Chapter 62: Reward and Chat (Patreon)

Chapter 62: Rewards and Small Talk

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Over the next thirty-one exorcism missions, Satoru Anjouin got a real education.

On one of them, another human-faced cat cursed spirit showed up. Apparently these things are born for all sorts of reasons, but the most common is a cat that was tortured to death, its lingering remnant soaking up cursed energy and turning into a cursed spirit.

They wear the grotesque faces of the very people who killed them.

Animals think simply. In their world, the only rule is that the strong eat the weak, so to their minds, whoever killed them must naturally be a powerful being.

It was another Grade 3 cursed spirit.

Maki Zenin took the cursed tool sword he'd used earlier and, with about the same strength he'd put in, killed the human-faced cat cursed spirit in a single blow.

She might even have used less.

Even so, the blade went in at the neck and came out between its hind legs, cutting it clean in half.

The human-faced cat cursed spirit lay on the ground in two pieces.

Like the cursed spirits exorcised before it, it began to dissipate. With luck, a little residue would be left behind, and residue carrying the taint of curses was often the raw material for making cursed tools.

After that came a few Grade 2 cursed spirits.

Maki showed him what the official guidebook meant by a perfect physical score with no cursed energy, the same as Yuji Itadori's. A naginata moved in her hands in step with footwork like a dance.

In an instant, several Grade 2 cursed spirits were simply gone.

Anjouin had some natural physical talent and decent dynamic vision, and even he couldn't fully follow Maki's movements.

She had no cursed energy reinforcement, yet her body alone rivaled a jujutsu sorcerer's after reinforcing with cursed energy.

Her fighting style was fairly one-note, though: her own physical ability plus an assortment of cursed tools.

Toge Inumaki, on the other hand, used cursed tools too, but most of the time he attacked directly with his cursed technique, 'Cursed Speech'.

Say 'Blast away', and a localized explosion went off.

Say 'Twist', and the target's body or object warped out of shape.

Say 'Don't move', and the target was briefly frozen in place.

As for Panda, his fighting style could only be described as very panda.

A bear's strength.

A bear's sharp claws.

A bear's appetite.

In short, Panda was both a bear and a cat, more or less.

Anjouin watched everyone's fighting style closely and joined in on a few team exorcisms, padding the assist count. Mostly, though, he stuck to Grade 4 cursed spirits.

In Maki's eyes he barely had the level of a Grade 3 sorcerer. Still, he'd only exorcised his first curse today and become a real jujutsu sorcerer, and back-to-back fighting took a heavy toll on body and mind.

Not everyone can ride around in a car all day, covering every street and alley in Tokyo.

Thirty-two exorcism missions in one day, from past four in the morning until ten at night. Anjouin suddenly understood why Kento Nanami always looked so haggard.

Only Maki and the others, young and in great shape with appetites to match, were fine. McDonald's for lunch, KFC for dinner, sleeping in the car whenever they felt like it, and not a trace of fatigue.

"So this is the daily life of a jujutsu sorcerer?"

Anjouin closed his eyes.

Thirty-two missions in a day was a bit much, but now that he'd tasted battle, he found it hard to forget that surge of excitement, the feeling of blood racing.

Even though he could keep his emotions in check easily, his beating heart felt livelier than ever.

It was as if a voice were telling him:

This is it.

Right here.

Satoru Anjouin felt as though he'd finally found where he belonged.

His hand still held the sensation of the cursed tool sword cutting through a cursed spirit, and he quietly savored his first victory.

It was like the sense of achievement from scoring in the 90s on his very first exam in first grade, back in his previous life.

Yes, what he tasted now was no different from an elementary schooler getting a 90-something.

It wasn't a victory worth clinging to, but it was the easiest kind of success for an innocent child to grab.

Back then, as a kid, he just hadn't been hooked on that kind of success.

Besides, exams in those days didn't demand much talent. Be a little strict with yourself and you'd get a decent score.

"Are we done with today's exorcisms?"

"Yep. Tomorrow's only twenty."

Maki tapped away at a tablet. With modern technology advancing, modern sorcerers had plenty of electronic gear to assist their exorcisms.

"Little An, going by contribution, how about you take ten percent of today's reward?"

"... Isn't that too much?"

Anjouin asked through a yawn. He was sipping canned coffee, his thoughts half a beat slow.

The Exorcism Club he'd founded had, with Kento Nanami's help, fleshed out its standards. More precisely, they'd imported the jujutsu world's system and modified it to fit.

So joining the club and taking part in exorcism missions earned you a corresponding reward.

That reward could be converted into points, just like other sports clubs earning point bonuses for good performance in ordinary high school leagues.

A Grade 4 cursed spirit paid 500 to 1,000 Private Points.

A Grade 3 cursed spirit paid 5,000 to 10,000 Private Points.

A Grade 2 cursed spirit paid 50,000 to 100,000 Private Points.

A Grade 1 cursed spirit paid 500,000 Private Points or more.

Exorcising a single Grade 1 cursed spirit was worth a civil servant's monthly pay, which in a way made it a pretty good deal.

Then again, Kento Nanami had once lost a comrade to a Grade 1 cursed spirit.

Today Anjouin had fought exactly one Grade 3 cursed spirit alone. The rest of the time he'd been hitting Grade 4s, or backing up Maki and the others against Grade 2s.

However you looked at it, he wasn't the main force, and that kind of joint operation only made his record look a little nicer.

"It's not that much," Maki said, glancing at the tablet. "Cash or points?"

"Points."

Anjouin didn't hesitate.

"The points get sent over once this club activity ends," Maki said.

"Ah, what a shame. Inumaki, Panda and I still don't have Advanced Nurturing High School student cards, so we can't convert points directly."

They'd learned the value of points from Anjouin.

Especially since, during this round of exorcisms, he'd pulled out two cursed talismans: a low-grade one, about as useful as a Poké Ball, which sealed a Grade 3 cursed spirit, and a mid-grade one that sealed a Grade 2.

Learning that Advanced Nurturing High School sold items like that, Maki and the others grew even more curious about the school.

They said the school's mysteries still hadn't been fully uncovered.

"Salmon (agreement)."

Inumaki agreed wholeheartedly, with a trace of dejection.

"I wonder if that school has any other cursed corpses."

Since the school could apparently sell anything, Panda figured an independent cursed corpse like himself wasn't out of the question.

"I'm going to go with Mr. Nanami for the next stretch, so see you later." Anjouin waved goodbye and climbed into a different car.

"See you."

Maki waved back.

She certainly had no complaints about a teammate who was earnest, eager to learn, followed orders and didn't cause trouble.

Especially as a member of the Exorcism Club, he'd be exorcising curses alongside them for a long time to come.

Babysitting a newbie was a bit annoying, but over the past few joint operations Anjouin had done well on the team and never tried to steal credit.

She remembered Teacher Gojo saying he was a descendant of a fallen jujutsu family who now planned to return to the jujutsu world.

Thinking of that, Maki pulled out her phone and started chatting with her best friend.

"Zenin Family Go Die: Heartknot~ you asleep yet?"

"Still Alive: Nope, Little Maki."

Maki knew her friend had pulled another all-nighter. Staying up late was just the norm in the jujutsu world these days.

Young people trusted their bodies and weren't afraid of all-nighters. Kento Nanami's thermos already had goji berries steeping in it.

"Zenin Family Go Die: I met a newbie today. Seems like he's got a complicated background. Anyone with a name like ××in is definitely not simple, huh."

"Still Alive: My family's perfectly normal, just an ordinary jujutsu clan. But your newbie isn't some Keikain, is he?"

"Zenin Family Go Die: Nope, nope. His name's Anjouin."

"Still Alive: Never heard of him♪"

Maki smiled. She'd only entered Tokyo Jujutsu High this year and had been enrolled for just a few weeks, but she'd grown up in Kyoto and knew students at Kyoto Jujutsu High.

Her friend hated her own family just like Maki did.

"She doesn't know him?"

"So Anjouin isn't one of the big families from Kyoto? No, Teacher Gojo said he came from a fallen family of sorcerers."

Maki had no interest in prying into other people's secrets, but she felt this 'junior' was no ordinary guy.

It was an instinct she'd had since birth.

Of course, the real reason was that she wanted to gloat to her friend, yet again, about the Zenin family being half-crippled.

Ahahaha!

Maki tried to hold down the corners of her mouth, but burst out laughing anyway.

Word was that the old geezers of her family were still lying in bed, half dead.

The very night she heard the news, she'd pretended to be an adult, bought a few cans of beer and drunk to her heart's content.

"Zenin Family Go Die: Oh right, oh right, I heard more news about the Zenin family. They say that father of mine lost an arm, too."

Given her father's fighting style, losing an arm would hit him hard.

"Still Alive: Jealous~"

Seeing her friend's reply, Maki grinned and typed back.

"Zenin Family Go Die: Heartknot, Heartknot~ next time I'm back in Kyoto, let's go shopping together."

"Still Alive: No problem~ ♥"

"Still Alive: Though I'd rather go to Tokyo. I heard Shibuya is really lively!"

"Zenin Family Go Die: Oh oh oh, sure, come to Tokyo then, I'll show you around. I made a ton from today's exorcisms."

"Still Alive: You'd better save it, Little Maki. Your money all goes to cursed tools anyway~"

"Zenin Family Go Die: It's fine, it's fine! In two more weeks I'm saying goodbye to those damn swindlers!"

Since this was a school where points ruled everything, it was bound to sell cursed tools too. Even if they cost a bit more, that beat having a middleman skim a huge brokerage fee.

Inumaki gnawed on a rice ball and shook his head as he watched Maki scroll through her phone.

All he could say was that since the Zenin family's collapse, Maki's personality seemed to have changed a bit.

Chatting with her girlfriend every day was really because that friend was still in Kyoto. If the Zenin family were still doing fine, her friend would've kept her posted on that too, though of course that wouldn't have made her happy.

"Zenin Family Go Die: How's Mai been these days?"

"Still Alive: Little Mai? Same as you. A puppy bounding around every day~"

The look on Maki's face melted at once, her smile full of warmth.

With the Zenin family's fall, what she cared about most wasn't her own promotion. It was that her twin sister could also break free from the Zenin family's 'shackles'.

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[Author's Note: PS: Four updates today.]

[Author's Note: PS: I'm planning to go paid tomorrow, and since I'm about to take on Ai Hoshino, here's a bonus update on short notice.]