Chapter 70: Descending from Mountain 86, Sprinting Up the Tree (Patreon)

Chapter 70: The 86 Goes Downhill, the Benz Goes Up a Tree

…

After Kento Nanami's explanation, the Hoshino siblings learned about the hidden side of this world.

Aqua, as the older brother, looked at his sister. He worried whether he could keep her safe. Gritting his teeth, he turned to Kento Nanami.

"Mr. Nanami, is there any way for us to gain the power to fight back?"

"You two do have the gift of 'sight,' what's usually called spiritual sense. And if you can enroll at Advanced Nurturing High School, you might be able to gain that power."

Kento Nanami held nothing back, especially not the school's admission rules. The Hoshino siblings fell squarely within the recruitment range.

Both siblings were a little excited after hearing the explanation.

"Then, can we get that guy to give Mom back to us?"

Ruby couldn't let go of the cursed spirit born from her mother's resentment. Even Aqua couldn't help looking at Kento Nanami.

But Kento Nanami shook his head.

"Ownership of that cursed spirit lies with Anjouin. It isn't my place to decide for him.

"Anjouin subdued that cursed spirit in order to make it his own shikigami. Jujutsu sorcerers are a profession much like onmyoji."

Of course, the onmyoji have declined by now, which is exactly why the jujutsu sorcerers got their chance to rise.

Passing cursed techniques down through bloodlines guarantees the jujutsu sorcerers a solid floor. It's like awakening a martial soul: awaken a decent martial soul, add some innate soul power, and you'll make Soul Venerable one way or another.

Ah, a Level 29 who only breaks through at fifty? That's a different story.

Anyway, being born with an innate cursed technique is just another way of saying you were born with a superpower.

The Hoshino siblings were young. They'd played games and watched dramas, and stories of onmyoji and their shikigami had been adapted plenty of times.

Besides, the two of them were show business people, and had even planned to apply to an arts school someday.

"Onmyoji…"

Aqua nodded.

The hand he'd placed on Ruby's shoulder tightened a little.

"Ow! Aqua, what are you doing?"

Ruby still hadn't given up. She even wanted to demand that they hand Mom back.

"…Ruby, give it up for now. We'll deal with it next year, once we're in Advanced Nurturing."

Having been reincarnated with an adult's memories, Aqua could tell from how the group had acted earlier that Kento Nanami was the strongest of them and the one in charge.

And a team like this had moved as if to support that boy's subjugation of the cursed spirit. Either the team had been hired, or the boy's identity was no ordinary one.

It happened in games all the time, right? A boss pays big to join the guild, the team carries him through a dungeon, and he walks away with the dungeon-exclusive pet drop.

"But…"

"Ruby." Aqua's expression was grave.

Seeing that, Ruby had no choice but to give way, and her eyes immediately reddened.

She had been reincarnated with her memories too, but she was still only a little girl.

In Aqua's view, it didn't matter which of the two the person who'd taken their mother was. Either way, it meant they weren't in a position to oppose him.

The first meant money, the second meant power.

Both were deeply troublesome.

"I'll see you two out."

"Huh? Where did that person go?"

Ruby lightly bit her lower lip with her upper teeth. She'd wanted to look at Mom once more before leaving, and she didn't know whether such a request would be granted.

But when she raised her eyes again, the person was gone.

"Mr. Nanami, this is bad! Anjouin has vanished!"

Maki Zenin felt like her brain had shut down.

After all, he'd disappeared right in front of her.

"What happened?" Kento Nanami asked at once.

"He was fine a second ago, then he was just gone."

"Salmon (Affirmative)." Toge Inumaki, hedgehog hair and all, nodded, willing to vouch for everything Maki Zenin had said.

Kento Nanami walked to the spot where Satoru Anjouin had disappeared and began searching the surrounding area.

"Maki, did you notice anything unusual?"

"…"

Maki Zenin fell silent, then spoke with a mix of confusion and suspicion. "Come to think of it, I think I saw a little boy in a blue suit."

"He seemed to appear out of nowhere too. Anjouin vanished right then, and when I went to look for the boy, he was gone as well. I thought I'd imagined it at first."

Maki Zenin reacted fast and linked the two events at once.

"A little boy in a blue suit?"

Kento Nanami went over the files he'd read.

There were a dozen or so registered Special Grade Cursed Spirits in the island nation at the moment. For something to slip past his senses and carry Satoru Anjouin off, he had no choice but to raise his suspicions a tier.

But none of those dozen or so registered Special Grade Cursed Spirits had the ability to teleport someone else.

As for anything higher, the "beyond Special Grade" tier that Satoru Gojo had set up personally, that was information even Nanami had no access to.

Naturally, Kento Nanami didn't guess that high.

He studied the traces around him, confirmed that he couldn't find any leads, and said bluntly:

"I'll contact Satoru Gojo. We'll certainly have to ask him about this."

"Little Bro Anjouin's luck is rotten. He finally subdues a cursed spirit, and before he can enjoy it for a minute, he's gone."

Maki Zenin figured Satoru Anjouin was done for.

She was from the Zenin family, after all, and knew exactly how off-the-charts the power to instantly teleport a person was.

Which was exactly why it meant Satoru Anjouin was about to face a grave problem.

—

"…Well, well, isn't that Jogo? Haven't seen you in a few days. How come you're just a head now?"

The stitched man in black said it with a cheerful laugh, as if stepping on an empty can.

"Mahito, you bastard. Get your foot off."

"You really can't take a joke, Jogo. I heard you went looking for trouble with Detective~"

"…"

"He may be a Special Grade Cursed Spirit, but Detective isn't like us. He has a powerful sense of justice, and he only turns up at crime scenes~"

The stitched man in black went on laughing.

"For the sake of the age of curses, we need to unite even more power."

Jogo had wanted to subdue the Special Grade Cursed Spirit Detective by force. Believing his own strength was beyond Special Grade, he hadn't taken the other party seriously in the first place.

Then, like a stray dog by the roadside, he had called out to Detective and been ignored.

When he tried to block Detective's path, a beam of light blew him apart on the spot.

"Mm, I love how stubborn you are, Jogo. Very human. Ugly, and entertaining."

"Mahito, shut your mouth!"

"I'm curious how you lost."

"I don't know. All I saw was a laser coming at me, and it looked like… a soccer ball?"

Jogo's expression was beyond complicated. He seemed to suspect he'd gone senile.

Since when did soccer balls and lasers go together? He might be a Special Grade Cursed Spirit who'd never gone to school, but he wasn't actually stupid.

"…Jogo, you really are badly hurt, aren't you?"

"No kidding. Half my body is gone."

Jogo wasn't the toughest of the four great Special Grade Cursed Spirits when it came to taking a beating, but he could certainly take quite a few.

And his wish to recruit more comrades to usher in the age of curses was perfectly sincere.

It was just that right now he was feeling a tiny bit withdrawn.

So he was weak after all.

"Hey, Jogo, why did you go quiet?"

"Whoa, you're not sulking already, are you?"

The stitched man in black spoke in the tone of a carefree, innocent child.

Killing intent churned ceaselessly inside Jogo, who was reduced to a single, lonely head.

—

"I see. Got it."

Three minutes' walk from Beika Town Station, there was a bench just right for resting.

Satoru Anjouin happened to be sitting on it, sorting out his thoughts.

After a few minutes of thinking, he'd worked out what had happened to him.

"Great. So this is what they mean by finishing the Subject 2 driving test, going straight onto the road, then onto the highway, and then racing an 86 downhill."

Wonderful.

The 86 goes downhill, the Benz goes up a tree.

Even Yuji Itadori, the protagonist of the original story, in his most miserable year, never went out for a bit of field experience and blundered straight into a realm beyond Special Grade.

A Grade 3 fighting something beyond Special Grade?

How could he even dream up something this absurd?

Fine. Time to hand in the revival coin.

Satoru Anjouin didn't actually feel that the Intel System had screwed him over.

If anything, a cheat like the Intel System was always about the advantage of the information gap: you keep stacking up advantages by knowing what others don't, or by knowing some secret.

For Satoru Anjouin, who followed the Lurker's Path, aside from the truly invincible cheats, he personally preferred the kind that supplied information.

Appraisal and status panels counted too.

When it came down to it, he just hadn't been able to catch hold of this towering stroke of fortune.

He'd figured that with the Intel System, he could become the hidden-character type who "doesn't know everything, just what he knows."

Once he'd built up enough power, that would be the moment for him to announce, "I'm Homelander."

Of course, Satoru Anjouin hadn't expected this world to be like the world of Lord of the Mysteries, where knowing more only made things more dangerous.

Going by today's intel, he could be fairly certain this world really was sewn together out of random garbage.

"So, how am I supposed to struggle from here?"

He figured he'd most likely lose his revival coin today, but Satoru Anjouin still thought he should put up a proper struggle.

That went especially for the information revealed in Intel #3. He'd used a Binding to block that line of information at once, but there was no guarantee that would keep those beyond Special Grade from noticing him.

Just as he'd set the Binding at the first moment and still run into the Special Grade Cursed Spirit Detective.

And Detective was the sense of justice split off from Regret, a being beyond Special Grade. That left Satoru Anjouin wondering just how unrecognizable the story of his childhood's little detective had become.

On top of that, now that he knew in advance about this world, and that the island nation alone had that many beyond Special Grade, Satoru Anjouin's sense of urgency grew even stronger.

Originally, the plan had been to stake ten years of time on a growth Binding.

Now he suddenly felt that even staking twenty years might be far too conservative.

If he was going to gamble, he might as well gamble bigger.

Before, he'd figured the goal was nothing more than putting together a core team, then fighting Ryomen Sukuna when the time came. Never mind what Satoru Gojo thought, they'd all go in shoulder to shoulder.

But now it looked like Ryomen Sukuna might have been buffed as well.

At his current rate of growth, it was nowhere near enough… Even reaching Grade 3 in a few weeks counted as fast in the old jujutsu world.

To be precise, he'd gone from zero foundation, to Grade 4, and then to Grade 3.

His knowledge was still a bit thin, but in many respects he'd barely reached Grade 3.

After all, at the original Jujutsu High, three years of study ended with graduating as a Grade 2 jujutsu sorcerer at best.