Toji let out an annoyed sigh, cracking his neck to the side. Sukuna stood twenty feet away, arms crossed and wearing Itadori's face like a well-fitting mask. The King of Curses bled malevolence into the air, so heavy it pressed against the world itself. Toji couldn't sense cursed energy, but even he felt the weight of it as plainly as the sunlight on his skin.
"So this is the rat squirming in my presence," Sukuna rumbled, his voice low and cavernous, as if it came from the earth itself. Itadori's boyish features twisted under that expression of casual contempt, four eyes glowing with a cruel fire. "How… disappointing. And strange. You don't even possess cursed energy, do you?"
Toji stayed slouched, one hand under his sweatshirt, scratching lazily at his stomach. He glanced aside, checking if anyone else had caught up. Nothing. Just him and this monster. He clicked his tongue. Not part of the plan.
"Nothing to say?" Sukuna tilted his head, mock-innocent. "Uro did say you weren't much of a talker. I suppose I should just get this over with."
His grin widened, rows of teeth far too sharp, far too sharp for a human mouth.
"You talk too much."
Sukuna blinked all four eyes at the words. In that fraction of a heartbeat where his vision shut, Toji moved. His ankle snapped forward, launching his rubber slipper like a bullet.
Sukuna's technique shredded it mid-air, invisible force tearing it apart, but by the time his eyes focused again, Toji was gone. Dust and air distortion were all that marked where he'd been. Then pain.
Toji materialized at his flank, faster than Sukuna expected. His kick blew past the guard and smashed into his jaw. Bone crunched. The King of Curses was launched sideways, his secondary eyes rupturing from the force.
He spun mid-air, planting his feet against the trunk of a massive tree. But Toji didn't give him even a breath.
The moment wood splintered under Sukuna's landing, a fist buried itself in his gut with a muted boom. The blow ripped him through the tree, his body rag-dolling through shattered bark before he could regain control.
"Dismantle!" Sukuna roared. An invisible slash carved through the air, forcing Toji to retreat a half-step or lose half his torso. Only then did Sukuna let himself crash, rolling to his feet. His four eyes were wide now, his composure cracked by the surprise and sudden brutality.
Toji tapped his foot against the ground, a chuckle leaving his lips. His hair fell to the side as he tilted his head, scarred mouth pulling into a grin. Black eyes bored into Sukuna's.
"Did you really think I was running because I was scared of you?"
Sukuna didn't answer. His hands already glowed as he knitted flesh back together with reverse cursed technique. The damage hadn't been devastating, but enough to rattle him. The man in front of him hit harder and faster than most sorcerers he'd faced in two lifetimes.
But that wasn't the problem. The problem was the absence. No cursed energy to track. In high-speed combat, sorcerers read each other through that flow. Lose your eyes, and cursed energy perception was your lifeline. Against this man, that lifeline was gone. He was like fighting a ghost. Hard to see. Unpredictable.
And when you lost sight of him—
"I ran because I was not being paid to fight," Toji admitted, grin sharp. "I was only paid to observe, but I suppose those terms are going to be changed."
Toji didn't wait for Sukuna to finish mending. He lunged, faster than the eye could follow, the ground erupting beneath his bare feet. Sukuna tried to track him with his eyes, but they were in the middle of a forest and Toji was at home in it. He leaped from one tree to the next, bouncing off them at unpredictable and mind-bending angles, his motion a blur even to Sukuna.
Sukuna finished his healing, his head pivoting, which allowed him a split second to catch the blur of movement. He barely got his arms up before the next hit landed. Toji's fist hammered into his guard, the shockwave rattling through the clearing and buckling the earth beneath them. The bones in Sukuna's forearms groaned from the hit.
The King of Curses grunted, but Toji was already moving once more. He flipped away, and using that same nonsensical bouncing movement, he appeared behind Sukuna, and this time, there was no guard to stop or slow him down. His fist ripped through Sukuna's defense with a follow-up hook that collapsed his ribs and sent him skidding back, carving a trench through dirt and stone.
Sukuna's grin had sharpened, even through blood and shattered teeth. He spat crimson into the dirt, four eyes narrowing. "You'll pay for that, worm." He waved his hand, and invisible slashes howled through the air, dozens, crisscrossing in lethal arcs. Trees split and toppled. Earth groaned and sheared apart, and Toji dived into the attacks.
"You can see it?!" Sukuna exlaimed in suprise.
Toji didn't reply, too busy escaping from every line of fire. Bouncing between trees like a monkey. Each time Sukuna thought he had the angle, Toji was already elsewhere, darting in from the blind side, a phantom without cursed energy to track. A ghost who dealt disgusting damage the moment you lost sight of him.
Sukuna was so busy looking for Toji once more that when he finally appeared, he did so right in the last place he expected. Directly in front of him. Toji shot a knee forward, ramming it into Sukuna's chin, and snapping his head back with a sickening crack. Before gravity even reclaimed him, Toji caught his face and hurled him into the ground. The ground cratered, dust and splinters erupting as Sukuna's body punched through earth.
He rolled just in time to avoid Toji's heel stomping down where his skull had been. The impact left a crater the size of a house, shockwaves scattering debris for yards. Toji turned to him with a grin that was all wide teeth before the dust covered them.
Sukuna snarled, his voice a jagged growl. He fired off another "Dismantle," carving through the smoke, but Toji slipped past the killing edge like it wasn't there.
Then Toji was inside his guard again, grin wide, black eyes lit with that feral joy only he understood. His elbow came down like a hammer, caving Sukuna's shoulder into his chest. Cartilage tore, bone cracked. Sukuna hissed through clenched teeth as his body cratered deeper. Still he held himself up, even as his body dug in to his ankles.
Toji leaned close, breath steady, almost conversational as he raised another strike.
"Is this all the King of Curses has to offer?"
The next punch cratered the earth again, driving Sukuna's body further into the ground. Flesh ruptured, ichor and blood spraying up in thick arcs.
For the first time in centuries, Sukuna felt the creeping edge of something he hadn't tasted in lifetimes, pressure. Not fear, not yet, but the undeniable weight of a man who fought like he couldn't be stopped, who couldn't be read, couldn't be sensed. A predator that belonged outside the rules of their world.
He laughed in the face of it.
It was a mad joyful laugh filled with exhilaration as he lay in the crater formed by his body. His reverse cursed technique sparked frantically, burning through cursed energy to repair what Toji had already ruined. His laughter continued, bubbling up between coughs of blood, manic and furious.
"You'll regret showing me your tricks, little insect. I'll peel the meat from your bones, as well as the answers to your existence." He said and it was less a threat, and more of a casual note.
Toji straightened, rolling his shoulders, his grin stretched wide, scar tissue pulling at the edges.
"You'll have to catch me first."
Sukuna's laugh continued, a mad cackling. "Look around you, worm!"
Only then did Toji look around, and as the dust began to clear, he saw exactly what Sukuna meant, what he talked about. The forest was no more. At least not as it used to be. What used to be towering trees had been cut down to stumps. All around them was a cleared field.
Sukuna staggered up, cracking his neck to the side. "The playing field has been evened with this. There would be no more jumping about for you. So show me what else you have to offer, and I'll devour it and spit its bones back at you."
Toji looked around him once again and let out an annoyed grunt as he realized that all the carelessly fired invisible slashes had never been truly aimed at him, but at his supposed environmental advantage. They fought alike, Toji was coming to realize. Sukuna and Gojo Satoru. They even thought alike.
Toji locked his fingers together and pulled, cracking them. He was unfazed by the flattened wasteland around them. Sukuna might've thought clearing the trees would handicap him, but it didn't. Satoru's previous death was a testament to that little fact. So instead, Toji's grin only widened as he spoke.
"Level the forest, level the ground, it doesn't matter. It simply means you're just easier to hit now."
He blurred forward, no warning, no cursed energy to give away the strike. Sukuna threw up his arms just in time to catch a fist, but the impact ripped through his block. Bone splintered, muscle tore. The King of Curses went skidding back again, trenches carving beneath his heels.
Toji spat blood to the side as the King of Curses grinned at him. Sukuna's guard had broken too easily because it had been designed to. He had only blocked with a single hand. In that split second where his guard had broken, his other fist had lashed out simultaneously, slamming into Toji's jaw.
Sukuna's grin widened as he roughly swung his arm horizontally. "Dismantle!" A vertical slash ripped through the air, fast and merciless. Toji dove beneath the invisible strike, his senses screaming danger and death at him as the atmospheric pressure changed and space was forced to twist for something unnatural to pass through.
Sukuna followed with another, then another, each swing cutting the earth like paper. But once more, Toji weaved between them, dirt and debris geysering behind him as he dodged frantically till all of a sudden, Sukuna appeared before him. He had been so focused on dodging that he had lost sight of the real threat.
Sukuna gently placed a hand on his chest, four eyes wild with fury and joy, then he called out. "Cleave!"
Toji felt it more than he saw it, his instincts howling death. He twisted, but not fast enough. Sukuna's palm rested on his chest. A red line tore open across his torso a second later, sending blood erupting in a violent spray that stained the destroyed ground red.
The cut should have been fatal. Should have split him in two. But Sukuna had not accounted for how tough Toji's body was. Cleave worked by automatically adjusting its output by measuring the curse energy Sukuna's opponent possessed and cutting through it. Against a foe without curse energy, the technique was forced to use an estimate. A wrong one.
Sukuna had also not accounted for Toji's ridiculous instinct in battle that led him to move before his mind even registered the hit or processed the pain that should've come with a point-blank Cleave. He grabbed Sukuna's wrist, yanking him forward, and drove his forehead into the incarnated sorcerer's face.
Bone met bone with a crack like thunder. Sukuna reeled, one set of eyes bursting in a spray of blood. Toji didn't let go. He shifted his grip, snaring Sukuna's arm like a vice, then twisted. The bone snapped, an unnatural bend jutting through his flesh and Sukuna was forced to scream in pain for the first time.
"Cleave that," Toji spat, blood dripping down his chin.
Sukuna roared, a guttural sound that rattled the clearing. His body healed even as Toji broke it, flesh crawling back into place, bone grinding against bone as reverse cursed technique burned white-hot. He twisted, ignoring the grip Toji had on his arm, and he lashed out with a kick, but Toji immediately released his arm and caught his leg mid-swing, then he made a pivot, and using the momentum, he hurled him away.
The King of Curses sailed through the air like a rag doll, smashing into the earth hard enough to crater it.
Toji landed on him before he could rise, heel stomping into his chest. The ground quaked. Sukuna gagged as his sternum caved in, blood flooding his throat.
But he laughed through it, choking and manic. "Yes… YES! That's it! Show me the strength of your abhorrent existence!"
Toji didn't waste words. He dropped into the crater, fists hammering down like piledrivers. Each strike was a cannon blast, shattering ribs, rupturing organs, breaking the same bones over and over as Sukuna's healing struggled to keep up.
The earth around them warped and split under the sheer force.
Sukuna tried to swing another "Dismantle" at point-blank, but Toji slammed his elbow into the side of his head, knocking his aim wide. The slash carved the horizon open instead, a mountain in the distance collapsing under its wake.
Pinned, battered, bleeding, Sukuna's grin only stretched wider, blood and spit bubbling from his mouth.
"Is that all you have to offer?" he rasped, half-mad as Toji slowed to a stop, panting for breath as he watched the King of Curses stare up at him, mad laughter bubbling through broken lips as his body healed before him, and Toji's face fluctuated between a massive grin and a frown.
He could not sense cursed energy, so he had too little of an idea of the actual amount Sukuna possessed. He could not read how high or low his output was, yet considering how much the King of Curses had healed himself, logic and experience dictated that he should've either been running out of cursed energy or been too low for whatever cursed energy he had to matter. Yet as he stared into the face that was rapidly healing beneath him, something told him that he would need more than his fists for this.
Yet there was a disadvantage to opening his inventory. When he tried, when he really tried. When he moved at speeds that burned his legs, where friction threatened to rip skin from meat, not even Sukuna could keep up, and that was an advantage.
His ability to be near invisible. The moment he held a cursed tool in his hands, that ability was lost. Even if Sukuna did not see him, he would be able to sense him, sense the tool in his hands.
Yet did he have a choice? He felt the inventory curse in his gut roll and squirm in anticipation.
Sukuna saw something in his eyes, a change in demeanor, and his laugh increased. "You have still not gone all out, have you!" He buckled his hips and Toji was forced backwards, where he flipped and landed on his feet as Sukuna staggered out of the crater he found himself.
"You fight much like that girl," Sukuna started, and for seemingly the first time, he truly looked at Toji's face. "You look just like her as well."
Sukuna spat blood into the dirt, the crimson staining his teeth as he grinned wider than before. His flesh stitched itself back together with sickening speed, the reverse cursed technique burning like wildfire through his ruined torso. His voice came out ragged, yet full of exhilaration.
"Like an animal. No, worse. You fight like something that should not exist. All instinct and motion. All marrow and bones." He flexed his arm, the one Toji had broken, and it snapped back into place with a grotesque crunch.
Toji rolled his shoulders, his chest no longer bleeding from the point-blank Cleave. His body screamed, but his grin didn't fade. If anything, it grew sharper. He had not fought such an opponent since the last time he clashed with Gojo Jiki, and not even that prodigy had been this willing to eat his attacks.
His black eyes gleamed with that same feral joy that had haunted sorcerers for years. That had earned him his name, his title.
"However, you should've realized that would not be enough. Not if you want to kill me and get away from this island. So put your sweat and blood into this!"
The air shuddered as Toji blurred forward. No cursed energy. No warning. Just a sudden, brutal collision. His knee slammed into Sukuna's ribs, driving the King of Curses sideways. The impact cracked stone underfoot like glass, but Sukuna held his stance.
Then he snarled, swinging his arm wide. "DISMANTLE!"
The world split open in a cascade of invisible blades, wider than the previous one. Toji ducked, twisted, rolled, his body moving with instinct that mocked the very idea of technique. One slash grazed his cheek, carving it open to the bone, but he was already behind Sukuna before the blood could even spill.
He locked his arm around Sukuna's body then heaved, lifting the King of Curses up, before throwing him overhead. Sukuna slammed into the ground headfirst and to the sound of his spine like a tree snapping in half. Bone shattered. Sukuna froze in place as the upper part of his body was buried in the ground.
A single thing rang through Toji's head. He needed to finish this. He opened his mouth, when all of a sudden he felt it. His senses screamed out to him as something tore its way through the air on a clear line for him. A giant lance of blood. Toji merely ducked, twisting to the side, and allowing it to hurl past in one lazy motion as he searched for the new opponent.
He caught her, the woman he had seen force-feeding Itadori Yuji Sukuna's finger. Kenjaku. The ancient sorcerer stood a fair meter away, hands clapped and outstretched, yet despite the fact the attack had missed, the sorcerer didn't seem worried in the slightest.
"Uro!"
Space twisted and bent. The air shimmering like warped glass as the lance of blood suddenly changed direction mid-air. Toji had only a second to widen his eyes and raise his guard before it slammed into him. The force of the technique sent him flying as it tried its best to tear past his heavenly restriction, hurtling him into the few clumps of trees outside the clearing Sukuna had made.
Sukuna tore himself free of the ground a second later as his spine healed. He shook the debris of sand and stone out of his hair as he turned to Kenjaku, ignoring the near-naked woman floating mid-air a few meters away.
"What is the meaning of this, Kenjaku?"
Kenjaku shrugged as they moved closer. "You've had enough fun for yourself, old friend. I would've let you continue, but your opponent is not one you should play with."
Before Sukuna could answer, a grunt cut through the air. Toji stepped out of the dust, clicking his tongue, annoyance flashing across his scarred face as he looked at the three sorcerers. He rolled his shoulders, lowering his stance, black eyes cold. A crater in his forearm, from where the lance of blood had only managed to pierce skin and meat.
"So it's three sorcerers now."
Yet it was not the injury that brought a frown to Kenjaku's face, it was the sight of the purple curse coiled around Toji's body. Its maw opened, and the hilt of a weapon jutted out, and Toji stood alone in the clearing, grin sharp.
"I'm going to wipe out the Gojos' savings at this point."