Stars dotted the night sky, and a crescent moon hung low on the horizon. The soft moonlight cast a faint glow across the land.
All four of them were still awake, gathered inside the village chief's house.
Silence filled the air.
The night felt like it was dragging on endlessly.
Dealing with the Aragami hadn't taken long—certainly not as long as Sōjun Minamoto's dream.
So it was still only the latter half of the night.
Sōjun Minamoto crouched on the ground beside Suguru Geto, purging the curses from the villagers' corpses.
There were over a hundred people in the village, not to mention the livestock, which also needed attention...
The workload was anything but light.
Neither of them spoke much. In silence, they picked up the pace, handling corpse after corpse—each one in varying states of decay.
At a glance, there was hardly any difference between human remains and animal carcasses. With so many bodies piled together, they became just numbers—indistinct and indistinguishable. In weather like this, the longer they sat, the worse the stench became.
Their minds were steady now. Scenes like this no longer stirred any emotion.
These people had been fuel for the Aragami, meant to burn slowly and be consumed over time. But when the two of them arrived, the Aragami realized it was losing control and threw on more fire, reducing them all to ashes.
Destruction is always easier than creation.
Now, their task wasn't just to extract and dispel the curses—it was also to preserve what was left of the flesh, keeping it from collapsing into a heap of broken tissue.
It was difficult work, but meaningful.
Not just for the villagers, or the chief, or the idea of life itself—it was also a test of their cursed energy control. For Sōjun Minamoto, as a Jujutsu Healer, there was deeper value in what he saw.
These curses, formed through the fusion of flesh and cursed energy, remained remarkably stable—even in death, they hadn't lost balance. They held both the resilient properties of curses and the functional integrity of the body.
There was much to be learned from them.
He crouched before a body, letting blue Cursed Energy swirl at his fingertips. Carefully, he extracted threads of curse like unraveling silk, dispelling them while stabilizing the remaining flesh—adjusting heads, straightening arms and legs, smoothing out twisted, hollow faces...
His technique, from start to finish, was smoother than the village chief's wife.
Dawn approached.
As the first light of morning broke across the sky, the two finally finished.
They had worked straight through the night.
Sōjun Minamoto was feeling great. After a solid rest earlier in the night and some fresh insight during the purification process, he was practically energized.
Suguru Geto, however, was barely holding it together. Sleep-deprived, dark lines had formed under his eyes.
The village chief and his wife had stayed up with them, helping where they could.
The village itself remained intact, untouched by the battle. But maybe that made it worse. In such familiar surroundings—where the crying of children, barking of dogs, and the nightly stirrings of neighbors had gone silent—the absence became unbearable.
Who could sleep under those conditions?
Without something to keep their hands busy, they might've gone mad.
But the work was done now.
With nothing left to do, the village chief stood by the wall, eyes vacant. Even his wife looked lost.
This place they'd lived in for most of their lives, the friends and family they'd always known—gone in an instant. Now it felt like they were the only ones left in the world.
Anyone would feel lost.
Sōjun Minamoto walked into the washroom, squeezed some soap from the dispenser by the sink, and rubbed his hands together. He worked the lather carefully over each finger, making sure not to miss the spaces beneath his nails. After drying off, a faint, pleasant scent of soap lingered on his skin.
The most valuable thing in this whole incident was the Aragami—and now, it was part of him.
Like the Chōchin-obake, the Aragami belonged to the Spirit-Type of the Cursed Spirit category.
It possessed a Cursed Technique that could rewrite dreams, wielded control over fire, and had considerable physical strength.
It seemed to reflect the three divine roles associated with the Aragami of legend: deity of the home and village, god of fire, and guardian of livestock like cattle and horses.
After partially assimilating the Aragami, Sōjun Minamoto sensed something unusual—its power was far beyond its supposed limit.
A Cursed Spirit's potential is set at its inception; the only variable is whether it reaches that limit or not.
But that limit isn't absolute. In rare cases, a Cursed Spirit can grow stronger after formation—if it's heavily feared by people or saturated with intense negative emotions.
The Aragami was not only intelligent—it was ambitious.
It had domesticated humans, performed divine acts in public, and encouraged the villagers' belief in it. Then, it deliberately steered that belief into reverence, fear, and guilt...
All to break through its natural limit.
If Sōjun Minamoto and the others had arrived any later, the Aragami could have grown even stronger—strong enough to turn the village into something akin to a divine realm.
By then, it would have been a nightmare to handle.
That thought led Sōjun Minamoto to remember the Fly Head.
It now seemed that the dog-like creature hadn't grown stronger merely by devouring its own kind, but rather by stealing the emotional focus of their negative energy.
Fly Heads were born from humanity's disgust and hatred toward flies. Because there were so many of them, those negative feelings were too scattered—hence their weakness.
But the dog-like creature had likely stolen that concentrated focus.
If all the Fly Heads in the Jujutsu world were wiped out, leaving only the dog-like one behind, then all of humanity's negative emotions toward flies would concentrate on it—
That's how a Fly Head King would be born.
...
Sōjun Minamoto made a call to Jujutsu High, notifying the Window staff to come and handle the aftermath.
To his surprise, the person on the other end hesitated for a while before vaguely saying they'd be there soon—then quickly hung up.
"What'd they say?" Suguru Geto leaned over, rubbing his face.
"Looks like we'll be waiting here a bit." Sōjun Minamoto toyed with the phone for a moment before slipping it into his pocket, chuckling. "They said they're sending someone over soon. I get the feeling it's going to be a hassle."
The mission was done, but everyone was dead.
Even though the villagers had already died before they arrived, it wouldn't stop some people from using that to stir up trouble or insert themselves into the situation.
He really wasn't in the mood to deal with that.
There were also loose ends to tie up—what would happen with the village chief and his wife, what to do with the village itself...
They couldn't just walk away.
Besides, something felt off about Jujutsu High.
Sōjun Minamoto rubbed his temples.
Times like this really showed the downside of not having an assistant supervisor. Everything had to be handled personally. It wasn't like before, when he could focus solely on exorcism.
"You two stay here for now," he said as he walked up to the village chief. "Someone will come to help arrange things. Whatever requests you have, just let them know."
"..."
"What kind of arrangements?" the village chief asked, having regained some composure. "Are we supposed to stay here?"
"It's up to you," Sōjun Minamoto replied. "You can stay or leave—do whatever brings you peace. Life has to move forward somehow."
The chief turned to consult with his wife. His expression turned bitter. "We don't want to stay here anymore, but... all of this… we need to take care of it properly."
He looked at the rows of bodies laid out neatly on the ground.
"What will happen to them?"
His voice was hoarse.
"If possible, I'd like to bury them up in the ancestral graves on the mountain."
"Of course. That's how it should be." Sōjun Minamoto nodded. "Professionals will come to handle it. Just let them know what you want."
"If anything comes up, you can contact me."
He agreed without hesitation.
The bodies had already been processed by him. There was no reason for Jujutsu High to forcibly reclaim them for research—especially since he was part of the Medical Department. All the data and information had already been documented.
He was the most qualified person to handle it.
(40 Chapters Ahead)
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