A/N: Welcome to my latest story: Potential Man. Here we go with this one. Next two chapters are up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) already if you want to see them early. Discount on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) until tomorrow so do check that out.
The body I stabbed through faded through my fingers, turning into mist. I looked around, trying to track the man as mist began to descend on the battlefield.
"That cursed spirit you killed with positive energy— the first one— was a special grade created from the human fear of wild animals. It's one of over a dozen special grades I have gathered over the years. I know not why you have been sent here, Megumi Fushiguro, but I assure you it was a mistake. Now I will let you leave before this next spirit shows you things that will make your brain leak out from your ears," he said.
"You really want to watch the Gojo fight, don't you? I get you, man. Me too. But sadly I won't be leaving here without that pale brain of yours in a bag, so do me a favour and die quickly," I said, slamming my fist into the ground, allowing Tiger Funeral's immense pure strength to course through my body for the second before impact. The ground around me shattered and the mist was somewhat scattered from the force of the shockwave I had created.
I heard the sound as Kenjaku moved to adjust to his suddenly shaky ground. I shot forward straight at him, flying with a punch aimed for him. Instead of him though, my punch slammed into my own palm. The body I hit was my own, I thought as it turned to look at me. It was a thin caricature of me, I thought with a scowl.
Glasses, thin frame with not a single pound of muscle, shy smile that did nothing to hide the paralysing fear in its eyes.
"Don't hurt me," it yelled. I didn't know how Kenjaku knew what my old body had looked like, but I didn't care. If he thought that was going to slow me down then he didn't know jack. I punched its head off. Or at least I tried to. My hand had become thin as his as well. My punch slapped against his face, doing nothing but causing the head to turn.
"Please stop," he screamed, cringing backwards. I scowled, trying to step forward, but the strength that I had felt in my body was all gone. I fell to my knees, looking down at myself in my old school uniform.
The blood that ran down my shirt had dried now, caking it in red. I could remember this day well. Too well. The first time I tried to kill myself. This made no sense. What kind of technique was he using? No, not a technique, a cursed spirit.
And did I not have a weapon for dealing with them? My fingers felt sluggish and clumsy as I brought them together in the shape of a deer's head. I needed to be fast. Kenjaku would be moving to kill me now, I had little doubt.
The Deer Shikigami rose from my shadow silently and its positive energy spread through the air just as it was made to do. I latched hold of it, purging the foreign cursed energy that had seeped into my body without notice. I opened my eyes and was met with a pair of red orbs. The cursed spirit looked almost fascinated as it glared down at me. It was eating me, I realised, ripping my body to shreds. It had taken an arm and part of the right side of my chest and I hadn't even noticed. Round Deer shot at us at my direction.
The spirit had latched on to my body so deeply that there was no separating us. Round Deer did not need to make the distinction though. It gored me straight on, its horns flooding my body with positive energy, making the creature explode and beginning the healing process for the damage that had been done. I spotted something out of the corner of my eyes, and grabbed the shikigami, forcibly returning it to my shadow right in time for a massive serpent to smash through the space it had once occupied.
Losing Round Deer would be a death sentence. Apart from Mahoraga, it was my most important shikigami. There was only one thing I could sacrifice it for. I twisted to the side even as I begun to repair my arm and chest.
The snake's spiked tail missed me by a hair. My shadow stabbed through it with a twist of my cursed energy. And then I set my eyes on him again. I must have looked a mess. He looked like he had come out for a simple stroll in the park. The cursed spirits just rose from the ground in front of him, taking shape in an unending horde that shot in my direction.
I crossed my hands in front of my body, reinforcing them with cursed energy despite the fact that one of them was yet to receive skin. The spirits crashed into me, sending me flying back into the foliage. Round Deer's positive energy shot from each of my limbs as I punched, kicked, head butted and clawed my way out of there. Or at least I tried to. It felt like with every one I killed, there was another waiting to take its place. It was like they were infinite. But I knew better. They could not be. There had to be an end.
I just had to reach it. I choked back a scream of pain as a pair of teeth bit down on the hand that had not even finished healing. I punched the creature to death with my other fist before another one grabbed hold of my hand with a limb, muscular, and coursing with strength. I tried to stab my injured arm through it only for another cursed spirit to grab that one. More and more spirits piled on, burying me under their mass.
I closed my eyes for a second as I felt their weight increase more and more. My cursed energy flared out from within as I forced my hands into fists. Mahoraga, your turn.
He rose from my shadow, rising through the throng of cursed spirits like they were barely there. The sword of extermination was like an eraser in his hands, wielded liberally. Where it went, cursed spirits simply ceased to be. I felt his hand close around my left arm and drag me out of the mass that buried me even as the other arm used the sword to end more and more of the spirits.
I stood on my own two feet even as I watched Kenjaku's eyes track Mahoraga with an unmistakable familiarity. Round Deer rose from my shadow next. Its positive energy spread around the battlefield, slowing down the mass of cursed spirits.
"The Divine General himself. Well, that explains how you killed Yorozu. That was an outcome that I did not see coming," he said, and I didn't say anything to his words.
"You see, I want to return to what I was doing so why don't you just keep yourself busy," he said, and then he was surrounded. I could barely make him out in the midst of the cursed spirits that surrounded him. There were seven of them around him.
The one behind him, skeletal frame shrouded in a cloak that seemed to repair and decay in a continuous cycle, waved a skeletal hand at Kenjaku and the phone I had destroyed instantly came back into being like nothing had happened to it. He lifted it back to his face like I was not worth his attention any more. From the power I could feel from these cursed spirits, I could see why. The least imposing of them was the one behind Kenjaku himself and even he felt stronger than any cursed spirit I myself had ever fought.
Seven special grades. This was an army. This was the force that Kenjaku wanted to bring the world to its knees with. This was the force that he would bring to bear if Gojo beat Sukuna to save him from the stronger sorcerer of the modern age. He had bragged that he had over a dozen special grades under his control. So this was about half his great army.
I took my stance, and the fight began anew. The ground shook before exploding around me. I had sensed the one shaped like a tortoise with all four of its feet do something. It was the one with earth manipulation. I pushed off the ground at the last moment. The ground solidified into spikes that rose up at me. I returned Round Deer to my shadow as I managed to get my hand in front of my chest at the last minute.
The earth spike that stabbed through my arm dug into my chest and lifted me higher in the air with its force. I looked down at the force arrayed and felt Mahoraga make it into their midst. He was the vanguard. I would bring up the rear. I growled in exertion and pain as I brought my legs around to rest on the spike that pushed me into the sky. I used it for leverage to push myself out of it. Round Deer's positive energy knit my chest back together, and then my arm followed.
I pushed off the spire unto another and then the next as I closed the distance to the cursed spirits as they fought against the Divine General.
One of the cursed spirits, about the size of a teenage male, average height and below average width, but encased completely in a light blue ice that emanated a cold mist, looking like just touching it would give you frostbite, gestured a hand in Mahoraga's direction. He, and everything behind him was instantly encased in a massive glacier. Another of the creatures, a misshapen giant began to rise towards the ice, intent on shattering it. Piercing Ox rose from my shadow rushing at it. The misshapen giant with the distended stomach, too long limbs that were just bone stretched over with skin with little to no fat or muscle to speak of.
I myself headed towards another of the cursed spirits. This one was a giant mosquito that left little to no doubt as to what its schtick was. Tiger Funeral and Divine Dog rose from my shadow as I raced for it.
The strength focused shikigami jumped in the air, heading straight for it. It shifted, moving to orient itself to stab through it with its proboscis that looked more like a spear than anything else. I slapped my hands together, taking Max Elephant's water, adding pressure with my own cursed energy, and shooting it out at close to mach speeds, aiming to take it out while it was stationary.
The water, once it left my hands, shot forwards before diverting away from the mosquito and towards another of the spirits. This one was just a blob of black water with a distant light in the middle. How would we even kill something like that?
It shot my water right back at me. I clapped my hands together, bringing Max Elephant out of my shadow. It lowered its skull, taking the pressurised blast of water head on. I jumped, sending cursed energy to my legs, and landed atop its back. Nue dove down, electricity sparking in its wings as it prepared to bring an end to the water-elemental spirit. At least that was the plan till the final spirit— this one surrounded with blue flames— took aim at it.
Nue was quick as it was graceful, managing to rise again with only singed tail feathers to show for the massive blast of flames that had almost turned it into charred chicken. I ran along Max Elephant's back before jumping straight for the mosquito. It had managed to avoid Tiger Funeral's attacks so far but that didn't matter because it had brought it right next to me. I landed right atop it, feeling the thing's body grow needle-like protrusions that stabbed into my skin from all over. My shadow rose from the ground, stabbing into it from near two dozen places, and killing it in one go. I fell to the ground, rolling to dissipate the force, even as my wounds began to heal and the cursed energy from the pricks I'd sustained was purged.
Mahoraga shoved his way out of the ice, body steaming. The wheel above his head turned once, and then again in quick succession. Clearly being frozen had prevented it from being able to move. It rushed at the ice spirit. It rose another glacier but this time the ice began to melt immediately it came into contact with the Divine General. I rolled along the ground to avoid a blast of blue flames. The spirit whose body was made entirely of fire arranged in a somewhat humanoid shape— at least it appeared to be so— turned its hand towards me and sent even more blasts in my direction.
Max Elephant trumpeted from its trunk and blasted the field with water, extinguishing the flames and almost succeeding in attacking the fire spirit before the one made of water tore the water from its control. Okay, that one had to go first. When Mahoraga made it through this next glacier, its wheel turned a third time and I knew the ice spirit was basically done for. Tiger Funeral had begun to fight against the giant even as Piercing Ox prepared another charge. The first charge had done some damage, but not enough to put down the cursed spirit.
I sunk into my own shadow, racing across the ground until I was right beneath the watery blob. I rose from the ground and shoved a hand brimming with positive energy into its mass. That would have disrupted its control over its form, but only a few drops of water hit the ground. I threaded my own cursed energy into our joined shadow, forming several tendrils that rose from the ground.
I sent my shadows into the watery mass, stabbing straight in, searching for some sort of core to destroy— the white light in the middle seemed to be a good place to start. It just turned to me, and then water rushed at me from all directions. I was faced with a choice here. Retreat and try again, or take the attack head on and hope I managed to win the race to see who could kill who first.
I took a deep breath and held it in as the water washed over me from head to toe, taking me in its grasp and forcing me to the ground under its pressure and keeping me pressed to the ground face first. I was holding my breath, yes, but the water forced its way down my nose and into my body regardless. I could feel my head pounding like drums were being beaten right next to my brain. My whole body ached in every spot.
But I did not put my attention on that because that would be the wrong thing to focus on. I focused on the technique I had created. Through the shadows I had in the watery blob, I sent Round Deer's positive energy by containing it within my own cursed energy and using it as the delivery method. Shoko had said it was impossible, but when she gave me her own technique, experimenting with it had given me the necessary expertise to figure it out. I couldn't do it with my own positive energy, but while Round Deer was in my shadow, I could use its abilities freely, and the one that mattered most was its ability to constantly output positive energy in high amounts.
The pressure building in my head ramped up to a crescendo as I delivered the destructive payload of positive energy. I felt it when the cursed spirit died. The water suddenly lost cohesion, falling apart above me. I gasped for air even as I spat out what felt like a lake's worth of water. I couldn't hear anything with the water in my ears, but I could make out the fire that swarmed at me from the corner of my eyes. This time, Max Elephant was able to extinguish the flames in one go.
Then it stomped forwards, releasing more and more water as it tried to drown the fiery cursed spirit. When I had finally recovered from the damage to my lungs and brain, I stood up and took a look around. Mahoraga had killed the ice spirit and now was chopping the giant to pieces. I noted that Tiger Funeral and Piercing Ox lay on the ground unmoving. Their bodies had lost all their mass, becoming little more than skeletons. The giant tortoise was being harried by Nue. It was lifting spires here and there to try and prevent the bird from reaching it, but Nue was a fantastic flier.
I shot forward at the tortoise. I stretched out my shadow, threading cursed energy into it and shaping it into dozens of tendrils that wrapped around the spirit from all directions. Nue used the chance to strike with a massive amount of force, wings practically sizzling with the amount of electricity running through them. The tortoise spirit swayed and was about to regain its balance when Divine Dog struck from its blind spot, teeth reaching out to grab a hold of its throat. Mahoraga had finished up with the giant and was moving for the fiery one.
Seven special grades and we were going to win. As if my words had jinxed it, the world I knew turned upside down at those words. Spirits that I was sure had been dead just some seconds ago began to rise. Instead of dissolving into the air like a dead cursed spirit, the tortoise's body began to reverse the process, reconstituting itself. I looked around, noting that the other ones we had killed were doing the same. I looked over at the one unaccounted for spirit. The one in the cloak that was decaying and then coming anew in a constant process.
Its hood covered its head and form, so the only thing we could divine from the outside looking in. But I didn't need to look at it to know what it was. A Cursed Spirit born from the human fear of time.
A/N: And so the chapter ends. Yes, I buffed Kenjaku but then there's nothing to say he didn't have more up his sleeves than what we saw in canon. Not like we ever saw him truly go all out. Next two chapters up on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) (same username as here and link in bio), support me there and read them early. Had my birthday last week and got another year older (boo), so there's a discount on patreon(https://www.patreon.com/c/Oghenevwogaga) until tomorrow for anyone interested in that (yay)