22 Coming Troubles...

A/N: No random quote today.

Also, drop some reviews, and proper ones. Please don't reviews with full stops and such. It's nice to see actual reviews for ones and criticism to improve my writing.

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The tightly packed streets of Japan were bustling as usual. The people all went about their works and everyone seemed to be in a hurry. The kids went to school, the teenagers to highschool or simply to hang out, the adults went to their respective jobs and some people just wandered about.

The sun shone from the sky, the bright white light filtering out from the atmosphere giving a vibrant yellow hue that shone off of the windows on the buildings.

Amidst the multitude of people in the middle of the crowd a young man walked with one hand in his pocket and the other holding a small pendant that was wrapped around his wrist.

The young man wore a dark black jacket with a simple black shirt underneath with a peculiar design. He wore black trousers and black shoes to go along with it. Anyone that looked at him might wonder if he really liked the color black or if his fashion sense was jut bad for him to not choose any other color.

Be that as it may, the young man looked quite charming in his outfit. Coupled with his impressive and lean physique that seemed to hold untold power and strength, his figure was a sight to be feasted on by the women and girls around the area.

Yet even as he was being stared at by all of these women, the young man kept his eyes riveted upon the small pendant that seemed to shine with a strange bluish hue.

This young man was obviously Shuichi. He had gotten his third cursed technique 4 days ago, which he decided was going to be last for a long long time. If he simply had too many cursed techniques, it would become way harder to focus on the already existing ones. Shuichi did not want to become a jack of all trades. He wanted to master what he had to the utmost limit.

At least that's how it should be according to Bruce Lee, as he said something about not fearing 10,000 moves practiced once, but fearing one move practiced 10,000 times.

Besides, a Jujutsu Sorcerer's true strength comes from their mind. A sorcerer is nothing but a con artist, and a sorcery fight is simply a competition of who can fool the other party more to get the upper hand.

That is what the books he had read said. Homura Takamekasuchi in particular really insisted upon this idea and Shuichi wasn't one to question professionals. If possible, he hoped to meet the man one day.

Anyway, the true worth of a sorcerer lies in how much understanding he holds of the concept of jujutsu and how much information he can derive from the cursed phenomenon around him.

And that was what he had in mind when designing his cursed technique.

As his last cursed technique, Shuichi felt like it should be something good. And so he spent a good amount of time trying to streamline the things he wanted and carefully decided on the type of prompts he was going to enter into the interface for cursed technique creation.

He had been very careful so that the technique doesn't get nerfed this time around.

And sure enough, it didn't get nerfed. The cursed technique he had created was a multi purpose one, if you will.

It was something that allowed him to do a lot of things, some of which would seem utterly absurd according to the current jujutsu standards. He was considering the current era because apparently, the old times were when the Jujutsu reigned supreme.

The main aim of the cursed technique had been to allow him to gather information, which would be possible with the technique he had made. An immediate increase in fire power was also a secondary aim, something he would also be able to accomplish.

Another aim was to give him appropriate defense and overall greater combat ability, which could also be fulfilled.

All in all, what he had made for himself was the ultimate ability for being both versatile and powerful. It was a technique which held almost infinite potential.

And what was the technique?

Well-

Shuichi looked ahead of him, seeing as how he was nearing the train station.

Today, he had decided to go to another city. Simply because the curses in Tokyo were no longer powerful enough. The reason he noticed was that he had simply absorbed too much cursed energy into his system, making it so that the atmospheric negativity was not able to be replenished.

That was not a good thing for overall power up. Sure, the amount of cursed energy he got from the entire city was a lot, but it didn't hold a candle to the amount he could receive when killing a grade 2 curse.

Which was a bit weird considering that grade 2 spirits weren't too rare in Tokyo and since they were made from the negativity of people, he, who was absorbing all that negativity should be getting way more cursed energy than them.

It wasn't something that made sense but hey, he could absorb cursed energy, that was all that mattered.

But still, he was starting to get annoyed by it all. Just one night before he had gone to another cursed spirit hunt in a nearby hospital and aside from about 15 grade 3 spirits, he didn't find anything noteworthy.

It was not something that could be overlooked.

He didn't know why himself but Shuichi wasn't very fond of slowing down and limiting himself purposefully when he had an obvious better option. Cursed energy reserves were going to be the last thing Shuichi needs to worry about but that's only if his cursed heart can be properly cultivated. It wouldn't work any other way.

Cursed Heart, although powerful, needed time and patience coupled with hard work to truly turn into a powerful technique. It was the entire reason that Shuichi had made this technique in particular into his very first cursed technique.

'Now that I think about it, only my third technique directly affects my overall combative power immediately. The other two work more along 'wait now enjoy later' kind of deal.' Shuichi thought to himself as he entered the train station.

The train station wasn't nearly as developed as it could be in the future but it seemed to be heading in the right direction.

'I wonder how long it'll take until bullet trains become a thing…' Shuichi mused and thought of which city he should be going to. Although he already had an idea where he would head to…

"Kyoto is a big no. It's not called the sacred ground of Jujutsu for no reason. The Kyoto sister school is also there serving as one of the headquarters of the Jujutsu community." Shuichi whispered to himself as he looked at the giant screen that showed the available trains and their timings.

"The other major cities might be a good choice but if I'm really willing to choose between all of them" Shuichi paused for a moment, remembering the report provided by Ryouta about 'paranormal' activities in one of their warehouses, leading to its abandonment.

"-I should go to Saitama." And with that Shuichi had decided.

~~~~~~~~

Gojo Satoru and Suguru Geto were not having a very good time. Of course they were both as carefree as ever, bickering among themselves with Gojo being a bit over the top as usual; but the thing was… they had been given a lot of missions ever since the 'cursed energy explosion' happened.

Sure, they had a lot of new recruits due to the absurd number of curse users Gojo and Geto had found, but most of them did not go above grade 2.

Now that in itself was pretty respectable. A Grade 2 sorcerer was by no means weak. If anything they belonged in the upper echelons of the Jujutsu world. Being able to contend with a Grade 1 spirit, something that could be considered the pinnacle existence seeing how rare special grades were was a feat that demanded respect.

Not to mention there were occasional grade 1's that were being recruited. Most of the curse users chose to join the jujutsu community and become sorcerers, while those that didn't were detained until the matter of the 'Curse Explosion' could be sorted out; at least until they found the perpetrator of the act.

But even then, the curse explosion that had happened had tilted the balance of the world a bit too much. No, tilted would be a wrong word. It would be better to say that it had flipped the logic overhead. While such things were inconsequential in front of the truly strong existences like Satoru and Suguru, the same could not be said for the majority of the sorcerer community.

It was very rare for a sorcerer to ever reach grade 1. And here, with grade 1 curses popping up every week the sorcerers were bound to be overwhelmed, even with their increased number. What did it matter if the grade 4 or grade 3 sorcerers had increased if the true threat that is grade 1 curses were the ones causing chaos.

Of course, such an example had its faults. Curses of every grade had been multiplying at an extremely unprecedented rate, never before seen ever since the old times; when the jujutsu world reigned supreme.

As such, even grade 4 sorcerers were greatly welcomed. But the absence of stronger sorcerers, or better yet, the presence of stronger curses increased the work load on the stronger sorcerers by a lot.

So much so that the entire batch of the Jujutsu High School, Gojo, Geto and Shoko were unable to rest for too long, completely unlike before when they would spend most of their time goofing around.

And today, they were going to another large city of Japan, Saitama. Where apparently, a grade 1 curse had been reported one day ago. The curse had been there for several days prior, yet for some reason, it was unable to be discovered by anyone. It only came into sight when several missing reports in the area were taken by the police.

"The curse this time is of a theorized grade 1. Though we haven't confirmed it, you two should not have any problem defeating the curse." The window that was driving them there said from the front seat. It was the same window that had went with Satoru to investigate the abnormal curse energy aggregate. What his name was had already been forgotten by Satoru.

Was it Hayato? Something like that…

Geto looked at the file he had been handed about the details of the mission.

"Why did it take so long for the report to go through to us?" He asked, with a side glance he looked at Gojo who was sleeping with his head hung back. His mouth was wide open as he snored a bit. His black glasses still covered his eyes as a bit of drool flowed down his chin.

It seemed like he was really enjoying the bit of sleep he was getting.

Sigh*

Suguru Geto sighed, annoyed by the behavior of his special grade friend. But what could he say? He had earned the right to be careless, same as him. They were the strongest and there was nothing that could challenge them.

"It relates to the local Yakuza gangs in that area. They had been using that warehouse for their own convenience. As a matter of fact, they own that property. It was the reason that the matter wasn't able to be conveyed to the police for so long and with the increased cursed energy density in the air, it was hard for a window to pick up the signature."

"How many casualties has there been?"

"Until now, there have been 23 confirmed missing reports in the area, all of which have been credited to the curse in the warehouse. So far, no dead bodies have been reported so there is no confirmation if they have been killed or not; but considering the amount of time they've been missing for, we might as well assume it as such." He replied.

"No." Geto suddenly said, cutting Hayato off. "Don't say such things." He simply stated.

He didn't say anything else, leaving the weight of his words in the air.

Seeing this, Hayato felt like crying.

Finally! He actually met a strong sorcerer that cares about the common populace!

But…

'While that is a good mindset to have… it might lead to some problems later on.' Hayato shook his head as he thought. He had seen a fair share of sorcerers have such a mindset in the beginning, yet in the end, they all end up ruined.

The jujutsu world was not a fairy land. It was just, yet at the same time extremely cruel. It was a place where morality mattered little.

To begin with, Geto was still inexperienced, and it was not confirmed what type of situations he might face in the future.

'I hope you become strong enough to support such a mindset.' He thought, knowing that he was thinking about a special grade sorcerer.

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