The tentacles surged forward.
Squelch, squelch, squelch—
Slick and wet, the sound of mucus filled the air as crimson appendages coiled and writhed, converging on Miwa from every direction.
Every hair on Miwa's back stood on end.
What the HELL, this is so gross and WRONG!!!
The girl grimaced and scrambled backward, retreating from the tentacles as fast as her legs would carry her, her expression completely fallen apart.
The tentacles struck.
She hacked at them with her blade — she could cut them. But they were too quick, too numerous. Sever one, and three more snaked in to replace it. There was no end to them.
The gap between her Cursed Energy and Mahiko's was simply too vast.
She kept retreating, but the space left to retreat into was shrinking fast.
Miwa gritted her teeth and leveled her blade, coating it in Cursed Energy, and unleashed Shinkage-ryū: Slash once more — cutting down a whole swath of oncoming tentacles. The severed ends sprayed mucus all over her, but at least she'd carved out a tiny pocket of space.
"That was impressive~— but you'd better watch your back, okay~?"
Mahiko's voice drifted over from ahead, breezy and unbothered.
Miwa instinctively spun around — and discovered that two plump little rabbits had appeared on the bookshelf behind her at some point, looking almost cute at first glance.
Rabbits?
Miwa blinked.
Then the memory slammed back into her — the intelligence report had mentioned it. This blue-haired Cursed Spirit could weaponize rabbits.
She whipped back around and swung her blade to cut them down.
But that single moment of hesitation had already cost her.
Both rabbits' mouths split apart into gaping maws, and from inside each one, several tentacles came boring out — wrapping around Miwa's waist and hoisting her clean off the ground.
"—?!!"
IS THIS A DEVOURING BEAST OR WHAT?!
Mucus soaked through her clothes, and that icy, slippery sensation pressed directly against the skin of her waist. When she struggled, her hands brushed the surface of the tentacles — warm, wet, soft, pulsing — and her skin crawled, her stomach lurched, every hair on her body standing straight up.
And it was precisely that visceral, bodily revulsion and horror that detonated something inside Miwa in this one instant — a burst of Cursed Energy output that blew past her usual limit—
"GET OFF ME!!—"
One slash.
Cursed Energy swept outward and obliterated both the rabbits and the tentacles alike.
Thud — Miwa crashed to the floor.
She hadn't even caught her breath before more tentacles were already crawling toward her. Ignoring the burning ache in her arms, she hauled herself upright and slashed again, cutting them down.
"Can you please stop attacking me like THAT?!" Miwa screamed.
"Well, you just look so easy to pick on, big sis." Mahiko giggled. "Keep going, keep going — but you're drifting farther from me, you know~"
She was right. The distance between them had been growing.
That was because Miwa had been choosing to fall back each time the tentacles came at her. Every step backward was a step further from Mahiko.
The terms of the bet were: touch Mahiko with her blade.
The greater the distance, the harder that became.
And it wasn't just the distance.
Miwa could feel her right hand — the one gripping the blade — trembling. Not from fear. From sheer muscular exhaustion. She hadn't had a large reserve of Cursed Energy to begin with, and the urgency and recklessness of the fight had been burning through it fast. Both her Cursed Energy and her body were failing rapidly.
"At this rate you'll keep falling behind until you lose. I'll tell you in advance — if you do lose, I won't hurt you or the others. But I might not let you leave so quickly. You, and everyone else — especially you in particular — might need to stay and help me with a few more experiments before I set you free~"
Mahiko tilted her head and smiled. "Is that really what you want? It'd be better to just go all in, wouldn't it? Use everything you have — see if you can break through my tentacles. That would make for a much more satisfying fight."
Miwa knew she was right.
A war of attrition was useless.
She didn't have time to drag this out.
How much longer could her Cursed Energy hold out against this tentacle onslaught? How many more full-force swings did she have left in her?
Ten?
Five?
She'd be lucky to manage five.
The only solution was to pour every last drop of her remaining strength and Cursed Energy into one final charge.
This one time. Win or lose — everything on this.
Click.
A single deep breath.
Miwa sheathed her long blade.
She lowered herself into a crouch, hand closing around the hilt, and settled once again into the draw-and-slash ready stance. Her eyes were utterly serious — her gaze locked with Mahiko's across the room, like sparks striking between them.
Jujutsu sorcerer.
It was a dangerous profession. A brutal one.
In truth, even many people with the ability to use Cursed Energy chose not to become sorcerers — because becoming a sorcerer meant fighting Curses, meant walking through danger without end. Almost no sorcerer ever died peacefully in old age. Which meant that the gift for jujutsu was itself a kind of curse.
Miwa understood that.
Other people became sorcerers for their own reasons. Some for the honor of a clan. Some so they could reach out a hand to protect others when it mattered most. They each had their own conviction.
So what was Miwa's conviction?
Her reason for becoming a sorcerer was simply that she was broke. She needed money to put her two younger brothers through school.
That was it. That was all.
Click.
The blade slid one inch from the scabbard — a cold flash of steel.
In this moment, the girl gathered every ounce of her focus onto the blade.
In this moment, she prepared to offer up everything — every bit of the life she had poured into this sword.
BOOM—
Mahiko blinked.
Miwa erupted. She moved so fast she left an afterimage, her feet cratering the floor with the force of her launch. She became a streak of white light, threading through the tentacles like an arrow, hurtling toward Mahiko at a speed that surpassed anything she'd shown before.
The tentacles lunged — and missed. They scrambled to give chase, but Miwa's speed in this single instant had left her previous limits far behind. The tentacles couldn't catch her.
In the next heartbeat, Mahiko understood exactly what Miwa had done. Her eyes went wide. "Hey, how did you—"
A Binding Vow.
Miwa had forged another Binding Vow.
In the original story Miwa had used this very technique — so Mahiko recognized it almost immediately. Miwa had pledged the condition of never being able to hold a sword again for the rest of her life, and in exchange, this final draw would be amplified to its absolute maximum.
Yes.
In this moment, to save the people in this room, Miwa had unhesitatingly surrendered her own future as a sorcerer.
"Miwa... if your studies get too hard, you can always come back here for school, you know. Or honestly, work isn't something you have to..."
"Oh, Miwa, you're still training at this hour? You can take a break, you know.... Ha, is that so — but honestly, talent for jujutsu isn't something you can force.... I think, for people like us, it's okay to ease up a little sometimes..."
Yeah. It really is hard.
Yeah. You really can't force it.
Miwa Kasumi understood better than anyone — she was ordinary. She really was just an ordinary person.
She had none of the grand ideals others carried. None of the burning, desperate hunger.
She was just a completely ordinary person who wanted to live each day a little better. A person like her, among all the sorcerers — she was the odd one out.
But—
Ordinary didn't mean mediocre.
Not having a dream that tore at your heart and kept you up at night — that didn't mean she would be a coward when life and death stared her in the face.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
She had never dreamed of becoming a hero. But she would keep swinging her blade.
She would never pick a fight beyond her reach. But that didn't mean she would falter here.
Because ordinary doesn't mean mediocre.
Because an ordinary person, for the sake of her own ordinary wishes, can give absolutely everything.
The wish to simply live each ordinary day a little better — that wish, plain as it was, could burn just as fiercely as any other.
And that was why she had become a sorcerer.
"Shinkage-ryū — Draw Slash!"
The girl cried out as she arrived before Mahiko, Cursed Energy erupting skyward.
The long blade cleared the scabbard.
This was a strike amplified by a Binding Vow. A strike that offered up everything. One hit — and it would all be over.
She was certain of it: if this blade landed, the fight was finished.
But in the next instant, a voice reached her ear.
It sounded impossibly slow — and yet it had already slipped into her ears before her blade left the scabbard.
"No Binding Vows shall be formed."
Her Binding Vow vanished.
The speed of her blade plummeted.
Mahiko stepped backward — easily, effortlessly — and the blow sailed past her. The blade cut only air, not even grazing the hem of her clothing.
In the same instant, the strength drained from Miwa's body and she pitched forward. Slick tentacles erupted from her shadow, seizing her limbs and hoisting her into the air.
"Why..." Only now did Miwa piece together what had just happened. Her face crumpled into the most pitiful expression — somewhere between devastated and about to cry. "You cheated..."
"Ahem." Mahiko shook her head, covered her mouth, and coughed loudly twice. She raised her hand and looked — it was covered in blood.
She cracked a rueful smile.
She had to admit it...
Miwa Kasumi looked so mild-mannered and sensible — and she was just as reckless as the rest of them.
It wasn't that the Binding-Vow-enhanced strike could have threatened her. It was that Miwa's use of that Binding Vow would have harmed Miwa herself. She would have lost the ability to hold a sword, to use Shinkage-ryū — her life as a sorcerer would have been over on the spot.
Mahiko had absolutely no intention of letting her exit the stage of jujutsu this early.
She had said it clearly — she wouldn't hurt her or the others. And yet Miwa had just gone ahead and sacrificed her own future anyway... that was terrifying.
It had forced Mahiko to quickly speak up, using Cursed Speech to cancel Miwa's Binding Vow before it could take effect.
Because play was play — but she had no desire for Miwa to spend the rest of her life unable to touch a blade, forever cut off from the world of jujutsu sorcerers, all because of her.
That would completely contradict what she wanted.
Well, it was fine. She had anticipated something like this long ago and prepared for it accordingly. A normal person would never have been able to react in time to Miwa's self-detonating gambit. But Mahiko was not a normal person.
Mahiko could react in time.
[Author's Note: This chapter is around 3k words. I recently reworked my outline and cut or revised a few chapters of my draft stockpile, so as for whether I can squeeze out another chapter tonight... I'll try! Stay tuned!]
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