Zenin Mirai didn't spare Naobito a single glance. Instead, he bent down and casually picked up the severed head lying on the ground.
After all, this was his dear father. He couldn't just let the man rest in a pile of rubble, could he?
Boom!
A thunderous explosion split the air from above.
Naobito, ever alert, didn't hesitate for even a tenth of a second. He instantly activated his Projection Sorcery and retreated more than a hundred meters away.
Another deafening impact struck the ground, making the earth tremble again.
Looking at what remained of Zenin Toji's body, shattered and reduced to a cloud of blood mist by the terrifying Cursed Spirit,
Naobito, who had thought the boy was going to attack him instead and had momentarily ignored his own brother's corpse, looked slightly embarrassed.
Mirai, on the other hand, allowed a rare, satisfied smile to appear.
This way, his father wouldn't have to lie in a place this wretched.
"Old man, notify the upper echelon of the Zenin Clan. I'll be calling a clan meeting tomorrow morning. I have something to announce."
Holding Toji's severed head by the hair, Mirai turned slightly and informed Naobito with an indifferent voice.
Without waiting for a reply, he stepped over the ruined ground and calmly made his way back to his quarters.
The chain of explosive booms, all courtesy of Mirai's very special wake-up service, had long since stirred everyone in the estate from sleep.
The powerless servants, along with the wives and children of various family sorcerers, had already fled their cramped homes at the first sign of tremors, gathering in open courtyards.
As for the Zenin Clan's two specialized combat divisions, they were already stationed around the perimeter of the battlefield.
If not for the eye signal they received from Naobito at the center of the conflict, both teams would have charged in long ago.
The first was Hei, regarded as the strongest Jujutsu combat unit within the Zenin Clan.
Each member held at least semi-grade 1 level strength, though the group was relatively small in number.
Their subordinate unit was the Kukuru Unit.
Comprised of male clan members who lacked cursed techniques due to low cursed energy, they were a fully armed force trained to fight without Jujutsu.
Despite lacking techniques, the Kukuru Unit's strength was not to be underestimated.
They trained their bodies relentlessly and were masters of cursed tools. They were the very definition of non-sorcerer warriors.
The scars across Mirai's chest were proof of years of training that began at the age of five, when he first joined the Kukuru Unit.
"Move."
Mirai's voice was cold as he looked at the two units blocking his path.
The captain of Hei glanced toward Naobito, who was silently walking up behind the boy, then promptly ordered his men to fall back without resistance.
Zenin Shinro, captain of the Kukuru Unit, hesitated for just a moment, delaying his retreat by two seconds, despite also receiving the same unspoken order from the clan head.
After all, Zenin Toji's head was still swinging from Mirai's hand, and Shinro had served Toji loyally for years.
"AAAHHH!!"
A sudden scream rang out, freezing the movements of the retreating soldiers. Cold sweat poured down their faces.
Zenin Shinro, still standing in Mirai's path, was suddenly consumed by a strange spatial distortion. Half his body, an arm and a leg, was swallowed in an instant.
Blood sprayed across the ground. His intestines and other unknown organs writhed like worms in the dirt.
What remained of him twitched and spasmed on the floor. His screams faded, growing quieter with each breath.
All it took was one focused glance from the boy, one captain-level officer, gone in a flash.
With no access to Reverse Cursed Technique, those final cries of agony could only be called his last words.
Mirai didn't react at all. He simply stepped through the blood-soaked path and walked quietly into the darkness.
...
Turning a corner along the hallway, he stopped briefly when he spotted three figures standing in front of his room.
A woman stood with a deep bow, flanked by two trembling little girls who looked no older than five or six.
Their nightclothes were rumpled, their hair messy and unkempt.
Mirai's eyes lingered on the girls. The corners of his lips curled upward slightly. Then, still carrying their father's head, he turned and entered his room.
They weren't related to him by blood, yet these twin girls, unlike the rest of the clan, were the only ones aside from his mother who had ever offered him kindness or even a smile.
"D-Demon…"
Zenin Mai whispered, voice trembling, as she watched the bloodstained boy smile. Her grip slipped from her mother's robe and she collapsed to the ground in terror.
Even Maki, though she managed to stay upright, was visibly shaking. For someone her age, that was already remarkably brave.
"Mai, be quiet!"
The woman, who straightened up only after Mirai entered his room, snatched up her daughter and snapped sternly, "Don't call him a demon. He is your older brother."
"From now on, whenever you see your brother Mirai, you must treat him with the same respect you show the clan head."
"Understood?!"
She wasn't wrong. Zenin Mirai was indeed their half-brother, born from a different mother.
The woman speaking was the concubine Toji had taken when Mirai was five.
That same winter, Mirai's own mother had been thrown into the depths of the Forbidden Vault.
After five years of life in the Zenin household, this woman had long since learned how to survive in a rotten aristocratic clan like this one.
She and the girls had seen most of what happened in the courtyard. She knew very well that Mirai, who had just killed his own father, was not going to be punished. In fact, this might just be the start of his meteoric rise.
...
"How pathetic. You really left behind a mess, you bastard."
Back in his room, Mirai lifted Toji's head and muttered coldly.
He had heard the woman's harsh commands outside the door, loud and clear.
The irony was staggering.
They had all seen him approach with Toji's severed head. Their reactions had varied… but not a single one of them had shown hatred.
Not one.
Not a trace of vengeance or grief for the man who had just been murdered before their eyes.
And under the analysis of Mirai's Mangekyō Sharingan, he had seen the truth hidden beneath the woman's formal bow. A fleeting moment of hatred and… relief. Quickly buried, but not missed.
His "dutiful" son.
His wife of five years.
His twin daughters.
All so close to him, yet not one of them had cared that he died.
But that wasn't surprising either.
Those little girls, barely four or five years old, were already doing servant chores like adults.
Being insulted, beaten for no reason, this was their daily life.
It had started even earlier for them than for Mirai.
Being female, and on top of that, being twins, a trait long viewed as ominous in the world of Jujutsu, meant that Zenin Toji had abandoned them long before he gave up on Mirai and his mother.
Even so, he had still called them failures, day after day.
Shaking off the thoughts, Mirai walked to a side altar in his room and placed Toji's head before a wooden ancestral tablet.
Only then did the coldness fade from his face. His expression softened, full of tenderness as he gazed at the tablet.
Yuzuki, Mother of Mirai. Her spirit tablet stood quietly, inscribed not with a surname, but a name alone.
Because she had despised the name Zenin.
She never had to say it. Mirai had understood.
He didn't speak.
He wanted to reach out and touch the tablet, but when he looked down at his bloodstained hands, he stopped.
"Divine Dog."
With a soft murmur, the shikigami leapt from the shadows, devoured Toji's head in one bite, and silently vanished once more.
And with that, both parents could finally be laid to rest.
The blood mist that once covered the skies: "…"
The severed head, now in a dog's stomach: "…"
After washing the blood off his body, Mirai stood before the mirror in the bathroom.
His black eyes, under the influence of cursed energy, once again turned crimson.
Eyes awakened by endless cursed energy.
Eyes triggered by intense emotional turmoil.
The Mangekyō Sharingan.
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200 P.S = 1 Extra Chapter