The Heian Era. The Golden Age of Jujutsu. Despite its title, very few sorcerers ever progressed their sorcery much. Yes, those who were talented, experienced, skilled, or just lucky got far. But eventually, they faltered and were unable to progress.
For these people, there was only one way of achieving the next step in their paths to the pinnacle, battle. Fighting day and night over and over until they finally broke through and reached that next level or died to someone seeking to escape their own bottleneck. This was why only a select few possessed domain expansion or even maximum or extension techniques.
For every sorcerer with an extension technique, ten others failed and died. For every maximum one hundred faltered. For every domain expansion thousands were destroyed. It was far from a golden age for many, but those who had made it to the top after hundreds or thousands of battles were truly magnificent and worthy of every title they may possess.
For Uraume, the only servant of the King of Curses and one of the most powerful individuals in the Heian era, if not history, it was much different. Uraume didn't struggle all that much. They were just talented and had a very good technique.
One blast of super chilled cursed energy was enough to handle pretty much anyone. For those it was not enough for, they simply met their end to a second or third blast. The point was, that Uraume didn't face much competition due to how powerful their technique was off the bat.
In the case of their maximum technique, it was simply a product of Uraume's talent. It wasn't the result of dozens of hard-fought battles but that of years of study and practice. Many may see this as a bad thing as Uraume had missed out on a lot of growth due to it. But Uraume didn't really see it that way.
All it meant was that Uraume had a wellspring of unawakened power, just waiting to be unleashed once a worthy opponent appeared to challenge the right hand of his majesty, the King of Curses.
——
Cursed energy is the result of negative emotions, this was the first thing young sorcerers learned when entering whatever teaching institution they may attend. Naturally, this meant a sorcerer feeling negative emotions could create or somehow enhance their cursed energy.
This wasn't entirely true. While negative emotions could result in the creation of cursed energy, the amount was so negligible it was barely noticeable and had no real effect on a fight.
While some may claim negative emotions could increase the potency of their cursed energy, it wasn't exactly correct. All they did was make your cursed energy flow more freely. For most rookies, this was generally a bad thing as it made it harder to control their cursed energy, resulting in it leaking into the environment and the sorcerers draining themselves much faster.
For any half-decent sorcerer above grade 3, this wasn't a thing. They had enough skill with their energy to keep it under control even if they couldn't do the same with their emotions. But a very small number of people ever made use of this aspect of cursed energy.
This was simply because if you were flipping out, odds are you weren't in the mood for fine cursed energy control and if you did try to control it precisely, your negative emotions would often fade. But this was dismissing a subconscious element.
For if one felt enough desperation, they could inevitably make their cursed energy flow freely and make a breakthrough. This was the technical science behind why most life-or-death battles resulted in one side growing stronger. Not that there weren't plenty of exceptions.
None of this was running through Uraume's head, nor would it ever. Luckily, they didn't need to know the science behind something to make use of it.
Condescending a majority of their remaining cursed energy into the palm of their hand in the form of chilled mist, Uraume threw all thoughts of saving energy out the window. If this attack didn't finish the monster, no amount of cursed energy could save Uraume.
Using reverse cursed technique, they transformed as much of the chilled cursed energy into positive energy as they could while dedicating nearly all of their focus to keeping the cursed technique active.
An intense heat washed over Uraume's face as their hand began to burn from the newly created ball of extremely dense steam. This, more than anything, spoke to the newly created technique's potency. All sorcerers had a natural resistance to their own cursed energy and cursed techniques after all.
Uraume brought their other hand up to cup the ball from above while angling their right hand up a little, leaving only a small hole in their hands.
The shikigami was not as simple-minded as some may believe and knew it had to stop whatever their opponent was doing before they could complete their action. A crater the size of a large car was punched into the ground by Mahoraga's foot as it pushed off, dashing towards the androgynous sorcerer, its blade raised above its head ready to strike.
Uraume knew they wouldn't be able to get the attack off before the shikigami cleaved both arms from their body. At least, not the attack they imagined. They would have to take some shortcuts.
Instead of focusing the steam into a single large beam pointed in a specific direction, they would have to settle for a mere explosion. It would weaken the attack as the cursed energy would be spread out across a large area instead of only the opponent but sacrifices had to be made.
As the concrete was turned black from the heat and any metal within a 50-meter radius was liquified, the steam crashing through the city, melting and burning everything in its path as it slowly lost potency, all Uraume could do was brace themselves as their skin was burned black and they were blasted away by the explosion of pure heat.
——
Isamu, now dressed in a white t-shirt looted from a nearby clothing store, stalked through the halls of the station, his eyes flicking back and forth. The curse's cursed energy was odd, its shape constantly changed, like its nature was to not have one.
Despite this making it a bit harder to track its residuals, it didn't get in the way much. Isamu was still able to get a general direction and as long as he was led close enough to the curse that he could sense it, he was good.
His fists and shoes were covered in the blood of transfigured humans, none of them pushing Isamu enough to even sweat let alone draw his blade. If it was the Isamu of a few hours ago, a blade would've been drawn simply due to Isamu's punches not being powerful enough to finish a transfigured human as quickly as he'd like.
But Isamu's punching power had grown significantly. Not because he had a lot more cursed energy or anything as while his maximum reserves had grown, he'd spent so much of those reserves that he ended up around his original maximum now.
No, he was simply better at using cursed energy now. Its movements were more fluid and efficient, the cursed energy perfectly in sync with his physical form. If he had to compare it to something, it'd be like the difference between a potent drop of venom from a deadly viper and a massive amount of rat poison. They would both mess your day up for sure, but one was a lot easier to inject.
As Isamu walked, his eyes began to move less and less as his attention shifted from the path of cursed energy he'd been following. It was no use now that he'd found the source and could sense the main body.
Resting a hand on his sword, he rounded a corner only to be set upon by three large transfigured humans, their fists enlarged to grant them more power behind every blow.
Isamu ducked under a right hook from one of the 7-foot monsters before leaning back, out of the way of another punch from his left. The third circled around and tried to bear hug him from behind. Isamu jumped through its arms faster than it could track and flipped over it, twisting its head off as he did so.
He landed and threw the disgusting head towards one of the beasts, blinding it momentarily as the head got in the way of its line of sight. Isamu dashed at the other, planting a hand in its heart before it could react. He then jumped just as the last transfigured human was getting its bearings and kicked its head off, its brains splatting on the wall opposite him.
"Woooww, you move well. What are you? First grade?" The voice came from Isamu right, Isamu's eyes rolling around in his head quickly to get a lock on the curse's position.
Before him stood a human-looking cursed spirit with a patchwork face and gray eyes. Long grayish-blue hair reached past his neck and sectioned off into three large strands with ties at the ends. Along with its face, it had stitches all across its body which gave the impression it was sewn together. It sported a black shawl separated into three pieces on the left sleeve.
Isamu slowly stood from the crouched position he'd landed in, his hand still resting on his sword handle. He gave no response as he sized up the cursed spirit. Like all the other cursed spirits with the ability to talk, its cursed energy pool was massive as expected. But to Isamu's surprise, this one was on another level when it came to pure quantity.
It would be a pain to take down. According to Nanami, no one but Yuji could actually harm it for good due to the nature of its cursed technique. Meaning without Yuji, you could either try to destroy it in one blow or fight until it ran out of cursed energy. And with how much more cursed energy it had compared to Isamu, he didn't like his odds with option two.
Which just left option one. The problem with that was Nanami had already tried that and the curse's presence in front of Isamu made it clear it hadn't worked. But there was one other option. To force it to use its domain expansion, make it drop its domain, then kill it while it was suffering from cursed technique burnout, a state one enters due to a domain expansion overloading their brain where cursed techniques are near impossible to use for a while.
With that in mind, Isamu dashed forward on surprisingly silent feet, his hand leaving the handle of his blade. The curse flicked something at him as he got close. It ballooned into a large transfigured human. It was pretty much just a white ball with two legs, two arms, and a giant mouth which tried to bite down on Isamu.
Isamu just jumped over it and plunged his hand into its brain before continuing. Pushing off the Pac-Man look-a-like, Isamu was met with the cursed spirit, his right arm turned into a bundle of bladed metal whips which lashed out at Isamu.
He reached for Maya and unsheathed it for an instant before slamming it back into its sheath. Diving through the now dismembered whips, Isamu caught a punch from the cursed spirit's other arm. Grabbing him by the wrist, Isamu quickly broke the bone before tossing the curse behind him into the transfigured human's corpse.
Isamu rushed him before he could move to dodge, kicking him in the gut so hard Isamu felt bones be crushed to dust and the transfigured human's body give out as the curse was thrown threw it as it popped from the force.
The curse was sent flying, its arms quickly healing as it rolled and skidded across the floor, desperately trying to find its footing. After it finally did, the turned back to face where it was thrown from, its eyes and head snapping back and forth, trying to find a trace of Isamu.
Before it could, Isamu slid behind him faster than it could perceive, his right hand unsheathing his scared blade in a flash of silver and purple. As his blade was drenched in purple blood and the curse's head flopped to the ground with a wet thud, Isamu straightened and looked down on the curse both physically and metaphorically.
How disappointing. It wasn't strong at all. Maybe a bit tricky but Isamu could tell it was a newly born curse, inexperienced and lacking in any real technical skill with jujutsu. Isamu sighed as he flicked the blood off his blade and backed up a bit, aware the curse was not dead. It seems he was in for a long and boring battle. Hopefully, its domain expansion is a bit interesting.