Chapter 179 (Patreon)

After the fractures in space-time swept past, the world fell silent.

“Is Sukuna dead?”

Shoko Ieiri stood on a rooftop, staring at the shattered sky. Fierce winds howled through what remained of the ruined city.

CLICK.

The rooftop’s metal door swung open.

“Probably not... Cough.”

“Gojo, you haven’t recovered yet. Forcing yourself to move is only going to make things worse.”

Satoru Gojo shook his head.

“It’s just cursed energy exhaustion. More importantly... what exactly has Sukuna become?”

Shoko slipped both hands into her pockets.

“I don’t know. As far as I can tell, he’s completely moved beyond the conventional definition of a curse. He’s become a higher order of life.”

“So he can’t even be classified as a Cursed Spirit anymore?”

“Exactly.”

Gojo clicked his tongue.

“What a pain. I was already reaching my limit when I fought him before, and he was still hiding something like this.”

The moment those words left his mouth, all color drained from the world.

Everything turned gray.

The clouds, the ruins, even the dust carried by the wind froze in place.

“What’s happening?”

Shoko spun around.

There was nothing before her, yet she could feel an invisible curse spreading through the emptiness.

Silence.

Absolute silence.

“Something...” Shoko whispered. “Something is coming.”

Gojo’s brilliant blue eyes locked onto a single black sphere suspended in the sky.

——————

In New York’s Times Square, Yuki Tsukumo was battling the Cursed Spirits pouring into the city.

Her cursed tool had only just severed the head of the creature before her when every electronic screen erupted into static.

The neon lights shattered as though crushed by an invisible hand.

Fragments of glass hung motionless in the air, reflecting blood-red specks of light.

The asphalt began to writhe.

Countless human faces surfaced from the black tar. They belonged to investors who had died amid the financial collapse the previous week.

Their mouths opened and closed in perfect unison, repeating Sukuna’s whisper.

“Humanity... allow me to grant you eternal rest.”

The air thickened.

Every breath felt like molten lead pouring into Yuki’s lungs.

She attempted to form the hand sign for her Domain Expansion, only to discover that the flow of her cursed energy had slowed to one-tenth of its normal speed.

In the distance, the Statue of Liberty’s torch twisted into seven serpentine heads before opening into one enormous mouth.

The Charging Bull on Wall Street released an agonized cry like a living beast.

Then the entirety of Manhattan began to rise.

It was not physically ascending.

Space itself was folding beneath it, as though some vast, unseen entity were running its tongue across the fabric of the world.

——————

Miguel’s voice exploded from the communicators.

“Everyone, close your eyes! Don’t listen! Don’t think!”

The warning came too late.

Seven black suns rose beyond the horizon.

The moment the sorcerers saw them, searing agony tore through their eyes. An endless procession of images was forced directly into their minds.

Villages consumed by fire during the Heian era.

Sealed chambers built for twentieth-century genocide.

Cities swallowed by nuclear catastrophe.

Humanity’s darkest moments replayed inside their minds at a thousand times their original speed.

A piercing drone tore through their hearing, while the metallic scent of blood filled their nostrils.

They tried to move their fingers.

Black crystals had already formed across their skin—the residue left behind after their cursed energy was extracted from their bodies.

Screams escaped their throats, but no sound reached the air.

Something had devoured their voices.

Within the unnatural silence, only a heartbeat remained.

No.

It was not a heartbeat.

It was the movement of something enormous stirring within the womb of the world.

——————

When ordinary sight finally failed beneath the pressure, the sorcerers at last “saw” him.

He rose from the waters of Tokyo Bay.

The waves solidified into blood-red crystal the moment they touched his body.

Four thousand arms spread from his back.

Embedded within their palms were weapons from different eras of the gods—the Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, the Yasakani no Magatama, Kamutoke, the Yata no Kagami, and countless others.

A Taijitu rotated across his chest.

Within it, half of Yuji Itadori’s face wept in silence.

Yet his appearance was not the most terrifying thing about him.

It was the contamination of thought.

A single glimpse of the patterns lining his robes forced three truths into the minds of those who witnessed him.

Every act of resistance had already been reduced to a predetermined outcome.

Death was the only salvation.

They loved him.

“What... is that?”

Kento Nanami stared at the existence towering between heaven and earth.

Despite its unimaginable size, the cursed energy within his body could not sense anything standing before him.

——————

A thousand meters above the ground, Ragnar Kagenou deployed Rho Aias—the Seven Rings That Cover the Fiery Heavens.

The seven-petalled shield that had turned aside countless attacks now rippled like a fragile soap bubble beneath the Beast’s presence.

Sukuna raised a single finger.

Rho Aias shattered instantly.

“So that was your plan, Sukuna.”

Ragnar reached into the Gate of Babylon and withdrew a white staff.

The next attack reached him without warning.

Ragnar raised the staff.

Sukuna’s power dissolved into countless flowers, bursting into bloom before him.

“You used my hand to destroy your remaining human vessel and complete your rebirth as a true curse.”

Cursed Spirits were born from the negative emotions accumulated by humanity.

However, for someone who had once been human to sever the last connection to humanity, death served as the final threshold.

The seven Crowns of Sin scattered throughout the world had allowed Sukuna to perfect the foundation of his cursed existence.

Then Ragnar had destroyed his original body.

Only through that death could Sukuna cast aside the last remnants of his humanity and become a complete curse.

The true King of Curses.

“Evil of Humanity—Curses.”

Ragnar looked upon the colossal body blotting out the heavens.

All four thousand arms formed hand signs simultaneously.

A black sun appeared behind Sukuna’s head.

The earth began to sink.

No.

More precisely, every man-made object was returning to its original state.

Steel melted and separated into raw veins of ore.

Concrete collapsed into sand and gravel.

The glass walls of skyscrapers contracted into crystals of silicon dioxide.

Every trace of the civilization humanity had taken such pride in was being reduced to raw material for curses.

The sorcerers began to laugh.

They did not know when it had started.

Their hands rose against their will, clawing at the skin over their chests as an overwhelming compulsion urged them to tear out their beating hearts and offer them to the Beast.

Their minds screamed that this was cognitive contamination.

Yet a gentle voice whispered from the depths of their souls.

“It’s all right. Soon, nothing will hurt anymore.”

——————

All four thousand hands completed their signs.

A vortex of cursed energy appeared overhead, expanding until it measured a hundred kilometers across.

Every surviving sorcerer understood what it represented.

The procession of humanity’s history had been given physical form.

Scenes from the past flickered across the sky like frames of a film.

Mushroom clouds rising from the wars of the twentieth century.

Plague-ridden cities from the medieval age.

Black smoke pouring from the factories of the Industrial Revolution.

The calamities that had brought untold suffering to humanity now took the form of Cursed Spirits.

They poured from the vortex in an endless tide, blotting out the sky as they descended upon the earth.

Megumi Fushiguro summoned the Eight-Handled Sword Divergent Sila Divine General Mahoraga.

It had barely manifested before the advancing curse assimilated it, transforming the Divine General into a lotus pedestal of white bone.

Even Yuta Okkotsu’s space-rending slashes could not halt the spread of the curse.

Nobara Kugisaki’s nails froze in midair.

Blood-red spider lilies blossomed from the handle of her hammer.

Yet the most unbearable sight was Yuji Itadori.

He floated at the center of the Taijitu, gazing down at everyone with a gentle smile.

His fingertip touched the ground.

The flow of time fell to zero.

[Authority of the Beast: Anti-Genesis—Malevolent Shrine]

In the final instant before the consciousness of ninety-eight percent of humanity faded away, they heard Sukuna’s declaration.

“Hereby, I declare—”

“The Age of Man ends.”