I stared down the draconic creature as it roared at me. 'What the fuck is this thing—Why can't I feel its cursed energy…'
I was no longer able to think about how this thing before me even existed before its wings spread wide and it blurred from where it was sitting on the ground.
It was only thanks to the vibrations of the world and pulse perception that I was able to rock my body back as a clawed hand swiped where my neck was just moments prior. But no amount of warning was enough for when it whipped around, and its tail cracked against me, and I was catapulted down and through dozens of trees.
I winced as my body carved through tree after tree, but my vision remained locked on the beast.
SHRAAAAAAAH!
Its wings gave a horrible crack as it sped towards me like a bullet, a cone of air surrounding it as my eyes narrowed and I took a step forward.
The ground in front of me wobbled and buckled before exploding out like a wave 50 meters tall and slamming into it with the force of a thousand Semi-trucks. The ground shattered like pieces as it slammed into him; trees, boulders, and dirt kicked up in waves as its body flipped forward from the impact, and Fester slid into my hands from its place on my back as my vibrating leg kicked against the ground with a shrieking hum.
The world before me stretched before slamming shut as my vision went dark at the edges from the acceleration, and I blitzed past the curse midair, Fester's vibrating edge cleaving the curse in two with no resistance.
Or rather, it would have.
But instead, all my cleaver did was cut the tail off the beast as it dodged at the last second, letting me pass by it like a charging bull. I skidded to a stop on a platform of cracked air and turned around as my body registered—
Every cell in my body screamed again, and I whipped around just in time to put Fester between the thing's clawed hand and me in the form of a spear trying to puncture my chest like a balloon.
I kept skidding back against more and more cracked space as the thing pushed me further and further back. 'Okay this is—'
Its tail regenerated in a flash, and it flipped back—tail cracking like a whip against Fester and knocking the blade straight upwards. Its body twisted unnaturally as its torso bent against its legs and it opened its Maw to shriek once more, saliva dripping from its fangs like a putrid web.
But instead of a scream leaving its mouth, a sickly purple miasma shot out like a backdraft and covered my torso before I could react fully. My eyes snapped open as a feeling of dread washed over me, and I hurriedly snapped, using my technique to boost the sound waves and blast out a wave of pure concussive force that dispersed the miasma and knocked the beast back about ten meters.
I leaned forward to charge—
Blood vomited out of my mouth as my eyes went bloodshot and my whole body felt weak. My brain went fuzzy, and I felt like my chest was about to cave in.
The creature capitalized in an instant, dashing forwards in the air and using its taloned feet to dig into my chest as it dragged me forwards in the air.
SHRAAAAAAH
Its clawed hands dug into the side of my neck and started to pull, aiming to rip me in half as blood spurted in a geyser. My clouded brain latched onto the one idea that would save me as a healing pod formed around my neck and chest, positive energy radiating in waves off me.
It ripped its arms apart, only to shriek as they crumbled to dust from the positive energy, and its leg followed suit.
A sphere of my technique formed around my right hand, and I smashed a hook into the side of its head at full force, holding nothing back.
Space bent against the creature's disgusting maw before shattering outwards with a deafening boom as its head exploded like a watermelon and it was shot into the horizon, carving through a few trees before skipping off the ground and into the horizon.
I vomited more blood as I flooded my whole body with RCE, temporarily healing the damage done as I looked down at my chest to see the skin cracking apart and dying as it turned necrotic while I still breathed. But it wasn't enough—I needed to flush the poison out of me entirely.
My focus turned inwards as I tried to isolate the poison before finding that I could not, no matter how much I tried or focused. 'Then my only option is… amputation… fuck, this is going to hurt.'
I put a hand over the infected area and channeled my technique into it, the infected flesh vibrating at a different frequency than the rest of my uninfected cells. 'Okay now three… two… one—'
I sent out a destructive frequency to the infected parts' frequency, and what felt like thousands of dust particles made of C4 detonated in my chest with a spray of blood as I screamed out in agony. My jaw clenched as I flooded the cavity that was my chest with RCE, and the flesh stitched back together in short order. 'What kind of monster curse was—'
SHRAAAAAAH!
My blood went ice cold as my head craned up from where I stood on the ruined forest floor, trees flattened around me from the last use of my technique.
There, kicking up a wave of dust from its charge, was that same curse from before, its head completely reformed as everything continued to degrade and die around it. 'How the fuck are you alive right now…'
I got into a stance as my right arm coated itself black. 'I guess it's a good thing—because I didn't use this last time, so please die.'
I threw my fist forwards into the thing's charge, but it rolled at the last second, a clawed hand slamming down on my blackened arm.
CLANG
The curse's arm stopped dead as it impacted my arm, and I smirked as my left turned a similar shade of pure black, and I whipped around with a left hook straight into its jaw.
Crunch
Its jaw cracked as it jolted back, head down, before it snapped its head back to me with another shriek; its jaw dislocated. I clamped a small barrier of vibrations over my ears but—
My skin started to grey and crack as I felt weakness wash over my body. My eyes widened again as I channeled armament into Fester as it slashed down across its body.
Its clawed hand reached up to stop it, but the positive energy in the blade broke down the part of its body that the cleaver intercepted, and it cut straight through. But that momentary time was enough to get the curse to dash back and avoid a potentially lethal blow to it.
It shrieked in pain as miasma started to leak from the edges of its mouth, and my eyes snapped wide open. I dropped my armament in order to use my normal technique and jumped with vibrating legs to put some space between me and the curse below.
It looked down and exhaled purple miasma in a wave of desolation and death, so much that it covered the forest floor entirely and even peaked over a few of the shorter trees, obscuring the curse from sight.
'Dear god...' I thought as I stared down in horror as all the trees started to wither and die, their leaves crumbling to dust. The trees grew old, greying and crumbling as they lost the strength to hold their own weight. 'If I go down there for even a second I'm—I will die.'
For some reason the thought filled me with equal parts dread and excitement.
How long has it been since my life was truly in danger?
Yuta would never have killed me—not if I was smart, even if I was weaker than him.
But this—
Whatever the fuck this was, it was far, far more deadly than Yuta was.
Fester slid into my waistband as I stretched both arms to the side and realized what I needed to do. 'Maximum Technique: Continental Clamp' My hands gripped the space to my right and left and I slammed them together as my hands interwove.
The world was silent for a moment before everything started to tremble. The ground for a hundred meters to my left and right buckled before flipping up and clamping like an enormous vice around the infected area.
They slammed together with a boom so loud I could feel my ears ringing and my teeth chattering. The gas flooded out of the seams where the two giant land masses clapped together, but an absent-minded pulse of my technique pushed the wave back before it could reach me.
But I still felt it—still felt that aura of impending death.
It was still alive.
I clicked my teeth and aerostepped to the top where they intersected and slammed both plates down onto the top of it. I poured my technique through the ground, letting my eyes roll back as I felt the vibrations rebound off the bottom of the plates of ground. I contained all the vibrations within the snare, and soon the whole thing started to shake as I felt another wave of vibrations I think was the curse shrieking in pain inside it.
The vibrations bounced and multiplied through the ground, and I started to feel it shake as the beast tried to break out from where it was ensnared. But it missed what I was really doing: making sure everything in it was vibrating at the same frequency. "RESONANCE BREAK!"
With a lightning-fast pulse of my technique at the destructive frequency, it all shattered like glass into a huge dust explosion. I jumped away and landed on a platform of cracked space as I looked down on the huge plume of dust, the feeling of dread washing away in short order.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I—
SHRAAAAAAAAH!
The feeling returned in spades as the cloud was dispelled into nothing as I saw the curse's pieces forming back together clump by clump. Its skeleton was visible through the viscera of the curse's half-formed head as it glared up at me and stretched its palm to face me.
I was too stunned to speak. 'Just what the hell is this thing—'
A needle-thin spike shot out like a lightning bolt, just barely registering against my pulse perception because of its inordinate speed, and carved through my elbow.
The world slowed down as I craned my head over and saw my whole arm grey from necrosis as black veins and cracks spread over my arm.
I did the only thing I could think of and vibrated my left arm to the absolute maximum—
And cut my right arm clean off as I dropped all enhancement to that arm.
The necrosis and cracks stopped spreading as I cut my arm off, and it fell to the forest floor below.
My terrified gaze fell onto the creature below as I radically increased the radius of pulse perception to hopefully catch—
I rolled my whole body as I felt another spike try to pierce my neck and kill me instantly.
I kicked off the air and realized my only hope of surviving, let alone winning, was remaining as mobile as possible.
SHRAAAAAAAH
My right arm reformed with a thought, but I was missing Fester now, and this fight just became a hell of a lot harder. I felt the curse enter my expanded radius of pulse perception, and I kicked down to the forest floor off the air above.
The ground raced to meet me as I dove, before I flipped forwards and, with another aerostep, I was flying parallel to the ground, pulverizing the ground beneath my feet to skate at ultra-low friction around the trees.
I felt the curse behind me charge forwards, each beat of its reptilian wings carrying it further and faster forward through every tree in its way as its clawed hands gripped the ground and threw itself even faster still. My gaze narrowed as several waves of seismic force traced through the ground like waves and knocked the curse further back and away, each bursting on its wings or torso, but dealing no damage to the freakishly strong curse.
'Why—Why can't I feel it? How did it survive? And why did my arms stop breaking down after I cut it off?' I asked myself as I continued forward to buy more time to break down how this curse worked and what on god's green earth might kill it.
I banked a hard right and let the curse cleave through tree after tree as it continued forward before roaring and changing direction, the motion buying me precious seconds.
'Why did it stop?' I asked myself as I replayed the events in my head. 'I cut my arm off, sure, but before that… I stopped channeling cursed energy to that arm—is that it? Does its poison spread through cursed energy? But then why do trees around it die? Is it like Hanami? Can it convert raw life force of plants into cursed energy?'
My gaze snapped back for a second to see the curse still in hot pursuit, and I clicked my tongue as I skidded forward and considered my options. 'My best bet is to annihilate it with RCE, and it can't seem to break through armament so—'
I stopped dead in my tracks as I let my feet dig through the ground and pivoted to face the curse full force.
SHRAAAAAAAH
It shrieked again as I proactively flooded my body with positive energy and my limbs blackened from armament. It reached its arm forward and opened its mouth wide. I assumed a stance, and as it reached forward with both hands, my hands lashed out, and we interwove our hands as it dragged me back and through the ground and trees, but I stopped it from getting any closer as I grunted and its maw clamped forward around empty air uselessly.
Its spit flew everywhere as it tried again and again to bite my head clean off, but I held firm, which clearly pissed it off.
SHRAAAAAAAAH!
It roared, and I turned my head from the putrid breath as I could feel its shout try to corrode my body to nothingness.
GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
But I snarled and roared right back, temporarily switching off my reversal to amplify the sound of my scream as visible waves of sound escaped my throat—completely pushing back the charging beast's scream and pushing its head back slightly.
Armament snapped back into place as I clenched my fists harder into the beast's scaled claws, fingers cracking and degrading its hand as I did so. I pivoted and threw it into a large, healthy oak tree, its back cracking the bark as it slammed into it, and I stepped forward in a blur.
Its left broken hand went to swipe at my throat, and I gripped its wrist with my left hand before turning my arm over and forcing its left arm across its whole body as my right slammed a hook into its jaw. My left hand released its left arm, only for my right hand to take its place as I leveled a left hook into where its liver should have been, and rotating my body to lash a left upper cut into its chin.
I released its arm and took a step back as its tail tried to whip against my chest, the appendage uselessly cracking against open air as I stepped back in with a blackened knee to its jaw as I jumped up and crashed an elbow to the top of its head.
Its right claws came up to tear me off it, but my arm gripped it before it could get close and squeezed. The cursed arm started to degrade as it came into contact with the positive energy, cracking and petrifying before our very eyes as it shrieked in unimaginable pain. I flicked my wrist down, and the arm broke off where I was grabbing it, and my hand gripped its throat next.
Its left hand lashed out to choke me as I choked it while it dug its claws deep inside my body, but I had already started to channel armament into both my neck and lower jaw, leaving only the sound of nails on a chalkboard as it tried to rip into me.
I squeezed harder as it grew more desperate, and I smirked as an open-barrier healing pod formed around the curse.
It howled as it felt itself be unmade by the positive energy and flailed wildly, but I held firm even as its legs kicked and lashed out. I held it there against the tree until I felt its body break down into dust and nothingness.
Until I was holding nothing at all—and only then did I let the barrier drop and my body relax. Armament dropped as did pulse perception as I fell down to my butt and sat there a little short on breath. 'What the fuck was that? It just kept coming back—and it didn't get instantly vaporized by a healing pod—every curse I've tried that on so far has been instantly rendered to nothing if I could catch them in it—hell, the only reason I wasn't spamming that was because of how expensive it was and the fact that it was hard to spawn it on top of them when they would move around it, but that—'
It stayed alive for even a second, and I think I have an idea why after I felt it so close.
The thing was constantly absorbing cursed energy from its surroundings like a void.
Curses are comprised of cursed energy, and it's countered by reverse cursed energy or positive energy—just like matter and anti-matter.
If a curse was constantly taking more and more cursed energy…
'The reason I couldn't feel it—and why the poison stopped working when I stopped channeling energy to it was because that thing doesn't really have cursed energy of its own… and instead every amount of ambient energy around it is its cursed energy—so if I kept unmaking it it would just keep reforming parts of itself until my output of RCE overcame its intake of cursed energy…'
My head turned to the sky. 'What a fucking monster… its poison stopped working because it had no cursed energy to siphon off to continue to spread.'
But there was something wrong.
My eyes squinted as I saw the tree's leaves start to brown before my very eyes. I opened my eyes wide as the branches started to wither and crinkle. 'You can't be fucking serious—I destroyed it all—how there was nothing left to regenerate from—does it always exist and I've run into some force of fucking nature or—' My gaze fell onto the arm I had taken off not seconds ago.
The end of the arm was bubbling ominously as the whole limb shook, and my mind screamed out as I tried to form a healing pod around it to destroy it, but was forced to dodge as another needle jutted out of it and tried to claim my right eye.
I rolled my head to the side, before I refocused on the curse and—
SHRAAAAAAAAH!
I was one step too late.
There stood the draconic curse in nearly full glory, muscles half-formed around its skeleton as only its right eye formed and its hands came together; the right pinky and pointer finger stretched forwards as its middle two fingers curled inwards to touch at the last knuckle, and it howled to the heavens.
SHRAAAAAAAAAAAH!
A dome of pure black stretched out before it, and without invoking its name, a domain formed around both of us, and a simple domain formed without even a thought as I let my energy fill the domain from edge to edge.
The curse, as if waiting for that exact moment, unhinged its jaw and tilted its head 90 degrees to the sky.
There was a sound akin to an industrial vacuum as it started to suck in, and all of the energy I had just expended was absorbed into the creature's maw before it ever had the chance to examine the domain's frequency.
The domain was pitch black from edge to edge, and not a single sound could be heard as sweat dripped down my forehead, and I realized just what a monster was in front of me.
'Just what—what are you! YOU MONSTER!'
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A/N:
Author here I hope you enjoyed that chapter as I really think I did a good job conveying what I think the pinicles of curses might look like in terms of the JJK world and this would come about because of the sheer quantity of frankly overpowered sorcerers alive at the moment.
I think I conveyed RCE and RCT as a good counter for curses where its the only way to reliably put him down with out him insta regening and why it didn't work that time as he's part of a unique new grade above the disaster curses where what they lack in their ability to comunicate they make up for in sheer ability, sorcery talent, and learning ability as you will see.
Also all curses in this class will have the drawing ambient cursed energy as their own in a sphere of influence around themselves proportional to their strength with their unique cursed techniques; they can't just eat cursed energy from sorcerers, though, unless they are within their domain then they can eat it.
Anyways I hope you enjoy let me know if you liked it or didn't because this is a new direction ish kinda but please give me your feedback. I hope you have a great day.