Chapter 66: Gáe Bolg
Even though Emiya did his best to rush, it was still over ten minutes later when he arrived at the scene.
Residents within a radius of several hundred meters had all been evacuated by the police, who had also set up a cordon.
On the wet streets, there were only silent buildings on both sides, their lights extinguished. The power system in this area had been cut by Jujutsu High to prevent a larger accident, and this was still under the uncertain condition of whether the Cursed Spirit was Special Grade or not.
If a Special Grade Cursed Spirit was confirmed, the evacuation radius would have to be at least ten kilometers, to control battle casualties while also leaving the government room for emergency measures.
After passing through the layers of the blocked cordon, Emiya finally saw Ijichi, who had called him.
Ijichi was anxiously wringing his fingers in the rain, and when he turned and saw Emiya, an expression of agitation immediately showed on his face.
"Mr. Emiya, you've finally arrived!"
Though Ijichi was the older party, he had, without realizing it, labeled Emiya as the 'adult' who could solve the problem.
"What's the situation? How long have Itadori and the others been inside?"
Knowing the urgency of the situation, Emiya got straight to the point.
"Well, when I first notified you, Mr. Emiya, the three first-years had just entered the building.
By all accounts, a rescue operation on the second floor should only take about ten minutes, and I also told them to choose to flee immediately upon encountering a Cursed Spirit.
But after so long, there's been no movement or information... I suspect they may have fallen into the Cursed Spirit's Innate Domain."
As he spoke, Ijichi gradually lowered his head, much like a child who had done something wrong.
The so-called Innate Domain can be simply understood as the prerequisite or preliminary version of a Domain Expansion—a sort of mental world. It's called an "Innate Domain" precisely because it's something inherent from birth.
However, humans cannot simply materialize their Innate Domain into reality. Only when a powerful Cursed Spirit is born will the excess Cursed Energy that overflows at its birth point transform the real space, creating a massive area of spatial anomaly.
The manifestation of an Innate Domain only means that their investigation was flawed: the Cursed Spirit is no longer a Cursed Womb, but has successfully been born.
"Innate Domain... so the existing map and location coordinates are useless, is that right?"
"That is correct..."
"Then I'll act now."
After receiving Ijichi's affirmative answer, Emiya did not hesitate and immediately walked towards the building's entrance.
"Wait, wait a minute... Mr. Emiya?!"
Before Ijichi could finish his sentence, Emiya had stepped through the door of the juvenile detention center. As he first opened the door, there was only a darkness so profound that even Emiya couldn't see anything, yet he stepped in without fear.
!
The next second, the door behind him automatically closed, and the scene before him completely changed.
Rooms twisted and coiled together, seemingly converging at a high, unseen point, but the true configuration was impossible to discern. In the empty space at the center of these rooms, countless convoluted pipes intersected.
"It's really distorted the space this badly?"
Emiya himself wasn't worried about the space being distorted and infinitely magnified. The main issue was that if the terrain was too vast, it would be extremely difficult to search for Yuji Itadori and the others trapped within the Innate Domain.
Clatter—Clatter—Clatter—
As Emiya was thinking about how to find the students scattered in the Innate Domain, a series of footsteps suddenly came from behind him. Because it was a kind of enclosed space, the echoes were quite distinct.
One set of footsteps was heavier than normal, and the other was lighter but too quick. The light, quick footsteps were familiar, like the Divine Dog Emiya had seen yesterday. As for the other, heavier sound...
Had there already been casualties?
After quickly making a judgment, Emiya immediately rushed in the direction of the sound at great speed.
He just caught sight of the Divine Dog running towards him, along with Megumi Fushiguro, who was running hard while carrying Nobara Kugisaki.
"...?!"
Alerted by the anomaly, the highly strung Fushiguro slammed to a stop, but the moment he saw the person, all his defenses instantly dropped. He didn't have to worry about the identity of the newcomer, because the Divine Dog couldn't be wrong.
"Emiya-sensei! What are you doing here?"
Perhaps because of his teacher status, or because yesterday's training had given him a much stronger sense of Emiya's ability than that of an average Grade 1 Sorcerer, Fushiguro truly felt as if he had seen a savior. It was like lying down in warm water after extreme fatigue; he was intensely relaxed, and his heart was filled with a sense of security. The last time he had such a feeling was when he saw Satoru Gojo arrive during a crisis.
"Because I got a call from Ijichi, saying you were assigned to a mission where a Special Grade Cursed Spirit might exist.
What's the situation? Where's Itadori?"
Fushiguro didn't have any major injuries, and Nobara Kugisaki seemed only to have collapsed from excessive Cursed Energy depletion.
Only Yuji Itadori wasn't here.
"Emiya-sensei, Itadori is still fighting the Special Grade Cursed Spirit by himself! Even if that Special Grade Cursed Spirit is only playing with him, he can't last much longer!
He said he would switch places with Ryomen Sukuna after I and Kugisaki safely escaped, but Cursed Spirits can't be trusted... even if he puts his hope in Sukuna, Sukuna will absolutely not act as Itadori wishes.
So, Emiya-sensei, please, you must save Itadori before that happens. You can treat this as my personal plea, please..."
Fushiguro spoke quickly because he knew how urgent the situation was.
If he wasn't carrying the unconscious Nobara Kugisaki, Fushiguro might have already been on his knees.
After all, even setting aside his feelings for Itadori, the other person was the one who sacrificed himself to let him escape, and he was absolutely unwilling to see someone as kind as Itadori die so ridiculously just to rescue a few hopeless scumbags.
This was Fushiguro's most genuine thought.
"Don't worry, Fushiguro. Even if you didn't say anything, I would certainly go and save Itadori."
"After all, I am a teacher now."
Even though they weren't too familiar, how could Emiya's personality allow the life of another person to just fade away? Especially when the reason for their fight was to save more people.
"...Thank you, Emiya-sensei.
The Divine Dog remembers Itadori's scent. I'll send Kugisaki out first, and it can lead Emiya-sensei to Itadori..."
"Awoo!!"
Before Fushiguro could finish, his Divine Dog howled first. More than its combat ability, the Divine Dog's greatest strengths as a Shikigami are tracking and sensing the environment, and this howl was meant to warn him.
A Cursed Spirit was coming.
"Be careful, Emiya-sensei!" Fushiguro immediately shouted a warning, and the ground cracked open the next moment.
Boom!
Terrifying Cursed Energy burst from the ground beneath their feet. The peculiar ripple even flew high into the air, instantly obliterating pipes hundreds of meters away.
"Hee..."
A Cursed Spirit's figure slowly crawled out from the rubble-filled ground, looking at them with a twisted smile. It was obvious it was highly excited, much like a child who had just found a new toy, and seemed quite impatient.
Its appearance was somewhat similar to the Grade 1 Cursed Spirit Emiya had first seen at that school; their bodies were both predominantly white. However, the Cursed Spirit in front of him was clearly stronger in both body and Cursed Energy, and its face was grotesquely crowded with four eyes.
"This Special Grade Cursed Spirit... could it be that Itadori is already..."
Seeing this Cursed Spirit, Fushiguro subconsciously thought that Itadori had already met with an accident, but the next moment he realized something was wrong.
"No, that's wrong... This Cursed Spirit isn't the one we just encountered."
"Emiya-sensei! Two Special Grade Cursed Spirits have appeared simultaneously in the juvenile detention center's Innate Domain—that's definitely not normal!"
While lower-grade Cursed Spirits might be able to coexist, higher-grade Cursed Spirits, upon meeting, usually only have one option: a fight to the death, unless their power levels are nearly identical.
But regardless, the appearance of a second Special Grade Cursed Spirit within the Innate Domain of a single Special Grade Cursed Spirit is absolutely abnormal.
If the Cursed Spirits couldn't have achieved this situation by their own will, then it was likely... artificial?!
Because his mind was more active, when he discovered the problem, Fushiguro thought of much more than the single-minded Itadori.
"I see, it's an artificially created Cursed Spirit, isn't it."
Having encountered a similar situation before, Emiya instantly spotted the chest of this Special Grade Cursed Spirit. A hole-like area was clutching a finger.
Undoubtedly, this was probably one of the Special Grade Cursed Objects mentioned by Satoru Gojo: Sukuna's Finger.
Could just one of the twenty fingers give birth to a Special Grade Cursed Spirit of this magnitude?
In that case, what would Sukuna's peak look like?
"Damn it, if that's the case, doesn't that mean Itadori must have already..."
The cruelest thing in the world is perhaps to be given hope and then have it snatched away, leaving only despair. If Emiya had been able to get there in time, even if he couldn't completely defeat the Special Grade Cursed Spirit, he definitely could have rescued Itadori from its threat.
But in the current situation...
"Since the situation is urgent, I don't have time to play games with you, Cursed Spirit."
As Fushiguro's thoughts turned increasingly negative, Emiya suddenly dropped his jacket, took a stance, and looked at the distant Special Grade Cursed Spirit.
Even though it was a product nurtured by Sukuna's Finger, this Cursed Spirit was still a Special Grade. Normally, it would take some time to defeat it, so if he wanted to rush to Itadori quickly, he had to use some real power.
"Trace on..."
Emiya extended his palm to his side and gently clenched it; a blood-red demonic spear was grasped in his hand.
Gáe Bolg, the demonic spear wielded by the great hero Cu Chulainn in Celtic mythology, capable of reversing causality.
It reverses the "effect"—that the opponent's heart is pierced—to come before the "cause"—the spear is thrust—forming an unavoidable dead end.
As a Noble Phantasm projected by Emiya outside the scope of his Sword weapons, Gáe Bolg consumes a greater amount of Cursed Energy and cannot be sustained as long as Kanshou and Bakuya.
But it doesn't matter.
As long as the core of causality reversal remains, it can play a huge role in a moment like this.
Satoru Gojo had said that the heart and even the head would no longer be a weakness for high-grade Cursed Spirits.
And the Cursed Spirit in front of him clearly wouldn't have a heart in the human sense within its mass of flesh and blood.
However, Gáe Bolg is not only effective against human opponents; it can also be used against giants and Phantasmal Species, which may not have a human-like heart, or even if they do, it wouldn't be in the same location.
Thus, the "heart" the demonic spear refers to is not a specific object, but a concept similar to a 'heart'.
Evidently, for the Cursed Spirit in front of him, the finger in its chest was its 'heart'.
"…?"
The Cursed Spirit felt confused.
It didn't know what a Noble Phantasm was, nor did it know what Emiya was planning to do next.
It only knew that the prey in front of it wasn't afraid of it, and was even taking a combat stance, which gave it a strange sense of crisis. If the sheer difference in Cursed Energy might have been enough to scare it into a panic and flee, then a thing like a Noble Phantasm was completely beyond its comprehension.
Hence, the Cursed Spirit did not run away. It even gradually approached Emiya, starting to gather a large amount of Cursed Energy in its chest. No matter where that sense of crisis came from, it figured it just had to erase the prey in front of it entirely.
So, the moment the Cursed Spirit took its next step, Emiya suddenly moved—
"Gáe Bolg!"
The red, bloody light, like a thorn, twisted and spread in mid-air, and the next moment, it aimed directly for the Cursed Spirit's chest.
It couldn't react at all, because the instant before Emiya made the move, its chest had already been pierced by the spear tip.
"De... De?"
The head with four eyes stiffly lowered its gaze. Its hand was still posed to gather power, but the core of its Cursed Energy had already been ripped from its body.
Emerging through its flesh, along with the spear tip and the finger, were countless strings of sticky, blood-like threads.
Boom!
Its body suddenly ignited with a spectral blue flame, leaving behind no remains.
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