Chapter 24

He stared at a strange etching just below a wall painting depicting a child running after a doctor with a smile on his face.

"We will spread out here," Jiki called out with a frown. It had not taken him long to figure out there was something wrong with the building.

The dimensions were off, the angles sharp, and the space distorted. These irregularities were so minor he doubted any other person had picked it out.

It was not a domain, that he was sure of. Over the past few months, he had ample time to witness a domain, and this was not one.

The strange scripts and seal etchings that could be found sporadically around the building had to be the cause.

"Are you sure about that?" Maki asked in a challenging tone, one he could not even blame her for and even expected from her.

The Zenin outcast had become something of a second in command among their group.

Always ready to challenge and put him on his toes. Yet when they decided and finalized on a course of action, she took to it with startling ferocity and dedication.

"We're wasting time here," he answered before jerking his feet out of the curse he cratered into the ground. Doing his best to ignore the way its purple blood splashed and disfigured the beautiful painting.

"Something is not adding up. It has been playing with us."

"What do you mean?" Panda asked as he dusted off his brass knuckles hidden under a puffy blue-colored cloth.

"Its curse energy is diffused around, managing to somehow enhance the resident curses and mask its own signature simultaneously," Jiki said aloud as he watched the rest of them finish off their respective opponents.

They were in a reception area that was supposed to be on the seventh floor. It was widely spaced, a perfect place to combat multiple opponents. One they had taken to with relish judging by the amount of bodies they left behind.

"The first one is nothing special. But purposely masking its technique by spreading out its cursed energy like it's doing. That's not something curses do," he finished as they turned their attention to him.

He refused to add the part where it was a noted Sengoku-period technique used by sorcerer-killers and assassins.

The particular clan that created it was wiped out by the combined effort of the Gojo clan and the Zenin clan after one of theirs used the technique to kill a baby with the once-in-a-generation opportunity of bearing the six eyes and the limitless technique at the same time and a star plasma vessel.

"So what do you suggest? We just spread out and wait for it to ambush us one after the other?" Maki asked with a frown.

"Yes," Jiki replied succinctly.

"Huh?" was Maki's eloquent response.

"It is smart enough to not face us all at once, so we give it the chance and allow it to show its hand."

"So how do we split up?" Emi finally contributed to the topic at hand, while Toge continued to keep a watchful eye out for any surprises.

"Emi, you'll pair up with Panda. Maki and Toge will go together, I'll be on my own."

"And that's the problem here. You'll be on your own," Maki cut in again, with a pointed finger at his chest.

"For all your talk about teamwork, you don't seem to partake in it much."

He knew that is what it boiled down to in the end. They had heard the stories and rumors but they did not understand. Not truly.

They could not comprehend the vast gap between them, and he was not cruel enough to slap it in their face.

Where they had learned on the laps of modern-day clans and tutors. He had been brought up on a diet of war, bloodshed, and things better left in the dark.

Inserting himself into the dynamic they were forming would do them more harm than good. But that was something for another day. Judging from the fire in Maki's eyes.

So he did as a leader was expected to. As someone who was seen as the first among equals. He compromised.

"Fine."

"Exactly. You can't keep running off—Huh?" Maki blinked wide amber eyes at him in surprise, while Panda, Emi, and Toge chuckled in the background.

The scene forced a smile on his face as he stared down at the green-haired teen. He would be a liar if he said he didn't enjoy throwing a wrench into whatever preconceived notions the girl had of him. He had a feeling it had something to do with being clan-born and being called a genius for so long.

"Okay?"

"Emi and I would go down the same way we came, making sure to check if there's anything we missed while rushing up."

He would've preferred doing this alone or working with Maki at least. But he could not leave Panda and Toge with Emi, not while a Semi-Grade one threat was running about.

She would be an anchor around their neck. One they'll have to watch for every second.

"The rest of us continue climbing up," Maki finished his sentence with a sharp nod.

"Yes. If we make first contact, there will be enough of a ruckus for you to come find us. The same thing goes for you."

They gave each other sharp nods before separating and walking off.

...

He had walked down two floors with Emi before spotting the most curious sight. At the end of the fifth-floor corridor, a light shined through a crack, illuminating a functioning elevator.

Jiki nudged Emi to get her attention before tilting his head at the elevator. They shared a glance before he started leading the way.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" she asked him with a glance at the flickering lights that passed through the elevator doors.

"Which one?" he asked her rhetorically with a soft smile. "Splitting up in an unfamiliar terrain or walking into a broken-down elevator in a hospital with malice leaking out all around us?"

"Both?" she asked, unsure of which.

"Tactically this is the worst option to take," he agreed easily. "But it's the only one left to us at this point. The Curse sees us as too much of a threat to reveal itself, so we're giving it a chance."

"By being weaker?" she asked, unsure, as they finally got to the elevator. He pressed the button to open the elevator calmly. He didn't have much interest in walking the stairs, and the fact that the elevator suddenly started to work even though there had been no sign of electricity in the building drew his attention.

He had a feeling something was waiting for them on the bottom floor.

"But we're not weaker now, are we?" he replied to her as the elevator door creaked open with squeaking motions. He stepped in and turned to face his hesitant classmate.

"No, we're not," she finally agreed, before taking a bold step to join him. A moment later, the door slammed shut behind her before it started to creak slowly.

Movement.

He noticed idly. Ignoring the way Emi had unsheathed her sword halfway in response. He closed his eyes and focused on his sense of balance.

The elevator was taking them down. So he started counting. Judging from the distance between the floors and the speed of the elevator movement, it would take them two minutes and thirty seconds to get to the ground floor. Unless…

Time passed, and his lips slowly parted halfway, forming a smile on his usually serene features. Seems like his deductions were right. It had been over two minutes and forty seconds, and they were still going down.

So there was a sub-basement level in the building. One they had not seen an entrance for, even though they searched the whole ground floor thoroughly. One that not even his eyes had made out.

Ding.

With that electric chime, the doors slowly creaked open once more, allowing the putrid scent of rotted and bloated bodies to sneak it's way into the elevator Emi gagged beside him, doubling over to throw up at the harsh smell while retching violently.

He had perceived worse the day he stepped into a discarded battlefield for the first time, the day he killed his first man at the age of five. A kunai to the jugular.

"Your neck is perfectly positioned for a decapitating strike," he noted in an empty tone. Not judging or scolding, but simply stating.

She jerked her head up sharply, left hand still on the grip of the sword before dragging the forearm of her sleeve over her lips to clean them.

"W-what is that stench?"

"Dead bodies," he stated with a nod at her response. She had recovered admirably. He began to walk forward. His hands were hidden in the voluminous folds of his haori, and his eyes were half-lidded. The perfect image of uncaring and carelessness.

"This should either be the morgue or the coroner's station." That was another thing that he disliked about the way Jujutsu Sorcerers acted. The lack of any real information on the job.

He had personally searched the ground floor of the hospital in hopes of getting directions and a map that would've helped them coordinate better.

"I'm calling Panda," Emi told him as she slowed down behind him.

"Tell them to search for the elevator on the corridor of the fifth floor and barring that, they should head to the ground floor and break the ground closest to the back doors of the hospital."

"How do you know that?"

He answered her distractedly. "We're walking down an incline. A gentle one," he noted with a quick tap of his feet against the ground.

"The Hospital was built on higher grounds, with the peak being the back to block the entrance from the harsh glare of the sun."

He was speaking to her, but his attention was focused on his senses. Ever since he stepped out of the elevator, he had been able to sense the curse's energy signature better. And what he felt made him equal parts curious and concerned.

The sharp sound of Emi closing her phone and pocketing it finally drew his attention back to her.

"Good thing we are not in a specialized barrier. I heard we can't make calls through them," she told him, before rushing to walk up alongside him.

She didn't need to tell him that, considering he had witnessed it for himself. But he doubted she knew much, if anything, about the details of the Jorogumo Incident.

"You've called them then."

"Yes, they're on their way," she replied sounding more relieved. Did she not think he was enough to handle whatever they faced? Amusing. Yet he did not particularly see the need to correct her.

She had gotten used to the stench he noted. The civilian-born girl was remarkable in the way she adapted to things if nothing else.

Their slow steps led them to a single door at the end of the corridor. A solid steel reinforced door that seemed like it was created for protection against a nuclear situation.

Yet it was open partway. His eyes noted the depression left in the steel door. Depressions reminiscent of fingerprints. He walked up to it and rested his palm against it before pushing gently.

It refused to budge a single inch. Indicating the locking motions and gears were still in place. The door had been forced open he concluded. Instead of wasting the cursed energy and effort it would take to widen the gap, he gave a nod at Emi before slipping in.

The room he stepped into was big. Still puddles of water littered the ground, the walls held mold and crumbling paint and broken open grates revealing the dead and decomposing bodies of multiple men and women that were abandoned to rot the moment electricity suddenly stopped flowing to the morgue.

The scent of decay and slow death was an insidious thing. Hanging heavy in the air and attempting to starve him of his breath.

The silence was oppressive, broken only by the occasional creak of decaying furniture and rusted metal, with the distant echo of dripping water and the faint whisper of a single breathing form ahead of him.

Flickering lights further illuminated the surroundings and revealed a figure lurking in the darkness.

Their silhouette was distorted, seated upon one of the numerous discarded autopsy tables and picking at the dead body on it, the scene created an aura of malevolence.

One that seemed to heighten with every flicker of the light, judging by the way Emi gasped as she followed in after him.

The figure finally looked up. Predatory amber eyes stared at him before speaking.

Jiki focused on the way the cursed energy seemed to roll under the flesh. With half-lidded eyes and fully alert senses.

He picked up the mix of a curse and human-cursed energy mixing beneath the skin like oil and water.

"Hello Fateless one, I've been waiting for you."