A quick note before we proceed: Mahiko never actually taught Junpei anything accurate.
Purely for her own amusement, she had fed him a completely fabricated set of facts — things like "Stand abilities," "Yoshikage Kira," and all the rest of it.
"All the players are in position." From the roof of a high-rise outside the Curtain, Mahiko spotted Nanami stepping through the barrier and narrowed her eyes ever so slightly.
The sorcerer who had shown up was considerably stronger than she'd anticipated, and had arrived considerably faster, too. But… whatever. It didn't matter.
This was enough.
On the surface, Mahiko continued to watch the battle play out below, looking for all the world like she was just enjoying the show.
But in a corner that no one else could perceive, she was quietly setting something else in motion — and no one noticed.
"Hm?" Far, far away, Kenjaku — who had been chatting with Rime while keeping one eye on Mahiko to see if she was cooking up anything new — raised an eyebrow. "A lot of Cursed Spirits?"
He was already aware that Mahiko had recently picked up a new plaything named Yoshino Junpei. He also knew the origin of the Cursed Spirit lurking inside Junpei's school — at its core, it had emerged from a chain reaction of negative emotions and curses triggered when a student's parent was killed by one of those earlier transfigured humans.
He had been watching from a distance, not sensing anything particularly worth worrying about.
But now he was puzzled.
Because more and more small Cursed Spirits were converging on the same location.
Why?
They were all roughly Grade 2 — nothing dangerously powerful — but this kind of convergence made no logical sense. Could it be that the original Grade 1 Cursed Spirit had some property that attracted other Cursed Spirits nearby?
"You've zoned out," Rime noted from beside him.
Kenjaku snapped back to the present, smiled, and gave a light shake of his head. "It's nothing. Let's get back to business."
Odd as it was, it wasn't a big deal. Mahiko couldn't possibly run into any real trouble over there. As long as he kept half an eye on the situation, nothing should go wrong.
Back at the school, Nanami was frowning.
He had actually been passing through the area when he noticed a large-scale Curtain bloom across the sky — which was what had drawn him here in the first place.
Upon arriving, he found an unfamiliar sorcerer locked in combat with a Cursed Spirit. From a distance, the stranger read as at least Grade 2 in ability.
As for who had deployed the Curtain overhead — he couldn't be sure. The technique was solid, possibly the work of the sorcerer in front of him, possibly not.
Nanami held back, keeping his distance, staying alert. An unknown sorcerer was unknown for a reason — friend or foe was impossible to say. And on top of that, the man seemed to be talking absolute nonsense, which made the whole situation stranger still.
Nanami had never once heard the phrase "Stand User" in his life.
He could feel the other person sizing him up in return.
Junpei's gaze swept across the blond man — the gently wavy golden hair, the ordinary salaryman's attire — and his eyes narrowed.
"I know you. I've heard about you," Junpei said, his voice now deep and rough. "You're Yoshikage Kira, aren't you."
Nanami: ?
Nanami: "Where did you hear that?"
"Aren't you?" Junpei frowned at him.
Miss Mahiko had told him that a dangerous blond man who looked like a perfectly ordinary salaryman went by the name Yoshikage Kira. And if it wasn't this guy, then who was it?
(In reality, Mahiko had simply made the whole thing up off the top of her head.)
But then Junpei recalled something else Mahiko had mentioned.
She had said she was being hunted — pursued by a group she called "allies of justice."
Was the man standing in front of him one of those allies?
Both of them stood there puzzling over each other. They might have kept talking, but in that moment, both simultaneously felt a strange ripple in the Cursed Energy around them.
They turned their heads at the same time.
Ringing the perimeter of the schoolyard — seemingly out of nowhere — was a dense encirclement of small Cursed Spirits, pouring out from every corner of the campus.
"There are a lot of them." Nanami's frown deepened.
All of them were roughly Grade 2.
Why were they all gathering here?
Nanami looked at Junpei. "You were just exorcising a Cursed Spirit, correct? Then can I provisionally assume you'll help?"
Junpei paused for a beat, then nodded. "If it's about protecting ordinary people, then yes. I'll help."
Nanami gave a small nod. "Then let's cooperate for now and deal with these Cursed Spirits."
The truth was, Nanami could have handled these Grade 2 Cursed Spirits on his own. The problem was that they were Grade 2 Cursed Spirits plus one unknown sorcerer of unclear allegiance — and that equation was different. He needed to confirm first that the stranger wouldn't take a shot at him from behind the moment he turned his full attention to the cleanup.
Looking at the guy, his combat style had a certain shape to it — but his movements carried a rawness, an unpolished quality. And given that they were at a school, there was a possibility this was some newly awakened sorcerer, a novice who had only recently come into his abilities — though looking at this six-foot-something wall of muscle, calling him a high schooler felt deeply wrong.
If he really was an untrained newcomer, it might be worth recommending him to Jujutsu High afterward.
Chittering and shrieking…
The surrounding Grade 2 Cursed Spirits began to close in, and Nanami and Junpei split the perimeter between them, each covering a different direction as they engaged and began cutting the Cursed Spirits down.
The clearing went quickly.
They swept through one full circuit — and every Grade 2 Cursed Spirit in the immediate vicinity was dead. But then a few more appeared.
An endless wave?
Nanami's brow furrowed hard.
But in the next instant, he felt it — a pulse of Cursed Energy, stronger than anything before it.
He and Junpei looked in the same direction at the same moment.
At the edge of the schoolyard stood a figure that hadn't been there before. It was draped in a pitch-black robe that obscured any detail — barely enough to make out that it was a fairly tall man. An unsettling Cursed Energy radiated slowly from his body, heavy and wrong.
Up on the rooftop of the distant high-rise, Mahiko spotted the figure's sudden appearance. Her eyes widened just a fraction — a perfectly calibrated expression of shock.
Nanami's voice was sharp and guarded. "Who are you? What do you want?"
The robed man did not answer. He simply shook his head slowly and raised one hand.
A strange pulse of Cursed Energy spread outward.
And then — every Grade 2 Cursed Spirit still remaining in the schoolyard began to twist. They thrashed and shrieked as their bodies stretched, compressed, and flowed like clay, warping into thin black streams that poured toward the robed figure and were absorbed into him.
Every single Cursed Spirit — consumed in an instant.
Nanami stared, motionless. His eyes had gone glassy.
Because this scene — the method by which that figure had just absorbed those Cursed Spirits — was so terrifyingly familiar.
An impossible suspicion surfaced in his mind, so unbelievable that his pupils trembled.
"Hm? Hold on."
Far, far away, Kenjaku stopped mid-step.
He had of course also seen the black-robed figure materialize on the schoolyard — and witnessed what that figure could do.
Kenjaku's mind went completely blank. Then it kicked into overdrive.
Wait. Who is that? What is happening?
Wait, wait, wait…
Kenjaku was stunned — utterly at a loss for what was unfolding over there.
That technique for absorbing Cursed Spirits — why did it look so much like Cursed Spirit Manipulation?
Was there actually a new sorcerer out there who could use Cursed Spirit Manipulation??
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👻🔥Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: COTE: Confessing to Sakayanagi From the Start
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter for everyone