CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.
"Okay, calm down and tell me what happened," Megumi said in a flat, unbothered voice, setting his wireless controller down on his lap. On the massive flat-screen TV mounted inside his traditional Zenin estate room, his game character stood frozen in front of a boss room.
Kneeling frantically on the tatami mats, the Zenin clan retainer took a ragged breath, trying to steady his shaking hands.
"C-Clan Leader! One of the remote villages located in the Yamagata region suddenly lost complete contact yesterday evening!" the man stammered out, bowing his head till it nearly touched the floor. "After our local sorcerers went to check it out... we discovered that the entire village has been slaughtered. All 208 residents. Men, women, elderly, children... not a single soul was spared."
Megumi's casual posture stiffened slightly. The faint trace of boredom in his dark eyes instantly vanished, replaced by a sharp, serious glare.
"208 people..." Megumi murmured under his breath.
Naturally, the Jujutsu world was severely understaffed. With Jujutsu High only graduating a meager three or four sorcerers every single year, the official system was nowhere near enough to manage an entire country's curse outbreaks. That small batch of High School graduates was mostly just a public face for the higher-ups to show off. The real heavy lifting and brute force of the sorcery world belonged to the ancient Jujutsu clans scattered across Japan.
Clans like the Zenin, Gojo, and Kamo held massive territories, deploying their own private forces to clear out curses within their borders. And among them, the Big Three Clans ruled supreme—not just because of their inherited cursed techniques, but because they possessed the largest private territories and armed forces in the nation.
"Was it done by a high-grade curse?" Megumi asked, picking up a wet towel from the table to wipe his hands.
"It is currently unknown, Clan Leader," the retainer replied nervously. "However... a terrifyingly similar incident happened just a little over a year ago. That attack was carried out by Suguru Geto, who defected from Jujutsu society after single-handedly slaughtering 108 non-sorcerers in a single village. The clan elders are heavily suspecting that Geto is the culprit behind this incident as well."
The retainer paused, looking up cautiously. "Clan Leader... should we assemble and send a squad of Grade 1 sorcerers to track him down and deal with him?"
Megumi leaned back against his cushion, his mind racing through the timeline of events.
Suguru Geto...
In the original plot trajectory around this time, there wasn't a massive amount of detailed record about his exact movements, other than the fact that he was currently laying the groundwork to establish his religious cult. A village massacre around this timeframe was completely consistent with his twisted goal of eradicating non-sorcerers.
So, hearing that Geto was behind this didn't shock Megumi at all.
What did get his gears turning was what Geto's ability represented. Cursed Spirit Manipulation was an extraordinarily convenient technique. But to be even more accurate, Megumi wasn't really interested in Geto himself—he was insanely interested in a specific special grade curse that Geto was destined to cross paths with in the future: Mahito.
Idle Transfiguration... the ability to freely reshape and manipulate the human soul at will.
To Megumi, a cheat technique like that was basically a world-class treasure! Everyone in the Jujutsu world would obviously want a piece of that power.
I need to track Geto down and get my hands on that technique first, Megumi thought, his internal logic veering into a completely absurd, twisted direction. A pure, innocent soul like Mahito shouldn't have to suffer in the cruel, abusive hands of true villains like Kenjaku and Yuji! As a responsible clan leader, I have a duty to 'protect' Mahito's soul from those monsters!
Having convinced himself of his utterly ridiculous hero complex, Megumi stood up from his cushion.
"No need to dispatch the Grade 1s," Megumi declared smoothly. "I'll go there and handle it myself."
The retainer's eyes widened in horror. "C-Clan Leader! Are you sure?! Facing a special grade curse user alone is—"
Megumi slowly turned his head, casting a cold, suffocating Zenin glare down at the man. The raw pressure radiating from his shadow caused the retainer's words to instantly die in his throat.
"Y-Yes, Clan Leader!" the man squeaked out, bowing furiously. "I will arrange your transport to Yamagata immediately!"
Megumi initially assumed the mission would be straightforward.
He would ride out to the site, use his shadows to track Geto's residual cursed energy, extract whatever DNA or techniques he needed, and then decide on the spot whether to capture the rogue sorcerer or just end him right there.
However, looking at the tall, white-haired man standing smack in the middle of the deserted dirt road ahead, Megumi realized things were not going to be quite that simple.
Gojo Satoru leaned casually against a wooden fence post, a paper bag of sweet pastries dangling from his finger, wearing that insufferably smug grin on his face.
"Gojo Satoru," Megumi deadpanned, stopping five paces away with a deep scowl. "What the fuck are you doing here? This is a private territory matter for the Zenin clan."
"Aww, don't be so cold, Megumi!" Gojo whined playfully, sliding his blindfold up just enough to reveal one sparkling, electric-blue eye. "Don't you remember that massive, expensive gift I sent over to your compound last week?"
Megumi didn't even blink. "That gift was sent by the elders of the Gojo Clan to clear up a land dispute on our border. What the hell does that have to do with you personally?"
Being instantly caught red-handed, Gojo didn't feel an ounce of shame. Instead, he flashed over in a blur of motion, vanishing from the fence post and reappearing right beside Megumi, clapping a heavy arm around the boy's shoulders.
However, the playful air around Gojo suddenly dropped, replaced by a rare, solemn edge in his tone.
"Look, Megumi... this matter is directly related to an old friend of mine," Gojo said quietly, staring off toward the distant mountains.
He turned back to Megumi, his grin returning, albeit a bit more forced. "So how about this? I'll owe you a favor. A massive one. As long as it doesn't involve blowing up the entire world, I'll do whatever you ask of me in the future. In exchange, you let me make the final call regarding Suguru's fate. We can even swear a Binding Vow right now if you don't trust my word."
Megumi glanced sideways at the white-haired powerhouse. A blank-check favor from Gojo Satoru—the undisputed strongest sorcerer of the modern era—was worth far more than whatever prestige the Zenin clan would gain from capturing Geto.
"Fine," Megumi muttered, shaking Gojo's heavy arm off his shoulder. "Keep your Binding Vow. What you can do, I can do too. But... there is definitely something I'll be wanting from you down the line, so I'll accept your condition."
The second those words left Megumi's mouth, Gojo's serious expression shattered into total absurdity.
Gojo gasped loudly, dramatically wrapping both arms over his chest like a modest maiden, taking a scandalized step backward.
"B-Brother..." Gojo whispered in mock horror, trembling slightly. "Aren't you a little too young to be making scandalous demands like that from me?!"
TWITCH.
A thick red vein popped on Megumi's forehead. A sudden, overwhelming urge to summon Mahoraga just to smash Gojo into the dirt washed over his entire body.
"Shut the fuck up," Megumi growled, turning on his heel and walking briskly toward the waiting car. "Let's go. I need to wrap this shit up fast so I can go back home and finish my game."
Gojo instantly perked up, strolling right behind him like an annoying stray dog. "Oh? What game are you playing? Is it that new RPG? Can I play player two?!"
"No."
Despite deploying the full force of the Zenin clan's vast intelligence network, actually pinpointing Suguru Geto's exact hiding location proved to be a total pain in the ass. The man was an expert at hiding his presence in the shadows of the non-sorcerer world.
However, the moment Megumi and Gojo stepped foot into the ruined, silent village in Yamagata, all doubts vanished.
The air was heavy, foul, and suffocating—polluted with a chaotic, disgusting cocktail of dozens of distinct cursed energy footprints overlapping one another. It was the undeniable signature left behind when a curse user summons a massive horde of low-grade cursed spirits to butcher defenseless humans in a enclosed area.
Looking at the blood-stained dirt and empty, ruined homes, Megumi's eyes narrowed into slits.
There was zero mistake about it. Suguru Geto had definitely been here.
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