Chapter 66: Commencing Exorcism (Patreon)

Chapter 66: Beginning the Exorcism

…

"Thanks."

Satoru Anjouin took the rice ball that Assistant Manager Ijichi handed over and thanked him in a low voice.

He washed down the microwave-warmed rice ball with mineral water, and a little warmth crept back into his body.

The April spring wind still carried a faint chill. The Jujutsu High uniform resisted this and that and kept the cold out to some degree, but whenever he remembered the creepy sight from earlier, he still felt a shiver run through him.

As far as the probe went, they had succeeded. Even now, neither he nor Kento Nanami had been killed.

Not having to hand over a revival coin was a good thing. But the strength of the idol vengeful spirit struck him as absurd.

Sure, in the original work the enemies were all Special Grade Cursed Spirits and the King of Curses. Fighting Ryomen Sukuna alone had eaten up who knew how many chapters, to the point where fans joked the series should be called Sukuna Land. But that was a world far removed from ordinary jujutsu sorcerers.

More often than not, a Grade 1 cursed spirit was the strongest enemy the jujutsu world could actually measure.

Cursed spirits with a cursed technique, especially, already possessed a certain intelligence.

And this one had even pulled a dirty trick like this, deceiving and ambushing a rookie like him and a corporate drone like Kento Nanami.

"Anjouin, prepare yourself. We may not be able to tame her, but today she has to be exorcised."

"Understood." Satoru Anjouin only felt mild regret.

"Inumaki and the others are here."

Kento Nanami rubbed his legs. Because the elevator had been stopped, this time they had walked out of the apartment building on their own two legs.

It wasn't until they reached the edge of the curtain that Assistant Manager Ijichi woke them.

Kento Nanami checked his watch.

It was 11:47 p.m., less than thirteen minutes to midnight.

Just then, another car pulled up.

"Mr. Nanami, we're here." Maki Zenin greeted him with a breezy grin.

When he had called in Maki Zenin, Toge Inumaki and Panda, Kento Nanami had already had Ijichi brief them on the enemy they would face.

"That idol vengeful spirit is Little Anjouin's target?"

After all, they had seen Satoru Anjouin pull out cursed talismans and snatch up a Grade 3 cursed spirit and a Grade 2 cursed spirit like he was catching Pokémon, so Maki Zenin and the others weren't entirely in the dark.

It was only that against this idol vengeful spirit, the more you knew, the worse off you were.

"Anjouin." Kento Nanami called his name. "Explain it to them. Afterward, use your Binding to erase their awareness of the target."

"Got it."

Satoru Anjouin started explaining right away.

"Talk while we walk."

Kento Nanami, who had eaten two rice balls himself, had topped up on a few carbs. He headed for the building and switched the elevator back on. He had no desire to take the stairs again.

"Tch. It's that much trouble?"

Maki Zenin pushed up the arm of her glasses. She had a deep store of knowledge and knew exactly how hard it was to deal with a cursed spirit that had a cursed technique.

If you drew one you countered, fine. But if you drew one that countered you, then even though a Grade 1 sorcerer ranked above a Grade 1 cursed spirit by the jujutsu world's math, the spirit could easily wipe out the whole party.

"Mentaiko (Dangerous)."

"Right? Even Mr. Nanami thinks she's a pain."

Ding—

The elevator suddenly sounded an alarm.

"Overweight." Satoru Anjouin glanced at the warning inside the elevator and was abruptly at a loss for words.

Everyone present turned to look at Panda, who was black and white and couldn't be photographed in color.

"That's... that's just cruel!"

Panda felt unbearably wronged.

Watching Panda clown around swept away the gloom left by the earlier failure. Light smiles appeared on the faces of both Satoru Anjouin and Kento Nanami.

Then a lovely female voice suddenly rang out inside the elevator.

[I'm Hoshino. What you're looking for isn't here.]

—

"I see. She really is a handful."

Maki Zenin took the mineral water Ijichi handed her and drank it in big gulps.

"Salmon (Agreed)."

Toge Inumaki was speechless too. As a Cursed Speech user, he had just been shot down by a cursed spirit using words.

The idol vengeful spirit's cursed technique was Lie, and it affected cognition, sight and hearing.

But a lie was still a form of speech. It was spoken aloud, said with knowledge of the truth, and said in order to deceive, so what was said differed from the facts.

Panda, curled up into a ball, felt it was all his fault.

Probably because he was so heavy and so noisy, the cursed technique had caught the lot of them.

"Anyway, let's form the Binding first."

Satoru Anjouin immediately formed a Binding with the group, making them forget everything about the idol vengeful spirit and keeping only the countermeasures aimed at the target.

Don't look, don't listen, don't think.

Satoru Anjouin drilled the plan into Maki Zenin and the others.

"That target, um, X... feels kind of tough. How about a pincer attack from both sides?"

"Worth a try." Kento Nanami agreed with the approach.

They had already established that the idol vengeful spirit was bound by some kind of restriction on killing until she completed her "Love" Binding, so from here on they could afford to be bolder.

And so, as the idol vengeful spirit came out of the rented room, her body made up of countless black characters and a pretty-girl mask over her head, Kento Nanami and Maki Zenin attacked from either end of the corridor.

[Mr. Nanami, good evening. It's time for your night run again.]

"Yeah."

[Is this your daughter? She's so cute. How lucky, a father and daughter running together.]

"Dad."

"Mm. Let's go."

A reliable man in a suit and a girl with a bit of a delinquent air rode the elevator back down together, acting as if they were about to go out for a night run.

"Wake up."

Toge Inumaki pulled down his scarf and called out softly, just once, and the father and daughter getting ready for their night run snapped out of it.

Remembering the scene that had just played out, Maki Zenin saw black before her eyes.

Luckily only two people had gone up this time, so only she and Kento Nanami knew about it.

Kento Nanami pushed up his glasses and didn't reveal the incident to the others. He simply said, calmly:

"We failed."

"When the target used her technique, we never had any intention of resisting."

Clearly, merely seeing the target had been enough to fall for it. Both of them had been carrying phones with the shouting recordings playing, and even though they had increased the number of voices, the effect hadn't improved noticeably.

"Cursed Speech definitely works. The question is whether Inumaki will become her target."

"Then we fight as a team, with protecting Inumaki as the priority."

And so a new round began.

Toge Inumaki hid on the landing at the corner where Satoru Anjouin had hidden before.

Satoru Anjouin and Panda crouched together on the flight of stairs, serving as cover for Toge Inumaki and giving him signals.

Maki Zenin and Kento Nanami once again closed in from two directions.

Satoru Anjouin poked his head out.

This time he had placed a new Binding on himself: his eyes could not make out the "target," his brain could not recognize the "target," his ears could not hear her "voice," his nose could not function properly...

He really was going all out to tame the idol vengeful spirit. Of course... this was no longer a question of whether to tame her or not.

The idol vengeful spirit's potential was high. Kento Nanami even suspected that if she completed her "Love" Binding, she might reach the Special Grade standard.

He even suspected that the "skin" he had destroyed earlier was just the shell of a cursed womb.

So today she had to be dealt with, whether by taming her or by exorcising her completely.

The idol vengeful spirit came out of the room door once more. She looked left, at the girl with her naginata at the ready, then right, at the adult gripping a nata cleaver. Her neck stretched without her willing it, raising her head, mask and all, to the ceiling as she peered at the figure at the far end, by the stairs.

"Wake up!"

Toge Inumaki's voice came through the Bluetooth speaker, ringing straight out of the pocket of Kento Nanami's suit.

Kento Nanami and Maki Zenin, who had been squared off against the idol vengeful spirit in fighting stances without ever attacking, swung their cursed tools at the target in the very next instant.

One after the other, weapons laced with cursed energy cut into the idol vengeful spirit's body.

[Huh?]

She still wore that same uncomprehending tone at being attacked.

As if it had never occurred to her why someone would hurt her, when she was so dearly loved by so many.

Two gashes opened in her body, and a huge number of characters sprayed out like blood. The characters that landed on the ground kept twisting, wriggling and crawling like tiny insects.

The idol vengeful spirit's body shifted constantly. Clutching the wounds on her shoulder and back, she put some distance between herself and the two of them.

[I'm Hoshino. I'm an idol. I'm not your enemy...]

The two who had been raising their cursed tools for a second strike stopped at once.

Satoru Anjouin had given Maki Zenin and Kento Nanami a new Binding too, so that to their eyes the idol vengeful spirit was only a mass of black haze.

He had also sealed their hearing, but that still couldn't fully withstand the "Lie" technique.

Or rather, he hadn't done it thoroughly enough.

Like the earplug tactic before it, it still couldn't block out sound completely.

As for the shouting recorded on their phones, it mostly served as resistance against the technique. The effect of Cursed Speech, however, was far more pronounced.

"Wake up!"

Peeking out from his hiding place at the corner, Satoru Anjouin noticed that Kento Nanami and Maki Zenin had stopped.

He signaled to Toge Inumaki behind him again. Toge Inumaki then shouted into his phone, and the Bluetooth speaker carried the effect of Cursed Speech outward.

It was a one-sided compulsion. Kento Nanami and Maki Zenin didn't need to hear it, and even though they had no hearing at the moment, they recovered once more under the influence of Cursed Speech.

"Maki."

"Right, Mr. Nanami."

Maki Zenin immediately whipped around in a spinning kick, slamming into the idol vengeful spirit's flank and sending her body flying toward Kento Nanami.

Cursed tools could do damage, but the most effective attacks against cursed spirits were still powerful cursed techniques, or cursed energy that had undergone a qualitative change. That was an attack method she, with nothing but her physical ability, didn't possess.

She really did need more cursed tools.

With that thought in mind, Maki Zenin had already kicked the idol vengeful spirit toward Kento Nanami.

After all those probing attempts, they had finally landed an effective blow.

"Ratio Technique—"

In the next instant, the idol vengeful spirit's body collapsed in an instant. Countless characters of "lies" scattered, and Kento Nanami's cursed technique lost its target.

"Shit. As expected, once they hit Grade 1, even cursed spirits have some intelligence."

With her body scattered, the idol vengeful spirit re-formed behind Kento Nanami. She then turned into a huge monster with four legs and four arms and charged at speed toward the corner where Satoru Anjouin and the others were hiding.

"Fuck, this is bad."

Satoru Anjouin couldn't make out what the enemy looked like, but a mass of black haze that huge charging at him still made him swear under his breath.

Worse, they had all sealed their hearing, so they couldn't hear a thing and could only use the hand signals they had agreed on beforehand.

And the idol vengeful spirit, running on all fours, closed the distance in barely a few seconds.

"Ohhh!"

Panda roared and showed off the strength of a bear.