If there was a customer service hotline for reincarnation, Akira would be screaming at the manager right now.
Instead, he was dragging his pathetic, gelatinous body through the festering slime of a dark Tokyo alleyway. He didn't have hands anymore. Or legs, really. He was a horrific amalgamation of shadow, sludge, and a few twitching appendages that felt like a cross between spider legs and broken fingers.
He spat out a mouthful of muddy rainwater, though he wasn't even sure if he actually had a mouth, or just a jagged tear in his face that served the same purpose.
Fuck my life, he thought, dragging himself behind a rusted dumpster as the sound of footsteps echoed at the end of the alley. Actually, scratch that. I don't even have a life anymore. I'm literally a walking clump of bad vibes.
It had been exactly seven days since he woke up in this fresh hell. Seven days of crawling through the grime, eating garbage, and hiding in the darkest, dampest corners of the city.
At first, he thought it was a nightmare. Then, he thought maybe he had been reincarnated as some sort of low-level slime monster in a generic fantasy world. But three days ago, he had been hiding in the rafters of an abandoned parking garage when two teenagers in dark, high-collared uniforms walked in.
He remembered the conversation vividly.
"The Window reported a Grade 3 around here," the black-haired kid had sighed, looking bored. "Don't let your guard down. We need to exorcise it before the veil drops."
Grade 3. Exorcise. The Veil. It hit him like a freight train. He wasn't in some RPG fantasy. He was in Jujutsu Kaisen.
And he wasn't the protagonist. He wasn't a prodigy sorcerer with a busted innate technique. He was the absolute lowest tier of cannon fodder—a Grade 4 Cursed Spirit. A creature born from human stress, fear, and negativity. He was the kind of garbage that a first-year student would instantly vaporize just to warm up.
A sudden, wet crunch snapped Akira out of his miserable thoughts.
He froze, pressing his pathetic, squishy body flat against the brick wall. The stench of rotting meat and sulfur washed over him. Slowly, he peeked around the edge of the dumpster.
Less than ten feet away was another curse. It looked like a deformed, hairless dog, but its head was entirely made of gnashing, human-like teeth. It was at least three times Akira's size, and it was currently tearing into the remains of a stray cat, its foul Cursed Energy radiating in the damp air.
Akira held his breath—or whatever the curse equivalent of breathing was.
This was the worst part of the last seven days. It wasn't just the sorcerers he had to worry about. Curses were cannibalistic. The strong ate the weak to get stronger. And right now, Akira was the weakest piece of shit on the block. Over the past week, he had barely survived three different encounters by squeezing into sewer grates where the bigger freaks couldn't reach him.
Just finish eating and leave, Akira prayed to whatever twisted god oversaw this universe. Please, just fuck off.
The dog-curse paused. It dropped the mangled cat.
Its head snapped in Akira's direction. It didn't have eyes, but it didn't need them. It could smell his pathetic, flickering Cursed Energy.
Shit. The beast shrieked—a sound like scraping metal—and lunged.
Panic hijacked Akira's instincts. He didn't try to fight; he just scrambled. He pushed off the brick wall, his spindly, finger-like legs frantically clawing at the wet asphalt. He darted toward a narrow crack in the alley wall, but he was too slow.
A heavy, clawed foot slammed down on his back, pinning him to the ground.
Agony flared through Akira's entire being. It wasn't physical pain like a broken bone; it felt like his very soul was being shredded. The dog-curse loomed over him, its massive jaws opening wide, dripping acidic saliva onto Akira's form.
No, Akira's mind screamed. No way. I am not dying in an alleyway as a fucking appetizer!
Pure, unadulterated rage flared up inside him. If he was a monster made of negative emotion, then he was going to use it. All the frustration, the fear, the absolute bullshit of the last seven days boiled over.
As the dog-curse snapped its jaws down to tear him in half, Akira didn't brace for impact. Instead, he forced every single drop of his pathetic Cursed Energy into the jagged maw on his own face. He twisted his grotesque body upward, ignoring the tearing of his own flesh, and sank his teeth directly into the underbelly of the larger curse.
The dog-curse thrashed, howling in surprise. Akira didn't let go. He bit harder, violently ripping a chunk of raw, purple Cursed Energy straight out of the beast's stomach.
It tasted like ash and rotten blood. Akira swallowed it anyway.
The larger curse stumbled back, its form flickering as it bled out black miasma. It was dying.
Akira collapsed onto the wet pavement, his own body failing, barely holding its shape. He had won, but he was bleeding out too. His vision began to blur, the alleyway fading into darkness.
So this is it, he thought bitterly. What a joke.
But just as his consciousness began to slip, a sharp, mechanical chime rang out in his mind. The dark alleyway was suddenly illuminated by a glowing, translucent blue screen floating right in front of his face.
[Host Condition Critical. Vitality at 4%.]
[Foreign Cursed Energy detected in Host's system.]
[Condition Met: First Blood.]
[Initializing The Devourer System...]
[Notice: Grade 4 Cursed Energy consumed. Initiating repair and evolution process. Do you wish to extract the target's traits?]
[ Y / N ]