Darkness was all he could see.
Darkness was all he was met with.
Darkness was all he understood.
Maybe it was fitting for someone like him, having committed the sin of tampering with thousands of people's souls to end this cursed cycle. Not even being worthy of passing on into the cycle of reincarnation.
What was he supposed to do now, with an eternity of time to spend with his own thoughts?
People would go insane if left alone with nothing but their own thoughts and no external stimuli.
'Sorry Gramps, I couldn't really keep my promise to you…'
It would be next to an impossible task to still find anyone alive with a semblance of a positive attitude towards him after what he did.
'I've lived for long enough, some rest would be nice…'
These were the last thoughts drifting in the mind of Yuji Itadori before a blast of all his senses assaulted him.
He could smell the most delicious and fragrant food, before it shifted into a putrid and acrid scent, constantly flipping back and forth with no rhyme or reason.
His nerves throughout his body stung and fired off every millisecond, feeling as though tiny pricks danced along his body and then shifting to him feeling as though molten fire was dripping throughout his entire being.
The crackle of noise assaulted him from every direction; loud, soft, quiet, rambunctious, screeching, singing, laughing, crying, slurring, moaning, gasping, shrieking, a thousand overlapping sounds of living and dying that crashed together all at once.
What felt like an eternity of agony and pleasure coursing through his body quickly vanished, just as fast as it had abruptly appeared.
What he felt next was a rough surface laying beneath him, and the smell of damp air.
Opening his eyes slowly, he noticed just how dark the environment around him was, with his eyes quickly adjusting.
"What the hell…" Yuji muttered out, before groaning with a muffled grunt as a migraine assaulted him.
On instinct, he channeled his reverse cursed technique and alleviated the symptoms, letting out a breath of relief, mentally thanking Ieri for that little life hack she loved to abuse.
"Can't remember the last time I had a migraine. Where the hell am I?" He slowly sat up, resting his arm on his lifted knee as he took in his surroundings.
All he could see was a huge room, with the floors and walls made of jagged black rocks. There was no form of life he could see in the room, only the large desolate ground stretching towards the walls of, what he assumed to be, the cave that he was in.
Letting out a sigh, Yuji slowly stood up effortlessly, which gave him a slight pause. Last he remembered, it had been over 200 years since he was able to stand without his knees and back cracking up a storm.
Looking down at his body, he noticed he was wearing his usual outfit, a silver reflective hooded jacket. It helped to keep his identity more lowkey. Even after hundreds of years, he still opted for the same style. Why fix what wasn't broken?
Stretching his neck, he looked around and slowly tried to piece together what was happening.
'I should've been dead already. My body turned into a cursed tool. I definitely didn't possess somebody else, so why am I still alive?'
Lifting his hand, he watched as it was engulfed with his cursed energy, feeling as though he was back in his prime with the amount he possessed.
"Seems like everything is still here, and better than ever." He muttered to himself before searching his pockets, but was left disappointed. "Of course, I have my clothes back but not my phone, just my luck."
Scanning his surroundings one more time, he slightly narrowed his eyes and spotted an opening on one of the sides of the cave, leading to god knows where.
"Well, anywhere is better than here."
With that, he began walking towards the opposite side of the huge room he was in. Lifting the hood behind his head, he covered himself, letting his face be shrouded by his jacket.
"Whatever kind of cave this is, it sure is massive. It should be at least hundreds of meters across." Looking up, he could see the ceiling stretched up even higher as well.
Hands in his pockets, Yuji walked about halfway across the room before stopping abruptly. That was when a low rumbling started to shake the ground beneath his feet.
Looking down, he could see the little pebbles near his shoes dance across the rough surface, skittering around lightly. But it slowly grew more chaotic, the pebbles bouncing around across his shoes and a few feet away as the rumbling grew more and more.
"Doesn't feel like an earthquake… Definitely not a cursed spirit either, I would've noticed one by now. A mining operation?" With how desperate people were getting to find a new fuel source, it wouldn't surprise him if people were digging anywhere to find a trickle of something.
However, that theory only lasted for a fraction of a second as the rumbling grew louder and more chaotic. Several pieces of the rocks along the ceiling fell down and crashed around the cave.
"Definitely not a mining operation…" Yuji said as his eyes tracked to the epicenter of where the rumbling seemed to originate and grow from.
The ground started to crack beneath his feet, causing him to hop slightly to the left as the earth split and fissured out like a disorganised spiderweb.
Slowly, the ground bulged out from the center of the cave as something large seemed to be forcing itself out.
The dark figure rose up from the ground, rising higher and higher as piles of rock and debris fell from its body, leaving large dust plumes to spread from below its body.
Looking up, Yuji calmly assessed whatever it was in front of him.
A large, imposing figure that grew to almost the height of the cave. It had an upper body similar to a human's, with two large black arms on either side of its body resting on the ground helping to support its body. Large, bone like blades jutted out along the forearms of the monster.
Its lower body was larger than the rest of it, extended behind the monster like a long tail, sporting the same bone protrusions along the back of its frame which climbed up the back towards its head.
On top of its head was a singular red eye, staring straight down at Yuji with a malice he was used to seeing directed at him. The monster slowly opened its maw, revealing jagged, sharp teeth as it let out a deafening roar.
"GRAAAOOOOOOORRRRRRR!!!"
The roar caused the cave to shake even more, but the force of its breath pushed away all the accumulating dust that had gathered around its body.
Narrowing his eyes, Yuji slowly took his hand out of his pocket but froze as he saw the ground around the monster slowly crack open as numerous bodies dragged itself out of the ground.
From what he could tell, at least 100 new monsters climbed out of the ground, standing in front of the large one eyed monster like its minions. These new monsters had heads resembling goats, bipedal and were carrying large clubs. The only thing Yuji could put a resemblance to these new monsters on were minotaurs.
A tense silence grew in the room as both sides stood still.
Yuji, deep in thought, trying to figure out what these monsters were since they didn't have a trace of cursed energy within them.
The monsters stayed back, waiting for the first move as the hoard of minotaur looking beasts tensely shuffled their hooves and grip on their weapons. These monsters had one instinctive drive within them, it was to appease the larger monster behind them and to kill.
However, at this moment they hesitated to make the first move. As monsters, their senses and instincts were sharper than that of most races, especially once born in the dungeon. They longed for the surface and never hesitated to kill humans they came across in the dungeon.
Yet they stood still.
The pure feeling of malice and dread that was contained in the human in front of them gave them pause. They didn't know why, they couldn't comprehend why a human could possess such malice and dread inside their body.
The large monster behind the hoard, Balor, also hesitated. It had killed countless adventurers delving deep into the dungeons, trying to reach deeper past its territory. Some might have given it trouble in the past, but they were always in large groups intending to push their way past itself.
Yet, this one human alone seemed different than anything it had encountered in the past.
It was an insult to its very being, an embarrassment that it would ever hesitate in front of a human.
With a loud roar, Balor raised its right arm and slammed it on the ground beside itself, killing a dozen or so of its own allies, but the hoard of monsters didn't care.
They all collectively roared and started charging forward, eyes gleaming red as their hooves left behind deep imprints into the ground from the force of their charge.
Balor started charging forward behind them towards Yuji, reaching its arms up into the sky and intending to crush the human beneath it.
"Just so you know, you attacked first."
Balor could barely hear the words the human spoke out, reaching its ears. Its singular eye narrowed as it watched the human take its hands out of its pockets.
Yuji raised his right hand, stretching two fingers towards the hoard of monsters and Balor behind them, his eyes dead calm and lacking any semblance of emotion behind them.
"Dismantle" (解 Kai)
(Author's note: Quick note here, going forward I'm not 100% sure yet which variation of the cursed techniques I should go with when displaying them in text. I'll expand more on it at the end)
A tense silence stretched out for a second, before an invisible wave passed throughout the room.
That was the last thing the monsters heard before their bodies split apart into dozens of pieces, crashing into a pile of gore before slowly dissipating into the air.
Balor itself stood still before its vision split into two, then four, then eight and more. Its entire body was sliced apart before bursting into a black ashy blast, leaving behind a large glowing rock on the ground.
"They disappear just like cursed spirits, but these rocks…" Yuji lowered his hood and stepped to where the monsters had died, looking at the pool of blood gathered along the ground.
'Cursed spirits leave nothing behind when they die. These monsters disappear just like cursed spirits, but they left behind rocks?' Yuji thought to himself as he saw the hundred or so of glowing rocks left behind in the wake of his attack in place of the monster's bodies.
Picking one up, he tossed it into the air a few times, feeling the hefty weight in them despite the size.
"This is just like Dungeon Quests or the rpg's I used to play." He couldn't help but compare them to the games he played in the past, which became fewer and fewer after a certain finger was consumed.
"Not like I can carry these with me anyway. Especially that one." He pocketed the one rock he was carrying before turning to the huge one left behind by the large one eyed monster.
"... I probably shouldn't but… to hell with it." After having a small internal battle, he walked up to the rock and placed his hand onto its glowing and smooth surface. Within a second, numerous outlines of scissors expanded outwards and covered the surface of the rock.
*SHING*
The glowing rock was quickly sliced apart into tiny pieces, scattering all over the ground as they crumpled away from Yuji.
"If I can't have it, no one can. Can't have anyone stealing my loot." Yuji joked to himself, putting on an indignant look before chuckling it away.
He patted the rock in his pockets before turning and walking on towards the opening in the wall once more, putting the hood of his jacket over his head.
"Well, since I'm in a cave, the only way out is up, of course."
And so Yuji set his trajectory, reaching the opening of the cave and seeing a path that slowly led up.
Still without a clue as to where he was, he didn't spend too long pondering on it and instead just wanted to get out first and foremost. Besides, how long would it even take to get out of a cave?
---------------------------
Authors Note: Welp, new me new fanfic? Been a hot minute since I wrote anything, motivation was a big factor but also just life in general tbh. This new fanfic is also still pretty iffy as it's something I just did spontaneously without a lot of the planning done yet. It was an idea that just came into my head one day and it sort of stuck, leading to me thinking and plotting out inside my head of what it would be like if a Yuji Itadori post JJK Modulo had his story continued somewhere else in a different world.
As for why I chose Danmachi? Well, my other pick was going to be MHA but I'll be honest, that setting has been overdone now and I wanted a different setting that's completely different in terms of culture and environment. MHA would also have too close of a connection to Japan in JJK so it would be a bit of a hindrance when trying to flesh out more of Yuji's character. Sure there's the whole dichotomy of Heroes not killing and Yuji coming in and spamming his domain on Fraud for One, I wanted a bigger disconnect for his character. Danmachi is a complete fantasy world and would barely have anything for Yuji to try to base himself on that would bare any semblance of home. He could try and reason it's a bit similar because of all the familiar names of Gods etc, but that would just be him coping which is something I could explore.
With that spiel out of the way, remember that one author's note in the middle of the chapter that broke your immersion? Here's a continuation of that: What would you guys prefer when it comes to Yuji using his cursed techniques? Just the plain english text, the Kanji/Romaji of them, or both?
"Dismantle" is easy especially for english readers/dub watchers, but "解 Kai" fits with the original and is pretty cool in my opinion. Here's some examples:
Dismantle
解 Kai
Kai (Dismantle)
Dismantle (解 Kai)
Or
解 Kai (Dismantle)
A bonus example:
領域展開 Ryōiki Tenkai (Domain Expansion)
Or
Ryōiki Tenkai (Domain Expansion)
Anyway that's it from me, hope you've enjoyed it and the coming chapters too.
P.S Suggest some good cover pictures too for the fic