Chapter 36

"Do you know how I came across such a curse?" he asked casually as he ducked underneath a five-fingered sideway slash by Rika—one that should have sent his guts spilling.

The new queen of curses was as violent as her new physical form indicated, but it was no real surprise. Vengeful curses that died brutal deaths always had more anger in them—rage and envy towards the still living. Her vicious yet instinctive fighting style was proof of that.

He tilted to the side to dodge a sword slash. The moment the sword passed him, Jogo charged out from behind him, arm outstretched and lips drawn into a wide grin revealing a roll of pitch-black teeth.

Cursed Technique: Disaster Flames.

Once more, the queen of curses was forced to curl and intercept the flames meant for her owner, and the screech of pain she let out from the attack brought a gap to the duo's surprisingly synchronized defense.

"Rika!"

For a well-seasoned and experienced sorcerer like Geto, a gap was all he needed. His perpetual smile widened as he blitzed forward, slipping past the still-reeling curse. It would heal, and soon.

Once again face to face with the boy, and before the child could react, he buried his fist into his stomach so hard the boy's eyes googled, and he let out an explosion of air and bile from his lungs. He spun to his side and lashed out with a kick to the side of the boy's head—one that should have broken his skull and pulped his head. Yet it was surprisingly blocked with the flat side of the blade.

A twist of the boy's wrist sent out a wide slash—one that Geto dodged easily with a skip back. The boy had recovered fast, he noted, as he observed the way the boy staggered back, eyes wide yet alive with anger and hate.

"Ah, I see. This is your first time experiencing such violent emotions, isn't it," he asked rhetorically, still smiling. "And you can feel the enhanced flow of the cursed energy fueling your body. Pushing you to a greater heightened sense of physical prowess and omnipotence. That feeling right there... it is false."

He tilted his head as he watched the boy harden his features as he immediately moved to strike Geto once more, uncaring of his words. The first strike was deflected by his reinforced fist, the second one was parried by a palm to the side of the blade, and the third was dodged. But the boy was relentless and talented.

More talented than he expected of a child barely a year into his journey as a sorcerer. With a flick of his wrist, the boy reversed the third blow smoothly and scored a gash along his robe—one that barely drew a thin line along his flesh, but one that marred his beautiful robes all the same.

He made a tsk before he continued speaking. His goal was to distract the boy from the volcano-headed curse that was flanking him.

"I got Jogo through a combination of luck and chance, you see," he started as he began circling the boy slowly, forcing him to turn to keep Geto in his view. "I had gone hunting for something, something that would have made my dreams a reality. I was ready to risk my life to gain it. Unfortunately, someone had beaten me to it." The memory of Jiki sealing Jorogumo with his Susanoo still brought a chill to his spine.

The Gojo scion had grown so much. He could still remember the first time he had seen that particular ability manifest. Only a single rib cage, shoulder blade, and some muscles. Watching it stop a blow that split his hardest curse open like a fish. Now, it was powerful enough to rip, sunder, and change entire landscapes.

He had a feeling that was not the end of it.

He could have intervened immediately after Jorogumo's sealing. Jiki was hurt and spent. But he could not bring himself to do it. He did not know what it would've taken to release Jorogumo once more. Perhaps he would've been forced to kill the boy he had seen as a surrogate younger brother.

So he shifted his attention to the other special grade, at the end of the day; who better to replace Jorogumo than another of her ilk?

He came to a stop out of range of the blade, "so I shifted my attention to another. An angry cursed spirit linked to the fear of disasters. And one that was already hurt, weakened from a battle that should have killed him."

The boy backtracked and raised his sword into a guard position as he finally decided to listen to him speak.

"Separating the retreating curse from its erstwhile guardian was hard, but the moment I did, it proved all too easy to subjugate the weakened curse."

He spun on the spot and lashed out with a kick at the danger he felt at his back. It was an exchange of strength. Curse energy-reinforced muscles against the raw inhuman strength of a special grade curse.

He lost.

He let out a laugh as the blow sent him through a wall, the force so great he tumbled and fought for balance before slamming into another.

He allowed himself to lay in the debris of scattered bricks, wood, and dust before forcing himself to sit up as he stared at the hole he had just come from. The boy was a crafty one, he admitted with a smile, as he cracked his neck to the side and used a hand to massage it.

Yuta had been stalling for time just as much as he had. His eyes continued to peer into the dust that had been thrown up as he waited, but nothing came to him and his smile shifted.

The sound of an explosion on the other side of the wall let him know the fight was still ongoing. They had thought to isolate him and quickly kill the disaster curse no doubt.

Ha, he guessed for a child the boy must have thought that a smart plan. But you do not quickly kill a special-grade curse spirit. Still, this was good.

He was a match for the boy, even if close combat had never been his specialty, he had trained long and hard to defeat that particular weakness of Shikigami and Curse Manipulation users. The scars that littered his frame even with Shoko's help were proof of that.

Yet he was not facing the boy solely. No amount of curse energy reinforcement would allow him to match the special-grade curse physically blow for blow. That was why he had Jogo.

Still, that was not enough. There was a reason why weapons were invented. He slipped his hand into his voluminous robes and pulled out a pair of escrima sticks. They were made from deep brown wood with a tint of red streaks running through it and banded by gold.

The cursed tool was a custom one gotten from the mad crafter, Juzo Kumiya. The eerie artificer claimed the escrima sticks were broken remnants of a more famous staff. Yet considering how the man's madness and insanity moved like the tides, his words would always be as solid as the grains of sand on a beach.

The only thing he could trust the man on was his fanatical craftsmanship, and glancing down at the pair of short sticks in his hands, It was one of the better-crafted tools he had laid his eyes upon.

Escrima fighting was one of the many skills he had picked up on his travels and exploration around the world. His goal had been a two-fold thing: recruiting people who shared his goals and, more importantly, learning.

Japan might have the highest concentration of curses due to Master Tengen's barrier trapping a lot of cursed energy, but it was not always like that. Once upon a time, when man still hunted with stone spears, things used to be different, and the various surviving enclosures he visited highlighted that.

Flexing his wrist and spinning the pair, he walked past the half-standing wall he had broken through and glimpsed the sight of Jogo fighting.

Every special-grade curse was a unique thing, with self-aware thoughts, dreams, and goals they wished to achieve. This made absorbing one a tricky thing. They always retained that sense of self, forever remaining autonomous in a way, which was both a strength and a glaring weakness. While he would always command their obedience, he did not command their loyalty, not yet at least. That was something he had to work for.

A work that he had accomplished by satisfying Tamamo-no-Mae's Incarnate wishes, slaughtering the lineage of the emperor that wronged her, even if the bloodline was over eighteen times removed from the original. What difference did it make that they were farther removed from the original monkey? Luckily for him, Tamamo-no-Mae was of a mind with him. With any luck, she would hold Jiki down long enough for him to accomplish his goals here.

As for killing the Gojo scion? Ha.

Jogo dodged under a sword slash and endured a two-handed hammer strike from Rika that cratered the ground and forced his feet to sink into the ground and up to his calves. The curse bared painted black teeth at the duo before two mini-volcanoes erupted from right beneath them.

The duo made to disengage, but only one managed that feat: Yuta. Rika was gripped by her long outstretched arms, her momentum halted as the mini-volcano erupted with an explosion of force.

Geto's narrow eyes widened as he observed the boy swiftly evade Jogo's attempt to grab his arm. At that moment, an opportunity presented itself—a clear opening to strike at Yuta's unguarded back. With his suppressed cursed energy, the boy remained focused on the battle ahead, ignorant of the more palpable danger behind him, as both he and his twisted lover exerted all their efforts to kill Jogo.

His lips twisted into a cruel smile. So they had truly forgotten about his presence. The boy had drunk deep of his anger and hatred, and while it gave him some level of increased combat prowess, the trade-back was that it narrowed the vision to the enemy you could see.

Now, what better way to remind them of his presence than to bash those black locks into the skull?

Keeping his cursed energy expulsion at a minimum, he sprinted towards the boy, sliding along the ground. His footsteps were more silent than the sound of a leaf falling to the ground.

His breath synchronized with the boy's own, his scent masked, for he was upwind.

It was all summarized into a technique that roughly translated into "the art of the wind." A 'gift' that was forcibly taken from one of the enclosures that had rejected his advances and his pleas to learn their ways. A special-grade sorcerer was not easily rejected.

Blowing through the thick smoke that had been left in the wake of one of Jogo's attacks, he appeared behind the boy and swung with such force and speed that the boy would have had no option but to die.

Yet all that careful planning, the effort he made to be as invincible and imperceptible as the wind was torn and thrown to the side like garbage due to sheer luck.

The boy was still retreating and had his blade held in a horizontal stance to parry Jogo's attack and give space. That was what gave him a view of his back, his black eyes drifted to the clear steel blade and he saw Geto's swiftly approaching form.

The both of them locked eyes at that exact moment through the clear steel blade, one eye held anger at a plan disrupted, and the other was filled with ample amounts of fear and surprise at being caught on the back foot.

Still, he was not going to be denied, Geto decided as he continued the swing. Not by Jiki, not by Satoru, and not by the sheer luck Yuta possessed.

If he was a younger man, he would've raged at the unfairness of everything. But age and experience had tempered his feelings and character. It was what allowed him to allow his anger to wash over him because, for a sorcerer, even luck was a skill.

Yet not even a deity's possessed luck was going to be enough to stop him from murdering the boy and taking the second step on his journey to completing his goals.

The boy pivoted, guard still up, and blocked the blow that should have turned his head into a crater of bones and mush. Yet Geto allowed a smile to form on his face, as the second stick slammed into the boy's side, breaking ribs with the force of the attack.

Yuta roughly transitioned from a block to a slash aimed at splitting him from his waist to his neck, but he parried the blow with ease, his right hand lashing out again with the stick and sending the blow wide before his left hand whipped the other stick at the boy's face.

His big black eyes widened as the blow caught him at the side of the head, the golden band around the stick catching the head at the right angle to crack his skull and pulp the eyes on that side of the face.

"Yuuutttaaaaaaaa"

He let the faraway scream of rage and the boy's own scream of pain wash over him as he felt his smile grow on his lips. He took no joy from the boy's pain, and killing the boy was simply a necessary objective to fulfill his dreams.

No, he smiled because he could see a straight pathway to his goals. To finally rid the world of the useless weak monkeys that banded up against their superiors, dragging down sorcerers and bringing about their ruin by simultaneous hate for the unknown and ignorance.

All he had to sacrifice was a single young sorcerer, the thought killed his smile as he lashed out once more, this time with a doubt overhead blow, that the body shakily raised his katana to block.

Blinded by pain and delirious by the crippling blows Geto had landed throughout their fight, the boy still tried his best to resist his incoming fate, and for that Geto respected him. He would make sure to bury him in a beautiful place.

The double hammer blow from the two wooden batons swung down with domineering force. They hit the shaky katana with so much force that the reinforced steel blade shattered, and the pair of sticks continued their downward strike with barely a drop in force.

The cursed tools were only a couple of centimeters from cratering the boy's head when a white gaunt and long-bodied figure darted out of the smoke and touched the boy's back.

Yuta murmured.

Cursed Technique: Copy.

The pair of sticks froze.

No, not frozen, halted. Their momentum was ripped away and discarded like...

They stopped centimeters away from a single bloodshot, half-lidded black eye. Geto watched as the pupils slowly dilated. His own eyes widened as he forced down even more, refusing to accept.

Yet the cursed tools barely managed to budge down an inch closer to the boy's head, and he felt ice flow down his spine as he was forced to accept, with a sobering realization, the technique the boy had manifested, even as flawed and incomplete as it was: Infinity.

Where was that fucking disaster curse?

As the boy's eyes dilated further, Geto recognized the impending shift before the boy himself did. Yuta's lone eye reddened, snapping wide with dilated pupils, while his mouth slowly gaped, a strand of saliva trailing down, fixated on the edge.

In an instant, that same murky gaze sharpened, his hands shooting up to seize a lone shard from the shattered blade mid-air. Black lightning crackled through his frame as he lashed out with the blade towards Geto's neck.

The sum of his experience, instinct, and body moving at overdrive and in sync led him to tilt his neck to the side, escaping what would've been a fatal blow to his neck, and instead watching it sink into the point between his neck and his shoulders.

At that moment, Geto felt real pain searing through him, a sensation he hadn't felt all day. He forced himself to strangle the scream that almost left his throat, instead, his right hand instinctively released the baton it held, rushing to grasp at the wound. The ferocity of Yuta's strike, empowered by the black flash, had shattered his defenses, the blade sinking deep into his flesh.

He could already feel the way his curse energy was reacting to the disrupting blow from the black flash. He wanted to curl up in pain and scream, but experience forced him to keep his eyes open as he saw the boy sink into the zone as he continued to move, unhindered by his broken body.

Geto knew with every fiber of his being, if he stayed there he was going to die. The boy was still in that focused and unfocused state. He remembered seeing the look on Nanami's face when he made the record.

Another black flash was coming.

He could not survive another, so he barked out, ignoring the way blood left his mouth as he spoke. Ignoring the way the boy wound back his arm for a haymaker. Ignoring the way Rika lounged over the form of her lover and master.

He allowed his eyes to drift down to his left hand that held the remaining baton and forced his cursed energy to come under control.

"Shoot," he ordered, and the baton vibrated momentarily in his grip. In a lightning-fast motion, it extended with tremendous force, slamming into the boy and serving as a fulcrum to propel Geto backward. The impact was so jarring that he tumbled and rolled upon hitting the ground, eventually coming to a rest face down, his hand still firmly pressed against his neck wound.

He blinked blurry eyes, forcing them to remain open as he pressed his free hand to the ground before forcing himself to his feet.

He glanced up at his opponent to see the cursed tool had done as he wished, giving him distance from the duo and smashing into the boy hard enough to send him to death's door.

Rika had been forced to lay hunched over him protectively and he saw a blue-green glow coming from where the boy lay, while the cursed spirit muttered his name incessantly. That was why she had not followed him. A deceptively smart move on her part, or more likely she just decided to prioritize Yuta's recovery over killing him.

Which was something he had gambled on when he decided to crater the boy's chest, for if she had aimed to kill him, she would've gotten to him before he even opened his eyes.

His feet shook, and he struggled to keep his balance, while his vision tried its best to blur out completely. When his vision finally re-focused, he could see Yuta's sternum pop out in a grotesque display from where it had collapsed in his chest.

Reverse curse healing was a very intensive technique, yet the boy had the reserves to keep it going for long enough to get him back into full form.

He made to laugh and coughed up blood again, his free hand snapped to his mouth. An instinctual move to stop any more blood loss but a wasted one.

The boy should be dead. He had almost done it even. Now the tables were reversed and he was the one that was left bleeding out and dying, while the boy was getting healed. He refused to think about how the boy had managed to achieve both Infinity and reverse curse healing, instead, he tugged at a tether only he could feel.

He still had a card to play, he decided as his lips spread wide, showing his blood-stained teeth. His eyes drifted up to where the tether led him to, and he saw his rebellious special grade peering down at him with its cycloptic eyes, and its black grin matching his bloodstained own.

It sat at the top of one of the few buildings close by that had survived the brawl that was two special grade sorcerers and two special grade curses exchanging blows.

He stared it down as it observed him, waiting for him to die and for it to see the result. Would it be free? Even Geto was not sure. What he was sure of was that he was not dead yet.

"Do it," he demanded and watched the smile drain out of the cursed spirit's face. It had thought he was oblivious to it, he realized as his own smile grew bigger just as the curse lost its own. He had realized it early. The curse was an old curse. Born and manifested as a special grade, it had never been truly challenged in its life till it met Jiki, and in the aftermath of that fight, it had grown.

"Do. It. Now," he ordered as he forced himself to stand straighter, Yuta was already getting to his feet. He was not fully healed, but something in his voice must have alerted the boy because he struggled desperately to rise.

But he was too late. They were all too late.

Jogo's hands twisted as he formed it into a two-handed seal, one that mimicked an enclosed trap, as he called out unwillingly with gritted teeth and an eye that stared death at Geto.

Domain Expansion: Coffin of the Iron Mountain.