MASH POV
The first thing I felt was pain. The giant's blow had sent me flying with the force of a freight train.
From across the bridge, I could only watch as the Director was backhanded into the river, and the monster turned its attention to Gudako. My Master. My Senpai.
I wanted to avert my eyes, to not see what was about to happen. In that frozen moment, I pictured it: the creature, with a roar, bringing that monstrous blade down upon her.
Yet, that didn't happen.
One second, its arm was raised, ready to strike. The next, a sharp smack of colliding flesh and bone echoed across the bridge. Something had smashed into the giant, a blur of motion that sent both of them hurtling into the city proper, away from my Master.
Ignoring the stinging sensation in my arms, I scrambled to my feet, my shield feeling heavy in my grip. "Senpai!"
Gudako was pushing herself up from the pavement, trembling but alive. "Are you okay?"
"I... I think so," she stammered, her eyes wide with a terror that mirrored the feeling in my gut.
I had failed. I was a Servant. My entire purpose was to protect, and I had been defeated in a single blow. The Director was gone, and only an unknown being had prevented my Master's death.
"The Director," Master's shaking voice snapped me from my thoughts, her hand pointing to the edge of the bridge. "We have to—"
Her words were cut off by the sound of splashing water. My gaze snapped downwards. From the muddy river below, a figure was carrying the Director's unconscious body. An enemy? A scavenger? I moved without thinking, an instinct—from the Servant I had merged with—planting myself and my shield between my Master and the newcomer.
The figure looked up, directly at me, then he leaped. It was a fluid, powerful jump that carried him from the riverbank directly onto the bridge.
As he placed the Director on the pavement, I took in his appearance. He was tall, dressed in a blue and white robe with golden accents, over a black undershirt. A wooden staff covered in runes appeared in his hand in a shimmer of light. His long hair was blue, his eyes a piercing crimson. A Servant.
I stood my ground and forced my own shaking to stop. "Who are you?" I demanded.
My attempt at an intimidating posture seemed to fail entirely if his calm demeanor was anything to go by. He offered a lazy, disarming smile. "Relax, girlie. If I wanted you dead, I'd have left your friend to drown."
Girlie?
He gestured with his staff to where the Director lay. He didn't seem immediately hostile, but I stayed on guard. "I am Caster," he said. A Caster-class Servant. One of the seven standard classes. "I was a participant of this Holy Grail War, at least, I was. Now this city is a hellscape. Animated skeletons, shadow Servants stalking the streets… whatever happened to Saber changed everything. Let's just say I'm a survivor."
A survivor of the Fuyuki Holy Grail War? And Saber was the cause of all this? He could have answers, but he was still an unknown. A threat until proven otherwise.
He seemed to ignore us, kneeling beside the Director as if we weren't a concern. I watched his every move, ready to intervene. He let out a low whistle.
"Berserker really did a number on her. A backhand like that probably shattered her arm and her leg on the fall." He looked up at us. "You are lucky that's all that happened."
Just as he finished his sentence, the ground shook, a deep rumble echoing from the direction the monster—the Berserker—had been launched.
Ignoring the tremor, my gaze fell upon the Director's body. He was right. If those tremors were any indication, the Berserker had enough strength to have pulverized her on impact. Her right arm seemed floppy, her leg bent at an unnatural angle. But something else was wrong. Utterly wrong. Her vibrant white hair had turned a dull, lifeless grey. There was a feeling about her—the same dead stillness I had felt from the skeletons.
Before I could process it further, the Caster was in motion. He tore strips from the Director's own coat, fashioning them into crude but effective splints. Then he moved his finger through the air above her, as if writing. Glowing symbols—runes, a system of Magecraft I had only read about in textbooks—flared to life over her forehead and on the splints.
When he finished, he looked up at me. "She was too close to death. I've placed her in a state of suspended animation. She won't get any worse, but she won't get any better until a healer can take a look."
The act was helpful, but it only confirmed his status as a powerful, unknown Servant.
Then, a wave of heat. A scorching heat so intense I could feel it on my skin even from miles away. I looked towards the battle. A light, brilliant and terrifying, bloomed in the distance. For a single, blinding moment, it was as if a second sun had descended upon the earth.
Just as it came, it vanished. The sky went dark again, the wave of heat disappearing as if it had never been.
Moments after, Caster's demeanor changed. The relaxed confidence vanished, replaced by the sharp focus of a predator. He rose to his feet and turned his gaze not to us, but to a distant skyscraper. His voice, no longer casual, cut through the air with a clear edge.
"Alright, you've had your fun. Show yourself! I felt the Berserker's presence vanish, so what's your game?"
For a long moment, there was only silence. Then a figure launched itself from the skyscraper, the upper half of the building crumbling into dust from the force of its departure. It had to be the one who had saved my Master. If what Caster said was true, this being had just defeated the Berserker that took me out in a single shot.
The jump was a high, long arc that covered miles in seconds. It landed on the far end of the bridge with a ground-shaking BOOM, the force of the impact rattling the entire structure.
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From my vantage point on the skyscraper, I observed the blue-haired man on the bridge. I could feel the power radiating from him—potent, controlled, and entirely different from the mindless rage of the brute I had just dispatched. He was intriguing. I decided to engage, but on my terms.
A memory, one of the human's, flickered—something about first impressions. The old me would have made an impression with overwhelming violence, a casual display of force to establish a pecking order. But the human memories suggested a different kind of logic: violence was a tool, but not the only one. Right now, what I needed was answers, not corpses. Dominance could wait.
I leaped from the skyscraper, landing on the bridge with a ground-shaking impact that sent cracks spiderwebbing through the pavement. The two girls flinched, but my four eyes were solely fixated on the sorcerer. I walked toward their small group at a calm, measured pace. The girls were terrified insects, irrelevant to the conversation that was about to take place. Only he mattered.
As I closed the distance, a silent pressure erupted between us. My own aura, oppressive and heavy with the weight of an absolute predator, rolled forward. His was different; it was sharp, a focused spear point of pure, indomitable will that met my pressure without breaking. Everyone I had ever met buckled when faced with my presence, either surrendering in terror or breaking themselves in a futile attempt to push back. A memory flickered—white hair, six eyes. Almost everyone.
The two girls, caught in the invisible wake of our auras, stumbled. The one holding the shield barely caught herself; the weaker one simply collapsed, her senses overloaded.
We both withdrew our power simultaneously. A tacit agreement. A fight here, now, was not the most interesting outcome for either of us.
The moment our standoff concluded, the sorcerer's demeanor shifted. He went from a coiled warrior to a relaxed guide, though I could feel the readiness humming beneath his skin, waiting for me to make a move. I smirked. He was itching for a real fight, just as I was.
He turned and said something to the girls that made them blush, picking up the gray-haired woman into his arms. The shield of the pink-haired girl vanished as she scooped up the redhead. He looked back at me, gave a sharp nod, and then took off at a sprint. I followed.
As we moved through the ruined city, I mulled over the situation. The first warrior had been a physical equal, a brute with astonishing vitality. This blue-haired sorcerer was different. He was skilled—the glowing symbols keeping the gray-haired woman in suspended animation were proof enough of that. He was powerful, but what truly fascinated me was his nature. Both he and the hulking brute were "containers" for some kind of spirit, but there was a critical difference. I could see the desperate soul of the one I fought, but I couldn't pierce the veil protecting this sorcerers. It was like trying to look into a sealed box. The feeling of being unable to fully dissect something was a novel, and irritatingly fascinating, sensation.
Our journey was interrupted by a streak of light from the distance. An arrow, wreathed in a simple but potent burst of energy, screamed out of the darkness. It wasn't aimed at me or the sorcerer. It was aimed at the weakest link: the girl being carried by the one with the shield.
Before either of them could react, I was there, appearing in the arrow's path. I didn't dodge. I raised a hand and caught it. The moment my fingers closed around the shaft, it detonated in a violent flash of light and force.
My lower right arm was shredded, the flesh burned away to reveal shattered bone. But before the smoke even cleared, Reverse Cursed Technique knitted the wound shut, my arm reforming perfectly in less than a second. I flexed my pristine hand. An amusing trick, with respectable power behind it. Cowardly, but effective.
My gaze drifted towards the mountain that loomed over the city, the source of the attack. I could feel the sniper's presence nestled there, near a large torii gate at its peak.
I would not let this go unpunished. As another arrow formed in the sniper's bow, I responded. Lifting Hiten, I aimed not at the sniper, but at his next shot. A thin, hyper-compressed stream of air, invisible to most, shot from the trident's prongs. As the sniper loosed his arrow, my attack met it mid-flight, detonating it prematurely. He abandoned his position, leaping from the gate just as my second attack—a more powerful blast of wind from Hiten—carved a clean hole through the mountainside where he had been standing. The message was clear: I see you. Try that again and see what happens.
We finally arrived at our destination. I couldn't help but look with a degree of professional curiosity. An invisible barrier, different from a Jujutsu barrier, covered the entrance to a hidden bunker. My senses could decipher three distinct layers: an illusion that hid the entrance, a ward that imposed a suggestion to ignore the area, and an alarm. Clever.
The sorcerer descended, placing the gray-haired woman on a simple cot inside. He produced bottles of water from a cache, tossing one to each of us. I caught mine without looking, my eyes still analyzing the intricate runes etched onto the woman. The shield-maiden caught hers while the other girl fumbled, dropping hers to the floor with a clatter.
I took a drink, unconcerned. Poison was a triviality.
I turned to the sorcerer, my four eyes locking onto his. A dozen questions were already forming in my mind.
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I lowered the bottle, turning my full attention to the blue-haired sorcerer. The air in the small bunker crackled with unspoken questions, a silence pregnant with the threat of violence. It was he who broke it first, extending a hand not as a warrior, but as an equal seeking an introduction.
"Caster-class Servant," he said, his voice level, holding a calm confidence that bordered on foolishness. "Cú Chulainn."
I met his hand with one of my own, the grip firm and dry. A name. A title. I processed them. The name, Cú Chulainn, sparked a flicker of recognition—one of the mundane human memories, a story from some northern European island. My eyes widened for a fraction of a second, an involuntary reaction that the sorcerer did not miss.
"Ryomen Sukuna," I replied, my voice a low rumble. I saw no reason to hide my own name. Power has no need for pseudonyms. "The King of Curses."
Cú Chulainn's eyebrow raised a fraction. "King of Curses, eh? A lofty title. And you've heard of me?"
"I have," I admitted, a smirk playing on my lips. The memories felt like reading from a dusty scroll, disconnected from my own reality but clear nonetheless. "The Hound of Ulster. Son of Lugh. Trained by that warrior in the Land of Shadows, the one they called a god-killer." I paused, my gaze deliberate. "What intrigues me is your title. Caster. The Hound was a spearman."
Before I could press the point, the Caster's gaze shifted to the comatose gray-haired woman on the cot. He looked back at me, his expression turning serious. "Before we get into that, what about her? I saw you regenerate your arm after that sniper's arrow blew up. Can your sorcery do anything for her?"
I followed his gaze. The woman was stable, for now, thanks to the glowing runes he'd inscribed, but I could feel something else clinging to her, a parasitic remnant of energy left over from the brute's attack. A corruption.
"Healing her is a trivial matter," I stated, a simple fact. "What concerns me is this taint clinging to her. A curse of some kind, but crude. I've never seen its like. I have no idea how her body will react if I attempt to excise it."
"I felt it too," Cú Chulainn admitted, his brow furrowed in concentration. "But I have no way to remove it. You do?"
"I have a way," I confirmed.
As the Caster was about to speak again, the shield-maiden, Mash, stepped forward, her expression a mixture of desperation and anxiety. "Excuse me, but what are you talking about? Taint? Is the Director…"
Her words died in her throat. I turned my gaze upon her, letting the full, oppressive weight of my presence descend. The air in the bunker grew heavy, the temperature dropping several degrees. Cú Chulainn tensed, but did not move.
"You," I began, my voice a cold, quiet whisper that carried more menace than a shout, "have not introduced yourself. You are interrupting a conversation between your betters. You are an insect attempting to speak at a King's table."
The girl froze, her face paling as she struggled to breathe under the pressure of my aura. The Caster finally moved, stepping between us, a placating hand raised. The pressure did not affect him as it did the girls, a testament to his own will.
"Easy there, King," he said, his voice losing none of its confidence despite the crushing presence. "The girl's just worried about her leader. Show a little grace."
I held my gaze on the shield-maiden for a moment longer before slowly retracting my aura. The Caster was right, in a sense. Her outburst was a product of the human weakness I was now supposed to be studying—loyalty. Still, it was irritating.
I turned back to Cú Chulainn, dismissing the girl as if she were a piece of furniture. "I do not understand what you see in them," I said, my voice flat. "She is a talking shield with an overinflated sense of duty. The other one couldn't even catch a bottle of water. They are fragile. Annoying."
The Caster let out a sigh, then clapped Mash on the shoulder, guiding her and the other, terrified redhead to the far corner of the bunker to speak with them in hushed tones. Left to my own devices, I turned my attention to the true problem at hand, the woman on the cot. My four eyes examined the intricate web of corruption clinging to her, and I began to dissect the puzzle. This new world, with its strange rules and fascinating problems, was becoming more entertaining by the minute.
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Cú Chulainn leaned back against the bunker's cold concrete wall, his staff held loosely in his grip, his crimson eyes never leaving the four-armed being on the other side of the room.
Heh. So the brute's presence really did just snuff out after that flash. The thought came, sharp and analytical. A monster like Heracles, gone in an instant. To pull that off single-handedly... what the hell kind of trump card is this "King" hiding?
He was alive, that was for sure. No Servant felt like that; a being of pure mana was a fundamentally different thing from this creature of flesh, blood, and bone. That changed the entire game. There was no Spirit Core to aim for, which meant you had to destroy him completely to put him down. He wasn't leashed to some Master's mana supply, so a war of attrition was out. He was a different kind of problem. A puzzle with none of the usual pieces.
He called himself the King of Curses, and Cú was inclined to believe him—the very energy rolling off the man felt like a pure, weaponized curse. He'd seen the arm grow back from nothing after that sniper's potshot, too. So you couldn't just wound him; it would have to be a battle of total annihilation to put him down for good.
His gaze flickered over to the two girls huddled near the entrance. They were terrified, and rightly so. But they were also liabilities. The Shielder was all duty and no instinct; she'd get herself vaporized trying to be polite to a hurricane. The other one looked like she was just trying to remember how to breathe.
Right, he thought with a grim sense of finality. Play it smart. Keep the brats alive, figure out the monster's game, and try to have a little fun before this all goes to hell. Simple.
Simple enough in theory. Cú let out a low sigh and pushed himself off the wall. He strode over, clapping the Shielder on the shoulder. The gesture had enough force to make the girl flinch. He steered them both toward a corner of the bunker, away from the object of their terror. "Over here," he murmured, his voice low. "Quick chat."
He leaned back against the wall again, staff held loosely, and pinned them with a look that cut straight through the haze of their panic.
"Alright, you two," he started, his voice a serious murmur. "Time for a quick lesson in how not to die in the next five minutes. Are you listening?"
The Shielder, Mash, managed a stiff, formal nod. The other one, Gudako, just gave a jerky twitch that was probably a yes. Close enough.
"Good. Rule number one: that thing over there," he said, jerking his chin towards Sukuna without looking at him, "is not your ally. He's not a Servant you can reason with, and he sure as hell isn't a hero. Got it?"
He watched them both nod again, the reality of their situation slowly sinking in.
"Think of him like… a wild animal," he continued, searching for the simplest analogy. "A big, four-armed predator that just wandered into your camp. He's here because this place is interesting, and right now, we're the most interesting things in it. The second that changes, the second we become boring, or annoying, or more trouble than we're worth…" He drew an imaginary line across his throat with his thumb. "...he'll deal with us. Simple as that."
He looked directly at Mash, his crimson eyes sharp. "You, with the shield. I get it. You're the knight. You protect. But you need to understand, your job right now is not to get in his way. You do not talk to him unless he talks to you. You do not question him. Your shield is a powerful tool, but against something like that, provoking him is a death sentence for your Master here."
His gaze then shifted to Gudako. She was purely a civilian, a non-combatant caught in a war of monsters.
"As for you, girlie… you just focus on staying alive. Stay behind her shield. Keep your head down. And for the love of all the gods, try not to do anything that pisses him off." He flashed a brief, grim smile. "Consider that the most important mission you'll ever have."
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I was observing the way the curse affected the gray-haired woman when the Hound approached, having finished his little talk with the girls. It was amusing; he must have known I could hear every word.
Standing behind my crouched form, he asked the question I knew was coming. "So, King. You said you had a way to fix her. Was that just talk, or can you actually do something?"
"I can restore her physical form," I stated, not looking at him, my four eyes fixed on the fascinating network of corruption. It was coursing through what appeared to be a secondary nervous system, a set of specialized organs dedicated to this world's sorcery. How novel. Jujutsu sorcerers used the brain to process Cursed Energy; these people had evolved an entirely different system for their craft. "That," I continued, "is a trivial matter. The issue is the corruption itself."
I rose to my feet, gesturing with a lower hand toward the comatose woman. "It is a parasitic curse, quite peculiar in its design. It's not just feeding on her; it's using her own energy network as a delivery system to taint her very soul." The spirit within her was seeped in this malevolent energy, its core identity being actively overwritten. A truly exquisite piece of sorcery. "I can heal her body and remove the energy, but restoring her soul to its original state is another matter. Even if I cleanse the physical vessel, the stain on her spirit will remain. And if I were to attempt to purify her soul by force… I have no idea if the taint would fight back. If that were to happen, well..." I let my gaze meet his. "All you would have left is a husk."
"So you can't do it?"
The arrogance. I almost smiled. "Is that what I said?"
Without waiting for a response, I acted. With two hands, I turned the woman's limp body onto her front. With a single, sharp nail, I sliced through the back of her uniform, exposing the pale skin beneath. Then, I placed one of my lower hands upon her back.
The first step was simple. I focused, and the familiar warmth of Reverse Cursed Technique flowed into her flesh. I felt the shattered bones of her arm and leg grind and then seamlessly knit themselves back together. Her ruptured organs mended. Lacerations and contusions vanished. The physical damage was an amateurishly simple problem to solve.
The next step was artistry.
I pushed my Cursed Energy deep into her system, a probe to map the infection. The alien energy of the curse was a living network, using the woman's own "magic nerves" as a battery to funnel its poison into her soul. First thing's first. I focused my will, aiming for the spiritual link itself. With an application of Dismantle precise enough to be imperceptible, I targeted and severed the connection between the corrupting energy and her soul. The moment it was cut, the energy thrashed, trying to re-establish its parasitic bond.
Not on my watch. I flooded her system with positive energy from my Reverse Cursed Technique, the purifying force burning away at the taint. Systematically, I backed the remaining foul energy through her magical nervous system, forcing it to retreat, to coalesce into a single, terrified mass on her back, just below a strange, intricate crest that, I noted with some curiosity, had remained utterly untouched by the corruption, protected by its own ancient, powerful wards.
Then, with a thought, I used a minute Dismantle to open a shallow cut on my own finger. Crimson, Cursed-Energy-rich blood welled up. I dipped the finger into it and drew upon the woman's skin. I was using her flesh as a talisman, my own blood as the ink. The intricate lines and geometric shapes flowed from a mind that had perfected this art over two and a half centuries. It was a prison, a flawless containment circle.
I rose to my feet and observed her soul. With the source of its infection severed and quarantined, the corruption staining her spirit began to recede, to flake away, until only the faintest discoloration remained. So that was its nature. A self-propagating curse that, if left unchecked, would have converted her own power until she became a willing vessel for the taint itself. An Altered being, a split personality, a shift in alignment… the possibilities were fascinating.
"Examine her, if you wish," I said to the Hound, my voice cutting through the silence as the woman's hair returned from a dull gray to its vibrant white, save for a few stubborn, faded strands. "I have sealed the foreign energy. I could purge it completely, but the woman's soul has already been altered on a fundamental level. Reversing it now would be… imprecise. It is better to have a contained sample to study, should we need to restore her fully later." A live specimen for dissection would provide a much more elegant solution.
Cú stepped forward. I watched as he placed a hand on her back, his own energy probing my work. A moment later, he bit his thumb, drawing blood, and inscribed two glowing runes directly over my own seal. How fascinating. These simple symbols of his were not the raw, overpowering locks of my Jujutsu; they were elegant, sophisticated keys. Like comparing a bludgeon to a scalpel. I could feel their effects: one was subtly amplifying the containment field of my seal, a clever reinforcement. The other was a tripwire, a ward designed to alert him if my seal began to fail. A collaboration, of a sort.
As Cú pulled his hand away, satisfied, a soft gasp came from the cot.
We both turned. The woman's eyes—her golden eyes—were now wide open.
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Author's Note
Hey everyone, thanks for reading the latest chapter. It covered a lot of new ground, and I wanted to take a moment to clarify some of the world-building choices I've made for this story.
First, Sukuna's perspective on Heroic Spirits. As you saw, he views them as souls inhabiting a container, which is a technically accurate if brutally pragmatic way of looking at them. On that note, for those of you FGO veterans already in the know, the reason Sukuna couldn't peer into our favorite Hound's soul is indeed a nod to that well-known connection with a certain one-eyed old god. As for why Cú didn't just heal Olga himself, while he is a masterful druid, that level of spiritual healing would require a vast amount of mana over a long period of time—something he simply doesn't have without a Master yet.
Now, for the big one: the seals. Some of you who are die-hard JJK fans will point out that seals in canon don't work like this Fuinjutsu-style application, and you are absolutely right. They are primarily talisman-based. This was a conscious choice on my part. The hard truth is, a canon Sukuna, even with Mahoraga, would struggle immensely against the conceptual, reality-breaking bullshit of the Nasuverse. So, I decided to have this one be from an alternate universe.
This brings me to my core creative choice for this fic. Logically, you could argue that Sukuna simply appeared at the end of the Heian era and became the strongest ever, and that would be enough to cement his legend. It's also said he killed most other sorcerers of his time, which would lead to their history being erased. Both are valid theories, but I mean, c'mon... that's no fun. My take is, what if he was there for most of the three-century-long era? What if he dominated for so long that no one else even registered?
This AU Sukuna is nearly three centuries old. This extended lifespan gave him the time not just to be the strongest, but to master and push every single art of Jujutsu to its absolute limit before he got bored and turned himself into Cursed Objects. I don't want the "Strongest Sorcerer in History" to be defined just by his raw strength, but also by his unparalleled knowledge and mastery. You can't call yourself a master of something until you have learned all there is to learn.
So yeah, if you don't like these changes, I am sorry, but I could see no other way for Sukuna to survive, let alone thrive, in the Nasuverse. On that note, Sukuna will get stronger here. He'll notice it later, but by coming to this new world, the limits to his growth have shattered. Considering the first main boss on the horizon is Goetia, yeah… you can see where I am going with this.
As of right now, chapters up to "Fuyuki 4: The King's Checkmate" are already available on my Pat-reon. The next update there will be Chapter 5, which will feature the final battle of this arc, and that will be up by Sunday. To read ahead or just to support my work, you can follow me at: pat-reon . Com / st_scarface
If you guys like, I could also make an info chapter detailing all the changes to Jujutsu I've made, create a Servant-style stat page for this version of Sukuna, and answer any other questions you might have. Let me know in the comments.
And if you are leaving because of these changes, I thank you for your time and for reading this far.
Ciao.