Gojo stood in the night sky as if the air itself were solid ground, smiling down at Betty and Subaru. A small sphere of pale blue light hovered at his fingertip, pulsing gently. Every scrap of fog that had blanketed the heavens moments ago was now compressed into that single point, drawn in by its pull.
And there, in the open sky with nowhere left to hide, a colossal shape finally revealed itself to Subaru's eyes.
"That's... the White Whale?!"
His head tilted back, his gaze climbing the impossible bulk of the creature gliding through the air above them. The corner of his eye twitched.
He'd been in this world long enough. He'd thought he'd seen things. Reinhard, the strongest Sword Saint in the kingdom's history. The infamous Bowel Hunter. A Mabeast Tamer, a Great Spirit, and somehow, inexplicably, a personal connection to the Witch of Envy herself.
But this was different.
No amount of accumulated strangeness could have prepared him. Because no matter how much a modern-day human adapted to a fantasy world, there was no getting used to the sight of a whale the length of a football field swimming through the sky like it was an ocean.
White-skinned, single-horned, savage. Razor-edged spines jutted from its fins and along its dorsal ridge. Up close, you could make out the hair covering its body, pale writhing filaments that looked disturbingly like worms. Above the creature floated a massive ring of fluorescent pink light, patterned like some ancient sigil.
Twin yellow eyes, each the size of a wagon wheel, glared down at them with predatory intent.
"Well. It's certainly ugly."
Gojo studied the beast with the detached appraisal of someone browsing a pet store and finding every option lacking.
"Shame Meili can't control this thing. Would've made a fun pet."
By Meili's own account, her Divine Protection only worked on hornless Mabeasts. The spike protruding from the White Whale's skull ruled that out immediately.
"Even if she could, it wouldn't matter. Her power can't override the Witch or any Sin Archbishop who holds the Gluttony Factor." Betty shot the idea down without mercy.
"So the only option is to put it down."
Gojo glanced at the merchants below. The travelers who'd been camping beneath the Flugel Tree for the night were losing their minds. When the fog had been thick, they couldn't see the whale, and their fear had been abstract, a whispered suspicion that they might have stumbled into the territory of a legend. Now that they could see it, centuries of terror made flesh against the open sky, every single one of them had the same thought.
Run.
They scattered like ants from a kicked hill. No one needed to outrun the whale. They only needed to outrun each other.
Gojo watched them go without a word. No point shouting reassurances. Killing the threat would do more good than calming anyone's nerves.
"Come to think of it, something this famous has to have a bounty on it, right?"
He rubbed his chin and looked at Betty.
"The Bowel Hunter had one. A creature that's terrorized every nation for centuries? Guaranteed."
"Obviously," Betty said.
"Perfect."
Gojo laced his fingers together, pushed his palms outward, and cracked his knuckles. A full-body stretch, loose and unhurried, like a man warming up for a morning jog.
"Let's deal with the big guy first, then regroup with Felt and the others. If we keep her waiting too long, she'll throw a fit."
The stretch complete, his smile sharpened.
"Show me what you've got."
The blue sphere at his fingertip launched upward, flicked toward the White Whale with a casual snap of his finger.
Against the night sky, the pale blue glow was unmistakable. The orb was tiny, barely larger than a marble, laughably small next to the whale's mountainous body.
But the whale reacted instantly.
Its massive frame displayed an agility that had no business belonging to something that size, rolling sideways through the air to dodge.
It didn't matter.
The sphere tracked it like a homing missile, adjusting course under Gojo's control, locked on and relentless. It closed the distance and slammed into the whale's flank.
The detonation echoed across the sky, matched by a roar from the whale.
But the roar carried more anger than pain.
"Huh." Gojo raised an eyebrow. "Tough hide."
Blue had punched a hole roughly five or six meters wide into the whale's body, a wound that should have been devastating on most creatures. Blood gushed from the crater like a ruptured hydrant. On a beast dozens of meters long, though, it was a flesh wound.
"Did the hair absorb part of the impact?"
A pause. Then his hand rose again.
No blue glow this time. Crimson light bloomed at his fingertip instead.
Reverse Cursed Technique: Red.
The red light wavered and coalesced into another sphere.
The White Whale, still reeling from the first strike, locked its gaze on Gojo's movements. Its eyes flooded blood-red.
It roared and charged. No evasion this time. The creature had decided this human wasn't a real threat, that the first hit had been a fluke, and threw its full mass forward in a headlong rush. The sheer pressure of its approach warped the air.
"Not running? Coming straight at me?"
Gojo laughed, soft and amused.
Red tore across the sky.
This time, it didn't matter how stone-hard the whale's skin was. It didn't matter that those squirming hairs could diffuse mana and weaken incoming force. Against the shrieking lance of crimson light, all of it was tissue paper.
The beam punched clean through the whale's body from end to end, threading it like a skewer through meat on a grill.
The roar that followed was nothing like before. Raw, guttural agony ripped from the creature's throat. Blood rained from the sky, a downpour of red.
Only a last-second twist had saved its life. In the instant before impact, the whale had wrenched its body sideways, turning what should have been a shot through the skull into a hole bored from its jaw straight through its torso. A fraction of a second slower, and it would already be dead.
Fear replaced fury.
The White Whale had assumed this was another insect. Another insignificant human, no different from the countless others it had crushed over the centuries.
Two attacks. Two attacks, and it had nearly died.
Terror flooded those crimson eyes.
With a low, guttural bellow, the fluorescent pink halo above its body blazed to life. Simultaneously, fissures split open across its skin, one after another. Not wounds. Inside each gaping slit squirmed a dense mass of organs, quivering like the plumes of a peacock fanning wide. The tremors intensified, and fog erupted from every opening, thick and endless, flooding the sky in seconds. Everything Gojo had cleared was replaced in the span of a heartbeat.
"Not as smart as I expected."
He watched it happen with idle curiosity. Even without clearing the fog, the Six Eyes tracked the whale's shape through the haze as clearly as if it were broad daylight. The concealment was useless.
But the whale wasn't done.
Its jaws yawned open, a maw over ten meters wide, lined with rows of jagged teeth. Deep in its throat, a mass of compressed white fog gathered, churning, building pressure.
Then it fired.
The blast erupted from the whale's mouth like a cannon shot, a column of hyper-dense fog screaming toward Gojo at terrifying speed.
"So there's more to your bag of tricks."
The words had barely left his mouth before the attack reached him. The impact shredded the air into howling wind, whipping his bangs into a frenzy.
And stopped.
The Limitless Cursed Technique held. The concentrated fog slammed into an invisible wall and split down the middle, parting around him like a wave crashing against a lighthouse, sheeting off to either side.
The ground below wasn't so lucky.
Twin pillars of diverted fog hammered into the earth with a sound like sustained thunder. Solid ground crumbled like dry crackers, carved into trenches that stretched dozens of meters deep.
The whale's pupils contracted.
Without hesitation, it whipped its enormous tail and rocketed higher into the sky.
"Running?"
Gojo watched it climb and shook his head, a flicker of disappointment crossing his face. He'd hoped one of the legendary Three Great Mabeasts might have some unique trick up its sleeve. In his own world, plenty of Special Grade Cursed Spirits had fascinating abilities.
This thing could spray fog and ram things with its body. That was about it.
Given that limited repertoire, the fact that it had survived this long came down to two advantages: a nearly indestructible hide, and flight. In a world where very few beings could take to the air, an enemy you couldn't reach was an enemy you couldn't kill.
He was about to end it when the retreating whale let out one final, resonant cry.
The pink halo on its back erupted with light.
Gojo saw it clearly. Through the fog, through the distance, the Six Eyes caught every detail. The whale's silhouette shimmered and blurred, splitting into overlapping afterimages that gradually solidified.
In the span of a single breath, one whale became three.
"Illusions?"
He paused.
"No. They're physical."
"Clones." A grin spread across his face. "Now that's a little more interesting."
"Hey! What are you mumbling about up there? What's happening?!" Betty's voice cut through from below. The fog blocked her vision completely, leaving her blind to everything above.
"Almost forgot you two can't see."
"As for how it's going... let's call it entertaining."
He pulled the fog in again, drawing it toward his palm until the sky cleared for a second time.
With the haze gone, Betty and Subaru finally got a clear look at what was happening overhead.
Their jaws dropped. Where there had been one White Whale, there were now three.
The creature had run rampant for so long, with so few survivors, that most of its capabilities had never been documented. This splitting ability was completely unknown. Even Betty, who'd existed in the same era as the beast, had never heard of it.
"Three?!" Subaru's voice cracked. "How did it become three?!"
Betty's brow furrowed. She raised a hand toward the sky. Several violet crystal arrows streaked upward, each aimed at a different whale.
The arrows were small enough that none of the three bothered to dodge.
"They're not illusions. All three are solid." She lowered her hand. "But two of them have noticeably weaker defenses than the original."
Attitude aside, Betty was razor-sharp when it counted. In a single volley, she'd confirmed all three were real and identified the true body by comparing how each one reacted to damage.
"Not bad, Betty." Gojo grinned down at her. "You found the weak point fast."
"Instead of wasting time saying things Subaru would say, why don't you finish this already?" She planted her hands on her hips.
"Harsh. You're not even a little worried about me? What if I got hurt..."
"Do you think I'm blind? I saw everything from down here."
She was done humoring him. Every time something serious was happening, he pulled this routine.
"Alright, alright." He turned back to the three whales circling overhead. "Doesn't look like it has any more surprises. Time to wrap this up."
The White Whale was still a Witch's creation. Curiosity had kept him toying with it longer than necessary, prodding it for abilities, wanting to see what a legendary monster from this world was truly capable of.
...
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