A hazy, illusory crimson mist spread across heaven and earth.
Columns of blood, no wider than a finger, rose slowly from the ground like phantoms.
Hundreds. Thousands. Tens of thousands...
Hundreds of millions of crimson pillars surged upward, dyeing the entire barrier in an eerie blood-red hue.
The pillars connected to the colossal cursed womb hanging high above the sky, its heartbeat growing ever more powerful.
It was like a blood-red sun.
A blood-red moon.
The vast and distant presence hanging overhead seemed to descend with every beat of its heart.
Like Mount Tai collapsing from above.
Like an avalanche crashing down directly before one's eyes.
An indescribable pressure expanded relentlessly, crushing everything beneath it.
Everyone on the Jujutsu High side, along with Uro and the others, looked up with icy limbs.
A suffocating sensation shot from their feet straight to their brains.
"What the hell is that now?!"
Kusakabe, Nobara, and the others, who had arrived a step later, finally regrouped at that moment.
Mahoraga had not been destroyed by them.
Instead, it had voluntarily sunk back into the shadows.
Staring at the enormous object descending from above, Kusakabe's heart sank into despair.
Utahime, Gakuganji, Maki, and the others wore equally defeated expressions.
The next second, Kusakabe collapsed onto the ground, trembling all over.
"It's over... We're all finished!"
It wasn't only the descending monstrosity.
They had also noticed the shattered battlefield below—and the glaring bloodstain upon it.
The remnants of a cursed energy signature they knew all too well lingered there.
Satoru Gojo's.
And beside Zenin Mirai stood the body of Ryomen Sukuna, already broken into countless pieces.
The fall of the two strongest...
Only after arriving late did the members of Jujutsu High fully realize just how hopeless reality had become.
An unknown monster.
And Zenin Mirai, a being even more monstrous than the monster itself.
"Damn it!"
Kinji Hakari, shirtless as ever, spat heavily onto the ground.
His delinquent features twisted into a grimace as he growled,
"Our chances of winning have officially dropped below zero."
Flying low through the air, Momo Nishimiya arrived from the opposite side of the battlefield together with Kamo.
Mai lowered her head and quietly walked to Mirai's side, not daring to meet the gazes of Utahime and the others.
Aside from the White Zetsu and Takaba, everyone had gathered in the center of the barrier.
Even Mei Mei and Ui Ui—the siblings who valued money above all else—had arrived at the edge of the battlefield.
They had originally planned to escape the country using Ui Ui's technique.
However...
The instant the barrier completely fused with Kamui, Ui Ui lost all ability to sense the outside world's spatial coordinates.
They were trapped inside the hell before them.
Mirai stood firmly upon the ground, silently observing the cursed womb above.
A strange light flickered within his eyes.
Those hundreds of millions of twisting blood pillars were the combined cursed energy of every ordinary human trapped within the barrier.
Not only the living.
The residual cursed energy left behind by every deceased sorcerer had been absorbed as well.
Gojo.
Sukuna.
Everyone.
Through the Rinnegan, Mirai could clearly see beyond the cursed womb's surface.
Countless twisted faces and souls were piled together within.
They were the many forms Kenjaku had worn throughout the past thousand years.
As well as the innumerable dead souls who had formed contracts with him.
The Culling Game barrier had not merely gathered cursed energy.
The scattered remnants of souls had likewise been unable to escape the Kamui dimension.
Just as Sukuna had once said:
Whether soul or flesh—
The only way to leave this place was to kill Zenin Mirai.
Thump. Thump. THUMP!
The heartbeat reverberating through heaven and earth became increasingly violent.
The colossal mass began to stretch and deform.
Its round shape gradually flattened into a long, elongated body.
A dark crimson head.
A blood-red torso.
The hundreds of millions of blood pillars slowly solidified, becoming what resembled countless legs attached to the creature.
It looked like a venomous centipede tens of thousands of meters long.
Yet far more grotesque.
Far more horrifying.
Pitch-black stitches wrapped around every inch of its body.
Its underside was composed entirely of tightly shut human faces.
Those faces belonged to the hundreds of millions of Japanese civilians trapped within the barrier—including the dead.
The black stitches bound the creature's body tightly together.
The countless protruding faces were pierced and linked one after another.
The blood-shrouded head slowly unfolded.
It consisted of over a hundred decayed faces layered atop one another, grotesque beyond description.
Among them, one could still vaguely recognize the appearances of Suguru Geto, Noritoshi Kamo, Kaori Itadori, and others.
All of them had once been vessels occupied by Kenjaku.
Then—
Facing the crowd below, every human face along the creature's abdomen simultaneously opened blood-red eyes.
Yet the expressions within those eyes were not hatred.
They were fanatical devotion.
At the same time, incomprehensible mutterings poured from their mouths.
The strange syllables sounded nothing like any language humans could produce.
Yet despite being impossible to understand, the voices resembled Hanami's speech—piercing through flesh and reaching directly into the soul.
"Praise... the Divine!"
"May Chaos... endure forever!"
"Guide... all living beings!"
"Together... unto the Other Shore!"
The maddening voices echoed endlessly.
Meeting those countless fanatical gazes, everyone below felt their scalps go numb.
Amid the ceaseless praises, the creature's head—formed from more than a dozen fused faces of Kenjaku—
Suddenly split open at the forehead.
The area constricted by black stitches parted apart.
Within it emerged an enormous vertical eye.
Its sclera was covered in blood-red cracks resembling a spider's web.
Yet its gaze...
That indifferent gaze shone with a holy white radiance amidst the endless praises.
The overlapping faces simultaneously assumed expressions of boundless compassion.
As though mourning the suffering of all living beings.
I want to give up.
I want to go home.
Struggle. Pride. Hope. Humanity's future...
I want to throw it all away.
Even a painless death would be fine.
Those thoughts filled the minds of everyone from Jujutsu High.
This was despair in its purest form.
A battle with absolutely no visible path to victory.
Not only the Jujutsu High side.
Even Uro and Mai, standing beside Mirai, could not suppress the fear rising from the depths of their souls as they gazed upon the ominous creature above.
An eerie silence fell over the battlefield.
Only the monster's endless mutterings continued to echo inside everyone's minds.
"Enough with this god-playing nonsense. Hurry up and get ready."
Mirai frowned slightly and spoke toward the sky in a tone of obvious annoyance.
His black robes billowed.
Darkness deeper than the night itself instantly swallowed heaven and earth.
Merely the surge of cursed energy emanating from him was enough to erase the voices blanketing the world.
The countless fanatical eyes upon the creature's abdomen were immediately sewn shut once more by black stitches.
At present, only Mirai understood the truth.
The creature in the sky—
Or rather, Kenjaku—
Had not yet completed its evolution.
One final step remained.
Uro patted her trembling chest repeatedly and finally let out a long sigh of relief.
It was obvious.
Her boss was even more monstrous than that monster.
His temper might not be the best.
But his strength was undeniably reliable.
Considering the era and environment in which she had lived, Uro felt that Mirai's temperament could only be described as "a little bad."
As for the Jujutsu High side...
They still stood at the edge of the battlefield in confusion, uncertain what they should do.
Then, without warning—
A sudden change occurred.
SPLAT!
Thick blood sprayed into the air.
Yuji Itadori's pupils instantly shrank to pinpoints.
PS: Access the complete/finished chapters/series at Patreon: NanamiTL
Please drop some power stones support me at my Patreon