Kagoshima Chuo Station, the southernmost Shinkansen stop in Japan. A few minutes had passed since a hellish landscape unfolded: the station, which serves twenty thousand people daily and is the largest in the prefecture, was blown away, and the massive Ferris wheel of Amu Plaza Kagoshima was snapped at its base, rolling around like a murderous unicycle.
Dispatched into this catastrophe with the utmost haste were the students of Tokyo Jujutsu High—specifically, the three students and one animal left behind while Yuta and Hakari were away.
Kirara Hoshi, Maki Zen'in, Toge Inumaki, and Panda. These elite Grade 1 sorcerers had been teleported by Gojo into the skies above Kagoshima. Even as they began their freefall, they did nothing but complain, utterly unfazed.
"That Satoru... he said 'I don't know Kagoshima's geography well, so I'm dropping you right above the destination!' but he literally meant way up in the sky. Did he think there were skyscrapers here to catch us?"
Maki Zen'in spoke as she descended acrobatically, leaping from one pocket of air resistance to another as if they were solid surfaces.
Beside her, Toge Inumaki fell straight down, surrendering to gravity until the very last second. Just before hitting the ground, he commanded himself to "Stop," applying an abnormal level of braking force to land perfectly.
Panda thudded down next to him. Since his weight was incredibly light compared to his physical durability, he remained unscathed without needing to do anything at all.
As for Kirara, she had marked the ground with "Gacrux" and herself with "Imai." By skillfully using her technique's "Prohibition of Approach," she landed softly like Toge, completely out of danger.
The Bitz swarming across Kagoshima lunged at them like ferocious beasts—only to immediately collide with one another as if pulled by a vacuum, reduced to a comical heap of squirming bodies.
"Oh, as expected of Kirara's nonsensical technique. they can't handle it at all."
"Maki, isn't that a little mean? My technique isn't 'nonsensical.' It's just maidenly, a total surprise-kill, and a bit complex and mysterious!"
"That's basically the same thing!"
"No it is nooooot!"
Kirara pouted, but her technique, Love Rendezvous, was a powerful conceptual ability that certainly earned Maki's "nonsensical" label.
It allowed her to mark her own cursed energy or that of others with the names of the stars that make up the Southern Cross. These markings were guaranteed to hit. The first rule stated that to approach someone with a marked name, one had to move through the star names in order of their distance from Earth. The second rule dictated that "attraction" would occur between those marked with the same star name, with the side possessing higher cursed energy exerting a stronger pull.
Even with that explanation, many would find it incomprehensible. Simply put, it was a traditional, orthodox form of sorcery akin to astrology, made complicated only by its modern stylistic arrangement.
Furthermore, this technique, bolstered by multiple complex "Binding Vows," possessed an extreme level of forced authority that ordinary strength could not resist.
Additionally, Kirara's application of the technique was cunning and merciless, having been honed under the tactical tutelage of expert combatants like Toji Fushiguro and Yu Haibara at the college.
Demonstrating that prowess, Kirara successfully pulled the nearby Bitz together by branding them all with the star name "Imai." Then, she introduced "something else" that had also been marked with "Imai."
"Here, a present for you."
"Wh—!?"
She pulled an object from her jacket. It was painted a cute shade of pink, but no matter how one looked at it...
"An incendiary grenade? Your ideas are as brutal as ever, Kirara. Is it safe? It's not going to catch me on fire, right? Panda is strictly flammable."
"Salmon, salmon..."
"This wasn't my idea, it was Mr. Toji's! I mean, sure, I use it all the time now that he taught me, but still!"
Indeed, what Kirara had thrown was a TH3 incendiary grenade, a favorite of the US military, imbued with cursed energy. Drawn in by the "attraction" of the Bitz, it slammed into the cluster at high speed. It was a genuine weapon of war, capable of incinerating everything with a thermite reaction reaching three thousand degrees.
Toji had once given her the "helpful" advice: 'Your technique basically means you can throw homing bullets as much as you want, right? That makes a grenade a mini-missile.' After much thought, she had arrived at the solution of acclimating incendiary grenades to cursed energy through a simplified "Bath." Her battle style had since become so explosive that the twenty-seven-year-old man-child Gojo teased her by calling her "Bomberman."
However, the effectiveness of this tactic was terrifying. With just a few tossed grenades, the Bitz were incinerated, leaving not even a bone behind.
Learning from the deaths of their comrades, other Bitz attempted to eliminate Kirara's group from extreme long-range, firing Piercing Blood and cursed energy blasts. But the remaining three sorcerers weren't about to let that happen.
"Twist."
With that single word, Toge Inumaki—a Cursed Speech user who had become capable of handling powerful commands after mastering Reverse Cursed Technique—deflected every incoming shot in a random direction to protect his allies.
And using the brief window of invincibility Toge created, Panda's strongest form unleashed a retaliatory strike.
Panda was the masterpiece of Masamichi Yaga. While officially a "mutant," the Special Grades had mostly figured out he was something else. He was a "Living Cursed Corpse" capable of generating his own cursed energy by housing the soul information of three siblings: the older sister, the older brother, and Panda. By switching the primary soul, he could transform his physical body.
Panda Mode was the default. Gorilla Mode, the "older brother," was the physical-heavy form for short-term combat.
And then there was the shy "older sister": Triceratops Mode, a high-output, glass-cannon form that disregarded the consequences.
Her ability consisted of firing a full-power homing beam of cursed energy at every hostile entity captured by her giant eyeballs.
"My big sister is shy, you see! Anyone rude enough to enter her field of vision gets slaughtered out of pure embarrassment!"
"Teriyaki, sea cucumber, broad bean."
"To be honest, Panda, I don't really get it either. You say she's shy, but your brother says 'That's just called being hysterical'—ow! My butt! The beam hit my butt!?"
"Probably because you talked trash about your sister?"
The first-years exchanged casual banter, but the firepower of Panda's Triceratops Mode was the real deal.
The beams, possessing high tracking capabilities, punched through the Bitz without collateral damage. The impact was enough to kill them two or three times over, dealing enough damage to force them to stop and focus entirely on regeneration. Once the targets were stationary, Maki dashed forward to deliver the finishing blow.
Maki moved across the battlefield with such incredible speed that a normal sorcerer would never believe she was using a physical body unenhanced by cursed energy; she even trailed slight shockwaves in her wake. At first glance, she appeared to be unarmed, but she reached into a "pouch with a 200% little-girl aesthetic" slung across her shoulder. She "thrust her arm in" and drew a blade that clearly should not have fit inside such a small bag.
The sword itself was a "cursed greatsword that inflicts unhealable wounds on the human body." It was part of a collection the cursed tool fanatic Toji Fushiguro had scouted from around the world. He had bought it for his private collection after grumbling, "This is only useful for killing people, and usually, anyone hit by this would die instantly anyway, so who cares if it heals? I'll take it."
It made sense; the cursed technique imbued in it was an extremely inferior version of the Split Soul Katana Toji favored. While it could "wound the soul," that effect was limited to humans. Against objects or cursed spirits, it was merely a "sword with a decent amount of cursed energy." It wouldn't even work on a grizzly bear; depending on the user, one could easily lose to a wild animal.
In other words, no matter what it was used for, the sad flamberge was haunted by the thought: 'Wouldn't the Split Soul Katana just be better?'
However, that display-piece sword had been handed over to Maki after Yuta Okkotsu reported the Bitz's resurrection.
The feat of carrying such a massive sword was made possible by the "Magical Mai-chan Pouch," a Grade 1 cursed tool created by the magical half of the Zen'in sisters, Mai Zen'in. Creating it required a heavy cost: she had to be in peak physical and mental condition, "transform" into her best state, and then spend so much energy making it that she'd be bedridden for a while. Essentially a four-dimensional pocket, this tool featured a security function: 'Anyone can put things in, but only the rightful owner of the pouch can take them out.'
Due to the heavy cost and the "little girl" design, only three exist in the world: those belonging to Mai, Maki, and Naoya. As for Naoya, he simply keeps his in his room as a convenient warehouse while asking, "Can I borrow this until I die?" So, in terms of actually carrying them around, only Mai and Maki use them.
This "disappointing" flamberge had finally found its purpose. When Maki swung it at a Bitz, its only redeeming quality—its anti-personnel lethality—was fully unleashed. The strike tore through the Bitz's soul, causing instant death.
"Oh, this isn't half bad!"
Maki spoke happily as she continued to lop off the heads of the Bitz one after another. She looked like a surreal, amusing presence—something out of a Western game with a "Killer Magical Girl" mod installed. But for the Bitz being decapitated in one hit, it was anything but funny.
As soon as they finished regenerating, they desperately tried to leap away to create distance and open fire on Maki. However, they were "bunched up" along with the corpses of their kin and their still-living comrades.
"Too bad for you."
The last thing they heard was that sentence, spoken using the Melanie Method.
Immediately after, high-speed incendiary grenades flew in and incinerated every last bit of their flesh. The unprecedented terror that had struck Kagoshima was quelled by the total elimination of every single terrorist.
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