November 15.
Capital of Hokkaidō Prefecture, Sapporo.
The sun shone brightly over the city, reflecting off the glass windows of the buildings and illuminating the streets crowded with cars. Cafés were full, shop windows displayed seasonal clothing, and entertainment shows with idols dancing under colorful lights played on store screens.
The world seemed to move at a normal, peaceful pace, oblivious to any catastrophe.
Culling Game? Barriers? At first glance, it seemed like they were happening in another distant reality.
However, inside the panoramic apartment that Damian had acquired in the city, the atmosphere was completely different.
Marin was curled up on the wide sofa, tightly hugging that white cat plush she had bought days ago. Her small face, usually radiant, was now wrinkled with worry.
The contrast was cruel: while cheerful, trivial songs played on the television, inside her a weight piled up that dragged her down more each day.
"Damian-kun…" she murmured in a faint voice, "is it really true that outside… nothing is happening? That day in Ōsaka…"
"Nothing is happening."
Damian's response was calm, almost reassuring. Lying beside her, he looked at her with a serenity that left no room for doubt.
"Everything was confined outside of Hokkaidō. Now there are also 'superheroes' inside, and this incident is aimed mainly at them."
The logic of his words was clear.
But the memory of the black smoke rising over Ōsaka, the explosions shaking the skies, and the desperate screams that had reached them remained etched in Marin's mind like thorns impossible to pull out.
She knew Damian was strong, too strong even.
And yet, she also knew how ruthless the inside of those barriers was; he himself had explained to her, in broad strokes, the rules of the game.
Part of her wanted him to use that power to save those who were trapped, but another part… a more intimate and selfish part, feared losing him. Feared that if he went in, he would not come back.
This dilemma had dimmed her light during all those days.
Damian had not remained idle.
He had tried everything: exquisite dinners at the best restaurants, walks through the city, even intense nights where he sought to drown her thoughts.
But nothing had a true effect.
No matter how much she smiled, there was always a shadow in her gaze.
Seeing her now, with her brow furrowed, clinging to that plush as if her life depended on it, Damian let out an audible sigh.
An entire week had passed since that day, and his little star still hadn't shone with the same light.
He, who only desired a peaceful life without upheavals or shadows, began to understand that if he didn't do something soon, the happiness he had sought so much would be swept away by the melancholy that shrouded his girlfriend.
Damian sat up slowly, heavy with reluctance. He reached out his hand and his fingers slid softly through Marin's blond strands.
"…Don't worry anymore." He spoke in a low voice, with a shade of resignation that sounded almost like acceptance of the inevitable. "I'll go see how things are…"
!
Marin lifted her head abruptly.
Her eyes, which for an instant had shone with a spark of hope, immediately clouded over with an even deeper fear.
"R-really? B-but… inside there it's too dangerous…"
Damian arched a single brow and, with a lazy smile, interrupted her gently.
"I'll just go see how things are." He emphasized each word, making clear the difference between watching and throwing himself headfirst into battle.
Then he leaned his face a little closer and added with confidence: "Don't worry… the one capable of hurting me hasn't been born yet. Wait for me without fear."
"..."
Marin opened her mouth to reply, but she had no chance. Damian had already raised his right hand. In his palm, Yamato materialized, and in a single movement he unsheathed the katana.
Shrrrk
The blade sliced through the air of the apartment and tore it apart with ease. Before them, a familiar rift opened.
On the other side, an unknown urban landscape spread out, chaotic and deafening, a world completely different from the warm apartment.
With one hand casually tucked into his pocket, Damian, without looking back, crossed the rift with calm steps.
The moment his silhouette vanished, the opening closed with a flash.
"..."
Marin remained alone in the room, hugging her white cat plush.
…
Upon crossing the rift, Damian had thought of moving calmly, taking a stroll through the streets, pretending a small inspection and returning afterward with some theatrics to reassure Marin.
After all, the only thing that truly stirred his interest was confirming whether Sukuna, in his full glory, would be capable of forcing him to unleash himself for real.
But his body did not fully obey his reasoning.
Without him consciously deciding it, his steps carried him directly to his former home in the Suginami district.
It was the dwelling he had occupied upon arriving in this world, burdened with memories that did not entirely belong to him.
He was not a man tied to the past or to borrowed memories, but that house, with its simplicity and with those traces of his life, represented a point of anchorage.
"..."
When the silhouette of the house finally appeared before his eyes, Damian froze in place.
His breathing halted, and for an instant, the heat of his blood struck him.
What remained of his home was nothing more than a heap of blackened ruins, charred wood and collapsed walls that barely preserved the shape of what they had once been.
While a penetrating smell of burning saturated the air like a cruel mockery…
Damian took several deep breaths, trying to contain himself, but the more he breathed, the more the fire inside him ignited.
"Calm down?…" he muttered through clenched teeth, a fierce tremor running along his jaw. "CALM THE FUCK DOWN?!"
His brow furrowed, and the spark of rage became an unstoppable blaze.
"In the end, I still underestimated that bastard Kenjaku! He never took me into account!"
He had warned him. He had made it clear that he didn't want interference, that they should leave him out of those power games.
And yet, Kenjaku had ignored that warning. Worse still: he had trampled on his pride by destroying the only thing that tied him to the beginning of this world.
The fury burned in his chest like an uncontrollable bonfire.
"If that's how it is… then that damn brain is going to have a stroke!"
Swish
The air trembled violently as his figure vanished from the ruins.
…
Above the Tombs of the Star.
Kenjaku slowly brought his hands together, as if preparing an inverted prayer, and his lips curved into a faint smile as he murmured:
"Domain Expansion… Womb Profusion."
The ground shook, and from it surged a monstrous tree, twisted and black as tar. From its trunk protruded deformed faces that seemed to scream, and from its branches hung bloated wombs that throbbed with a sickly pulse.
At its base, four bald spirits, with skin marked by imitations of closed eyes, held up the abomination like pillars.
Immediately, the space within the domain shifted. The gravity became suffocating, the air so thick that every breath was like swallowing mud.
Kenjaku raised a finger, amused.
"Good… now we'll have another proper fight."
!
The force of gravity and cursed energy erupted together: the ground collapsed as if splitting into plates, and a wave of curses surged from it, charging in a stampede.
Yuki Tsukumo crossed her arms to resist, but the impact was brutal.
Swish
Her body was flung away, smashing through columns that crumbled into dust in her wake. She coughed violently, a trickle of blood staining the corner of her lips… and yet she smiled.
"Bom Ba Ye!"
She struck the ground with one hand and at her side, Garuda spread its wings, while its body swelled a thousandfold in an instant, plummeting toward Kenjaku like a meteorite.
"Oh?" Kenjaku arched a brow. "You can still move?"
He lifted his hand, and the space around distorted. The altered gravity deflected Garuda's trajectory, sending it crashing into the edge of the domain, which it tore through violently.
But Yuki was already on top of him, taking advantage of the distraction. Her fist, wrapped in collapsed mass, aimed straight for Kenjaku's face.
Crack
Kenjaku tilted his head just slightly and dodged with ease. He knew that as long as his body did not make direct contact with Yuki, his supremacy remained intact.
"What a shame. Inside my domain… the power of techniques is doubled." His smile widened.
!
Yuki's pupils shrank sharply, and suddenly, an even greater force crushed her against the ground with such brutality that her spine cracked like a branch about to snap.
"Cough…!" she spat blood, but did not look away. There was something else, right behind Kenjaku.
Crack…Crack…
High above the domain, a thin fissure began to spread. The crack finally split with the force of thunder, shaking the entire domain.
!
Kenjaku's proud smile froze. His eyes widened, and his head snapped upward abruptly.
In the shadows, even Tengen's usually unchanging expression showed a hint of surprise. Chōsō, hidden, felt a shiver run down his back and tensed his entire body.
Every gaze converged on the same direction: the rift that had just opened high above the domain.
Bzzzzzt
A blinding blue-white radiance filled the entire field of vision. It was not a single bolt nor a mere surge of energy, but a mesh formed by tens of thousands of overlapping slashes, rays of death interwoven.
Each line crossed with another, forming a lethal net that shredded everything it touched.
!
The world rumbled.
The dome of the Tombs of the Star, that ancient stone ceiling which had withstood countless eras and contained the power of a colossal barrier, disintegrated in a matter of seconds. Everything became grayish dust, finer than ashes.
The wind roared violently, lifting the cloud toward the open sky. The world seemed to breathe again as a clear firmament was revealed.
The ash began to fall like a cascade, but was soon pushed aside by an invisible force field that opened a clean space in the midst of the devastation.
And there, in the center of that stillness, a figure emerged, floating above the air.
His white hair waved like frozen fire in the current, and his black clothes whipped violently.
Floating, Damian, with his left hand in his pants pocket, held Yamato in his right.
His half-lidded eyes looked downward, watching Kenjaku. On his handsome face there was no anger nor exaltation, only an icy indifference, like the gaze of a god contemplating mere insects.
"Kenjaku."
His voice was not loud, but it echoed clearly in every ear.
"Hadn't I already told you…?"
He paused briefly, and in that lapse, the air grew even heavier.
"Not to provoke me?"
Kenjaku's scalp bristled as if needles had pierced through it. A cold sweat slid down his temple, and his heart pounded under the sensation of being caught by an invisible claw squeezing tight.
Provoke him? WAS THIS A JOKE?! Wasn't this butcher demon supposed to be lying low in Hokkaidō? Even fleeing from him was already too much! Who, in their right mind, would dare provoke him?
"I…" Kenjaku's lips trembled, and with difficulty he managed to stammer, "It wasn't me…"
Damian tilted his head. The corner of his lips curved into a grimace that was no smile.
"My house…"
His voice descended like an icy wind…
"Turned into ruins."
House?
!
Kenjaku's pupils shrank, and his mind went blank, struck by incomprehension.
House? What house? The one in Suginami? Destroyed? Who did it??
"IT WASN'T ME! DAMN IT, IT WASN'T ME!"
The scream broke in his throat, and the weight of this injustice, added to the fear gnawing at him, froze his blood.
Which idiot had unleashed a disaster that now pointed at him before this monster!?
"I…" He tried to explain, but his words drowned.
Bzzzt
A faint hum spread through the air, so subtle that for an instant it felt as if the entire world had fallen silent.
There was no prior gesture. No drawing of a blade.
Only a clear flash, a luminous line that crossed the domain as if slicing space itself in two. It manifested without warning, as if it had always been there, waiting.
No one reacted.
Kenjaku's expression was trapped in an eternal instant. It didn't even have time to shift from surprise to indignation or fear. His instinct forced him to turn his head back—
Shrrrk
The gigantic black tree, the core of his domain, froze.
A line of light, as thin as a hair, ran through it from the crown to the root.
A second later, the silence broke.
BOOOOOOM
The world shattered.
The tree split in two with a deafening crash. Its deformed branches and the wombs hanging from them collapsed to either side.
And then… an unbearable chorus, the piercing cries of babies, echoed from within the split trunk.
They were the voices of countless curse cores, imprisoned there, now annihilated in a single cut.
The very foundation of the domain had been reduced to dust by a slash!
!
The next thing Kenjaku felt was his insides lurching. Not from physical damage, but from something far more disturbing: he hadn't managed to see the instant when Damian drew the katana.
That slash had not only reduced his domain to dust, it had also destroyed a thousand years of accumulated knowledge.
All his logic, his studies, his plans!
The sword, in that man's hands, was so irrational it seemed to deny the very laws of reality.
"You…"
Damian's icy voice came without warning, right behind his neck.
"What are you looking at?"
Kenjaku's heart stopped for a second.
Boom
His body burst with cursed energy, retreating with all his strength. Instinct forced him to create distance at any cost, and his field of vision stretched all at once.
Damian's figure grew smaller as he was pushed away.
Did I make it!?
A second later, he understood the truth: no!
Even though his body was being dragged backward, he felt nothing in his arms or legs. A strange pressure squeezed his heart, and he looked down by reflex. What he saw left him petrified.
His torso was still retreating, but his two arms and two legs did not follow.
They were left floating in the same place, suspended in the air where Damian had been standing just a moment before.
The cuts were so clean there was no bone, no shredded flesh, only smooth surfaces.
Half a second later came the consequence.
Splurt
Streams of blood gushed from the amputated stumps like geysers, staining the air a dark red.
Only then did his ears catch the delayed sound of flesh tearing.
"Eh…?"
Kenjaku's broken gasp escaped his throat before the pain hit him fully, ripping through his brain.
Helpless, he watched his severed limbs slowly fall from the air and crash onto the ground.
His own body, now reduced to a torso and a head, collapsed violently.
The impact shook everything, and the stabbing pain of his lost limbs tried to darken his vision. But the instinct of a millennia-old sorcerer was not so easily extinguished.
"Reverse Cursed Technique."
Cursed energy surged violently inside him. The severed flesh at his cuts began to bubble, twisting. In seconds, new embryos of arms and legs sprouted from the ends of his wounds.
But… a shadow descended from above.
!
A sole crushed his face against the ground with devastating force.
The dry crunch of bones breaking echoed under the pressure. His nasal bridge caved in like shattered glass, and a spray of dark blood spread across the floor.
"Ugh—AAAHHH!" Kenjaku let out a muffled roar, a mixture of pain and rage. More than the physical damage, it was the humiliation that struck him: being reduced to this state, like an insect under the sole of a shoe.
His breathing grew rough. He forced his head up just a few centimeters, enough to glance sideways at the owner of that foot.
Damian!
Rage made Kenjaku's body explode with cursed energy. His gravitational technique surged instantly, compressing the space above Damian with the intent of crushing him into pulp.
!
Ripples filled the place, stones vibrated, and dust rose.
But Damian's body did not move an inch.
His silhouette remained upright, as if gravity had no effect on him. Not even the folds of his clothes shifted under the force that should have leveled entire buildings.
But the foot pressing on his face sank down even further, doubling the pressure.
!?
Kenjaku's eyes opened wide, overflowing with disbelief. He could feel the cursed energy draining from his body, the technique functioning… but with no result!
Why?! WHY ISN'T IT WORKING?!
He clenched his teeth in fury, the veins on his forehead swelling until they stood out against his skin, and forced it even more. His cursed energy flared higher, and the air began to buzz with a deafening hum as the gravitational field doubled over Damian.
But nothing changed.
Damian, with one hand still resting in his pocket, looked down at him. His half-lidded eyes and icy gaze were the cruelest response to those desperate efforts: complete indifference.
Not only had he not been crushed. The foot pressing against Kenjaku's face suddenly grew even heavier.
Crack
The ground beneath Kenjaku's head fractured like porcelain, sinking into a deep fissure.
He groaned under the unbearable pressure; he could feel the bones of his face on the verge of giving way completely.
"Keep going." Damian's voice remained flat. "With more effort. Let's see how much gravity it takes for you to burst your own head under my foot."
The words fell over Kenjaku like freezing water in the dead of winter.
He understood instantly!
The gravity he was pouring over Damian was useless, like an ant trying to move a mountain. But the worst part wasn't that. The gravitational field wasn't affecting the white-haired man… it was concentrating right on the spot where Damian was stepping on him.
He was using his own technique to crush his own skull!
The more he increased the gravity, the more unbearable the weight of the foot on his face became.
It wasn't Damian pressing him down with force… it was him driving his own head into the ground.
Horrified, he immediately cut off the flow of his technique.
The invisible field surrounding him disintegrated at once. The pressure of the foot lessened slightly, but it still pinned him against the ground.
"N-Nero! Listen to me!" His voice came out distorted by fear. "It wasn't me! I didn't destroy your house! I SWEAR IT!"
"I know."
Damian's voice didn't change in the slightest.
!
Kenjaku froze.
"But wasn't it the fights of the participants in your little game that did it? I already know."
Kenjaku's brain went blank.
He knows?
He knows and still comes after me?! Cuts off my arms, my legs, stomps my face like I'm trash?! What the hell is this?! Every debt should have a culprit… not me!
The injustice consumed him, but the fear suffocated him even more, choking his throat to the point he couldn't utter another word.
"But you, being the organizer, didn't set a rule that prevented the players from destroying things related to me. That's why, right in front of you, I'm going to tear apart your damn game."
The foot pinning him against the ground lifted slightly.
Kenjaku, in his desperation, felt his reverse technique beginning to react by instinct. 'Maybe… maybe I can…'
But he didn't have time to finish the thought.
BOOOM
The foot came down hard on his head with an even more monstrous weight.
________
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