The night wind, carrying the scent of gunpowder and a faint hint of blood, brushed over the ruins of Shibuya.
Sukuna stood on a high vantage point, his four arms stretched out as the majestic power within him surged.
It was a sense of perfection, of wholeness, as if a legendary blade that had been sealed for a thousand years had finally been wiped clean of its rust and had its edge sharpened, waiting only to drink the blood of a powerful enemy.
He exhaled a satisfied breath, his four crimson eyes narrowing comfortably.
However, at the very moment this sense of completion arose, his eyes, which could pierce through souls and perceive Cursed Energy and all abnormal fluctuations, flickered ever so slightly.
"Hmm?"
Sukuna turned his head and looked toward a certain direction in central Tokyo—not the specific spot where Makima had just been erased, but further away, toward a certain
node that seemed faintly connected to the entire city, and even the broader national territory.
In that instant, he clearly captured an extremely faint aura of Control, identical in origin to the part of Makima's existence he had just digested. It was like a distant spark being reignited in the darkness, quietly lighting up over there.
Immediately following this were countless minute causal threads, almost negligible in their subtlety but filled with the weight of "contracts" and "prices." They extended from that direction toward every corner of the Japanese Archipelago, trembling gently like a spiderweb before tens of thousands of them snapped and dissipated without a sound.
Accompanying the snapping of these "threads" was an extremely subtle wail and a sense of emptiness originating from the world itself—the result of the instantaneous demise of a massive collective of lives, something only a being like Sukuna could perceive.
"I see."
The giant mouth on Sukuna's abdomen split open, revealing a knowing and slightly mocking smile. He understood.
"Trading the lives of bugs for your own? And you used... a hundred thousand in one go? Or even more?"
In his crimson eyes, the distant city lights were reflected, and he seemed to see visions of elderly people, children, youths, and housewives in countless homes—in their sleep, at work, or while walking—suddenly suffering heart failure and respiratory arrest as their lives quietly vanished without warning.
"That's pretty ruthless, and... convenient. Signing a contract with the Prime Minister of a nation to transfer the damage received to the entire populace. Control Devil, huh... A truly fitting name."
He shook his head, his tone neither approving nor disdainful, but more like an indifferent evaluation of a toy's last bit of cleverness.
"A pity, it's nothing more than paying for death in installments. How many lives will you use to fill the gap next time? Two hundred thousand? Five hundred thousand? Or... will you burn all the bugs on this nation to ashes?"
He knew Makima wasn't dead. Or rather, the Makima who had been erased within the Domain just now was merely a surface existence she had propped up using the lives of countless citizens, an existence she could discard at any time.
As long as that contract signed with the Prime Minister to transfer damage remained, and as long as this country still had citizens to be consumed, she would be extremely difficult to truly kill.
"A bit troublesome, but only a bit." Sukuna whispered to himself.
To him, Makima's method of surviving by relying on contracts and hostages certainly increased the difficulty of complete eradication, but it also cost her the qualification of being a "pure powerhouse."
A ruler who needed to hide behind countless weaklings and rely on consuming the lives of others to save herself had their caliber and essence greatly diminished in Sukuna's eyes.
However, he did feel a faint surge of interest in Makima's current state.
After personally experiencing the endless slashes within Malevolent Shrine that erase existence, and being forced to consume a massive price, far exceeding any previous instance, how would this Control Devil react?
...
Over ten kilometers away from Shibuya, inside a safehouse belonging to the Public Security Division.
The lights were off. Only the neon shadows of the city outside filtered through the gaps in the blinds, casting pale streaks of light across the cold floor.
Makima stood quietly by the window, her figure half in light and half in darkness. She was still wearing that neat Public Safety uniform, her long hair styled meticulously, as if she had never experienced that heart-stopping moment of near-total annihilation just now.
However, if anyone could look directly into her eyes at this moment, they would discover something abnormal. Those golden ringed eyes, which were always calm and ripple-free as if everything were under her control, now showed an extremely subtle but real stagnation and disorder in the golden light flowing within them.
It was like a gear inside a precision clock that had suffered a microscopic shift and tremor after being violently struck by an external force.
Her complexion was paler than usual—not from blood loss, but from a deeper kind of exhaustion and lingering fear that seemed to touch upon some essential concept.
Her right hand, which should have been hanging naturally, clenched almost imperceptibly for a moment before quickly relaxing. Her nails seemed to have briefly pierced her palm, bringing a negligible sting that helped her focus her chaotic thoughts.
Fear.
A cold, unfamiliar, yet incredibly clear emotion was quietly coiling around her heart—a heart that should have been devoid of such ripples.
It wasn't a fear of death.
The concept of devils originates from human fear, and their understanding of death differs from that of humans.
Makima did not fear the end of her own existence. That would perhaps just be a return to Hell, waiting for the next accumulation and call of fear.
What she felt was something else. It was the tremor brought about by the total subversion of her cognition.
It was the instinctive shudder caused by an absolute gap in power.
It was the deepest sense of powerlessness and crisis when facing an existence that could treat her most prideful "Control" authority as nothing, push her contractual substitution survival method to its limit, and was completely incomprehensible, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.
In her mind, the hellish scenes of those few seconds played back uncontrollably.
That world-changing Domain of flesh and blood.
That four-armed being seated atop the shrine of bones.
And finally... that endless torrent of dark red slashes attacking from every dimension, carrying the rule of erasing existence.
Within that Domain, her power of Control was like a fly trapped in amber, unable to move.
The contract transfer she initiated was triggered the instant before the slashes touched her. The lives of a hundred thousand citizens fell, turning into the fuel for her substitution.
She could clearly feel that those slashes weren't merely destroying flesh or souls. They were negating the very concept of "Makima".
If the number of sacrificed citizens hadn't been large enough, and if the transfer hadn't been initiated fast enough, she had no doubt that she would have completely and cleanly disappeared by now, just like the areas directly hit by the slashes, without even a chance to return to Hell.
This reminded her of the oldest, most mysterious, and most terrifying existences in Hell.
The Primal Fear Devils.
Those devils symbolizing ultimate concepts like "Darkness" and "Death."
Because their concepts are too vast and terrifying, and they have never truly "died," their true bodies cannot descend to the human world. They can only grant power through contracts or project a portion of their might.
Sukuna... this being who called himself the "King of Curses" and had revived from a thousand years ago. The level of power he displayed, his method of interfering with "existence" and "concepts," and that pure, arrogant, and unreasonable absolute strength gave Makima a powerful sense of déjà vu.
Is he an existence on the same level as those Primal Fear Devils? Or even stronger?
Once this thought surfaced, it was like a cold wedge driven into her mind.
"No, perhaps it's different. Primal Fear Devils are limited by their concepts and find it difficult to fully descend. Whereas he already walks this world, possessing a complete physical body and will of his own."
What shook her heart even more was the ability Sukuna had displayed against Denji.
The Weapon Human she had "adopted" who was fused with the Chainsaw Devil, the projection of some distorted emotion deep within her and... the object of her longing.
The Chainsaw Devil, Pochita, was the very "terror" that had once caused a bloodbath in Hell, consuming the concepts of countless devils and making all devils tremble at the mention of its name.
Makima's obsession with "Chainsaw" was a mixture of worship, longing, and a certain morbid possessiveness.
However, just now, she had "seen" Sukuna simply grab Denji's pull-cord and, with a single tug, forcibly strip away and devour a portion of the Chainsaw Devil's original power as if he were extracting juice.
That ease and casualness, that direct plundering of a devil's origin, completely exceeded her understanding of power systems.
This wasn't just killing, this was a higher level of violent extraction and possession of the concept itself.
***
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