NO. 9 - Productive Three Months

Jumping from rooftop to rooftop in the dead of night like a parkouring ninja was pretty fun.

Due to the size of the country, almost all of the living complexes, like apartments or houses, had to be built pretty close to one another in order to save space. This also applied to the metropolitan areas in the cities where all the buildings and skyscrapers were practically stuck to one another to save space.

Yeah, there were some areas in the country where there were more spaced-out buildings like those made for the government or private organizations, but those weren't that common to run into.

Due to that, traveling from rooftop to rooftop on foot was pretty easy since you don't have to leap across large distances to get to the other side. Making traveling from Ward to Ward all the more easy.

"Should start heading home now."

I leaped in the air using my CE and felt the cool night air brush past my face. It felt nice and refreshing.

Three months.

It's been three months since I've embarked on my quest to master jujutsu. This journey has led me to engage in nightly skirmishes with the less savory elements of our heroic society. The city is teeming with criminals and scoundrels, outnumbering the heroes three to one.

Now, some of you might be wondering why an 11, now 12-year-old kid would go around getting into fights with grown-ass adults. The answer is simple: for experience.

My path to mastering jujutsu sorcery and my curse techniques is not an easy one. I've meticulously planned my physical training, ensuring that my new, more strenuous routine doesn't impede my growth. Rushing would be counterproductive. It wouldn't do me any good to hinder my development just to get a teeny bit stronger than before. I still had time, so there was no need to rush.

I didn't want to risk being short after all.

Anyways, back to what I was talking about. My reasoning as to why I was getting into fights was to increase my fighting experience and my understanding of jujutsu sorcery. My goal was to get to the point of understanding jujutsu like Sukuna himself while having the battle IQ of Gojo himself.

My goals may seem lofty, even unattainable to most canon jujutsu sorcerers. But I'm not most sorcerers. I'm different.

I was him.

I was that guy.

Or at least, I would be soon.

I blinked out of my thoughts and landed in an abandoned alleyway a block or two from my orphanage in order to change. I stuffed my jujutsu uniform away and put on a black hoodie and blue jeans. Now changed, I walked out onto the sidewalk and began walking home.

Yup, just a 12-year-old walking alone at 2 am.

Now then, where was I…

I had a cheat, or as some would call it, a golden finger, that could give me every known cursed technique in the original series without the blowback. Making my potential even more significant than that of Potential Man himself. It wouldn't be far-fetched to say that I could one day become an untouchable God.

Just imagine the sheer power of someone with the Six Eyes, Sukuna's cursed energy reserves, Limitless, the Ten Shadows, Shrine, and Star Rage could do. It was both frightening and exciting to think about.

Some of you may have noticed I only listed four techniques. There's a reason for that.

Unfortunately, I made a disappointing discovery when I unlocked my fifth cursed technique. I was only able to use four techniques within 2 hours of each other. Let's see, let's explain this in video game terms. Let's say my body has four magic slots into which I could assign a single curse technique. If I wanted to change one of the techniques, I had to wait two hours for one of the slots to cool down in order to switch that technique to a different one.

Out of curiosity, I pushed myself to use five techniques at once, but I didn't like having blood flow out of my eyes, nose, ears, and mouth while the most horrible headache tried to melt my brain. Safe to say, I'm sticking to four curse techniques until I can safely handle more.

Despite that slight hiccup, it wouldn't do me any good imagining what I could one day be able to do until I actually pulled those techniques and passives from the gacha system.

So far, I've yet to pull any of the aforementioned techniques. But I have managed to pull some other great techniques so far.

I now had Jogo's Fire Manipulation, Yorozu's Construction, MeiMei's Black Bird Manipulation, and finally, Goda Toshio's Cloning.

Who was Goda Toshio? That was the name for Mr. Bagman from the hidden inventory arc in JJK.

I do want to dispel one thing right now: Jogo's Fire Manipulation and Yorozu's Construction did not make me OP. At least, not yet.

No, Jogo was said to be on par with around 8 or 9 of Sukuna's fingers. Making him an incredibly powerful curse spirit. Heck, his fight with Sukuna himself at Shibuya was the perfect example of what one with such a technique could do.

However, Jogo was a special-grade curse spirit with a lot of cursed energy.

I, on the other hand, have the reserves of a grade 1 sorcerer.

Which means I had no hopes of pulling off any crazy and over-the-top moves that could melt an entire city block.

Moving on to Yorozu's Construction technique. It was by far one of the most impressive and diverse techniques in the catalog of curse techniques.

The technique itself allows me to re-create any substance I recognize with CE, with the exception of special cursed tools. In other words, I could bring to life anything I could imagine! The sheer limitless number of possibilities was enough to cause me to laugh like a madman!

Which I did when I initially pulled the technique from a diamond pull, which happened to be at school. I was looked at as if I was a crazy person for an entire week after that.

The technique had one restriction, which was that it did not recreate special cursed tools. That aspect of the technique was a little disappointing. My plans of creating a small armory of my two tools went out the window. Said two tools were Kusakabe's Katana and Slaughter Demon. Two weapons that went well with Maki's weapon mastery skill, which I pulled a while ago, as well.

Back to the technique, creating something from nothing uses a lot of cursed energy, making this technique extremely energy-inefficient compared to other cursed techniques. However, due to my relatively okay reserves and low understanding of jujutsu, the most I could create before exhausting myself for an entire day were small-medium items.

This was rather sad and disappointing; not being able to become a heavy hitter immediately was annoying, but there was nothing I could do. I had to keep training to be able to one day use these techniques to their maximum potential.

This brings us back to my last two techniques.

Black Bird Manipulation and Cloning.

As the name suggests, Black Bird Manipulation allows the user to imbue crows with CE and control them at will. The user can manipulate multiple crows at the same time from an extended range away from themselves.

Additionally, the user can also share vision with the birds, making the technique perfect for surveillance. It also makes the crows, under the user's command, absolutely obedient, so they can also be used offensively, even at the cost of the bird's own life.

That move was something I didn't find myself ever using unless it was life or death. This was primarily due to the mistake I made when I began naming my crows after several JJK characters and the bonus ability to understand what they were saying. It would be cruel and heartless of me to use them like MeiMei did as suicide bombers.

I used this particular technique to scour the city to find any seedy locations crawling with people to beat up-I mean, criminals to stop. It also helped me avoid any patrolling heroes and police as well. A convenient technique indeed.

I arrived outside of the orphanage's west building and began sneakily making my way over to the window of the storage room; I mean, my room was located using precise movements and stealth.

As I sneaked around, I thought of my last acquired technique. Bag man's Cloning.

This technique allows the user to clone themselves using a kind of mud-like liquid material manipulated with their CE. The user can produce up to four clones for a total of five bodies. Using the cloned bodies, the user can instantly change out their real one with a clone at any time, sorta like Boogie Woogie but without the clapping.

Every clone can be considered exactly identical to the original caster, with the exception of the clones knowing their clones. Which was a relief when I found out that little tidbit. I didn't want a Twice situation to happen.

I haven't had many opportunities to use this ability in combat as of yet. If anything, I wanted to save this technique as my trump card for a rainy day. You never know when you might need a get-out-of-jail-free card. So, instead of using it on the field, I decided to use my clones for a more productive and lucrative reason…

"Page seven is done! I'm ready to ink the next one!"

"Got it, got it. Here's page eight and nine."

"Dude, there's a typo on chapter twenty-one."

"Oh yeah? Then fix it."

I used them to write up my books and manga!

Stepping into my room, I closed the door behind me and congratulated myself on another successful infiltration. The sight of four other perfect copies of myself greeted me as they all were hard at work on their assignments. Seeing my arrival, they all paused and turned to me.

"Ah, the boss is back."

"Welcome back, Boss!"

"Oi, you got some blood on your shoe."

"You smell like failure. No Black Flash tonight either?"

I could do without the personalities these guys have. I rolled my eyes at their comments and threw myself on my small bed. They didn't mind my dismissal and got back to work.

Each of my copies was wearing different colored shirts to separate themselves better as they all slaved away. Two of my copies were typing away on books 2 and 3 of The Hunger Games on their new laptops, while the other two were drawing up a storm for next week's chapter of my new serialized manga.

What was so great about these clones, besides their snarky comments and the fact that my small room was now even smaller thanks to their bodies and all the art supplies and notebooks, was the fact that they didn't get tired or have any human needs!

This technique really came in handy, considering I still needed to make money while training myself to become the strongest, which means that I could have them work on all my current and future books and manga series without stopping. A perfect and productive child sweatshop!

"Oi, boss. Our editor called while you were gone." Clone Green said as he stopped drawing. Clone Yellow nodded and inked away at the page in front of him. I turned to CG with tired eyes and nodded, causing him to continue. "She says she wants to meet you and that she won't take no for an answer again."

"Tch. That woman sure is persistent." I muttered as I rubbed my face. "Fine! Fine! I'll call her tomorrow to set up a meeting. As long as I can get her off my back. One meeting shouldn't hurt."

CG nodded and picked up his pencil to continue sketching away. I sighed and looked up at the roof. The exhaustion from today's shenanigans and training is catching up to me. Slowly, my eyelids began to grow heavier and heavier before sleep consumed me.

"Oi, Boss. Brush your teeth."

-

Info Sheet

Shimizu Souta

Cursed Techniques:

Boogie Woogie - Todo Aoi

Blood Manipulation - Choso

Auspicious Beast Summons - Ino Takuma

Fire Manipulation - Jogo

Construction - Yorozu

Black Bird Manipulation - Mei Mei

Cloning - Bag Man

Skills:

Yuji's Hand-to-hand combat skills

Yuta's Swordsmanship skills

Maki's Weapons Specialist skills

Abilities/Passives:

Nanami's CE reserves.

Weapons:

Kugisaki Nabora's Hammer

Slaughter Demon

Kusakabe Atsuya's Katana

-

AN:

Thank you for the 500 PS! I hope you enjoyed the bonus chapter!

Now, then, new poll time!

The time to vote on our last poll is coming to an end soon, so here is a new one for you all. I'm curious to see what direction you all want to see Souta head in, whether that be the heroic route or the villainous one. Or maybe something in between? Let me know what you all think!

This poll will end in Chapter 20.

Vote here for the Gojo (Good) route. <-< strong>

Vote here for the Sukuna (Selfish) route. <-< strong>

Vote here for the Kenjaku (Evil) route. <-< strong>

Until next time!