Date: July 2018
Time: 3:40 p.m.
Location: An abandoned industrial park on the outskirts of Tokyo
With the chant, "Born of darkness, blacker than darkness," the black, translucent veil covering the abandoned industrial park began to collapse from the top, melting away like ice under sunlight.
The slightly harsh afternoon sun pierced the gloom once more, spilling over cracked concrete and twisted steel bars.
Kaede stood quietly in the center of the ruins. His right hand hung low at an angle, gripping the long blade of Mikazuki Munechika.
His dark red eyes stared calmly ahead, while purple-black residue from the collapsing Grade 1 curse dripped from the groove of the blade.
Dust and dark red bloodstains marked his deep blue uniform coat. The air around him was unusually damp from the aftereffects of his technique, and tiny droplets of water condensed slowly at the tips of his slightly long black hair before sliding down.
Mei Mei rested her massive battle-axe effortlessly on one shoulder, her pale blue eyes sweeping across the cursed residue on the ground as it fully turned to ash.
She glanced at her phone screen, then tapped it a few times in satisfaction.
"Clean and efficient. Working with a semi-Grade 1 practical fighter really does improve productivity.
After deducting your share from the payment for this Grade 1 mission, the remaining amount is still quite respectable."
Mei Mei smoothed her silver hair, the corner of her mouth lifting into that standard, elegant merchant's smile.
"However, your tactical margin of error seems completely built around that special constitution of yours.
Using water to replenish cursed energy may give you strong long-term endurance, but repairs for wear and tear on a special-grade cursed tool come out of your own pocket.
If I were you, I'd adjust the angle of the next strike by two inches and avoid its hardest bones."
Just then, a sharp, urgent phone ringtone broke through the silence of the ruins.
"Hm? My phone..."
Kaede turned his wrist and slid Mikazuki smoothly back into its sheath.
He pulled the violently vibrating phone from his uniform pocket. The screen flashed with the name Assistant Supervisor: Kiyotaka Ijichi.
Kaede extended a slender finger, pressed answer, and lifted the phone to his ear.
The instant the call connected, Ijichi's voice burst from the speaker, ragged with frantic breathing and extreme panic. In the background, heavy rain could be heard hammering against a car roof.
"Kaede-kun! Is your Grade 1 mission finished?!
Thank goodness you picked up!"
Ijichi's voice was shaking uncontrollably. He was clearly caught in some enormous panic and despair.
"A special-grade cursed womb suddenly appeared above Eishu Juvenile Detention Center in West Tokyo!
The higher-ups gave orders and sent Itadori, Fushiguro, and Kugisaki, the three first-years, to confirm survivors and guide evacuation, but... but a few minutes ago, the special-grade cursed womb hatched!"
On the other end, Ijichi swallowed hard. He spoke so fast he almost bit his tongue, his voice thick with self-blame.
"The reaction is completely beyond projections. There's a real special-grade curse inside!
And... and just now, I completely lost contact with Itadori-kun and the others!
Gojo-san is overseas on a business trip, and the other Grade 1 sorcerers are completely tied up... Kaede-kun, I know this violates procedure, and you only just finished a mission, but your current location is the closest to the detention center!
Please... save them!"
Mei Mei stood nearby, and with her hearing, she naturally caught fragments of the call.
When she heard the words "special grade," the smile on her face faded slightly, and a rational, assessing look flashed through her eyes.
She did not interrupt right away. Instead, she stood quietly in place, rapidly calculating the risks and potential gains of intervening in this emergency.
To her, a mission without a clearly stated price was not worth rushing into.
At some point, dark clouds had begun gathering over West Tokyo in the distance. Low thunder rolled faintly.
"I understand..." Kaede hung up and drew in a deep breath.
He knew Mei Mei would not make a move, but...
"Why is this happening so fast, and right when I'm out on a mission...? This is trouble. If it's just a special-grade curse, I can still deal with it. But if we've already reached the point where three-finger Sukuna has awakened..."
"Mei Mei-senpai, I'm going ahead."
Kaede's body suddenly dissolved into vapor, fading away.
Mikazuki dropped straight into the puddle below, then vanished as well.
In the abandoned industrial park, Mei Mei watched Kaede disappear on the spot.
A moment later, the sky overhead darkened completely within seconds.
Strong wind swept sand and gravel from the ground. A heavy cloud so black it looked ready to drip ink raced westward at a speed that defied weather itself.
"So he didn't hesitate to open his domain. What a completely unrestrained style."
Mei Mei lifted a hand and tucked her windblown silver hair behind one ear.
Watching the retreating storm cloud, she pulled up her bank account balance on her phone, glanced at it, then turned gracefully and started walking in the opposite direction from the juvenile detention center.
"If a monster of that level has awakened, I won't be joining the spectacle without ten times the risk allowance.
Good luck, young 'exception.'"
...
Above Eishu Juvenile Detention Center.
The sky, already heavy and oppressive from the hatching of the special-grade cursed womb, was now forcibly covered by an even lower, thicker bank of black thunderclouds.
Kaede could already feel an enormous mass of cursed energy, and the unease in his chest deepened. There was a strong chance that three-finger Sukuna had awakened, and that Yuji could no longer suppress him for the moment.
The main building of the detention center had already been destroyed beyond recognition.
In the exposed ruins of the first floor, Megumi Fushiguro knelt on one knee over shattered concrete, blood from his forehead dripping down his face and onto the ground.
He gasped for breath, both hands locked in the hand sign for Mahoraga, but his fingers trembled uncontrollably from cursed energy exhaustion.
In front of him, a pink-haired boy stood atop a broken wall.
No. That was no longer Yuji Itadori.
Black tattoos spread across his body and up to his cheeks, and a second pair of eyes beneath his normal ones stared out with naked brutality and mockery.
Ryomen Sukuna had just ripped the heart from that body with his bare hand and casually thrown the still-beating flesh down by his feet.
And just as Sukuna was about to leap down from the ruins and deliver the final blow to Megumi on the ground...
Splash!
Without warning, torrential rain came crashing down.
This was no ordinary natural rainfall.
Bone-chilling droplets ignored the remaining cover of the ruined building above, seeping into every corner of the space with absolute dominance.
Sukuna stopped and lifted his chin slightly. Rain struck his face, covered in black markings, then ran down his skin.
He sensed at once that every drop touching his body was neutralizing the dense cursed energy radiating from his surface by a tiny but impossible-to-ignore amount.
"Oh? Domain Expansion... and no closed barrier edge. You've directly manifested your innate domain into real space?"
The second pair of eyes beneath Sukuna's own narrowed slightly. There was no trace of fear, only the wild joy of a predator spotting interesting prey.
He slowly raised his right hand and watched the rain gathering in his palm hiss faintly, as though ice had been dropped into boiling oil.
"Using rainwater to wash away and suppress cursed energy. The structure is rather elegant. But..."
At the exact moment Sukuna analyzed the situation, the dense curtain of rain in front of him suddenly twisted.
Dark red eyes were the first thing to light up in the gray storm.
A deep blue uniform coat snapped in the fierce wind. Kaede seemed to have always been part of the downpour, only now peeling his shape out of the water.
His feet landed steadily on the flooded rubble, knees bent, his center of gravity pressed low.
His right hand gripped the hilt of Mikazuki. The long blade pointed diagonally toward the ground, its edge shining with a cold, bone-deep gleam under the washing rain.
Megumi knelt not far away, drenched by the downpour.
He struggled to open his eyes and stared at the unfamiliar back that had suddenly appeared out of the rain, his mind going blank from blood loss and shock.
Sukuna looked down at Kaede from above, his eyes sweeping over the long blade radiating a special cursed energy. His grin widened further, exposing white teeth.
"Another fool of an insect. You think you can rescue someone from me with a petty trick like this?"
Before the words had even finished, the concrete beneath Sukuna's feet exploded into powder.
His speed exceeded the limits of human perception.
There was only the violent sonic crack of torn air before Sukuna's figure appeared directly in front of Kaede, pushing through the torrential rain like teleportation.
"Fast!"
There was no flashy technique. Sukuna's fist, packed with terrifying power, ripped through the rain with pure, annihilating violence and came straight for the boy's face.
At the same time, two invisible, lethal slashes, Dismantle, slid silently along the flooded ground, cutting off Kaede's escape to both sides.
This attack was not only absolute domination through strength, but a perfect display of battle intelligence.
Faced with an unknown enemy, the King of Curses opened with a merciless killing blow.
"So he really is playing with me? If that slash had aimed straight at me, I'd probably need a while to recover... Damn it, why is Sukuna's manifestation lasting longer than in the original?"
Under that crushing pressure, Kaede's dark red pupils contracted instantly.
Mikazuki carved a sharp silver crescent through the air, meeting Sukuna's steel-shattering fist from below in a hard, frontal clash.
BOOM!
The moment blade and fist collided, a deafening roar exploded.
A terrifying shockwave spread wildly from the point where they met.
For several yards around them, the rainwater vaporized instantly, creating a brief vacuum.
The heavy standing water on the ground was lifted several yards into the air by the violent blast, surging outward like a breaking wave.
Megumi was blown across the ground, rolling several times before barely coming to a stop.
At the center of the clash, Sukuna's fist had been cut open to the bone by the blade, but that absurdly tough body had actually trapped Mikazuki Munechika between the bones of his hand.
"You've got to be kidding me!"
Kaede's feet, meanwhile, were forced backward by the recoil, carving two deep trenches through the ruined floor.
"Hahahaha! Not a bad reaction!"
Sukuna laughed wildly, completely unconcerned by the wound on his fist.
Instead of retreating, he pressed forward using the force of the blade caught between his finger bones. His other hand curled into a claw and shot straight for Kaede's heart.