Sukuna sat with a faint smirk playing on his lips. Using his enhanced senses, he watched his little helper Uraume tear through the Jujutsu Sorcerers down below. It was easily more entertaining than modern television.
"Jeez... I wonder if I need to do something about Uraume's obsession with me," Sukuna muttered to himself.
Ever since he bestowed his demon blood upon them, Uraume had grown even more fanatical. Lately, they had even been altering their biological form, enhancing their appearance with their newfound flesh control just to catch his eye.
"Nah. I'm sure nothing bad can come outta that."
"I must say, even I didn't expect the board to fall into place quite like this."
Sukuna tilted his head slightly. Kenjaku, currently piloting Geto's corpse, strolled into view with a casual wave.
"Killing Satoru Gojo, especially a Six Eyes user with such absolute command over the Limitless, was a variable I spent centuries planning around. Yet here you are, sitting pretty and completely recovered." Kenjaku stopped at the base of the rubble, looking up with an easy, unbothered smile. "You made a near-impossible feat look mundane."
"Oh. It's you," Sukuna replied. One of his four eyes lowered to track Kenjaku, while the other three remained fixated on Uraume's battle in the distance. "How did things wrap up with your little livestock? The 'Disaster Curses,' was it?"
"Ah. Uraume slaughtered the last two before I could complete their roles," Kenjaku said with a light, airy sigh, though his eyes remained sharp. "Fortunately, I managed to absorb their forms right before their cores dispersed. Though I must admit, your new gift made them absurdly difficult to manage right at the end."
Kenjaku hummed, resting a chin in his hand. "It's a shame about Mahito, though. I couldn't reach him before my precious son decided to put him down. I really can't decide whether to be disappointed or proud. He is, after all, the only creation of mine that hasn't turned out to be a total failure."
"Haha! And that's only because he inherited a fraction of my strength while I resided in his body," Sukuna scoffed, his smirk widening. "All borrowed strength."
Sukuna's tone flattened out, the amusement vanishing into something far colder. "So why step out into the open now, Kenjaku? Aren't you afraid I might cut you down just to pass the time? Gojo failed to keep me entertained for long."
"Oh, I am deeply afraid of you," Kenjaku chuckled, completely unbothered by the threat. "But fear is just data, isn't it? And the data told me that if I waited for an exact sixty seconds while you sat up here admiring your work... the window would open."
"Hmm?!"
Sukuna glanced back just as the open jaws of the Prison Realm snapped shut around his frame. Viscous red flesh and tendrils whipped outward, binding his torso and limbs in an instant. The sudden lock on his body hit like an absolute wall. His physical strength locked up, and his cursed energy refused to manifest.
A truly fascinating cursed tool.
"I wasn't entirely sure it would hold a monster like you," Kenjaku admitted, watching the trap spring with tailored satisfaction. "Your existence bends the rules of this era. But when an opportunity to remove the largest unpredictable variable from my board presents itself, I'd be a poor player not to take it."
Sukuna didn't rage. He didn't even turn his head away from Uraume's fight in the distance. The smirk slowly returned to his face.
"You know, Kenjaku... I'm not surprised you tried a trick like this. But don't delude yourself," Sukuna chuckled low in his throat. "The only reason you caught me... is because I let it happen."
Kenjaku raised an eyebrow.
"Think about it," Sukuna continued, his eyes gleaming with dark curiosity. "Wouldn't it be far more interesting to see what Uraume does when they realize I'm gone? I want to see if their emotions will force that Cursed Technique and Blood Demon Art to break past their limits. It's going to be a gorgeous little catastrophe."
He settled back into the pulling force of the artifact. "Besides, this gives me some quiet time to refine a few ideas of my own. Just make sure that Merger of yours is worth the wait. If it turns out to be boring, I'll peel your skin off the second I step back out."
"You speak as though breaking out is a simple matter of patience," Kenjaku said, folding his hands casually behind his back. "There is no escape from the Prison Realm without me opening it. The tools and techniques capable of forcibly unsealing it have long since been extinguished from this world. And with Uraume occupied down there, no one is coming to negotiate your release."
Kenjaku turned to take his first step away, speaking over his shoulder with smooth composure.
"Still... you have a habit of making the impossible look trivial. Which is precisely why I didn't rely on just one layer. While you and Gojo were tearing the landscape apart, I had a secondary barrier harvesting every drop of ambient Cursed Energy you spilled. The reservoir is already full."
He paused, offering one last polite nod. "The Culling Games will handle the rest of the preparation for the Merger. Ah... but listen to me, monologuing while the clock is ticking. Such a bad habit of mine. Goodbye for now, Lord Sukuna."
Kenjaku brought his hands together in a precise, formal gesture.
"Gate, Close."
The Prison Realm snapped shut, sealing Sukuna inside its pocket dimension as it fell with a heavy clink to the floor.
Walking over to pick it up, Kenjaku let his smile drop from his face as he reached down to grab it.
That whole time, even when he was captured... the threat of death radiating from him never diminished in the slightest. It's likely he had a way to kill me the whole time if he really wanted to...
"Tch, I suppose I had better make this Merger worth it if I want this fun life to continue a little longer. You're truly amazing, Ryomen Sukuna."
"Now, I should get outta here before it's too late. I'm not sure I possess the power to kill the current Uraume."
As Kenjaku moved to take a step forward, the Prison Realm in his hand suddenly became impossibly heavy. The crushing force slammed into his palm, forcing him to drop it as the dense pressure radiating from the object cratered the ground, causing the concrete to sink as the eyes of the realm snapped open once more.
The Prison Realm cried tears of blood, trembling violence into the dirt before eventually settling, each eye looking utterly exhausted.
"What a monster indeed. I can't wait to see what comes next." Kenjaku picked up the calmed Prison Realm and tucked it into his sleeve. From the looks of things, that was just Sukuna testing the boundaries of the cursed tool rather than making things difficult.
"How considerate..."
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"Domain Expansion: Frozen Hell!"
Uraume's domain rapidly expanded, wrapping everything within a hundred-meter radius inside its heavy barrier. The temperature plummeted instantaneously as heat itself was violently siphoned from the atmosphere.
"Damn it! Everyone, get ready, I'll cast my domain!" Yuta yelled as frost began to violently crystalize across everyone's skin.
"Domain Expansion: Authentic Mutual Love!"
In an instant, half the freezing space was violently rewritten into a gray field littered with crosses and plunged swords. The spreading frost stalled out as Uraume sneered.
"What a nuisance! This isn't enough to stop me in the slightest, boy!"
"Blood Demon Art: Bloody Mist - Bloody Spires!"
Uraume's palm split open as demonic blood poured from the hole. Slamming their hand into the scorched ground, several colossal, jagged pillars of blood-red ice crystals shot upward, aiming to impale the sorcerers in their path.
Yuji drove a hardened fist straight through the center of a rising pillar, shattering it into red shrapnel as he dodged the secondary spikes. Yuta commanded Rika to shield the others before darting forward himself. Pulling a katana straight from the earth, Yuta charged alongside Yuji, both closing the gap from opposite flanks.
That's when Yuta bared his teeth, black speech markings surging across his cheeks and mouth.
"Don't Move!"
The vocal command struck with physical impact. Uraume locked up mid-motion as Yuji coiled his upper body back.
Spatial distortion crackled around his knuckles.
Black Flash!
A vicious, blood-red explosion of cursed energy slammed directly into Uraume's chest, snapping ribs with a sickening crunch. Yuji immediately followed through, driving a firm, flat palm into Uraume's abdomen, leaving a grid of faint dotted lines etched into their flesh.
"Cleave!"
"BLEGH!!" Uraume vomited a torrent of dark blood, yet a manic smile was already spreading across their face as their flesh knit itself back together instantly.
"Blood Demon Art: Bloody Mist - Crimson Reflection!"
From the heavy blood splatter dripping down Uraume's torso, a copy of Yuji's fist burst outward.
Black Flash!
WHAM!
Yuji's nose shattered instantly against the force of his own mirrored strike, driving his head backward with violent speed. Yet Yuji simply gritted his teeth, digging his heels into the dirt and walking straight through the impact.
Black Flash!
Yuji's follow-up right hook cratered into Uraume's jaw, sending the demon spinning backward through the air before they righted themselves on a pillar of frost.
"Blood Demon Art: Bloody Mist - Bleeding Sky!"
The domain's sky was instantly blanketed in crimson ice lotuses that bloomed in unison, raining down a dense storm of thick crimson spears directly onto Yuta and Yuji.
Yuji met the barrage head-on, throwing a dense hail of Dismantles that shredded the ice spears mid-air. Yet as the spears shattered, they instantly split into pressurized jets of blood arrows.
"Blood Demon Art: Bloody Mist - Second Bloom!"
The arrows slammed into the ground, several detonating against Yuta and Yuji's guard and blasting both sorcerers backward.
Yuta's right arm and leg were stripped to the bone from the blast, but a rapid surge of Reverse Cursed Technique instantly reconstructed his flesh. He glanced over to see Yuji standing firm, heavy purple bruises rapidly fading across his arms.
"You need me to heal you?" Yuta called out, keeping his katana readied as Uraume adjusted their stance on the pillar.
In that brief opening, Yuta focused entirely on maintaining his barrier. If his concentration faltered here and his domain collapsed, Uraume's thermal drain would freeze them all instantly.
"No, I'm fine..." Yuji gritted out, taking a heavy breath to steady his pulse.
"Huh! What's this feeling?" Uraume suddenly froze, looking off into the far distance. A heartbeat later, both Yuta and Yuji stiffened as well.
That's when Uraume's bloody face broke into a wide, ecstatic grin.
"Looks like your sensei lost after all!" Uraume laughed maniacally as grim expressions fell over every sorcerer present.
They had felt it too. The overwhelming, crushing energy coming off Satoru Gojo from his clash with Sukuna had suddenly dropped sharply, then vanished entirely. Yet Sukuna's lingering signature remained as massive and unyielding as ever.
"This can't be real, right?" Maki muttered, her knuckles turning white around her weapon. Nanami, Megumi, and Nobara grimaced in complete shock.
"If this means what I think it does, then it's over for everyone in this country... maybe even the world as a whole," Nanami said, a dark shadow falling over his face.
"No way, right?! Gojo was a monster! How could someone like him actually lose?!" Nobara gripped her hammer until her hand shook violently.
"Wait... something's not right..." Uraume's eyes narrowed, the manic laughter cutting off as they tried to lock onto their master's essence.
"Sukuna-sama's presence is... muffled?"
The overlapping domains around them shattered as Uraume voluntarily collapsed their barrier. Before the sure-hit effect of Yuta's domain could process the shift, Uraume thrust a hand forward, driving a jagged blade of Bloody Mist straight through Yuta's chest.
"I have no more time to play around. Consider yourselves lucky that more pressing matters have come to my attention."
Uraume tore the blade free and bounded off, leaping across the ruined cityscape with a deep, frantic terror taking root in their demonic heart.
Lord Sukuna... please be okay!
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