Chapter 38

"Jiki-san" a rough voice called out from behind him, and even without turning his head, he could tell who it was. Utake Gojo. The leader of the exorcism squad deployed by the Gojo's to help contain the mess the war was turning out to be, and also a direct descendant of Old man Takumi. "If you need our aid..." The man trailed off as he and the rest of the clan members stood a few meters away.

Jiki thought about it for a short moment as he wrapped up his hair before bundling it into a bun. "I'll be fine" He finally replied the man.

"But the Zenin's..." The older man started.

Ah, He had almost forgotten about that. Intel said the Zenins were still angry about losing their vessel, and blamed him for it. That he actually killed it, was just a flimsy justification for them to come at him finally. He wouldn't put it above them to sneak in an attack while he was preoccupied with the special grade.

"Fine, a staggered patrol three hundred meters away. That should allow you to catch any of the hei that try to slip through, while also putting you out of range of the fight."

The ruffle of clothes behind indicated the man's agreement as he and his squad spread out, allowing Jiki to focus on the threat before him. He sent his eyes roving among the plethora of different shapes and curses that surround him, categorizing their forms and their grades before letting his eyes fall back to the specialgrade curse.

She had been silent, allowing his conversation with a level of curtsy he didn't expect from a cursed spirit.

He stood bare meters away from her, and they had a tense stared down with each other. Black tomoe in a sea of red against four pitch-black orbs. It was still not common knowledge of how his genjutsu worked. There were some vague allusions to the fact that it needed eye contact, but they were barely spoken of in public.

No, knowledge of his genjutsu even though it was not something he made any real effort at keeping it secret had not spread far and wide yet, and if he was to guess, it was the Clan's hand at work.

Regardless, even if it had somehow slipped the tight information net that the clan was weaving around him, he doubted this particular curse would've cared. So like always, it came to him easy, His first true love and the first technique he ever sought to learn.

What did it say about him that he sought so hard to create a reality of his own making, for in the end, that was the goal of genjutsu users.

Her unguarded stare at him gave him the window to send in his cursed energy through her eyes. Infiltrating her cursed energy was the easy part. Sinking his genjutsu packet into her frame and letting it take root was where he met his first real challenge.

There was a simple reason why special grades were so easy to spot, you only needed to be in the presence of one to know what you were facing. To know that if you were anything less than what they were, you were going to die and there were hardly any exceptions.

A special grade curse had an enormous amount of cursed energy, their very beings held a different level of metaphysical weight which showed in the sheer volume they were able to output. This turned them into a font of negative cursed energy that was fueled by whatever fear created them.

His genjutsu struggled all the way to find an actual hold in her immense, and unstable flow of cursed energy. Not even his experience and prodigious talent made it easy, after all this was his first time trying to trap something of this power in a genjutsu. But before he was Gojo Jiki, he was Uchiha Itachi, and the blurring of Reality and Illusion was his Domain.

Little by little he made progress, and his cursed energy took root, spreading themselves into the curse until the curse did the most shocking thing.

She tilted her head to the side, and even with her hands covering her lower face, Jiki could almost feel her smile spread even further along her segmented jaws. As an intense sense of curiosity and amusement emanated from her form, before in a quick flare of cursed energy, she washed the genjutsu packet out of her system, forcing Jiki to blink.

"I have not seen a technique like that in centuries."

The words almost forced him to blink again, but he had enough control of his body to kill its instinctive desire to express shock and surprise.

Instead, he stared at her back with the slowly dawning realization that Tamamo-no Mae was an Old curse, not just an Old curse but an Old Imaginary Vengeful Cursed Spirit. A category of cursed spirits that were more fluid than any other.

Their abilities were fueled by the stories and legends that crafted their forms before their cursed energy sprang out of that font to puppeteer the body.

However, that was not the biggest problem for, in the end, it was just a curse, one that had been chained and shackled by Geto's power. At least that was what he assumed, the rational conclusion he had come to as a result of observing Geto's technique.

The rogue special grade was not the first person to be born with an innate technique that allowed its user to control curses.

That was what he thought at least. He thought wrong and the first sign should have been the fact that Geto had been able to take control of a special-grade curse, while also leaving it sapient, instead of simply sentient like other curses in his arsenal.

No, It had agency, even in its subservience to Geto. It possessed the capacity of a thinking being to act, and that particular detail was what truly made it different from any other arbitrary curse."

An Imaginary vengeful curse with the knowledge of centuries backing it and a sapient thought process to make use of it. It was almost like facing Jorogumo once again he realized with a smile as he tilted his head to match hers.

Her presence had upped his evaluation of Geto's cursed technique while also reinforcing his earlier complaints of the simpleness of regular curses.

Geto had been given the special grade rating at eighteen because of the sheer scale at which he could operate. The extent of his ability to absorb and control lesser grades had shown no upper limit. That had been enough to qualify him for a special grade, due to the sheer quantity and variety he could bring to bear in a fight. They were not aware of the Quality he could bring, now Jiki was. He could see Geto taking control of every special grade curse and…

He forced himself to halt the tangent he was going on. He had neither the time nor the opportunity to worry about Geto, instead, he returned focus to the curse, and with the knowledge of Her sapience, he asked a question.

"Why have you not attacked?" Even in the quagmire of his thoughts, he had never lost focus or sight of what was happening around him, always on some level primed to respond if the curse attacked, yet she had remained still.

Her continued silence might as well have been a statement of guilt because Jiki came to a simple conclusion. "You're not here to kill me are you…" he trailed off as the curse tilted his head at him in a bow.

"Just to tie me down, long enough"

Fair enough. It was an obvious tactic, one that he had indulged in multiple times. The only difference was that he was not going to waste time here.

He assessed the distance she maintained and the heavy robes worn by the vengeful curse. This immediately ruled out close combat from her repertoire, which instantly made it his chosen approach.

With a flex of his muscles, he launched himself at her. Ignoring the niggling feeling at the back of his mind that reminded him that, Jorogumo didn't seem like a close combat type either.

Jorogumo was different.

Tamamo-no-Mae watched him as he got closer, her four pitch-black eyes tracking his movements yet unlike Jorogumo, she made no effort to force him to keep his distance, and for a second he felt doubt.

Doubts he analyzed, and discarded before the next second. When Tamamo-no-Mae finally moved; it was to slowly bring out an instrument from her voluminous robes. One that was decidedly too big to fit in there, so it was definitely formed from her cursed energy and she was simply playing up on the theatrics expected from one of her myth.

A Koto; The Courtesan.

What weapon does a musical equipment use? It was that realization that determined his next move, it suddenly made sense why she had allowed him to draw close.

She held the koto with a gentle, loving grip as four other pale hands slipped out of her robes to cradle it. Two hands supported the instrument while another pressed down on the strings, unleashing an explosive force of combined sound and energy toward him.

The explosion radiated outward from her, obliterating the ground in front of him before finally hitting him like an invincible blow, slamming into him, throwing him back.

He skidded along the ground, hands pressed to his ears. Reinforcing his ears with cursed energy just in time saved him from ruptured eardrums, which would have destroyed his balance and turned him into a bumbling mess. He knew this well, having inflicted it on enough people to recognize the effect.

His lower stance and ability to anchor his cursed energy to the ground were the only reasons he didn't go head over heels, though his body still bore the brunt of the blow.

He stared back at her the moment he came to a stop, shaking off the effect of the technique. Unfortunately for him, she refused to mention the name of the technique to give him an idea of what he faced, but he could extrapolate enough.

Yamamoto-no-Mae Incarnate had multiple origins and stories that contributed to her formation. Her history was as varied as the people who told it and spread it wide, which should theoretically morph her very being.

The most common and popular tale was of a courtesan who served an emperor, only to be ordered killed when she refused his advances.

His eyes moved along her form again, noting that her kimono closely resembled those worn by courtesans he had seen in his past life. It was nearly identical to the attire of an Oiran, the highest rank a courtesan could achieve.

His gaze drifted down to the koto she held in her hands. The wood appeared aged, yet the strings gleamed with a luster that bespoke newness. The dichotomy only reinforced his belief that it was formed from her cursed energy.

He straightened himself to his full height once more and tilted his head to the side, preparing to dodge her sound waves and then eliminate her—a seemingly straightforward task, especially given her passive demeanor.

He began to walk and circle her, gradually increasing his pace with each rotation. Despite this, she didn't need to turn around to keep him in her sight.

The upper pair of eyes on her face shifted along the sides, halting just above each of her ears in a grotesque display of the malleable flesh curses wielded, ensuring she always had him in her view. She observed and waited patiently, displaying her strength, so he decided to change tactics.

With a flex of his cursed energy, the previously docile and subservient curses that had served as both her honor guard and his cage sprung into action.

Cracks appeared on the asphalt beneath their cloven feet as they thundered forward, screeches and howls erupting from twisted vocal cords and contorted lips as the curses descended into madness. A cacophony of different shapes and forms charged toward them. Yet, he remained untouched, for he was not their target. Instead, their diverse forms surged past him, and a relentless tide of putrid flesh, tattered furs, and molted scales converged on Tamamo-no-Mae.

For the first time, she lost her seemingly bored and curious look, her four eyes widening in disbelief. The obsidian orbs scanned over the frenzied creatures, a flicker of uncertainty crossing her features.

The moment her gaze shifted from him, he vanished into the chaos of the raging horde. Genjutsu was his craft, honed to perfection, and he had woven triggers into every surrounding curse the moment he glanced over them. They had proven surprisingly compliant in the presence of the special grade, and succumbed easily, making his task far simpler than anticipated.

Now what would she do?

....

She tightened her grip on the koto as she came to a decision. Her third and fourth hands striking the strings viciously. Within a foot of her, everything erupted in a visceral shower of blue-purple blood, torn limbs, and twisted organs, all reduced to nothingness in an instant. This was the power of a special grade—a devastating, omnidirectional attack.

A single note of pure hatred that had, turned cursed flesh inside out in a detonation that scattered remnants of their putrid forms in all directions, while the attack continued to spread.

In a radius of three hundred meters, devastation reigned supreme. Everything was torn asunder and obliterated, his former minions and curses reduced to mere fragments of flesh and a mosaic of multicolored blood. The ground around her had dissolved into a crater of utter emptiness, leaving only the solitary structure where she stood, a stark testament to the destructive power she could bring to bear when she was not just trying to stall him.

She set her four eyes to scour through the debris she had created, searching for the boy with white hair and the most striking scarlet eyes. Yet, when they found nothing, for the first time in centuries, she felt a stirring within her—a sensation she could only define as sadness.

Words flowed into her ears, and her eyes widened in surprise. She snapped her head up to where the voice was coming from and saw a figure directly above her, illuminated by the moonlight, his silhouette stark against the night sky. His hands formed a strange sign, cursed energy primed for release. He had jumped!

Cursed Technique: Fire style: Great Flame Annihilation.

Then all she felt was pain as the fire consumed her.

...

He landed gently on his sandaled feet, the soft clack of wood against scorched earth echoing in the desolate surroundings. The ground was seared and cracked for meters around, the air heavy with heat and parched dryness.

Nothing could have survived such devastation, and it showed from the crater he landed in, a vast chasm that mirrored the first one Tamamo-no-Mae had created, only deeper by meters. He could see the destroyed pipes deep beneath the earth, cables and pipes that carried water and electricity.

The Great Fire Annihilation stood as the pinnacle of Fire-style techniques, the supreme technique that laid all to rest. Or so everyone believed until he awakened his Sharingan and let a gaze akin to that of a goddess sweep over the earth.

However, Amaterasu remained a unique ability possessed solely by him and later on, his brother, leaving the Great Fire Annihilation as the true pinnacle of Fire style for any other individual.

Taking a deep breath, he ignored the oppressive heat and dryness of the air, his half-lidded eyes peering beneath as he extended his senses in the same motion.

His senses stretched out for miles, honed to a degree that rivaled even the most skilled sensor-nins from his past life. In this world without any true specialization, he once again found himself standing above most others.

Yet, despite his heightened perception, he found nothing. Absolutely nothing had survived the fires—not even the black-furred curse spirit bearing the form of a hound that he had tamed, and most importantly, not Tamamo-no-Mae.

He finally sensed something at the edge of his awareness and raised his eyes to it, his body poised for violence. Yet, to his surprise, it was just a crow—the same one he had seen hours ago.

With that realization, he knew his task here was done. He had dealt with the major threats, leaving only the cleanup for the other sorcerers.

Expanding his awareness further, he caught sight of Satoru effortlessly dispatching the black-clad man with a display of taijutsu prowess the man likely hadn't anticipated. The sight almost brought a smile to his lips.

Yet, Satoru was not done, while Jiki had managed to get rid of his opponent faster, which meant he was free to go after Geto now, and that thought soured his mood.

With a flex of his knees, he leaped, sailing gracefully over the edge of the crater before landing softly and resuming his stride. He wasn't particularly keen on walking the entire distance, thankfully he could sense Ijichi's presence, along with the dispatched Gojos, mere meters away. Surely one of them would have a suitable transportation method—

Crack.

He froze, then turned back slowly to witness a red meaty hovering cocoon that had materialized out of thin air, a presence that had not existed mere seconds ago.

Crack.

The cocoon pulsed with life, veins, and arteries moving under their own power, its movements resembling the rhythmic pumping of blood and power into whatever lay within.

Crack.

Allowing himself a slow blink, he observed the pulsating form before a name popped into his mind: a cursed womb.

The cocoon suddenly froze, mirroring his own motion, then exploded with a burst of force, sending fleshy chunks flying in all directions. Jiki swiftly lashed out with a backhanded slap, deflecting a piece hurtling toward his face and sending it away into a nearby building.

Emerging from the blood, viscera, and mist, a woman stepped forward, only identifiable as Tamamo-no-Mae by the four eyes peering down at him amidst strands of oily black hair.

She was clad in another set of robes: a blood-red hakama from her waist down, and a white kosode splattered with blood. The garment of a shrine maiden.

The Shrine Maiden—the second tale of Tamamo-no-Mae and closely linked to the courtesans. They both shared the tragic fate of dying at the hands of an obsessed emperor who desired them for himself. However, in this rendition, the emperor was said to have been struck down by Amaterasu herself for daring to lust after one of her Miko's.

Once again accused of killing the emperor, the Shrine Maiden was forced to flee, only to be captured and killed days later.

He sighed, realization dawning on him as he saw the trap Geto had laid. If there were three tales that shaped her existence, then as an Imaginary Vengeful Curse, she manifested as those three curses—meaning she had truly perished in her first incarnation.

There was no mistaking it—this was simply the manifestation of the second tale that brought her into being. Which meant he would have to exorcise her three times to rid himself of her permanently.

He was almost tempted to end it all at once—seal her with the Totsuka Blade and put an end to this charade in a single stroke.

"Kikikikikikiki"

Yet, he could almost hear Jorogumo's sinister laughter at the edge of his awareness. Despite being confined within the sake bottle, she refused to sink into the oblivion the seal offered and instead remained aware of the going ons in his vicinity.

He couldn't afford to risk even the slightest opening of that cage without first trapping the millennia-old malevolent curse spirit in a binding vow. This meant he would have to go through this ordeal all over again. With another sigh, he released a breath, regretting not accepting his clan members' offer.

They would have served as good distractions, at least, and with any luck, might have slain one of her forms.

As she took another step out of her grotesque womb, Jiki let out a final, resigned sigh, shrugging the tension out of his shoulders. Well played Geto.