Jujutsu Kaisen: Megumi — Chapter 33 - The 200-Meter-Radius Weightlifting Arena of Shinjuku (Patreon)

"Using the weight of Piercing Ox and Max Elephant to increase the falling speed."

"Then using that speed to feed back into Piercing Ox's properties."

"I didn't expect you to pull this off, Megumi Fushiguro!"

In the massive crater in Shinjuku, Sukuna's face was a mask of ferocity, every feature twisted and wrong.

Both arms were still wrenched at spine-chilling angles.

Pale bone, slick with viscous blood, had torn through the skin and jutted raw into the murky air.

With both arms completely crushed, Sukuna couldn't support his body on his legs alone.

And so, before Reverse Cursed Technique could finish its work, the invincible King of Curses had no choice but to drag himself across the ground with his legs.

"All out of tricks, King of Curses!"

Megumi wasn't about to let a chance like this go to waste. He opened the floodgates.

"But an attack like that — you can only use it once, can't you!"

A nauseating crack of bones knitting back together filled the air. The mangled arms were forcibly healed through Reverse Cursed Technique, flesh closing over jagged edges.

Sukuna snapped upright. His newly restored arms crossed over his chest in an instant, settling into that despair-inducing slashing stance once more.

Blood-stained fingertips fixed dead ahead, aimed at the colossal, mountain-sized Piercing Elephant.

"Without the help of a Domain, how is your Piercing Elephant supposed to launch a surprise attack?"

"Let me deal with this damn shikigami first — then I'll deal with you!"

Megumi had slash resistance. Piercing Elephant didn't.

If Sukuna poured enough slashing waves into it, Piercing Elephant would die, and Megumi would permanently lose several summoning slots.

Faced with that confident death sentence, though, Megumi didn't flinch.

He stood there bold and unhurried.

Because he had absolute faith in his animal companion.

"Oh, you really think I can't replicate the weightlift from just now?"

"Guess what else I fused into it besides Piercing Ox."

Megumi let out a smug chuckle, like a magician taking his final bow, and revealed the last piece of the trick.

A sharp, jarring crack split the air.

From the broad, heavy back of Piercing Elephant, scale-like feathers sprouted without warning.

Then layer upon layer, they expanded. Wildly.

In just a few seconds, they tore free of the flesh entirely, unfurling across Piercing Elephant's back into a pair of enormous thunder-wings, a wingspan stretching hundreds of meters.

"That's..."

Sukuna recognized them.

Nue's wings.

WHOOSH WHOOSH BOOM!

Those wings, vast beyond all reason, beat once in place. A hurricane erupted above the ruins, tearing through the rubble with nothing left standing in its path.

In the roaring wind, Piercing Elephant's body was actually beginning to leave the ground.

The flying elephant had arrived.

"Piercing Elephant, you're free again!"

Megumi stood at the heart of the storm, arms spread wide, laughing up at the sky:

"Fly toward the heavens — now!"

With his cry, Piercing Elephant began to shrink in Sukuna's field of vision as the distance steadily grew.

The charging dive was beginning to replicate itself.

Sukuna knew. If he didn't stop a second weightlift from building, he would be pushed into a losing position.

In this situation, the King of Curses made his choice,

"Domain Expansion!"

"Malevolent Shrine!"

Sukuna pressed his palms together and unleashed the killing move he had held in reserve for the entire fight.

"Within the 200-meter radius of my Domain, I will tear you apart into bloody shreds!"

"I won't let you fly beyond my range."

The 200-meter attack radius that Domain Expansion could instantly cover, intercept Piercing Elephant before it climbed any higher, and the weightlift would be stopped cold.

The bone shrine reappeared, forcibly overlapping with reality. A patch of purgatory carved itself into the heart of Shinjuku.

An invisible, traceless net of killing slashes saturated every inch of that two-hundred-meter space.

Megumi wasn't about to let him have it.

"You want to ground my helicopter? Did you ask the captain's permission?!"

The shadow tide surged. A second cursed tool materialized in Megumi's hand.

"Chain of a Thousand Miles!"

He hurled one end like a harpoon toward Piercing Elephant's silhouette, and it coiled instantly into a rope ladder he could grip.

Piercing Elephant was a helicopter.

Megumi hung from it and wobbled skyward right through Malevolent Shrine.

"Don't crash yet!"

"Move!"

He hauled himself up the Chain of a Thousand Miles toward Piercing Elephant, drew the Inverted Spear of Heaven, and drove its absolute nullification into every guaranteed-hit attack coming their way. The spear whirled in his hand with fierce momentum, carving out a dead zone that no slash could enter, keeping Piercing Elephant untouched.

Under Megumi's defense, the helicopter climbed.

Piercing Elephant's altitude finally cleared 200 meters, breaking free of the kill zone.

Once the flight steadied,

Piercing Elephant accelerated again.

"One thousand meters, or two thousand?"

Megumi watched Sukuna shrink to a speck below, lining up his position and waiting for Malevolent Shrine to end.

Up above, Sukuna stared at a weightlift buildup far higher than the last one.

The hand seal never stopped.

After the Domain ends.

The weightlift begins.

And I will die.

"It seems the only option is to dive into the shadows and risk brain damage from oxygen deprivation..."

Sukuna murmured under his breath, turning the problem over.

"But that's the thinking of a worthless wretch!"

"Come then, Megumi Fushiguro, let's have a weightlifting showdown!"

Resolution locked in his eyes. He slowly released the hand seal and waited for Megumi and Max Elephant to drop.

"Oh. The Domain stopped."

The instant the purgatory faded, Megumi couldn't hold back a laugh. He extended a sword-finger, and Piercing Elephant's wings instantly reshaped into a clean aerodynamic form, trimming air resistance for the dive.

"Old man", Sukuna really was a thousand years old, "I'm here to walk all over your back!"

Megumi and Max Elephant came crashing down. The sheer momentum tore through the air.

But the closer they drew to the ground, the closer to Sukuna, the clearer it became.

That thoroughly confident smile spreading across Sukuna's face.

And spreading alongside it,

Raging flames, blazing between the King of Curses' hands!

[Open]

Sukuna unleashed, once more, the one killing move that had never been adapted to.

In that instant, Megumi finally understood how foolish it had been to take to the sky alongside Piercing Elephant.

With Malevolent Shrine left uninterrupted,

The Shinjuku cityscape within a 200-meter radius had already been reduced to dust!

And that dust became the fuel for Furnace: Open to spread.

Megumi's entire offensive had just flown straight into the fire.

Sukuna's grin stretched wider and wider, until it burst into a roar of laughter that shattered the surrounding clouds of dust:

"Megumi Fushiguro, are you going to take this Furnace: Open head-on..."

"Or..."

"Are you going to take this sea of dust instead!"

Megumi's heart lurched.

"Take this, Megumi!"

"A 200-meter-radius Shinjuku weightlifting barrier!"

"Let's see whether you can lift all of Shinjuku, or whether I can lift Piercing Elephant!"

"Megumi Fushiguro!"

Sukuna, brimming with malice, bellowed his sworn enemy's name:

"Let's lift!"

➤ Next: Just This Once