Jujutsu Dragon Emperor Chapter 13 — Creepy Village (Patreon)

The private outdoor bath attached to his room was a small but perfect natural stone basin carved into the hillside and fed by a pipe that drew directly from the hot spring beneath the ryokan.  Beyond the balcony the mountains stretched out as far as the eyes could see and looked beautiful when combined with the star filled sky. 

Naoto sank into the water until it reached his collarbone, a cup of sake balanced on the stone beside the basin, and let out a long breath that seemed to carry the last several months of tension out of his body. 

He'd eaten well and now with the heat of the water soaking into muscles that hadn't been allowed to properly rest in weeks, he felt something close to genuine peace settle over him for the first time in longer than he could remember.

When was the last time he'd actually stopped? 

Not paused between training sessions to eat or sleep, not the brief lulls between sparring rounds with Gojo, but genuinely stopped. No training, no talisman research, no financial projections for his businesses, no checking on the twins, no scanning the compound for threats or scheming elders.

He honestly couldn't remember. 

Maybe never... at least not since arriving in this world.

It was nice.

Not that he didn't love Maki and Mai. 

That was the thing that still caught him off guard sometimes. 

He'd originally taken them in purely to spare them from what he knew would happen in the canon timeline and somewhere along the way he had gained real affection for them. He loved them. Genuinely, deeply, in a way that had nothing to do with plot knowledge. 

They were his family now.

Maybe after this mission he could take a few days, head back to the compound, actually spend some time with them instead of just calling. He'd promised Mirajane he'd visit soon and he'd meant it. The girls were growing fast and every week he missed felt like something he couldn't get back.

His father would have plenty to say, of course. Naobito always had plenty to say. The exhibition match, the hidden technique, the fact that Naoto had been lying about his abilities for years, all of it was still sitting unresolved between them. Maybe it was time he actually sat down and had that conversation instead of dodging it. 

He liked to think his father was a decent enough person beneath the clan politics and the constant measuring of everyone against the Gojo standard, though he was pretty sure Toji would have had something deeply unkind to say about that assessment.

At least he'd get to see Mirajane. 

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the stone rim of the basin, letting the steam wash over his face as he thought about her, the way she smiled when the twins did something that impressed her, the way she scolded him for overworking, the warmth of her arms when she hugged him and the way she always held on just a little longer than necessary—

The sliding door behind him opened.

Yuki stepped out onto the balcony in a cotton yukata, a fresh bottle of sake dangling from one hand, her hair loose around her shoulders. 

"Yo," she said casually. 

Naoto opened one eye and looked at her. "Did you need something?"

She crossed to the edge of the basin and crouched, setting the sake bottle down on the stone ledge. "Not particularly. The higher-ups have someone watching my room. So I gave him the slip through the bathroom window and came here instead."

Naoto frowned slightly. "Wouldn't someone be watching my room too?"

"There should be, but for some reason there isn't."

Naoto chuckled, reaching for his sake cup and taking a sip. "Wait... I guess that might be because I got rid of my tail earlier. There was a curse user following us on the train. I beat the shit out of him and left him tied up in a bathroom somewhere around Nara station."

Yuki stared at him for a beat, then threw her head back and laughed. "You left him tied up in a bathroom? On a moving train?"

"He'll be fine. Probably."

"Hehe nice," she said, still grinning as she stood back up and reached for the sash of her yukata. She pulled it and let the garment slide off her shoulders, catching briefly at her elbows before falling away entirely and pooling around her feet on the wooden decking.

Naoto's eyes tracked the movement and looked at her naked body. 

Yuki Tsukumo was built like someone who had spent her entire life fighting. Her shoulders were broad for a woman, going into arms corded with lean muscle that flexed visibly when she moved, and her stomach was flat and defined enough that the lines of her abdominals could be seen. Her legs were long and powerful, thighs thick with muscle, and her hips flared wide from a narrow waist making her look very feminine. 

Her breasts were large and heavy enough to sway slightly as she moved, sitting naturally against her chest, her nipples dark and tightening in the cool mountain air.

She stepped into the hot spring without hesitation, lowering herself into the water across from him with a satisfied exhale that fogged in the air, and settled until the surface lapped just below her collarbones. She looked at him with that same unbothered grin.

"What's the matter, Zenin? You look a little flushed."

"It's very hot water," Naoto said calmly, his expression deliberately neutral despite the fact that his heart rate had doubled.

"Mmhm." Her grin didn't waver.

She reached for the sake bottle and poured two cups, sliding one across the stone rim toward him. Naoto took it with a nod and she lifted hers, tipping the whole thing back in a single motion and letting out a moan, her head falling back against the stone as the warmth of the alcohol joined the warmth of the water.

"God, I needed this," she said, pouring herself another. "You have no idea how much being a special grade sucks when it comes to personal time. The higher-ups treat me like their personal cleanup crew. Every mission that's too dangerous for the regular sorcerers, every situation that's too politically sensitive for the clans to handle themselves, every cursed spirit that some Grade 1 couldn't deal with, it all ends up on my desk. On top of school. I've been running nonstop since I was first year and I can count on one hand the number of actual breaks I've had in the last four years."

Naoto chuckled, swirling his cup. "So why don't you just refuse? You're a special grade. It's not like they can force you."

Yuki shrugged, the motion causing the water to ripple around her shoulders. "My refusing doesn't hurt the higher-ups. The people who end up paying for my vacation are the sorcerers who have to fill in for me and the civilians who get caught in the meanwhile." She took another drink. "It's a shitty system built by shitty people, but the people at the bottom of it don't deserve to suffer more just because I want a day off."

Naoto smiled at that. "Who knew you'd be such a softy."

Yuki's foot came up through the water and pressed against the center of his chest, her toes spreading against his pectoral, and she pushed with just enough force to pin him back against the stone rim. "Who's soft?" she said, her eyes narrowing with amusement.

Naoto swallowed.

Yuki's smirk widened as she glanced down toward the water between them and then back up at his face. "Well. At least one of us isn't."

Naoto reached down, caught her ankle, and firmly moved her foot away from his chest before releasing it. "You're terrible."

"Damn right." She refilled both their cups without being asked, settling back into her side of the basin. "So, Zenin. Are you a virgin?"

"How is that relevant to anything?"

Yuki shrugged with exaggerated innocence. "There are certain things when it comes to cursed energy that can push a sorcerer to the next level. Methods of clearing the mind, improving flow, breaking through plateaus. Some of them are pretty unconventional."

Naoto chuckled despite himself. "And sex is one of them."

Yuki grinned over the rim of her cup. "You'd be surprised. There's a reason some of the old texts talk about it in the same breath as meditation and breathing exercises. Complete physical and mental release, the kind where your conscious mind actually shuts off for a few seconds, does something to cursed energy circulation that's hard to replicate any other way. It opens channels. Clears blockages. Makes the energy flow like water instead of syrup." She took a drink. "Not saying it's the most important method, but it's definitely the most fun one."

Naoto smiled and shook his head slowly. "Sure it is."

"I'm serious! Ask any sorcerer over thirty, they'll tell you the same thing."

"Yeah, yeah," Naoto said, waving his cup at her. "What are the other methods then, since you're apparently giving me a lecture on self-improvement tonight."

Yuki hummed, her expression shifting from teasing to something more thoughtful as she settled deeper into the water. "Have you ever thrown a Black Flash?"

Naoto shook his head.

"Didn't think so. Most people your age haven't, even the talented ones. A Black Flash is what happens when you apply cursed energy within a fraction of a second of a physical hit, we're talking a millionth of a second, the timing has to be so precise that no human being can do it deliberately. When it connects, the cursed energy distorts and flashes black, and the impact hits with the force of a normal strike raised to the power of 2.5. It's not just a stronger hit, it's a fundamentally different kind of impact."

She paused, refilling her cup. "But the power isn't the important part. The important part is what it does to your brain afterward. A sorcerer who's experienced a Black Flash enters a state of heightened awareness, like a switch gets flipped and suddenly you understand your own cursed energy on a level you didn't before. Your control improves, your techniques become refined, your reinforcement becomes more efficient."

"It's the difference between a sorcerer who intellectually understands cursed energy and one who's felt it in their bones. Two sorcerers with identical reserves and identical techniques, one who's thrown a Black Flash and one who hasn't, the one who has will win every single time. It puts you in a completely different tier."

Naoto of course knew this as the Man himself had explained it but he was glad to confirm it. "Maybe I'll throw one soon."

Yuki laughed and poured herself another drink. "You can't throw one at will. Nobody can. The timing is too tight for conscious control. It happens in moments of peak focus during real combat, usually when you're not trying for it. Some sorcerers go their entire careers without landing one. Others get it once and spend years chasing the feeling again."

Naoto shrugged, a small grin pulling at his mouth. "Doesn't matter anyway. I'm already the strongest."

Yuki raised an eyebrow over her cup. "Oh really? What about that Gojo kid? He's got the Six Eyes and Limitless."

"Gojo is strong," Naoto said, his tone matter-of-fact rather than dismissive. "But right now, today, I'm stronger than him. I've proven that." He paused, staring at the surface of the water. "Though once he learns reversed cursed technique, that might change. RCT combined with the Six Eyes would let him run Limitless at full power indefinitely without any of the stamina limitations he currently has. That would close the gap fast and probably push him past me."

Yuki tilted her head. "I wouldn't bet on him figuring that out anytime soon. Even I'm still struggling with the concept, and I've been working on it for years. RCT is one of the hardest things in jujutsu to learn."

Naoto exhaled slowly, leaning back. "I haven't even thought about learning it yet, honestly. I've been so absorbed with my talisman research that everything else has taken a back seat. There aren't enough hours in the day."

"I noticed," Yuki said. "You're always scribbling in that notebook." She took a drink and then gestured with the cup. "Though I'll be honest with you, talismans are useful at the lower levels of sorcery, but when it comes to high-level combat they're pretty redundant. A paper charm against a special grade curse is like throwing a napkin at a tank."

"That's exactly why I'm working on changing it," Naoto said. "There shouldn't have to be such a massive gap between the weak and the strong."

"A sorcerer born without an innate technique is basically told from day one that they'll never be more than cannon fodder, and the entire system reinforces that. The last real innovation in combat methodology was New Shadow Style, and that was ages ago. Nobody's bothered to develop anything new because the people at the top are comfortable with the status quo."

"Strong stay strong, weak just die." 

He set his cup down. "I'm developing these talismans so that even sorcerers without cursed techniques can fight. An innate-technique storage talisman that anyone can activate. A simple domain charm that gives someone without a domain their own. Impact seals, reinforcement formulas, things that put power in the hands of people the system decided weren't worth investing in."

Yuki was silent for a long moment, watching him with an expression he hadn't seen from her before, the teasing gone, the playfulness set aside. Then she shifted through the water, closing the distance between them until she was beside him rather than across from him, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched beneath the surface.

"You are becoming more attractive by the second," she said, "and if you're not careful I'm going to jump your bones right here in this bath."

Naoto turned his head to look at her, their faces close enough that the steam from the water curled between them. "I thought you were supposed to be teaching me how to be a better sorcerer."

She laughed, the sound vibrating through the water between them, and then she stood up, water cascading off her body as she rose, her breasts directly at his eye level for a moment, glistening with moisture, droplets running down the curve of her stomach. "Maybe another time," she said, looking down at him with a grin that promised considerably more than it delivered. "For now we have to focus on the mission."

She stepped out of the basin and reached for a towel, wrapping it around herself before turning back to face him. "I've got a bad feeling about this one, Naoto. I can't put my finger on it, but something about the briefing doesn't sit right with me. Six villages going dark with no signs of struggle, no residual cursed energy, no bodies. That's not normal cursed spirit behavior. Even intelligent ones leave traces."

Naoto climbed out after her, grabbing his own towel and drying himself off as they moved back inside through the sliding door. The room was warm from the heating, the futon already laid out on the tatami, and Naoto gestured toward it. "Take the futon. I'll sleep on the floor."

Yuki just laughed, and before he could process what was happening she'd grabbed him by the shoulders and tossed him onto the futon. He landed on his back with a grunt, and before he could sit up she dropped down beside him, pulling the blanket over both of them and settling onto her side with her back to him.

"Or we can do that," Naoto said to the ceiling.

"Get some sleep, rookie," Yuki said, already closing her eyes. "We've got a big day tomorrow."

He lay there for a few seconds, staring at the wooden beams above him, acutely aware of the warmth radiating from her back. Then he closed his eyes, let the exhaustion of the day settle over him, and fell asleep.

...

The off-road truck bounced over another root and Naoto's head cracked against the ceiling for the fourth time in ten minutes.

"Can you watch the road?" he said through gritted teeth, one hand braced against the dashboard and the other gripping the handle above the door. "I'd like to arrive with my skull in one piece."

Yuki was behind the wheel with both hands gripping it loosely, a massive grin on her face as she took a curve at a speed that no sane person would attempt on a dirt road this narrow. "This is great!" she shouted over the engine. "When was the last time I got to drive something this fun? The higher-ups always make me take trains and walk everywhere, they never let me requisition vehicles."

"I wonder why," Naoto muttered, grabbing the door handle again as the truck went briefly airborne over a ridge before slamming back down hard enough to rattle his teeth.

"Relax, we're fine. I've got perfect spatial awareness,"

"That doesn't help if you flip us into a ravine."

"I won't flip us into a ravine." She paused. "Probably."

Naoto closed his eyes and considered whether he'd survive a jump from a moving vehicle at this speed. "Shouldn't we at least try to be a little stealthy? We don't know what's out there. Whatever took six villages worth of people without leaving a trace might be able to hear a truck engine from miles away."

Yuki waved one hand off the wheel, which made Naoto's stomach lurch. "We're both special grade sorcerers, Naoto. This is probably just some Grade 1 spirit that's been feeding on the isolation and fear in these mountain communities and got a little too ambitious. That's how it usually goes with remote area assignments."

"Grade 1 spirits are still pretty powerful," Naoto said.

"Meh. Not compared to us." She glanced at him with that grin. "Tell you what, since you're so worried about it, let's play for who has to deal with it. Rock, paper, scissors. Winner fights the curse."

Naoto rolled his eyes but found himself raising his fist anyway... three months of living with Gojo had apparently conditioned him to resolve disputes through children's games. "Fine. On three."

They threw on three. 

Naoto threw rock. 

Yuki threw scissors.

She pouted, her lower lip pushing out as she stared at her own hand. "Best of three?"

"No." He grinned. "You lose."

"I hate this mission already."

...

They reached the edge of Hinokage just past noon, the truck rumbling to a stop where the dirt road ended and a narrow footpath led down through a break in the trees toward what looked like the first buildings of the village.

"Here we are," Yuki said, climbing out and stretching her arms over her head.

Naoto stepped down from the passenger side, his boots crunching on dry leaves, and stood still for a moment, scanning the treeline and the buildings ahead. The village was small, maybe thirty or forty structures clustered along a single main road, traditional wooden houses with thatched roofs and small garden plots, a few larger buildings that might have been communal spaces or storage. Everything was intact, not a single broken window, not a single door hanging off its hinges. 

It looked like a postcard of a quiet mountain village.

They walked in together passing house after house. Naoto glanced through an open doorway and saw a kitchen with a pot still sitting on the stove, whatever had been inside it long since burned to black char. A pair of shoes sat neatly beside the threshold, aligned as though someone had taken them off.

"Split up," Yuki said. "Check every building, look for anything that tells us where they went or what made them go. Meet back here in twenty minutes."

Naoto nodded and peeled off to the left, moving down a side street that wound between smaller residential buildings. He checked each one thoroughly, sliding doors open and scanning interiors, and found the same thing everywhere. Meals left on tables, some of them half-eaten, chopsticks set down beside bowls as though the person using them had simply stood up and walked away mid-bite. Laundry hanging on lines in back gardens, dry and stiff from days of sun and wind. A child's drawing pinned to a wall, colored pencils still scattered across the floor beneath it.

No blood. No damage. No signs of any kind of struggle at all.

He reached the radio tower at the edge of the village, a simple steel-frame structure with a small equipment shed at its base, and ducked inside to check the transmitter. The equipment was old but functional-looking, a simple shortwave setup connected to a car battery for power, except that someone had deliberately cut the antenna cable.

He crouched beside the equipment and tried to splice the cable back together. He was halfway through the repair when a sound reached him from somewhere deeper in the village.

It was a murmur of what sounded like a dozen voices speaking in unison.

Naoto abandoned the radio and moved toward the sound, following it through the empty streets, his footsteps quickening as the murmur grew louder. It was coming from the largest building in the village, a wooden structure near the center of the main road that he'd initially taken for a meeting hall or communal dining space. The doors were closed but not locked, and as he pushed them open the sound hit him fully. 

The interior was a single large room and every villager in Hinokage was inside it.

They were on their knees. All of them. Rows and rows of people, men and women and children, packed together on the bare wooden floor facing the front of the room, their hands clasped in front of them and their heads bowed as they rocked gently in time with the chanting. 

Their faces were hollow, their cheekbones pressing against skin that had gone gray and papery, their eyes had sunken deep into sockets ringed with dark circles, lips cracked and moving ceaselessly as they repeated the same words over and over. They looked like they hadn't eaten or slept in days, their bodies running on nothing but whatever was driving them to stay on their knees and keep praying.

"What the fuck," Naoto said quietly.

He walked further into the room, stepping carefully between the rows of kneeling figures, none of them reacted to his presence. 

He crouched beside an older man near the edge of a row and put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey. Can you hear me? What happened here?"

The man didn't look up. His mouth kept moving, the same words cycling through again and again, his eyes fixed on something at the front of the room that Naoto hadn't examined yet. Naoto tried a woman in the next row, touching her arm, speaking louder. Nothing. He tried a teenager, a child, an elderly woman clutching a rosary so tightly her knuckles had gone white. None of them acknowledged him. They just kept praying.

Naoto straightened and followed their collective gaze toward the front of the room, where a raised platform held what appeared to be a simple altar. And on the altar, resting on a cloth of white linen, sat a horn. It was old, curved, made of something that looked like bone or ivory and it radiated cursed energy. 

"Father warned us that heretics would be sent."

The voice came from above and to the right. Naoto's head snapped toward the source but found nothing, just shadows gathering in the corners of the rafters.

"Meddlers," another voice added, this one carrying a petulant whine that made it sound almost childish. "Heretics who would try and prevent his coming. Father said they would try."

"How rude of him," the first voice agreed.

"Can I eat him?" the second voice asked immediately. "He smells strong. I bet he tastes amazing. Please let me eat him, please please please—"

"Patience, sister."

Naoto turned slowly, cursed energy already beginning to circulate through his body as he tried to pinpoint the source of the voices. "Show yourselves."

Two figures descended from the rafters and landed at the front of the room on either side of the altar, the moment their feet touched the platform every single villager in the room convulsed as one, their chanting breaking into ragged cries of joy and relief, hands reaching upward, tears streaming down hollow faces as they begged and pleaded and praised.

"Forgive us! Forgive us our sins!"

"Please, mercy, we have been faithful—"

"Bless us, please, we've given everything—"

Naoto's frown deepened as he looked at the two figures.

They looked like angels. 

That was the only word for it. 

The one on the left was a woman with pink twin tails with a wide mouth and hungry eyes, her body wrapped in robes of pale gold. Wings extended from her back, broad and feathered but wrong, the feathers discolored at the edges, patches of bare quill showing through like a bird in the middle of a sickly molt. 

The one on the right was a man with foxlike features and golden eyes, his robes more elaborate and trimmed with what looked like threads of actual gold woven into the fabric, his own wings narrower and more angular, pristine white at the center but darkening to a bruised yellow at the tips.

They weren't human. That much was obvious immediately. But the villagers could see them, were reacting to them, were reaching toward them with shaking hands and tear-streaked faces, and that was wrong because normal humans couldn't perceive cursed spirits.

Naoto's mind raced. Curse users? No, they didn't feel right for that, the energy coming off them was too strong, too inhuman. But they couldn't be cursed spirits either if the villagers could see them plain as day. Unless they were strong enough that their cursed energy had crossed the threshold where even non-sorcerers could perceive them, which would put them at...

"Who are you," Naoto said flatly, his stance shifting subtly wider. "And what are you doing to these people."

The male figure turned toward the female and gestured elegantly with one long-fingered hand. "You see, sister? No manners whatsoever. Walks into our Father's house, interrupts the faithful at their prayers, doesn't even introduce himself."

"I don't care about manners," the female said, her eyes fixed on Naoto with an intensity that made his skin crawl. "I care about eating him. He's got so much cursed energy I can practically taste it from here. Just let me have a bite, just one—"

"We should at least introduce ourselves first," the male said, smoothing the front of his robes. "We are not savages." He placed one hand over his heart and inclined his head. "I am Charity. One of the seven Heavenly Host, servants of the Father."

The female spread her arms wide, her wings flaring behind her with a rustling sound that made the nearest villagers flinch. "And I'm Temperance! Also one of the Heavenly Host!" She licked her lips. "Also very, very hungry."

"Heavenly Host," Naoto repeated, not recognizing the term in any context that made sense. "Your Father. What the hell does that mean?"

"It means what it means," Charity said in a bored tone. "Our Father is coming. The faithful prepare his way. And heretics who would interfere with the preparation will be dealt with accordingly."

Naoto looked from one to the other, then at the rows of emaciated villagers still weeping and reaching toward the two figures, then back to the horn on the altar. "I don't know what you are and I don't care. Whatever you're doing to these people stops now. You can either stand down and be taken in, or I'll dispose of you both. Your choice."

Charity and Temperance looked at each other. 

Charity smiled and Temperance grinned. 

"Sister," Charity said mildly. "You may eat now."

Temperance launched herself at him, her body blurring across the space between them with her mouth already opening wider than any human jaw should allow.

 Naoto reacted on instinct rather than thought, his body dropping backward as he coiled his legs and snapped them upward in a backflip that connected both feet squarely under her chin. The impact was hard and it launched her upward into the rafters smashing her through the roof.

He had barely landed from the flip when Charity's fist arrived from the side, and Naoto registered it just late enough that his block only partially absorbed the blow. The rest of the force drove through his guard and slammed into his ribs with a weight that felt like getting hit by a car, his body lifting off the floor and punching through the wooden wall of the building in an explosion of splinters and dust before he tumbled across the dirt street outside and rolled to a stop.

Naoto pushed himself up immediately, ignoring the ache spreading through his ribs, and got his feet under him just in time for both of them to come through the hole he'd made in the wall. They landed in the street side by side, wings spread behind them, Temperance was rubbing her jaw where his kick had connected, the skin already knitting back together, bone resettling beneath the surface with a faint crack that Naoto could hear from where he stood.

He hadn't felt any reversed cursed energy from the regeneration. 

None at all.

Which meant it was natural regeneration. The kind that only cursed spirits had.

Which meant the villagers could see them because their cursed energy output was so massive that even non-sorcerers could perceive them.

Which meant they were special grade.

Both of them.

"Shit," Naoto said.

(AN: So these are the enemies of this arc. Well some of them anyway. I like Jujutsu because the fights are always cool. I'll try and make them cool too but don't hold your breath. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)