"Hollow Purple."
The world was not supposed to end in purple.
That was the last coherent thought Toji Fushiguro had as Satoru Gojo, who was floating in the air like some untouchable, arrogant deity, unleashed an attack he had never seen before: the Imaginary Technique, Hollow Purple.
The mass of colliding infinites didn't just tear through the air, but it erased it thousands of times in an instant on a molecular level.
Toji felt his own body cease to exist, nothing but emptiness flooded his mind as Gojo's Hollow Purple completely devoured the Sorcerer Killer.
If Toji could use his hands, he would have punched himself for breaking his own rule. He had just fought for free and for his pride, to rid the world of the Jujutsu society's most prized possession and prove to the parasites of the Zenin clan and the rest of the Jujutsu society that he, the worthless monkey who couldn't even use jujutsu, was superior to them all.
He had let the Zenin ghost in his head choose his actions again, and now he was paying the price.
He waited for the absolute nothingness of death to finally embrace him fully, most likely entering hell if there was even one.
"Huh?"
Instead, Toji's feet hit solid stone with a heavy thud, temporarily disorienting the Sorcerer Killer, but he quickly regained his footing.
Toji blinked.
He was no longer in the Star Religious Group headquarters. The sky above him wasn't the sunset rays reflecting off Tokyo skyscrapers where he surely died. It was a piercing blue of afternoon, even in the shitty, cramped alley he was in, he could witness the massive, ridiculously tall tower that pierced the clouds like a tacky monument to satisfy someone's massive ego.
He checked himself over. His body was completely intact.
"Mommy..."
Toji patted his shoulder and felt the familiar, disgusting texture of his inventory curse wrapping itself around his neck, the curse letting out a soft, guttural purr upon contact.
"Good that you didn't wander off," Toji said, briefly checking his inventory of cursed tools and other weapons to see if anything was missing, noting that everything was intact.
Quickly hiding his worm in his stomach, Toji's head flashed with a realization.
He was alive. He ate the full bulk of the Gojo brat's attack and survived without a scratch. How? He did not have the answer to that.
Moving forward, Toji took a deep breath and exited the alley to scout his surroundings better. The air smelled of raw sewage, cheap ale, a bit of blood, and livestock.
"What kind of backwater medieval theme park is this?" he muttered in a bored tone, hands in his pockets as he stepped out of the alleyway, seeing the city properly.
'This shithole will be hard to navigate,' Toji thought annoyingly.
༻❁༺
It didn't take Toji long to figure out the rules of this city that went by the name of Orario.
In fact, it took him exactly three days to realize the city was a chaotic, glorified ant farm run by bored, self-proclaimed gods.
The "Adventurers" here relied on something called a Falna, some kind of cursed tattoo that gave them superhuman abilities, and they used those newfound powers to go into the "dungeon" and fight monsters for money.
The whole shitty system sounded a little too much like the Jujutsu society for his liking, with level-ups being the equivalent of a grade upgrade.
Toji almost chuckled while watching the Adventurers walk around with their oversized swords and inflated egos, their ridiculous appearance almost looking like those video games he had seen around Japan while on missions.
Most of them were slow, sloppy, and heavily reliant on a tattoo that could be taken away at any moment should their contractor desire so, leaving them helpless and weak.
Even in their tattooed state, Toji could take them on with little sweat, but he didn't care about proving he was stronger than ants.
He cared about only three things: a soft bed, decent food, and not working for a living.
For the first three months, Toji reverted to his oldest, most reliable survival tactic: He became a professional womanizer.
Orario was full of rich, high-level female adventurers who spent their days risking their lives in the dump that was the dungeon. When they came to the surface, they wanted distractions.
Toji, with his impressive, perfect physique, lazy yet charming smirk, and complete lack of shame, was the perfect distraction for them.
He bounced from estate to estate.
One week, he was lounging in the silk-sheeted bed of a wealthy Amazon from a high-tier Familia called Ishtar, drinking her imported wine from her Amazon homeland and listening to her complain about the dungeon profit share being too low for her liking.
The next, he was crashing in the Familia manor of a half-blooded elf, eating her expensive chocolate cakes and stealing the loose Valis off her nightstand.
He wooed them, slept in their beds, gathered every piece of critical intel about the Guild, the City, the Gods, and the economy, and the moment they started talking about "feelings" or asked him to be part of their Familia, he vanished into the night.
It was a decent living, but the constant relocation was getting tedious.
The high-level women were too demanding, as in never letting him sleep through the night, and avoiding their jealous Familia members was cutting into his morning nap time.
He needed a permanent sponsor.
A Familia that acted as a zero-interest bank account and a roof over his head, run by a God who was too desperate or too stupid to ask questions.
Toji thought about possible candidates for a Familia to join, his feet carrying him through the city, ending up in the alleyway behind a bustling marketplace on a warm Tuesday evening.
Toji had just turned tail from his newest sugar mama, and his stomach was rumbling from skipping the breakfast she was cooking for him.
He leaned against a brick wall, watching the merchants pack up their stalls, the sunset was slowly revealing the moon in the skies.
His dark eyes settled on a wooden crate left unattended near the back of a stall. It was overflowing with golden, fried potato snacks.
Jagamarukun, they called them.
He didn't really care what they were called. They were unguarded calories and he was hungry, they'll do for now.
Toji pushed himself off the wall, his footsteps completely silent as he walked over to the crate. He lazily reached a hand out to grab a handful.
"Hey! Get your hands off those!"
Toji paused.
He slowly turned his head, looking down.
Way down.
Standing there was a remarkably short girl with twin black pigtails, a white dress that looked like it had been tailored for someone twice smaller than her size, and a bizarre blue ribbon tied beneath her chest that threatened to flash Toji at any moment.
She was glaring at him, her hands planted firmly on her hips.
"Those belong to the stall owner, I won't let you rob her!" she lectured, pointing a tiny finger at his chest. "I saw you! Sneaking around like a stray dog! If you don't put those back right now, I'm calling the Ganesha Familia to lock you up!"
Toji just stared at her.
His enhanced senses picked up the subtle, dense frequency humming beneath her skin. It wasn't cursed energy, but something those self-proclaimed gods emitted.
Divinity.
'So this is one of those Gods,' Toji thought, thoroughly unimpressed. 'She looks like she hasn't eaten a hot meal in a week. Her dress is frayed. She's standing in an alleyway guarding potatoes for free. She's completely broke.'
Toji slowly pulled his hand back, popping a stolen potato into his mouth and chewing it slowly while maintaining bored apathetic eye contact with her.
"You're a God, right?" Toji asked, his voice a deep, lazy drawl.
The girl blinked, her righteous fury stuttering for a second.
"H-Huh? Yes, I am! I am the Goddess Hestia! And you should show some respect to the divine, you brute!"
"Right. Hestia."
Toji swallowed the potato and scratched the back of his neck. He looked around the empty alley, then back to the diminutive goddess.
"You got a Familia?"
Hestia flinched.
The bravado instantly vanished, replaced by a painful, pathetic defensive posture. She looked at her feet.
"W-Well...not exactly. I mean, I'm new! The children of the lower world are just...taking their time realizing my greatness! That's all!"
Toji smiled.
It was almost too perfect.
A hopeless, desperate sponsor with zero members and zero expectations.
She couldn't order him around, she couldn't track him, and she'd be so grateful just to have a warm body on her roster that she'd let him do whatever he wanted.
"Cool," Toji said, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and looking down at her. "I'll join."
Hestia's head snapped up so fast her pigtails whipped through the air.
Her blue eyes were wide, staring at the towering, heavily muscled man.
"Wait. What?" Hestia squeaked. "You...you want to join? My Familia?"
"Sure. Why not," Toji shrugged. He walked past her, snagging another potato from the crate.
"I need a place to crash, and you need someone to make you look legitimate. It's an investment. I get free rent, you get a Familia member. let's go." He began to move, expecting her to follow.
Hestia stood frozen in the alleyway, her brain entirely failing to process the last sixty seconds.
She had spent weeks begging on her knees for a single adventurer to join her, and now, a terrifyingly intimidating man who was caught stealing potatoes had just casually volunteered himself.
"A-Are you serious?!" Hestia stammered, spinning around to face his back as he walked away. "You don't even know what you're signing up for! What even is your name?!"
Toji paused, glancing over his shoulder.
The dying light of the Orario sun caught the almost cruel, lazy smirk on his face.
"Toji," he said. "Toji Fushiguro. Lead the way. I need a nap."
༻❁༺
The walk to the ruined church on the outskirts of the city was quiet, mostly because Toji ignored every personal question Hestia threw at him.
When they finally descended the creaky wooden stairs into the dimly lit shithole of a basement that served as the Hestia Familia's headquarters, Toji looked around in a deadpan stare.
There was a lumpy sofa, an old bed, a single rickety table, and a pile of books. It smelled like dust and shit in here.
"It's...a work in progress," Hestia muttered, suddenly embarrassed by her divine poverty as the massive man surveyed the room.
Toji just grunted, walking over to the lumpy sofa and testing its springs with a hand.
"I've slept in worse. Mostly drainage pipes in Tokyo. This'll do."
Hestia blinked, deciding to ignore the 'drainage pipe' comment for her own good. She puffed out her chest, trying to project an aura of divine authority.
"Right! Well, as the Goddess of this Familia, it is my sacred duty to grant you my Grace. We need to officiate your Falna."
She pointed to the sofa.
"Take off your shirt and lie down on your stomach."
Toji paused, his hand resting on the hem of his shirt. He looked back at the tiny goddess, his expression flat. His gigolo instincts, honed over months of bouncing between the beds of lonely, high-tier adventurers, kicked in automatically.
He let out a long, exhausted sigh.
"Aight. But be quick about it. I haven't had a full eight hours of sleep in a week, and I'm not in the mood for foreplay."
Hestia's face instantly ignited into a shade of red that rivaled a tomato. Steam practically whistled out of her ears.
"WHAT?!" Hestia shrieked, her voice cracking as she waved her arms frantically. "NO! NO NO NO! I'm giving you my Falna! The divine tattoo! The blessing of the Gods! What is wrong with your brain, you absolute degenerate?!"
"Oh." Toji blinked slowly, utterly unfazed by her screaming. "Right. The tattoo thing. You should've just led with that."
He casually pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it onto the table.
Hestia's angry tirade died in her throat as she stared.
Toji's ripped back had its share of light scars of violence over the hyper-dense muscle.
Hestia shivered lightly at both the sheer tightness of the muscles and the scars, but she forced herself to focus. She was a Goddess. This was her first child.
"Get on with it," Toji, face-down on the couch, said with rising boredom.
Hestia swallowed her nerves, sat on his lower back to reach his broad shoulders, and pulled out a silver needle. She pricked her finger.
"This might tingle a bit," she whispered, placing the drop of divine blood onto the center of his spine.
She began to trace the lines of the Falna.
Usually, a God's grace flowed easily into a mortal soul, lighting up in a soft, ethereal blue.
But the moment Hestia pushed her Arcanum into Toji's back, her divine senses violently recoiled. It felt like she had just poured a cup of water into a black hole. His body wasn't just lacking mana to receive her grace, it actively rejected it.
The Falna didn't glow blue. Instead It burned a harsh, stark pitch-black against his skin, before the etched hieroglyphs finally began to glow a gray shade in a successful activation.
"Wait, am I reading this right?" Hestia muttered, hastily pressing a sheet of parchment against his back and rubbing a drop of her blood over it to translate the status.
She scrambled off his back, holding the paper up to the flickering candlelight. Her eyes widened as she read the status.
His basic parameters—Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Agility—were all listed as I-0. He was a baseline Level 1.
But that wasn't what made the Goddess look baffled.
First, there was the magic parameter, which was completely blackened out, giving no clear number.
And the second anomaly was a massive, dominating block of text sitting in the 'Skills' section. It wasn't a standard skill that Hephaestus had told her could manifest in Familia members.
"Toji..." Hestia whispered, her voice shaking. "Have you...have you been cursed before you met me?"
"I don't know," Toji mumbled into the cushions, already half-asleep. "Why?"
"Umm...Well," she began, unable to explain it properly, her eyes scanning the description of the skill.
༻❁༺
Skill: [Heavenly Restriction]
Description: A supreme, irreversible binding of the soul. The vessel's capacity for Arcanum (Magic) is permanently sealed at absolute zero. The acquisition of any spell, magic, or secondary Falna skills is permanently disabled. In exchange for discarding all supernatural potential, the vessel is granted absolute physical supremacy, heightened sensory perception, and total immunity to spiritual tracking, including immunity to all kinds of charms.
༻❁༺
Hestia lowered the paper, staring at the mountain of a man snoring lightly on her couch.
In the world of Orario, adventurers relied on gaining new skills and unlocking magic to survive the Dungeon. It was an essential path to grow.
But the Falna had just looked at Toji Fushiguro's soul and said "Nope."
"You can never use magic," Hestia whispered to the quiet room. "You can't get any new skills. You're...you're broken."
"Good," Toji suddenly grunted, not bothering to open his eyes. "Magic is for flashy idiots who like to shout their moves before they die. Are we done? Rent is due tomorrow, shortstack. Keep it down."
Hestia inflated. "Don't call me that!"
༻❁༺
New fic as a test with JJK x danmachi crossovers for me.
This will work to sharpen my knowledge and way of writing of both series together for the upcoming, massive JJK x danmachi fic I have in mind
Toji is just too peak and too easy to write so I chose him for this test, I could have gone with Nanami but...My goat can rest in peace