Chapter 18

He sent searching eyes back, and once more malevolent scarlet eyes locked into eerie blue.

Satoru walked up to him and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright?"

He gave a shrug and a smile before replying, "A bit burnt, bruised and cut. But majorly exhausted." And that was the truth. He was no longer the six-year-old kid who struggled to even survive against the Sorcerer killer.

None of the injuries he had gotten so far were life-threatening. No real broken bones, and he made sure he was never slow enough to take Jogo's disaster flames head-on.

The only real injury he noted was the laceration from his left chest to his shoulder. He glanced at it. Throughout the fight, he had instinctively held the muscle tight in a feat of long-practiced control. Yet, it still bled freely.

His only notable injury was a glancing blow from an amused Jorogumo. That she also had access to a domain just made it that much more insidious. This was his second foe that had not taken him seriously, and they had paid the price for it.

They had ignored the threat he could pose simply because of his age. In his previous life where children as young as six could be sent to the war front, nobody would've dared make that mistake. But this world was… soft.

Only two world wars in a century, compared to the four they had in less than fifty years. Yet wasn't this exactly what he had hoped to build? He shook his head breaking off the wild tangent his mind had begun to follow, daring to dredge up past hopes and dreams.

Satoru replied to him with a nod before turning his attention back to the regenerated curse.

"An unregistered special grade?"

"Who are you?" The curse asked while turning the screw at the side of its head. Anger and annoyance at being ignored? Jiki noted it down as an emotional tick.

This time a smile crept up on Satoru's face, and his normal boisterous exterior appeared once more but tinged with something dark. Something malicious.

"I'm the strongest," he stated with all the certainty of a man that had known his fate from the moment he was born. A man whose birth shifted the aisle on which this world spun.

The cursed spirit gave him a confused look even as Satoru continued before turning his eyes to where the giant straw figure used to rest. "And know you were not the one to actually stress my cute little Jiki-kun after all…" Satoru gave him a very obvious once-over before continuing, "You're weak."

Satoru turned away from the surprised and rapidly boiling visage of the cursed spirit. He gave a brief look at the second curse that hadn't moved an inch, to the open-mouthed form of granny Kugisake and the wide-eyed forms of Aiko and Nobara.

When had they woken up? He questioned idly. He had been so focused on the threats before him that he had missed their recovery.

"It was another special grade," Jiki gave out another shrug. A shrug that stretched his wounded shoulder, he realized with a wince.

"Special grade cursed spirit: Jorogumo?"

Satoru asked with a raised brow. Considering the speed Satoru got here with and taken alongside the fact he didn't come over with the eye wrap on, Satoru most likely had an idea of what he was coming to face. So Jiki nodded in reply.

"Mau Mau, I was really gearing up to face her you know."

Satoru continued with an exaggerated pout. Completely unbothered about the cursed spirit that was rapidly boiling just as its diminished cursed energy seemed to rapidly increase.

"The higher-ups already had their panties in a bind, after all her cursed energy could be felt back at jujutsu high all the way from here. Can you believe the moment she was released, The number of cursed spirits in Japan alone nearly multiplied?"

"Really?" He asked in surprise.

"Really," Satoru continued with an exaggerated hand movement depicting the way the cursed energy flowed out.

"How come I didn't see a single cursed spirit in the village?"

"Because I killed them all before they managed to feed off her cursed energy, brat," the rough voice of Old Woman Kugisaki called out, drawing their attention back to her.

"Anyway, she was a registered Special grade and we had some idea of her capabilities so where is she right now?" Satoru finally continued.

"I sealed her," Jiki answered plainly, stifling the desire to shrug.

"You seal-"

Cursed Technique: Disaster flames.

Satoru ducked and spun on the spot, like he had been waiting for the moment for days. Dodging the overstretched gray hand before burying two fingers deep into the wide-eyed cursed spirit's chest.

The sheer speed of the moment made it certain that Jiki was the only one who saw what actually happened. Satoru whispered a sentence. His previous jovial tone drained to nothing, and his soft voice carried the cold chill of the dead.

Cursed Technique Reversal: Red.

The explosive output of the reverse cursed technique activating point blank in front of the special grade burnt a hole through it. A hole that extended outwards to carve a new pathway into the forest.

The shockwave of force came next. It exploded and blew everything in the surroundings away. With a flex of his cursed energy, Jiki anchored himself to the ground and kept his footing, before raising a hand to block out the dust.

When he raised his head once more, the special grade was nowhere to be seen. But Satoru was still looking down the pathway his reverse cursed technique had carved through the forest.

Waving off the dust, he looked to Satoru and asked, "Still alive?"

"Surprisingly," Satoru admitted with a curious tilt of his head. "I guess it's not a special grade for nothing."

The flare of cursed energy that indicated the activation of a technique drew his eyes to where the seemingly docile special grade curse was. It had finally decided to move then? He could not hear the words this far away, but its effects were clear.

Within the entire clearing, a wide flower bed suddenly grew out. The soft sound of summer breeze blowing through the flowers, the sweet smell of pollinated flowers, the-

With a directed disruption of his cursed energy, the sensation disappeared just as fast as it came. Genjutsu? Jiki realized with wide eyes. And one that was insidious enough to get past a sorcerer's innate resistance to it. How?

Two lifetimes of well-honed instincts screamed Danger, so he turned. His sharingan enhanced his perception, slowing the world down for him alone.

Five cursed energy enhanced roots speared forward. He ducked under his, and Satoru recovered fast enough to slap the one that came for him to the side. The remaining three overshot and went behind them.

Behind them.

He spun around, dread in his bones and his eyes shifting into their mangyeko form headless of the risk as Amaterasu; the heavenly illumination of a God sprang out and destroyed one root.

Ignoring the spike of pain that came with the usage, He turned immediately, and the next second the black fire sprang up on another root, but even with that, he was still too slow. To slow to stop the last root. The last root heading for Nobara.

Old woman Kugisaki sent trembling knees up and stepped in the way. A valiant effort to save her grandchild. A wasted effort. It speared through the weakened frame of the elderly woman, bursting out her back with her internal organs following before its sharp end buried itself into the unmoving girl.

He blinked away the prediction.

Spears of roots shot out from where the cursed spirit was standing. Five cursed energy-enhanced spiked stakes for the five people alive in the clearing.

His cursed energy was running low, but he still had enough in him to try it. Locking his ten fingers together, he raised up the two index fingers to his lips, before twisting his cursed energy into what he wanted and breathing out.

Cursed Technique: Fire style - Great Flame Technique.

He expelled a large stream of flames from his mouth that progressively widened as it shot forward like a long-range portable flame thrower.

Fire against wood was only ever going to have one result.

The spreading barrier of cursed energy-derived flames scorched and burnt down the five roots with an unmatched hunger before they could gather up speed in time to become the threat he saw.

His cursed energy ran dry a few seconds later, and he was forced to stop and hunch over to cough out the smoke that had managed to form in his lungs.

Using a B rank fire style jutsu barely ten minutes after he managed to re-engineer ninjutsu on this world was not the smartest thing, he had to admit even as he felt Satoru's hand on his back, slapping it gently.

He looked up to see Satoru staring at him with an increasingly bright smile.

"You've discovered your Innate technique!!!"

Satoru exclaimed. All the concern about his previously injured state was gone in the heat of the moment. The anger and curiosity at the special grade cursed spirit transformed into joy. This was the Satoru he was more familiar with.

"Not exactly," Jiki finally spoke as he managed to clear his lungs. To the raised questioning brow of Satoru.

"I copied the cursed spirit's technique."

"An innate technique that copies other techniques?" Satoru asked, with a hand on his chin. The two special grade cursed spirits forgotten behind him.

Jiki was not certain it was that either. The way he molded his cursed energy was something different from just copying a technique. He had a feeling this was replicable. It won't be easy, but he knew it was possible. But the concept of Ninjutsu or its originator Ninshu was not known nor common here.

Explaining it would be time-consuming, and they didn't have the time for it. Plus, he knew how worried Satoru had been about his lack of innate cursed technique. So he shrugged in response, suppressing the wince that shot through him.

"What about the curses?" He asked as he sent out searching eyes.

"They've been gone for a while," Satoru answered as he walked off to see Aiko, Nobara, and old woman Kugisaki.

"Two special grade curses teaming up and working together is rare, but not exactly unheard of."

"They were here to recruit Jorogumo."

"Huh," That stopped Satoru short. "Really?"

"Really," Jiki answered.

"Hah. That won't have gone well for them. Jorogumo was a noted… cannibal. She didn't exactly care where she got the cursed energy from. That was one of the reasons she was so feared in the Heian Era. In other notes-"

Satoru looked back at him as he continued walking.

"The higher-ups are going to want to see you. This is not just about you being a prodigy. You managed to seal a centuries-old cursed spirit."

"What should I expect?"

"A marriage contract at least," Old woman Kugisaki broke into the conversation once more as they neared, even if her focus was on pressing her palm on both Aiko and Nobara's head.

The old woman knew reverse curse healing? So why didn't the spiteful bag of anger and annoyance heal the gash she tore into him? Then her words clicked again in his head.

"A marriage contract?" He asked with a barely notable tremble in his voice that was definitely caused by the smoke that got into his lungs.

"Mau Mau, don't mind her this is not the Meiji period. Forceful arranged marriage is no longer all that common."

Jiki's hopes were raised a bit before the older woman opened her mouth once more.

"You forget they also tried to marry you off in a stupid attempt to artificially breed new six-eyed brats, and only the fact that you were the next clan head stopped that in its tracks."

Satoru scratched his head in embarrassment. "It's all in the past anyway. Don't worry about it."

For the first time, Satoru's words didn't bring him any comfort.

"This is the first official meeting in regards to the ungraded Jujutsu Sorcerer, Gojo Jiki."

Jiki stood in between six equally spaced traditional wooden slides. Behind them were the moving cogs and wheels of the Jujutsu world. The people that decided who lived and who died in this world.

He stood easily giving a lazy look to the seal etched wooden slides. Not even his eyes could peer through them.

Here he was wasting time instead of continuing his vacation in Aiko's village now that it had been cleansed. Satoru better keep to his words and teleport him back after this.

Needing a distraction, he turned his attention to his clothes.

The white kimono and matching black half-hand haori he wore over it fit him snuggly he had to admit, the more traditional wear for some reason reminded him of older times. This was reinforced by the scene. This was not the first time he was meeting a group of higher-ups in a clandestine location.

"Exorcised his first curse at age six," the first voice called out.

"Unlocked a mutation of the six eyes," another one acknowledged.

"Fought and survived the Hyper Lethal class; Sorcerer killer," another one added.

Hyper lethal? Did they just make up a new classification for a single man? He could not say why they didn't just classify him as special grade. But Considering the prejudice of the higher-ups, he would guess it was the man's lack of cursed energy. It must've hurt them to even admit that he was a threat to the vast majority of them.

"Committed unsanctioned investigation on the registered special grade spirit; Jorogumo," another one called out. This time hostility laced this person's tone, and Jiki raised an unimpressed brow at it.

"Accomplice in the death of over Thirty men and women," another voice continued, tone cold and unfeeling.

"Fought against the special grade curse: Jorogumo and sealed her," This one was more approving.

"Allegedly." The hostile voice added.

He let out a sigh that drew all attention to him. "You've heard of her; you've felt her cursed energy, tasted the sheer malice and desire she held in her frame, even from afar while clad in your protection. If she was roaming about Japan, we wouldn't be here talking about me," he stated for the first time. His tone curt and non-argumentative, simply factual.

"Disrespectful. Truly a Gojo," the hostile voice finally said after a short five-second break where they all shuffled behind their barriers. He guessed not even their overinflated sense of worth and pride could blind them to what he had done.

"With the aid of the mutated six eyes, with noted abilities widely varying from the original six eyes," the cold and detached voice continued from where they stopped.

Jiki stood still and uncaring. He had made his point. He might not care for being psychoanalyzed to his face, but he wouldn't allow them to discredit him for no reason.

"According to the multiple eyewitness reports, names were mentioned with each activation of the techniques. Divine names. Deific names. Gods," a new voice called out in amusement.

"Heretical!!" the hostile voice spoke up once more, glee lacing the tone.

"Amaterasu; an unquenching black fire," one noted.

"Susanoo; a faux manifestation of a God," another one noted.

"Yet, the names have been backed up by the ability. And we all felt it, didn't we," the first voice finally spoke up again.

Once more, they were quiet. But this time, it lasted longer, and it perked his curiosity. What exactly had they felt?

"Sealed the special grade curse: Jorogumo with the blade of Totsuka. A deific grade weapon that had been lost for almost two millennia," the cold voice noted once more.

The voice was clinical, neither approving like the first nor truly hostile like the fourth. It just made statements. But this time, it held something like interest in its tone.

"How did this come to be?"

He shrugged in reply. This had gotten tedious again, but he was not one to break formality. "I don't know," he said—the truth and a lie.

He did not know how they lost their own Totsuka no Tsurugi, but his own was brought along from another life, where he challenged its protector, the chief summons of the elusive bearded dragons, in a bid to counter what Orochimaru had done to his little brother.

"Lie," one voice noted.

"True," another one countered.

"I tire of this," a new voice spoke up, bearing the weight of age in its tone, the grinding of millennia.

"Verdict?" it asked.

All were silent for ten long minutes while he stood like a statue.

"Special grade status approved," the hostile voice finally announced for the group, with gritted teeth that he could hear even from behind its barrier.

"Special grade sorcerer: Gojo Jiki, you're hereby mandated to join one of the jujutsu schools in Japan here. Absence or renegading on this is not… advised," the aged voice spoke up once more.

"I officially welcome you to the world of Jujutsu, child. May you be one of the pillars that hold it up high."