True fear

Staring at Kanami and the energy that was coursing through him, Rei was a bit surprised, 'He awakened to cursed energy already? He didn't even have a teacher or anything.... is this what they call a genius?'.

"Looks like you changed a lot?", asked a surprised Rei. Here was the same kid, who couldn't even sit through a scary story, now ready to fight a man-eating monster.

"uhhh... yea, I'm sick of being so scared of everything, I want to change", answered Kanami.

"Well good on you... now", Rei turned his head to get a good glimpse of the monster. It was desperately attempting to remove the metal pole embedded into its middle head, "How do we deal with that?"

"We beat the crap out of it, look its still struggling with your previous attack", Kanami suggested , before running off attempting to fight the monster, again. Rei merely shook his head, before grabbing Kanami's collar preventing him from making any reckless moves.

"Oi! What was that for?", Kanami asked angrily.

"Remember the last time you tried to do that?", asked Rei. Kanami immediately remembered his near death experience; if Rei had not arrived, he would have died. Kanami still had no idea what the monster was capable enough, in fact for all he knew it could have been faking its struggle in an attempt to lure victims.

"Alright what do you suggest we do?"

Rei pointed to the monster, who had not moved an inch from its original spot. "Seems like its really struggling with getting that pole out, its just using its tail. None of its other heads are helping it, and its not moving at all. Which means..."

"Means what?"

"If it has three heads, then it should quite easily be willing to sacrifice one head. I mean, it could just regenerate it later. The fact that its not even trying to fight us right now means that the middle head must be the main one, or the place where the central nervous system is located".

'After taking a closer look at the monster, it doesn't seem to have any nose, eyes, or ears: just a couple of mouths. Which means it most likely hunts by tracking cursed energy, explains why it completely ignored me and went after Kanami. Sukuna's fingers probably radiates crazy amounts of cursed energy', thought Rei as he studied the monster a bit more.

Kanami nodded his head before pitching in, "And the fact that none of the other heads are helping it means that it lost control of its finer motor skills when you jammed the pole, either that or the pole was jammed at a blindspot."

"There you go now you're using your head!", Rei exclaimed, slapping the back of Kanami's head.

"So what do we going to so?"

"We jump it!", Rei ordered with a manaical smile.

"... what?"

"To be honest, I'm pretty sure we could have just bum rushed it, but I wanted to look smart", Rei laughed rubbing the back of his head, causing Kanami to slap his forehead. "Alright, we'll assault the middle head, try to ignore the other two. You take right, I'll take left."

"Fine... but we have to hurry", with that the two boys rushed to their designated locations. The two heads elongated themselves, attempting to attack the two boys. Rei merely ducked underneath, easily dodging the head, while Kanami punched the right head with his cursed energy-infused fist.

Bang!

The sheer power from Rei's fist caused the middle head to explode. It quickly regenerated from the injury, however it was met with Kanami's fist dealing another blow and allowing it to be met with Rei's fists.

Bang!

Bam!

Bam!

Bang!

Bam!

Bam!

Bang!

Just like that, the two boys took turns punching the monster. Rei's punches destroyed its head, while Kanami's blows brought the head to Rei's fists. The cursed spirit couldn't react at all, not only due to the boy's unrelenting blows, but also due to the fact that its nervous system was continually getting destroyed and regenerated.

Eventually, Rei could tell that the cursed spirit was running out of cursed energy, its regeneration was slowing and eventually it won't be able to regenerate.

Kanami quickly smashed the barely regenerated mouth of the cursed spirit before its head exploded again from contact with Rei's fist. Seeing how it wasn't regenerating its head, Rei quickly grappled its neck before and threw it over his shoulders. As the body was falling, Rei quickly turned and gave it one final punch, tearing a hole through its stomach, and sending it crashing away.

"Well that wasn't so hard", said Rei wiping his hands.

"Yea, it was much easier than I thought", nodded Kanami, wiping away the sweat. "Hey Rei, you know anything about this weird energy... wait do you have it as well, is that why're you're so strong?"

'He's talking about cursed energy', thought Rei. "No, I don't have a clue about what you're talking about. I'm just strong cause I work out", Rei answered flexing his muscles and showing his biceps.

"Alright...?"

"Well anyway Kanami, you still got that cloth right?"

"The finger? Yea, let me get it", Kanami rustled through his pockets, attempting to scavenge for the finger, "It should be right here".

"Something wrong?", asked Rei, visibly forming sweat.

"Yea.. yea.. nothing's wrong, it should be right here. I know I put in my pocket", Kanami cried, taking off his clothes, in an attempt to make the finger fall out, "Yea, I took it out to bait the monster then I .... ran to the monster without putting it back."

As Kanami and Rei realized what had just happened, they were already too late. The cursed spirit used the last remains of its cursed energy to elongate a head, and eat the finger. The two boys sprinted, attempting to prevent the monster from eating the finger.

Although, Kanami did not know what exactly what the finger does, seeing Rei's desperate expression he knew it was something dangerous.

Unfortunately, both boys realized this fact too late, and the spirit had already consumed the finger.

"Goddamnit! Why does it have so many mouths!", roared Rei, with an angry expression which quickly morphed into one of pure fright.

An explosion of an evil aura occurred when the monster ate the finger, both boys could feel the immense pressure radiating from the newly revived cursed spirit.

'One finger... can do this', thought Rei, 'This is.. pure evil', Rei felt like he could see the devil materialize within the aura surrounding the devil. This was the true power of a special grade curse, something he never experienced before.

'I can't move! I can't move! I can't move! I can't move! I can't move! I can't move! Please move!', Kanami desperately tried to run away as far as possible, however his body wasn't listening to a single thing he was saying, too shocked to do anything.

The monster stared to form black stripes around its heads, with small-ball like eyes forming on these black stripes. Its skin was now an ashen white, and its claws were now blood-red.

Suddenly, the spirit disappeared from its original position, reappearing right behind the two boys. At that moment, they both knew that they were dead if they looked behind them.

Huff! Huff!

Rei was breathing heavily, and sweating buckets. He had not experienced true fear like this in his entire life as Rei Tachibana. He was familiar with this deep, dark feeling within his gut. A feeling he had forgotten about, thanks to his abilities.

The feeling of Death.

It was something he had experienced in his previous life; Something he believed he would never have to experience again. Now with this special grade cursed spirit right behind him, ready to kill him at a moment's notice, he had been reminded of that feeling.

"Kanami watch out!", roared Rei, sensing the monster about to attack Kanami. Rei quickly grabbed the frightened boy and threw him away, before quickly defending himself from the oncoming tail whip.

CRACK!

The sheer force of the tail shattered Rei's defending arm, before launching him away.

It was the first Rei had broken his bone, even in his previous life he had never experienced the pain of his bones being completely shattered. It was this pain that made Rei understand a fundamental fact:

He had grown to overconfident in his power, and ended up making a mistake that may very well lead to his death. He hadn't gotten Toji's physical body... instead, he obtained Toji's potential or inheritance. Given enough training, he could very well be comparable to Toji Fushiguro, however Rei had never trained a day in his life. His strength just naturally increased as he grew older, and so he never found the point of his training.

This, this was the biggest mistake of his life.

Rei's morbid thoughts were quickly interrupted by the curse. Now that it possessed eyes and intelligence, it could clearly tell that the tall teen was a more dangerous threat than the sniffling kid that was kneeling on the floor.

The spirit focused its cursed energy onto one of its mouths, forming yellow ball of pure cursed energy. After a mouth-sized ball had formed it quickly fired it at Rei, forming a long streak of yellow energy.

Rei could barely block, before the beam had hit him, sending him crashing away. He had barely enough time to recover before the spirit reappeared right in front of him with another ball of cursed energy.

"Cursed spirit, come out please!", Rei managed to yell, before he was hit point-blank with the energy attack. He was sent crashing threw multiple buildings behind him, before finally stopping on the concrete.

COUGH! COUGH! PTOO!

Spitting out the a glob of blood along with some broken teeth, before wiping away some blood on his nose. His ribs and left arm were broken, his nose was smashed in, and he could barely stand up. If any doctor were to examine his body, they could think its a miracle that he was even conscious.

'So this is how my blood looks', he joked in an attempt to calm his nerves, unfortunately the sudden spike in evil cursed energy made him despair. Turning his head, he saw the nightmare fuel staring right back at him. To make matters worse, it was snickering at him - as if his whole struggle was merely a game for it- a truly sadistic cursed spirit.

Believing that its toy was 'broken' the spirit gathered up massive amounts cursed energy, causing the ground to crack. The tremendous force from the energy was even capable of raising the ground around it.

'What the hell! Its only one finger!', Rei panicked, sensing the massive amounts of energy. Seeing his death right in front of his eyes, Rei's frightened thoughts turned into that of admiration.

"To think one finger holds this much power. Sukuna truly is the King of Curses!", Rei laughed, stretching his hands as if he had come to a revelation, "Throughout Heaven and Earth, he alone is the honored one... only his pleasure and displeasure exist", Rei recited, remembering a quote that he believed to truly represent Sukuna.

"And now my cursed spirit will have even greater power than the King of Curses! HAHAHAHA, to think I will have control of all that power!", Rei laughed donning a crazed expression. The cursed spirit let out a wave of cursed energy, resulting in the concrete being melted and the skin on Rei's arms being burned.

"Come on cursed spirit... where are you! Aren't you supposed to be stronger than Sukuna... you can't even beat some stupid finger bearer! You're so weak, just like me", Rei laughed insulting the cursed spirit that was supposed to be his partner. As he stared at the gargantuan ball of energy thrown by the spirit, that seemed to swallow up the entire street, he could only laugh at his pathetic state.

THE END

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Rei found himself in a dark setting. Staring around at his new surroundings, all he could see was the pitch black void.

"So I'm back here", muttered Rei, still smiling. He remembered this was that ROB's domain.

"NO"

"Oh hey ROB, long time no see", Rei greeted as he turned around, but he was met with nothing. Examining his surroundings again, he asked "So where are you?"

"I am not the ROB"

Suddenly he felt the 'ground' he was standing on being lifted. The void suddenly changed into a bright red sky, and in front of Rei was gigantic silhouette with deep purple eyes. In fact, Rei was standing on the silhouette's opened palm.

The being moved closer to Rei, as if examining him, before speaking, "Nice to meet you, Mastah"

"...Cursed Spirit?"

"Yes, Mastah."