Boss! Boss!" Another came running over. "Mine's different too!"
"What've you got?" Mahiru turned her head.
The man who'd previously been a chef pulled out a flamethrower, somewhat hesitant: "Is mine maybe not so good?"
"Holy crap!" Mahiru leapt up. "This one's incredible!"
And so, as the process of granting Techniques went on, more and more "surprises" kept appearing.
"Boss! What I awakened is a mousetrap!"
"Chief, I awakened something amazing over here, but you'll have to let me go register it with the police force..."
"Big sis Mahiru, big sis Mahiru! Why is the thing I awakened a table corner?..."
"Iron pliers—what I awakened is iron pliers..."
"Damn..." Nobara Kugisaki watched the extraordinarily lively scene before her, her mouth gaping into a perfect round.
It was simply... like "the immortal folk arrayed thick as hemp."
There were no experts present—because everyone present was an expert.
Sukuna was really in for a treat.
"Come to think of it, they wouldn't go applying all eighteen forms of torture to me, would they?" Itadori felt a chill run down his back and gave a shiver.
There was a finger of Sukuna's inside his body.
They'd better not end up hammering Sukuna and hammering it onto him.
"Relax, that won't happen." Mahiru waved her hand. "How could I possibly make such a rookie mistake?"
With Sukuna having left Itadori, the damage wouldn't be transmitted to Itadori's body. Rather than asking whether it would affect Itadori, it was more accurate to say that hammering the finger and hammering Itadori produced one and the same effect.
If a single finger turned out not to be enough, dragging Itadori over to make up the numbers was also an option.
"Absolutely not!" Itadori crossed his arms into an X in front of him. "I'd rather die than suffer this kind of torment!"
Ah... Sukuna, although you and I are enemies, I still extend my sympathy to you.
This blue-colored fellow really was too cruel.
.....
Aiya—although Mahiru had carelessly collected a whole pile of marvelous treasures over here, now was not yet the time to make Sukuna feast hard on a full Manchu-Han banquet.
These people had only just learned their Techniques and were, in fact, extremely unpracticed. Take Electric-Drill Bro, for instance: holding his drill, he bored into Sukuna's finger until sparks flew, yet he still hadn't managed to channel any Cursed Energy.
They still needed training, still needed instruction.
And the task of instructing them was handed over to Nobara Kugisaki.
"Huh? Me?" Nobara pointed at herself in surprise. "Don't you need my help with going to find that dropped-out third-year student?"
"No need, big sis Kugisaki," Mahiru shook her head, entrusting the task to her in earnest, heartfelt tones. "Because instructing them is something only you can do."
That's right. Right, right.
Nobara's Technique was meant to be used just like this.
In the original work, sending Nobara to the front lines had been an utterly foolish move... this current arrangement was the correct one!
From now on, no matter who they fought, as long as they could knock off some piece of the enemy's bodily tissue, they could immediately bring that tissue back, and Nobara would lead a squad up to it and just hammer away viciously with their little mallets.
Enjoyment.
This kind of battle was truly enjoyable.
Mahiru went ahead and named this group the "Kugisaki Squad."
The girl could hardly wait to see the moment when the "Kugisaki Squad" completed their initial training and brought all their various methods to bear upon Sukuna's finger.
Trust me.
No matter whether Sukuna won against Satoru Gojo or not, as long as the Kugisaki Squad could keep evading Sukuna's pursuit thereafter, Sukuna was sure to spend a truly splendid and fulfilling life.
"The small hours, huh..." Leading Fushiguro and Itadori out of the school, Mahiru checked the time.
Awakening their Techniques and arranging Kugisaki's task... had taken two or three hours.
That was actually quite fast, all things considered.
But they had only two days left.
They had to press on without pause to the next preparation.
"Kinji Hakari, huh...." Mahiru stroked her chin.
Jujutsu High had already given them a brief introduction to this Kinji Hakari, but even without the introduction, Mahiru could tell from her memory of the original work just what a heavyweight this person was.
—First of all, he was strong.
His Cursed Energy was coarse, so getting hit by him really hurt.
The most special thing was his Domain—the ability of his Domain was a "lottery draw," and he could keep drawing.
When he drew a prize, he'd gain a buff.
The biggest prize and the strongest buff was, for four minutes and twenty-one seconds, possessing infinite Cursed Energy along with an automatically running Reverse Cursed Technique.
Most importantly, this fellow also cheated.
As long as he kept his Domain open for a while, he was certain to enter "shameless cheat mode."
Infinite Cursed Energy.
A body of Immortality.
He might not necessarily be able to win, but he generally wouldn't lose either.
"The Jujutsu assistants all say the senior is strong," Itadori said, "but... why did he drop out?"
"Because he got on the radar of the Jujutsu higher-ups, probably," Fushiguro Maki said. "Besides, he was never exactly an honest type to begin with."
In fact, Kinji Hakari's way of doing things was just that of a street thug.
After dropping out of Jujutsu High, he went off to a place far from Tokyo and opened an underground fighting ring.
The selling point of this fighting ring was, of all things, letting ordinary people watch sorcerers box.
You should know that sorcerers had an obligation to conceal the existence of Jujutsu from ordinary people.
And Kinji Hakari's conduct would, without a doubt, expose the existence of Jujutsu to the public eye.
It completely and utterly violated the rules.
One could tell that this fellow belonged to the most uncontrollable, most troublemaking sort.
Utterly unrestrained.
What's more, the current storyline had diverged from the original work.
In the original work, Kinji Hakari had been relatively furtive about running his fighting hall, because at that time the existence of Jujutsu had not yet been made public.
But now, the existence of Jujutsu had been disclosed about a week or so ago.
Everyone knew there was such a thing as Jujutsu.
Society was in turmoil, and it grew only more violent as the earthquake relief efforts wrapped up.
Some people resisted the sorcerers, some people adored the sorcerers, and a great many more, in order to survive amid the disasters, chose to follow in the sorcerers' footsteps and become their underlings.
That was exactly the case on Kinji Hakari's side.
Before the disasters struck, Kinji Hakari's turf had been nothing more than an abandoned multi-story parking garage.
But with the onset of disaster and all manner of fortuitous coincidences, he had now become the boss of half that whole stretch of city.
Countless people who could find no direction for survival amid the disasters of Jujutsu and earthquakes all chose to come under Kinji Hakari's wing for protection, supporting him in passing and working for him.
If Mahiru, Jogo, and the others were the bosses of the area around the hot spring hotel, then Kinji Hakari was now the boss on his side of things.
Satoru Gojo had asked them to persuade Kinji Hakari to come over and help.
To be honest, this was by no means an easy errand.
"How should we go about it?..." Itadori stroked his chin in earnest thought. "First off, shouldn't we avoid revealing that we're from Jujutsu High? In that case, should we pretend we don't know Satoru Gojo?"
"Are you stupid? How could there be a sorcerer who doesn't know Satoru Gojo?" Fushiguro sighed. "You'd best leave matters like this for Mahiru and me to think about."
Itadori was too straightforward; he couldn't deceive people.
Word had it that that third-year senior's girlfriend was also a third-year senior.... With a special predilection like that, Itadori had better not end up getting lured away and losing some important things.
"Ah, the car's here." Mahiru had asked a Jujutsu assistant lady to drive for them.
Kinji Hakari's location was very far, and driving was the fastest and most convenient mode of transport they could currently think of.
Actually, Mahiru could also have grabbed Fushiguro and Itadori by the scruffs of their necks and flown them over the whole way, which would have been faster. But Mahiru also wanted to handle some other matters in parallel along the way.
The car was a business van with two rows of seats in the back. Mahiru sat down in the rear seat, then beckoned to Fushiguro Maki.
"Come, come, come—it's time to fulfill my promise."
To prepare for battle, Mahiru wanted to study the Ten Shadows Technique a bit more.
As the car set off, Mahiru began her exploration, and Fushiguro Maki began making strange sounds. Itadori, after initially pretending not to hear, suddenly thought of something and spoke up to ask: "Come to think of it, Mahiru already knows the Spirit-Calling Technique, right?"
The girl was taken aback, not knowing why he was asking about this.
...Could it be that Itadori had actually figured out that Little Kaori Itadori was his mother?!
Mahiru gave two dry coughs: "I do, but what about it?"
"Then can the Spirit-Calling Technique resurrect infinitely?" Itadori gestured. "In theory, as long as there's a corpse, you can call down a spirit, right?"
If she could use the Reverse Cursed Technique, then why fear a shortage of corpses?
"It doesn't work," Mahiru answered. "The dead... can probably only be revived once."
Mahiru had at first also assumed she could summon infinitely, but later discovered she was wrong.
Once someone had been revived once, it was difficult to revive them a second time.
To resurrect the already-dead was, in itself, to deceive the world; deceiving it once was fine, but a second time was hard to pull off.
So Mahiru could not treat those she had revived as figures who could be repeatedly expended and created anew.
Once someone was revived, she had to take responsibility for them.
At the same time, Mahiru had also come to understand that, for most people, it was not the case that the more Techniques on one's body, the better.
Mahiru had also previously intended to imprint other Techniques onto Satoru Gojo, but after testing it out, in the end she gave up on the idea.
—Everyone's soul is different.
Sometimes, forcing another person's Technique onto someone else only produced counterproductive results. Mahiru herself was special, but for most people, the compatibility of a Jujutsu Technique was far more important than quantity.
And so this gave rise to yet another problem that Mahiru had been pondering and fretting over all along.
"Itadori." Mahiru spoke up to ask. "What kind of Technique do you want?"
"Hm?" Itadori was stunned for a moment. "A Technique?"
"Yes, a Technique."
Itadori had no Technique; much of the time he fought purely on the strength of high stats.
The boy's skill slot had always been empty.
How could that do?
With Sukuna gone, Mahiru began to ponder just what sort of Technique would suit Itadori best.
"Or else..." Mahiru thought of the purpose of this trip, and her eyes suddenly lit up. "Or else, how about we give this a try in a bit?..."
"What?" Itadori was completely lost.
He only felt an ominous premonition lingering in his heart. ...Mahiru wasn't cooking up some bad idea again, was she?
____
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