Chapter Text
November 11, 2018
Day 11 of the Culling Game
Tokyo Colony No. 2
“A PLAYER HAS ADDED A NEW RULE TO THE CULLING GAME! RULE 9! PLAYERS SHALL HAVE ACCESS TO THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION ABOUT OTHER PLAYERS - NAME, POINTS, NUMBER OF RULES ADDED, AND CURRENT COLONY!”
Almost in sync, thousands of Kogane appeared to announce this addition to the Culling Game Rules. Several Sorcerers were startled by this announcement. Several were unfazed.
Some were thoughtful enough to check for what ‘Players’ have the most points, whether to hunt them down for a good fight or to avoid them entirely.
Among the ‘leaderboard’ of those with the highest points were Sorcerers, newly awakened or reincarnated from a previous era of Jujutsu.
HIGURUMA HIROMI
POINTS: 102 RULES: 00
CURRENT COLONY: TOKYO NO. 1
KASHIMO HAJIME
POINTS: 100 RULES: 01
CURRENT COLONY: TOKYO NO. 2
But above all, and most concerningly…
TECHNOBLADE**
POINTS: 430 RULES: 01**
CURRENT COLONY: (ERROR: MISSING INFORMATION)
**Name was updated by the Player’s request in exchange for 100 points!
October 31, 2018
5 Hours until the Culling Game Starts
Tokyo, Japan
There once was a man who thrived off of chaos, who lived for fighting and bloodshed. Battles at the frontlines, skirmishes on the outskirts, guerrilla warfare, honor battles, gladiatorial style combat, one on ones, one v manys, free for alls, he had done it all.
He had seen empires rise and fall. He had seen cities reduced to ash and rubble. He had watched countries split in revolutions. He had partaken in all of that, whether as a leader or a freelancer or a mercenary or a volunteer. He had watched as loyalties shifted, he had joined and betrayed, he had been joined and been betrayed.
He had traveled through dimensions countless times, slain dragons, slain Withers. He had conquered the Earth, he had taken over nations and laid to ruin others. He had been crowned king, he had been an anarchist.
He was known across all regions, all worlds. Everyone knew his name.
That life was one of violence. That was then.
This life was peaceful.
He was born, or rather reborn, on June 1, 1999, in Sendai City Japan, in a mundane world.
There were no mobs, no monsters or magical creatures that hunted people. There was no Nether, no hellish dimension that you could risk life and limb for resources or travel, and no End. There were no wars - at least, not on this side of the globe. This country, the nation of Japan, was peaceful. At least, it has been since another country apparently dropped the sun over here two times some decades ago.
He was a full-time student, a freshman nearing the end of his first year in college, focusing on classical literature both foreign and domestic as well as on creative writing. He was going to school in Tokyo - local, as in it was in his home country, but it was still around two hours commute from his hometown by bullet train.
The goal in life was to get an easygoing job, probably as an office worker, save up enough to go buy and live off a farm.
Maybe grow potatoes. Sell them too.
Maybe write a book here and there in his free time.
He has no memory of dying, or anything. Just one moment, he was then and there. The next, he is here and now.
I mean, at first, when he fully realized that he was reborn, he wasn’t happy. Because, seriously, you’re telling him that he’s a normal person?? In a normal world??? HEEH??? It just wasn’t right.
But such was life. He could get his hands on a sword or a bow or an axe, but mutual-combat* PVP wasn’t really part of this world and he didn’t really want to be hunted down by law enforcement for the rest of his life, so meh.
*that is, combat where both or multiple players fully consent to fighting to the death, usually in places where there is the possibility of respawning so the stakes are pretty low
He still kept up with his training - one doesn’t just stop being who he once was. And it’s not paranoia if they’re out to get you (who’s they? He doesn’t know. But they could be out there.) He kept his body ready for anything, his reflexes sharp albeit largely untested in this new life. He had taken several martial arts as a kid, joined kendo as a junior-high and high-school extracurricular, bounced between dojos and tournaments (all of which he won first place, of course, his shelves stocked full of gold medals and trophies and his name was featured in some local newspapers), but… he was just some guy now.
There once was a time when drawing blood would set him in a frenzy, a chorus of voices screaming BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD.
In his first MMA tournament, in this life, his fist landed on the perfect angle on his opponent’s face, whose nose crunched under his knuckles.
He watched the red drip drip drip from a broken nose, feeling empty as there was only silence - silence save for the heavy breathing of his opponent, as he blankly raised his arms in a victory that felt hollow before cheers and polite clapping began. His opponent was exhausted and overexerted. He wasn’t even winded.
The absence of chat was heavy.
He was just some guy, and it was Halloween. Wednesday, October 31, 2018. On a whim, he went out dressed up as a stereotypically Western King, probably based on someone from Europe. Full red cape trimmed with white faux fur, red tunic with plasticy ‘gold’ accessories, and a plastic crown that somehow managed to fit perfectly on his head without flying off.
(It was almost reminiscent of what he used to wear, in another life.)
He had commissioned a sturdier, more accurate-to-his-past version from some artsy seamstress online, but shipping had been messed up and would arrive later tonight at his apartment. He wanted to actually be out of the house tonight, so the cheap costume had to do.
It’s not like he had anyone to impress.
He was sat on a subway connecting the college campus to Shibuya - he had managed to get to the station early compared to his latecomer fellow students, who were also all dressed in costumes for Halloween. With the limited number of seats and how packed the crowds were, most were left to stand and hold onto the handrails and bars as the subway went.
Normal life.
Normal world.
Normal person.
And then, from the front of the train, someone burst.
It was a gruesome sight, the sight of a human suddenly twice the size they were supposed to be. Their limbs stretched too far, their flesh bloated, their skin discolored until it was closer to the color of a bruise all over. Their clothes - costume and props - ripped and tore and broke.
That was just the beginning. Cue the screaming.
One by one, each person on the train twisted. Changed. Became monstrous. Hysteria had those still unchanged screaming in panic, but there was nowhere to move. Nowhere to go. Everyone was trapped.
Huh.
So much for a peaceful life.
For a moment, he felt the touch of a palm in between his shoulder blades. It was a moment that seemed to stretch for a short eternity.
“Oh? That’s odd,” a not-quite voice of a not-quite person hummed. Something not-quite right. But they were malicious in their apathy, and didn’t much care for this human, civilian anomaly. This human would be torn by his fellow, transfigured humans, and this would one day be a distant memory of something that didn’t quite fit.
And then, he could see.
Little creatures whizzing about in the air, formed by the fear these people felt in their last moments before they turned into monsters. A moaning and groaning shadow in the corner of the train, resembling the quintessential overworked salaryman.
A humanoid… thing, one that could have fit in with all of the costumed humans if it hadn’t turned them all into monsters with a touch. But upon second look, it more resembled a patchwork doll with uncannily symmetrical features, mismatched eyes, limp gray hair, and stitches across its too-uniform skin.
It had looked at him for a moment like he was the one who didn’t fit, but then turned away and disappeared into the crowd of roiling limbs and bubbling flesh.
The screams stopped.
And then, the groaning began.
“Help… me…”
”It hurts!”
”uggghhhhhh…”
One of the changed humans turned on him, grasping at his arm with a forceful grip too strong to have been normal. Their maw, large and deformed and more crocodilian than human, opened.
He pushed them back before the mouth snapped shut, his arm just out of its grasp right in time to avoid sudden amputation.
Really.
So much for a peaceful life.
He reached up to the handrails hanging down from the ceiling of the subway cart, lifted both legs, and kicked.
The no-longer-human’s bone structure must have been compromised after the change. With very little resistance, their skull was caved in too easily. Blood exploded outward like a firework, splashing all over him.
Ah.
A kill count of one, in a world that was supposed to be peaceful.
Another no-longer-human took its place in the too-cramped train, and he snapped its neck by grabbing its oversized head in two hands and twisting. It was soon trampled underfoot by a clump of deformed flesh, which was summarily put out of its wailing misery too.
Half of him felt conflicted. Disappointed. This was supposed to be his retirement arc; he wasn’t a warlord anymore, he was a fighter by hobby in this life.
The other half…
LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOO!!
The moment he’s been (not really) waiting for.
He can drop out of college! Return to PVP, become the strongest again. Farmin’? That’s for LOSERS (unless it’s to become the #1 potato farmer. It’s part of his brand, see). Writing? WHAT A NERDDDD
All he had to do was survive.
…without armor.
…unarmed.
…in a cramped space full of hostile mobs.
…
Thinking quickly, he pivoted. His fist landed heavily against the shuddering windows on the doors of the still-moving train.
Before he could pull back and punch it again, he was bodily shoved by another transformed human.
It’s around this point that he realized that, if he wants to get out of this train, he needs to do a little decluttering.
He reached back up to grasp a handrail, this time holding on and wrenching it out of its sockets. The metal sockets groaned before snapping off at the welded seams.
It was no sword, no sharp edges and blunt all over, but it would do.
Swinging back, he managed to clobber two heads in the same motion.
Kicking, punching, swinging, he was a flurry of movement across the train. Each motion got larger, longer, more destructive, more space to move as it was cleared up. Deformed corpses and blood littered the floor to the point where you couldn’t even see what color it was originally painted. He couldn’t even get good footing, the corpses made him liable to slip or twist an ankle, or sink into blubbery flesh.
So he stood on the seats, still swinging and killing. And when those got too bloodied to be good for standing on, he just held onto the rails above him and attacked while hanging from the ceiling.
Eventually, it was silent.
He had done it.
He had exterminated the entirety of the train, aside from the whizzing not-quite bugs that he couldn’t touch and the shadowy salaryman ghost thing that was sobbing to himself in the back. He had given some experimental swings at them. He just went through them, like they were mirages. They didn’t attack him anyway, seemed to want to avoid him, so he figured they could coexist for however much longer he was going to take to get out.
He was a little winded, so he took a moment to breathe in. Unfortunately, the train was musty with the cloying scent and humidity of the copious amounts of blood that had been spilled.
Ugh. Whatever.
Also unfortunately, there was no saving his costume. It was drenched in blood and gore, torn in some places by grasping fumbling deformed hands or claws or teeth. Parts had ripped at the seams, which did actually make it easier to move (and fight) in. Thankfully, it was a cheap heap of scraps, and it still clothed him. His reputation would be in shambles if he ended up fighting buck naked.
He sighed.
The blood was already drying on his skin in places that he didn’t even think he could get it, and it was making him itchy and a little irritable. At least he no longer had finals to worry about - he wouldn’t be returning to college now when he could spend his time better. And he’d be shocked if college was still going after this shit show anyway, affecting so many (now dead) students so close to campus.
On that thought, he’s not responsible for their deaths, is he? It would be such a pain if he was blamed for killing them when they were all turned to monsters that were trying to kill him first.
…eh, it probably wouldn’t be a problem. He’s sure the police would have much bigger things to deal with, such as, the doll-person that turned them into monsters.
In the rest of the time that it took to travel, he began etching runes into his weapon of choice; the broken handrail. He smeared blood into the engravings; it was no lapis, and his work was shoddy under the pressure without an actual enchanting table, but a weak version of Knockback was simple enough to imbue into the metal using someone’s surprisingly sharp skull fragments.
Hopefully.
There’s no telling if it was successful, really.
The train stopped.
Ding.
The automated voice announced the destination: Shibuya Station.
Minutes ago, he was one of many who had been crammed onto the subway. He was one face of dozens.
Now, though…
He was the only person to step off the train.
What’s this? Kenjaku, ducked behind a wall, was sure that Mahito would have taken the time to transfigure the hundreds of humans that were making their way to Shibuya by bullet train, but when the subway arrived there was a distinct lack of Cursed Energy signatures that were characteristic of Mahito’s transfigured humans.
Instead, well.
”It’s here!” Jogo, the Disaster Curse created by the fear stemming from volcanic eruptions and other related natural disasters, grinned.
“The train!!” Some random, ignorant non-sorcerer cried in relief.
As if set into motion by some unseen cue, the crowd trapped in Shibuya Station by a barrier that they could not see, being killed by Jujutsu that they could not see, surrounded by Cursed Spirits and a battle that they could not see, began moving towards the train. There were people shoving one another to get to it, believing that they could finally get out of this place if they were able to board the train.
“Outta the way!”
”Let me on!”
”Move it!”
But those at the front of the line for the train were frozen, staring in disbelief and shock.
The windows on the train…
Is that…
Blood?
One of the carts couldn’t be seen into; the windows were in complete blackout, not because of any curtains or anyone in the way but…
It was like they were painted in a thick coat of red from the inside.
Blood.
When the automatic doors slid opened, no one tried to board it. Instead, the crowd recoiled. Some screamed.
Blood poured out from the floor of the train onto the rails like it was an overflowing tub. Glimpses of disfigured monsters could be seen lying dead on the inside.
And one person stepped out.
Long, pink hair tied back in a loose but elegant ponytail fell down his back, clad in a long red fake-velvet cloak that was trimmed in what had likely once been white faux fur. His red eyes were impassive yet predatory under a plastic yellow crown as they stared out at the scene that awaited him.
He was completely drenched in blood.
His hair was matted with it, dry only in some small patches. His costume was fully saturated and sodden with it, fabric clinging to his skin where it could. Streaks of red were on his cheek, as though some had splashed onto his face and he had tried to wipe it away with a hand that had even more on it, with the end result of just smearing it all over.
But the way he held himself, tall, confident, and ready like a hunter…
Kenjaku managed to get a good, long look on this man.
He was a non-sorcerer, no Cursed Technique to speak of. Maybe he had just enough Cursed Energy to see Curses, but with the way that those crimson eyes caught and lingered on the forms of Jogo and Mahito with total unfamiliarity spoke differently; this was an entirely mundane human who had, through the circumstances surrounding him, awakened the ability to see Curses whilst in danger of them.
The crowds parted for him when he began to walk, pushing back on itself to avoid being touched by the man covered in red and dripping it all over behind him. He left a trail of droplets and footprints behind him, not that anyone really noticed.
Kenjaku tore his attention away from the man, who was actually just… leaving. Heading for the stairwell and not even looking behind him. Something about the nonchalant set of his shoulders and irritable clench of his jaw spoke of a desire for a nice shower to scrub his skin of blood. It’s not like he could get far anyway, with the barriers in place. Kenjaku could find him later.
For now, well, plans change, but the show must go on.
Gojo Satoru was distracted by the absurdity of a non-sorcerer (and not even one with a Heavenly Restriction, like Zen’in Toji) in this situation. Gojo Satoru was distracted by the fight that had been put on pause just to witness that non-sorcerer. Gojo Satoru was distracted by the crowd of regular people around him.
“Gate Open.”
And now, Gojo Satoru would be distracted by the voice and the face of none other than Geto Suguru.
October 31, 2018
3 Hours until the Culling Game Starts
Shibuya, Japan
He trudged through the streets, socks squelching with blood in his boots. Flakes of rusty crust came off of him when he scratched at the itches on his fingers, but it built up under his fingernails too. He had killed countless more humans-turned-monsters on his walk back to his apartment, where he would find rest.
Without chat, bloodshed seemed a lot more empty. He desperately needed a shower.
Without chat…
Distantly, he heard it.
A cacophony.
The sound of hundreds of thousands of voices screaming incoherently, spamming emotes, chanting BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD with a frenzy he has not experienced in a lifetime.
He stopped. He froze. He was frozen.
And then, a toothy grin spread across his face.
He kicked off the asphalt ground in a dead sprint, laughter bubbling up from his belly, filled his chest, fell from his lips in scattered cackles.
It got louder as he drew near, more frenzied like piranhas catching scent of prey or sharks in the water.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
E E E E E E
LETZ GO
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
WHERE YOU AT, PIGBOY???
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD??
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!!!
He took a hard left down the street, boots skidding across the ground briefly as he gracelessly nearly tumbled over his feet. Louder. Louder. LOUDER.
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
E
E
E
EEEEEE
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
He found it. He found them, in a deep dark dank alleyway, the single streetlight flickering out more often than it was on.
On the damp rocky ground, a writhing pool of shadows and a bone-white protrusion sticking out.
It gave the same miasma, the same strange vibes that the shadowy salaryman ghost or those buzzing bugs gave. It felt similar to the doll-person, or the hunched over, fashionably-challenged volcano granny.
But coming from it was the chanting voices that only he could hear, a lifetime ago.
He rushed over to it, picking it up from the shadows that clung to it like tar but fell away like water when he held it up in the air like Simba from the Lion King. He knew it like he knew his own hands, his own stature, his own body in the midst of a fight and fever. He’s not sure why it manifested as what it had, but he wasn’t complainin’.
”CHAT!” He crowed victoriously as he spun with it in his hands. He laughed at the returning screams, indulgently bringing it down and closer to his face so he could get a better look at them. “Did ya miss me?”
And it was them. It was really them, it was really Chat.
For some reason, they had followed him into this world not as inherent voices in his head, but as voices that came from the boar-skull mask he favored from his past life. And he also knew, with utmost certainty, that only he could “hear” them once more.
YES
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!
YEEEEE
POGCHAMP
YUP!!
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!
WE MISSED YOU 😭
E
E
FUCK YEAH PIGBOY
E
LOL, NOPE
NERD
NO, FUCK YOU
He laughed indulgently.
”Nah? You didn’t miss me? Guess I’ll leave ya here, then.”
He wasn’t going to.
But he watched - listened - it wasn’t exactly a single one of the five main senses that he could “hear” them by, but something that he couldn’t fully describe. Sometimes it was closer to actual sound, other times it was more like reading an actual messaging site or chat. Hah, Chat was a chat!
NO!
NO NO NO
WE DIDN’T MEAN IT
COME BACKKKKKKKK
NOOOOOO
He laughed again, and again, and kept laughing until his lungs burned and his sides physically hurt.
“Oh, man! I’m just messin’ with you. Nah, I’m keeping you, Chat, you hear me?”
A roar of approval.
He put the mask on.
It slotted perfectly onto his face, just like he had known it would.
And suddenly, the intrinsic emptiness that he had been carrying all his life was filled.
And through it all, one chant reigned supreme:
TECHNOBLADE NEVER DIES