Chapter 189: Sendai Great Battle (Patreon)

"…"

Yorozu stayed sprawled flat on the deck, so furious that her whole body swelled and ached with it.

Why did she keep getting the cold shoulder?

She'd raced all the way from Sendai, which was exhausting enough. And when she'd thrown herself into his arms, this brat had dodged her like she was a plague god.

Dodging was one thing. But he'd actually had the nerve to look perfectly natural and ask her to tell him a story.

A surge of foul temper ricocheted around her chest. If anyone else had dared slight her like this, Yorozu would have turned them into a sieve with liquid metal long ago.

But the one standing across from her was Uchiha Ayato. She couldn't beat him, and if they really fell out, she couldn't bear it anyway.

If she scrambled to her feet now with her tail between her legs, it would only make that earlier fall look both stupid and pathetic.

Yorozu's eyes flicked, and she gave up on standing altogether. Her full hips twisted nimbly against the planks and she rolled over, her long legs stretching out casually.

Yes. She simply lay down flat on the deck, bold as brass.

The afternoon sun slanted across the yacht's deck. The sun-warmed teak gave off a gentle heat, and it soaked into her back so snugly that it made her bones go soft.

Yorozu tilted her fair, striking face up and narrowed her eyes contentedly against the sunlight. A lazy hum slipped from between her slightly parted red lips.

Her seawater-soaked clothes clung tightly to her full, high bust, tracing a breathtaking curve.

The sticky, clinging feeling made her tug at her collar. An urge rose in her to strip off every last bothersome stitch.

She was used to going about bare, whether walking, sitting, or lying down. Since taking on flesh, having to wear fabric every single day felt suffocating.

But when her gaze brushed past Uchiha Ayato out of the corner of her eye, she held back from undressing on the spot after all.

If she really stripped here, this guy would only look down on it as shameless flaunting.

…

Seriously, was something wrong with this guy?

He didn't like big ones, and yet he liked small ones.

What a twisted taste for the childlike.

Yorozu loosened her collar with an easy air and rolled onto her side, propping her head up with one hand. Her thighs bent and crossed slightly, fully displaying the round, lifted curve of her hips in the sunlight.

Once she'd arranged herself into a thoroughly alluring pose, she slowly lifted her eyelids and fixed a burning gaze on Uchiha Ayato, a few steps away.

One hand rested on the outside of her thigh, her fingertips tapping the fabric now and then as she haggled.

"Listen, you little brat, you're way too good at freeloading, aren't you?"

"Even if you go listen to someone tell rakugo at a yose hall in Asakusa, you have to pay for a ticket before you walk in, at the very least."

A mix of reproach and calculation showed in Yorozu's eyes as she went on.

"I was so tired a moment ago I could hardly stand, and you wouldn't even lend me a hand. You dodged faster than anyone…"

"And now you won't give me even a little sweetener, yet you still want to hear my story for nothing, like you're trying to get something for nothing?"

Togawa Sakiko: …

Ribbit. What a thick-skinned woman!

She hooked her arm through Uchiha Ayato's, wanting to see how he'd handle this woman who refused to get up off the floor.

The boy wasn't buying it at all.

Uchiha Ayato let Togawa Sakiko cling to his arm. He lowered his gaze to Yorozu, who was waiting for him to come over and coax her or give her some sweetener, and his smile was perfectly composed.

"Oh~"

"So I have to pay a ticket fee to hear you tell a story?"

"In that case, you can choose not to tell it. I won't force you."

"Since you've already mentioned that you worked with Okkotsu, I can just go ask Senior Okkotsu directly later. It's all the same."

Yorozu: "?"

Yorozu's eyes went wide. She stared at the boy across from her in disbelief, and the breath she'd only just settled jammed in her throat again.

How could there be a man this impervious in all the world?

That ticket money wasn't that ticket money.

Who was trying to get money out of you?

Was haggling with you really about that?

Couldn't you go along with me just a little and give in a bit?

Even if he'd just walked over and pulled her up halfheartedly, or followed her lead and offered her a way down, she would have spilled everything that happened inside the Sendai Barrier right then.

But no. He'd tossed out a light "I'll go ask Okkotsu" and shut the conversation down completely, leaving no room to bargain.

Yorozu's gaze was full of bitter resentment, nearly burning two holes into Uchiha Ayato's handsome face.

On the other side, Togawa Sakiko lifted her chin slightly, her eyes full of a victor's composure.

Looking at the two of them standing side by side, Yorozu felt thoroughly aggrieved.

If she really sulked and kept her mouth shut, Uchiha Ayato would absolutely follow through. Once ashore, he'd go straight to that brat Yuta Okkotsu to find out what happened.

Then all her hard work in Sendai, the fighting, the scraping together of points, the rewriting of rules, would be reduced to a few cold sentences from someone else's mouth.

More importantly, without a reason to tell the story, what excuse would she have left to keep pestering Uchiha Ayato to talk?

Yorozu was torn, her fingers unconsciously twirling a lock of hair around twice.

She absolutely could not hand over her chance to shine to an outsider!

She took a deep breath, her mind spun through a few turns, and she began forcibly digging through that conversation for a reason that would let her back down gracefully.

Wait a second…

Come to think of it, didn't this time count as Uchiha Ayato actually taking the initiative to show concern for her?

With that brat's lazy temperament, if he were indifferent to her, he never would have bothered asking that question.

Since he'd brought up Sendai on his own, and deliberately dropped Yuta Okkotsu's name to goad her into talking, he clearly wanted to hear her tell it herself, how she'd performed inside the Barrier.

It was just that, with that little girl present, he was too embarrassed to show his concern so openly—

Right. Since he wants to know about me, it means he still cares about me in his heart!

In other words, the spirit of Ah Q had won.

Once that flawlessly self-consistent logic took shape in her mind, the stifled anger in Yorozu's chest vanished at once, and her brows lifted with renewed radiance.

As a mature, magnanimous woman, she ought to give Uchiha Ayato a graceful way out, naturally and considerately.

Yorozu let out a long, feigned sigh of resignation and pushed herself upright from the deck with her core.

She sat cross-legged where she was and tucked the long hair scattered across her chest behind her ears.

Then she raised her face and cast Uchiha Ayato a look full of generosity and smugness, patted the deck beside her, and said:

"Fine, fine. Who told me to be so soft-hearted?"

"Honestly, what am I going to do with you? Sit down, Big Sister Yorozu is about to tell you a story."

…………………………

Earlier that day.

The Sendai Barrier.

Yorozu, tightly encased in a layer of black, savage biological exoskeleton, was charging at full speed down a ruined asphalt street.

The translucent thin wings on her back vibrated at high frequency, and every time her foot slammed into the ground, it stomped another pit into the already cracked concrete.

Hundreds of meters away, dazzling blue-white flashes of cursed energy lit up one after another atop a commercial skyscraper.

Thick beams of energy tore through the air, grinding the abandoned cars and lamp posts along their path into scrap iron.

Using the fierce mobility her insect armor gave her, Yorozu bounded through the gaps in the barrage, ready to charge up that tower in one go and drag out the sniper. Then her shikigami, Kogane, suddenly announced a newly added general rule:

[General Rule 10: Players may transfer any score to other players.]

The insect armor in full sprint slammed through a half-broken low wall in its path. Yorozu's entire face turned dark beneath the carapace mask.

Listening to Kogane's cheerful announcement, she felt a surge of foul temper shoot straight to the crown of her head.

What blind idiot had added a rule at a time like this?

Whoever it was had terrible timing.

Not earlier, not later, but right after she'd just made a Binding Vow with that Okkotsu kid and turned around to charge the enemy.

The more Yorozu thought about it, the more she felt she'd been cheated.

She already held ninety points, just one step short of the hundred needed to add a rule.

If this transfer rule had appeared even a few minutes sooner, why would she have needed to discuss any cooperation with Yuta Okkotsu?

Back then, Takako Uro had already been losing to her. All she'd have had to do was put a blade to that bitch's throat and make her transfer ten points to buy her life, and that would have been that.

Uro was holding seventy points. To save her skin, she wouldn't have so much as blinked at handing over a paltry ten.

Even if the rule had come out an hour later, that would have been fine!

By then, she'd have killed Ryu Ishigori and Takako Uro on her own, gathered the hundred points herself, rewritten the rules, and walked away.

Even if she'd learned afterward that points could have been transferred, she'd have just laughed it off, thinking she'd taken a slightly roundabout route, and wouldn't have been this furious.

But the broadcast had landed in the worst possible gap.

It was like pressing her thumbprint on a contract to sell herself into hard labor, only to look up and find that the employer had originally planned to just pay her.

If she'd only hesitated a moment longer, she wouldn't have needed all this trouble…

That regret threw her state of mind off balance.

Still, however annoyed she was, a Binding Vow between Jujutsu Sorcerers was no joke.

Since the agreement had taken effect, she'd have to grit her teeth and see the job through.

Another frosty blue shockwave slammed down head-on, plowing a smoking, scorched trench into the ground.

Yorozu neither dodged nor evaded, driving straight through the raging flood of cursed energy.

With the last stretch of distance, she turned her head and shouted down the street behind her.

"Hey, brat!"

"Even though we can transfer points directly now, don't you dare get silly or go soft on your end!"

"Kurourushi is a man-eating cursed spirit, and Dhruv Lakdawalla is a lunatic who slaughters indiscriminately. Both deserve to die, so killing them is the easiest way to get points!"

In the dust at the other end of the street, Yuta Okkotsu stopped and nodded toward Yorozu.

"I understand. Thanks for the warning!"

Since Yorozu was in a hurry to end this quickly, there was no need to hold back or play around.

Yuta Okkotsu took out the silver ring he kept close to his body and slid it crisply onto the ring finger of his left hand.

The instant the cold band slid onto his finger, a vast, ominous surge of cursed energy erupted from behind the boy, and the air temperature plunged.

That ring was the medium through which Yuta Okkotsu connected with "Rika," the external reserve of Cursed Technique and cursed energy left behind when Rika Orimoto ascended.

Once the connection was complete, for the next five minutes, the shikigami "Rika," who could normally only show partial limbs to assist in battle, would enter a fully manifested state.

In this state, she not only supplied Okkotsu with a bottomless well of cursed energy, but also let him freely use every technique Rika had absorbed and stored.

"Come, Rika, everything!"

With Yuta Okkotsu's low shout, a massive black shadow fully solidified in midair.

"Yu—ta—!!!"

The fully manifested one-eyed Rika let out a roar, and together with Yuta Okkotsu she turned into two streaks of light, hurtling toward the stadium where Dhruv Lakdawalla was holed up.

Meanwhile, on the exterior wall of the commercial tower behind them, Yorozu ran straight up the vertical glass curtain wall, full of blazing fury, and flipped up onto the rooftop.

The concrete parapet at the edge of the roof had long since been shattered by the earlier bombardment. Ryu Ishigori, with his outrageous pompadour, stood in the howling wind, wisps of white smoke still drifting from the cannon-barrel tuft of hair on his forehead.

Seeing that agile figure encased in black insect armor fight her way through his barrage and reach him, Ryu Ishigori showed no panic at all. Instead, his eyes lit up.

He looked the scorching Yorozu up and down and grinned.

"Oh? You charged straight up through my fire?"

"Looks like you're really hot and sweet~"

"Woman, are you going to be my dessert?"

Hearing this baffling remark, Yorozu's brow furrowed tightly beneath her mask.

Hot?

Sweet?

Was this guy hitting on her, damn it?

She couldn't be bothered to waste words on him. The floor tiles beneath her feet exploded, and with a piercing screech of tearing air she closed on Ryu Ishigori in an instant.

She raised her right fist and drove it squarely into his open chest.

"What kind of filth are you?"

"Don't pin that disgusting talk on me!"

A deafening boom burst over the rooftop. A white shockwave swept outward from the point of impact, even tearing the sheet metal of a nearby ventilation duct away.

Ryu Ishigori didn't even have time to fully raise his arms to block. That punch, which seemed to carry the force of ten thousand tons, slammed straight into his chest.

His eyes bulged, and a mouthful of blood mixed with shredded organs sprayed from his mouth. His thick pectoral muscles and the breastbone beneath were crushed inward, and his hulking body flew backward more than ten meters.

Flying backward, Ishigori smashed through two water tanks on the roof, his feet gouging two long scorched trails across the slick surface, and only managed to steady himself when his back hit the railing at the roof's edge.

He looked down at the clearly sunken fist mark, and a look of disbelief crossed his face.

Then the grin on his mouth widened further and further, and his blood and his vast cursed energy visibly surged and boiled with excitement.

Standing where she was, Yorozu shook out her hand and remarked, a little surprised:

"Tch. You're a tough one, brat."

"Haha… cough, cough, what a heavy fist!"

"One punch and even my bones are burning hot!"

Ryu Ishigori wiped the blood from his chin with a hand and took a step forward.

His chest still throbbed with pain, but he acted like a preacher who had finally found a kindred spirit, lecturing Yorozu with fanatical eyes.

"Woman, do you know…"

"In my past life, I lived decently enough. I ate good food and met good women, but until I died I felt only eight parts full, never truly satisfied!"

"That half-empty emptiness is because in this life I'm still missing one dessert that could sate me until I'm sick of it!"

Listening to the pompadour spray spit while preaching his philosophy of being eight parts full and dessert, Yorozu felt herself getting more and more heated.

Her mind was full of nothing but gathering a hundred points quickly, adding her rule, and leaving Sendai to see Uchiha Ayato. Where did she have time to give therapy to a starving ghost?

Yorozu picked at her ear impatiently and cut off his long speech.

"Enough, enough. I'm in a hurry and don't have time to listen to your nonsense philosophy."

"You've heard the general rule about transferring points between players, right?"

"If you know what's good for you, transfer your points to me right now and save me the trouble of beating you to death."

Faced with Yorozu's threat, Ryu Ishigori burst into wild laughter.

Vast cursed energy gathered above his head, and a heart-stopping white light accumulated at the tip of his pompadour. Even the chunks of concrete beneath his feet trembled, suspended by the pressure of his cursed energy.

His scorching gaze locked onto Yorozu as he declared loudly:

"You want my points? That's easy!"

"As long as you can satisfy me first, forget points, I'll serve you my very life as a side dish!"