Chapter 160: Mahito: The Core of Cursed Energy, I've Mastered It! (Patreon)

Shibuya.

The outskirts of the scorched earth.

After his initial breakdown, Itadori Yuji reined in his emotions and slowly pushed himself up from the ground.

His eyes were hollow, empty of light, as though his very soul had been scooped out of him.

The boy who had knelt here sobbing his heart out just moments ago was already buried beneath the ashes of that grief.

Itadori Yuji didn't waste time standing still.

He forced his legs to move, stumbling out of the scorched zone and into the ruined streets beyond, blocks torn apart by the shockwaves of the explosions.

Crying and denying yourself — that was a coward's way out.

Before a gear rusts through completely and is scrapped, all it has to do is keep turning.

Right now, agonizing over whether his own sense of "right" even mattered was, in itself, meaningless.

If he stopped to dwell on the guilt threatening to crush him, Itadori Yuji really would die.

So he could only keep walking.

Keep saving people.

As long as even one person was still alive in that wreckage — as long as he could pull out even one survivor — then his existence still meant something.

Yes. Set aside, for now, all the thoughts that only piled on more suffering, and focus wholly on saving others.

With a hollow thud,

Itadori Yuji kicked aside a twisted length of rebar blocking his path and began methodically searching for any sign of life.

He combed through two whole blocks without stopping.

He walked into building after building, calling out again and again into the silent streets, hoping for even the faintest response.

But...

Nothing.

A few wandering low-grade cursed spirits caught his scent and gave him a wide berth.

Blood smeared across the pavement had already dried black. Scattered cosplay props lay everywhere, and here and there he spotted a single shoe, abandoned in someone's panicked flight.

Every time he heaved aside some heavy piece of debris and found nothing underneath but cold concrete, his movements grew a little slower than the time before.

Just as he rounded a half-collapsed convenience store, a faint murmur drifted from around the corner:

"Help me..."

Itadori Yuji froze instantly and turned toward the dim corner.

A dark shape huddled behind a broken billboard, trembling all over, straining to keep its breathing quiet.

Someone's alive!!!

The thought filled his blank mind in an instant.

He ran toward it without thinking.

It was a girl in a sailor uniform, sitting on the ground and shivering, a long gash of blood running down her calf.

Itadori Yuji dropped into a crouch and reached out to help her up.

"Are you okay?!"

"Don't be scared, I'll get you out—"

Before he could finish, the girl's face — until now written all over with fear — suddenly warped.

Her features crumpled together into a shapeless mass, her body swelling like a balloon, bursting out of the sailor uniform, until she became a bloated monster, letting out a meaningless, gurgling moan.

Clearly, this was one of the Transfigured Humans.

Itadori Yuji's outstretched hand hung frozen in midair.

"—Surprise~!!!"

A voice, dripping with delight, suddenly rang out from above.

Itadori Yuji lifted his head like a machine.

Mahito sat cross-legged atop a snapped steel beam, tossing a chunk of rubble in one hand, a nauseatingly bright smile plastered across his face.

"Aw, was searching for people really that tiring?"

Mahito swung his legs idly in the air, his eyes gleaming with the satisfaction of a prank well played.

"I watched you buzzing around like a headless fly for so long, I got bored, so I figured I'd see if this trick could reel you in."

"And whaddaya know, it worked!"

He pointed down at the Transfigured Human still squirming at Itadori's feet, letting out a light chuckle.

"You really are a hopeless do-gooder, you know that?"

"You just love saving people that much, Itadori Yuji?"

"Mahito——!!!"

Itadori Yuji let out a furious roar.

He stomped a crack into the pavement beneath him and, using the recoil, launched himself straight at Mahito on the beam.

"Hahahahaha!"

Watching the red-eyed boy charge at him like a maddened beast, Mahito burst out laughing in excitement.

He spread his arms wide and shouted, meeting Itadori Yuji's charge head-on:

"No need to shout so loud, Itadori Yuji!"

"I can hear you just fine!"

Itadori Yuji closed the distance in an instant, his right fist cutting through the air straight at Mahito's face.

Mahito made no move to dodge at all.

He simply parted his lips at a leisurely pace and used his tongue to push out a handful of small, pitch-black, sticky cocoons of flesh.

"Multiple souls—"

"Body Repel!"

The moment the cocoons touched open air, they began to swell and stretch violently, dozens of blurred human faces surfacing and sinking across their surface, letting out agonized wails.

They spread like a vast net woven from flesh and blood, sweeping toward Itadori Yuji as he hung in midair.

The instant he saw those twisted faces, Itadori Yuji's pupils shrank, and countless faces — people he'd seen struggling to survive on the streets of Shibuya — flashed through his mind, impossible to hold back.

Were any of them people who had fled through those streets?

Were any of them mothers and children who had huddled together in some corner, clinging to each other?

If he threw this punch...

A wave of overwhelming nausea and guilt made Itadori Yuji's fist falter at the last, fatal instant.

He wrenched his hips and abdomen, forcibly aborting the strike, sending his whole body into a graceless tumble through the air, just barely dodging the whip-like lashes of flesh.

With a heavy thud,

Itadori Yuji crashed hard into the rubble, rolling backward several times before scrambling back to his feet.

"You bastard..."

He looked up at Mahito, chest heaving, veins bulging on his mud-streaked face.

"Why..."

"Why can you toy with so many people's lives, over and over again?!"

Itadori Yuji gritted his teeth and charged again, using the terrain for cover to dodge another burst of Body Repel, closing the gap between them.

"How many people in Shibuya have you already turned into these monsters?!"

At those words, Mahito froze for a beat.

In that brief moment of distraction, Itadori Yuji's fist, loaded with raw fury, connected squarely with the side of his face.

Mahito was sent spinning through the air, crashing down into a pile of broken bricks below.

But in the next instant, he pushed himself off the ground and sat back up, as if nothing had happened at all.

"Ordinary people?"

Mahito wiped the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, a flicker of confusion crossing his eyes.

Ordinary people?

What ordinary people were even left in this wreckage?

They'd all cleared out long before Ryomen Sukuna even took control of Itadori Yuji's body.

The "cocoons" he was using now were all stock he'd made from reconstructing cursed spirits.

But watching the fury burning in Itadori Yuji's eyes — fury mixed with suppressed terror — Mahito caught on in a flash.

This kid...

Could he actually believe there were still living people hidden in this wreckage, and that Mahito was out here catching them for fun, turning them into monsters?

If he played along with that idea, would it break the boy down even faster?

A thoroughly rotten idea took shape in Mahito's mind at once.

"Oh, how would I know?"

Mahito grinned, catching Itadori Yuji's fist, and spoke in a tone begging to be punched:

"Itadori Yuji, do you keep count of every slice of bread you've ever eaten?"

Having pushed Itadori Yuji back, he produced two more flesh cocoons from his mouth, tossing them between his hands like juggling balls.

"But then again..."

"These cute little guys I'm using now are all fresh, still warm!"

Mahito deliberately dangled the cocoon toward Itadori, continuing:

"After all, turning an ordinary person into one of these has a thirty-minute time limit."

"Once that half hour's up, they turn right back into humans."

Watching Itadori Yuji's face go bone-white, Mahito was having the time of his life, his grin twisting into pure smugness.

"So? How does it feel?"

"Knowing that these monsters trying to kill you were, just a few minutes ago, living, breathing people who could laugh and cry..."

"And that they can still change back — can you really bring yourself to kill them?"

"Shut up!"

Itadori Yuji roared, cutting him off, but he couldn't hide the tremor in his voice.

He didn't dare doubt Mahito.

As long as there was even a one-in-ten-thousand chance it was true, every punch he threw was shattering a life that might still have been saved.

"And you know, all of this is your fault, Itadori Yuji~"

Mahito had no intention of shutting up. He slipped easily past Itadori Yuji's increasingly wild, rage-fueled attacks, his voice slithering into the boy's ear like a snake:

"If it weren't for you, I never would have found so much material — so many people huddled together out of fear."

"Ever poured boiling water into an anthill as a kid? Pretty easy, right?"

He deliberately slowed his pace, circling around Itadori Yuji.

"Watching all those little bugs scramble around — did it make you laugh?"

"When I harvest ordinary people..."

"It's the exact same — easy, and fun!"

With that, Mahito suddenly stopped moving, tilting his head back to gaze at the thick smoke in the sky, as if savoring some wonderful memory.

"Of course, from a curse's perspective, I really do owe you my thanks."

"Thanks to you, I got to put on such a perfect fireworks show!"

"I told you to shut up!!!"

In that instant, Itadori Yuji's reason burned away completely.

Like a beast gone mad, he abandoned all defense and threw everything into a chaotic flurry of punches at Mahito.

A left hook, a right straight, a sweeping kick—

Facing Itadori Yuji's all-out, mutually-assured-destruction style of fighting, Mahito made agile use of the ruined terrain.

Sometimes he blocked with his arm; sometimes he used a Transfigured Human as a meat shield in front of himself.

Watching Itadori Yuji hold back at the last second, again and again, out of fear of that entirely fictional thirty-minute limit — choosing to take a brutal hit himself rather than deal a killing blow — Mahito couldn't help but laugh out loud at how absurd it looked.

This was exactly what he wanted.

Mahito understood perfectly well why this boy grated on him so much — Itadori Yuji stood in the exact position Mahito most wanted to deny.

One was a curse following its instinct to kill; the other, a human following his instinct to save.

Their respective versions of "right" had been diametrically opposed from the very start.

Only by breaking his opponent, by grinding his dignity, his convictions, his ridiculous stubbornness into the dirt, could Mahito prove that his own existence was the one true "right."

As long as the suffering piled up heavy enough, as long as the hatred brewed deep enough, even a hopeless do-gooder like Itadori Yuji would eventually be left as nothing more than an empty shell, ruled entirely by the will to kill.

"Hey, Itadori Yuji, you still owe me an answer~"

Mahito seized the opening left by Itadori Yuji's overextended attack and drove a heavy kick into his stomach, sending him flying backward.

Watching him clutch his gut and climb back to his feet, Mahito spoke slowly:

"Go on, answer me now."

"What determines the value and weight of a life, to you?"

Itadori Yuji wiped the grit from the corner of his mouth, and in his bloodshot eyes, a light still refused to go out.

"That's not something I have the right to define."

"All I know is that a human life should never be treated as a tool, to use and throw away however you please!"

"Hahahahaha!"

At those words, Mahito doubled over laughing.

"How shallow. Your sense of justice is downright shallow!"

Mahito wiped away a tear, leaned in close to Itadori Yuji, and lowered his voice:

"Still don't get it, Itadori Yuji?"

"I... am you."

"I kill for no reason, and you save for no reason — what's the real difference between us?"

"We're both just acting on our own instincts."

As he spoke, Mahito tapped a fingertip against Itadori Yuji's chest.

"You cling to your own version of 'right,' thinking you're some hero come to fix the world..."

"But when you try to wipe me out to protect others, aren't you also forcing your own 'right' onto me?"

As the words left his mouth, Mahito felt the cursed energy inside him boiling with an intensity he'd never felt before.

The more he backed this boy into a corner, the more clearly he could feel that mysterious, elusive realm drawing near.

A black will, burning bright!

He was touching the very core of cursed energy!

"Oh, right, you probably know this already, don't you?"

Mahito's tone suddenly turned strange.

"Someone forced a damned Binding Vow on me a while back."

"I don't remember a thing about when it was made, but besides restricting me from killing..."

"That Binding Vow probably also has a clause strengthening my capacity for empathy, don't you think?"

He looked down at his own hands, sneering.

"For a while there, I kept feeling these disgusting little pangs of pity, out of nowhere."

"That bastard who forced the Binding Vow on me probably wanted to use it to make a curse like me understand the human heart."

"Too bad — it completely backfired!"

Mahito lifted his head again, his expression twisted into the peak of madness:

"Precisely because I now understand how weak and pathetic the human heart is, I take even greater pride in being a curse!"

"A curse is a curse!"

"Love and hatred are two sides of the same coin — and if you humans enshrine love as sacred, then hatred deserves the same reverence!"

Mahito clenched his right fist, and the light around it seemed to collapse inward toward that single point, black sparks crackling and bursting at his knuckles.

"This is..."

"...my own justice!"

"—Black Flash!"

With a thunderous crack, Mahito's fist slammed squarely into Itadori Yuji's stomach.

……

[Achievement Quest: Guide Yakushi Kabuto to recognize himself, and lead him to complete his own self-redemption.]

[Status: Completed]

[Reward disbursed: Sage Art · Inorganic Reincarnation, Yin Healing Wound Destruction, Yang Release power +10% (currently 70%)]

Uchiha Ayato, having just turned his attention back to the situation in Shibuya: "?"

Wait, what...

The villain doubles down on villainy, achieves enlightenment on the path of evil — and that counts as self-redemption?