Outside the Kamo estate, a rift tore through the sky. Satoru Gojo and Suguru Geto stepped out of the void, their boots crunching on the gravel.
"The smell of blood is staggering," Suguru said, adjusting his collar. "To think the Kamo would fall into such chaos. I hope there are survivors left to save."
Satoru shrugged, folding his arms behind his head. "I say we wait for Oka Kamo to finish off every last one of them. It'd make cleaning up the aftermath much simpler, don't you think?"
"..." Suguru shot him a dark look. "That's going too far, Satoru. With the Zenin gone, the number of sorcerers is already dangerously low—"
"I know, I know..." Satoru rolled his eyes. "Stop nagging like an old housewife."
The two began to walk toward the estate, but suddenly, they both stopped in unison.
"Oh? Our cute students are already here?" Satoru grinned. "In that case, let's leave the stage to them."
"Mai, the situation is critical. Let go of me."
"Understood, sister."
Mai's face was flushed as she reluctantly released Maki's arm. Nearby, Momo Nishimiya watched the display, her teeth practically grinding together in annoyance.
Maki sighed, looking at her sister. Since being rescued from the Zenin estate by the teachers, Mai had been recuperating in Shoko-sensei's lab. When Maki finally went to visit, Mai had woken up and clung to her, crying for hours. Since then, Mai seemed like a different person. All the bitterness and feigned hatred had vanished, replaced by a clinginess that was... intense.
Maki didn't hate the affection, but she couldn't help but feel that her sister's feelings had become a bit... fermented. Is it just my imagination?
RUMBLE—!!
A deafening roar shattered her thoughts as the Kamo family's ancestral shrine collapsed in a cloud of dust.
Oka Kamo, now a monstrous entity resembling a Grade 0 Curse, roared with a voice that sounded like gurgling blood. He was no longer a man; he was a walking storm of gore driven by a single, jagged obsession: Destroy the Kamo.
The first to hit the front lines were the powerhouse duo, Yuji Itadori and Aoi Todo.
"What kind of monster is this?!" Yuji shouted. Facing a giant mass of shifting, sentient blood, he realized his "fisticuffs" had nowhere to land.
Todo leaped high into the air, his muscles bulging as he drove a massive punch into the creature's head.
SPLASH!!
The head shattered into a thousand droplets, but it reformed instantly. Worse, the attack had drawn the monster's focus. Countless crimson tentacles erupted from the central mass, their tips sharpening into lances as they whipped toward the duo at blistering speed.
Clang! Schlick!
Maki arrived in a blur, her blade a silver arc that severed the tentacles in a heartbeat. The severed limbs hit the ground and dissolved into puddles, only to crawl back toward the main body like living leeches.
"Ordinary attacks are useless!" Maki yelled.
"Let me try!" Megumi Fushiguro wove his fingers into a sign. "Nue!"
The great bird soared, its wings crackling with brilliant electricity. Bolts of lightning slammed into the monster, causing the blood mass to shrivel and recoil. It seemed to be working—until the liquid blood suddenly hardened.
"Blood Manipulation: Blood Star Rock?!"
The creature shrank into a jagged, armored sphere. Then, from the gaps in the shell, a barrage of blood arrows erupted.
"Supernova: Piercing Blood?!"
"It has all the Kamo techniques!" Megumi shouted, dodging a lethal streak of red. "We need a massive offensive to burn it all away at once!"
Momo, circling above on her broom, signaled with a lantern. "Kasumi! Can Mechamaru's cannon do it?"
Kokichi's voice crackled through Kasumi Miwa's earpiece. "Sorry... Mechamaru Mode: Zero is still under repair."
"..."
"However," Kokichi continued, "my sensors show the outer layer is just a shell. Oka Kamo's original body is at the very core. If you hit the center, you hit the source!"
"Got it!"
With the weakness identified, Todo and Yuji—the most durable pair in the group—charged forward to draw the fire. At the cost of several shallow wounds, they paved a path through the blood-lances.
Maki and Miwa moved in tandem, their blades flashing as they carved a deep wedge into the gore.
Rip!
The thick blood parted, revealing the distorted, agonizing form of Oka Kamo at the center. His eyes were glowing pits of scarlet, his skin stretched over a frame that was barely human anymore.
"Now!"
Nobara Kugisaki seized the opening. She lunged forward, tossing three nails into the air and swinging her hammer with a fierce grin.
"Straw Doll Technique: Resonance!"
The strike aimed directly at the soul should have ended it, but a chill ran down Nobara's spine. The "walking corpse" Oka Kamo suddenly snapped his eyes open, his gaze full of cold, lucid malice. His mutated right hand lunged out of the blood, snatching all three nails out of the air!
BANG!
A heavy bullet slammed into Oka's forehead.
In the distance, Mai was perched on a rooftop, her Barrett sniper rifle still smoking. The impact snapped Oka's head back, but as he slowly righted himself, the bullet—now a flattened piece of lead—simply sat embedded in his forehead like a macabre ornament.
"Fall back!" Megumi summoned a Toad, its tongue wrapping around Nobara to pull her out of the monster's reach.
The group's faces turned grim. Based on that exchange, Oka Kamo had officially entered the realm of a peak Special Grade Cursed Spirit.
"You want to stop me... from destroying the Kamo..." Oka's voice was a distorted rasp. "Then you... can die with them!"
He unleashed a tidal wave of blood-tentacles that acted like a closing net. The ground shattered wherever they touched.
"Supernova: Piercing Blood!"
A series of razor-thin blood lines sliced through the air, neatly severing the tentacles.
Noritoshi Kamo, his long hair now shorn short, stepped onto the battlefield with a look of absolute resolve.
Yuji gasped. "Whoa, that was amazing!"
Todo frowned. "Something's wrong. I know Noritoshi's strength. Those tentacles are too dense for his normal output to cut them that easily."
High above, Momo signaled the coordinates. Noritoshi followed her lantern's light, locking onto the monster's core. He drew a single arrow from his quiver, his own blood and cursed energy swirling around the arrowhead in a violent vortex.
"Goodbye, Father."
Zing—!
The arrow streaked through the sky like a falling star, punching through every obstacle and burying itself perfectly into the center of Oka's forehead.
BOOM!!
With a thunderous explosion, the entity known as Oka Kamo vaporized into a fine red mist. A heavy rain of blood began to fall, staining the surrounding miles in a haunting, permanent shade of crimson.
Yuji blinked, wiping a drop from his cheek. "Is it... over?"
Shoko's Laboratory
Souma Gojo sat on an exam table, a lollipop in his mouth, flipping through the confiscated research data.
"So, Oka Kamo intentionally used his son's blood as a stabilizer," Souma mused. "It made Noritoshi the ultimate 'hard counter' to every single artificial Blood Manipulation user they created."
"No matter how many 'fakes' the Kamo family churned out, Noritoshi would always be able to suppress them," Shoko added, leaning against the counter. "Once the 'Artificial Technique' was perfected, a natural-born user like Noritoshi would have become expendable to the main house. Oka left this secret behind to ensure his son would always be the most valuable asset they had."
Shoko sighed, a trail of smoke rising from her cigarette. "Perhaps that was his way of showing fatherly love."
Souma set the files down and shook his head.
"I think you're being too romantic, Shoko. To me, it looks like Oka was just creating a bargaining chip to trade with the main house for his own status."
"Then Takanobu's insults pushed him over the edge, and years of resentment turned into a suicide mission."
"You're a pessimist, Souma."
"Can't help it," Souma said, popping the lollipop out of his mouth. "I've made it a habit to assume the worst of people."
"Especially when they come from the Big Three."
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