The world blurred, and once again, Sōjun Minamoto lost all five senses. It felt like he was back at the very beginning, the moment he first arrived in this world.
Back then, he was just a forming embryo, comfortably suspended in amniotic fluid.
Now, he was inside a giant egg, submerged in a thick, murky black liquid. An emotional tether served as the umbilical cord, continuously feeding him nutrients.
Those nutrients were curses.
There was no ground beneath him, no sky above—just an overwhelming sense of boundless emptiness. He drifted aimlessly, suspended in nothingness.
As time passed, the feeling of disorientation deepened, to the point where he began to confuse one thing—was he still human, or had he become a curse?
Boom... boom... boom...
A knocking sound echoed, abruptly waking him. His senses snapped back into place.
A crushing pressure surged around him, and he instinctively tried to curl up—only to realize his body was already curled to its limit.
Gasping for air, his breathing became strained.
"...Come... out..."
What?
He pressed what could be called his "ear" against the barrier.
...
The voice vanished.
It felt like time stretched on endlessly—or perhaps it had only been a brief moment.
"It should be coming out soon, right?" The doubtful voice came again, clearing all the confusion in his mind.
He began to absorb more quickly, draining the black liquid around him. Four "umbilical cords" shot out from the invisible boundary and wrapped around him like chains, channeling a surge of cursed energy into him.
The space grew tighter and more suffocating.
He punched through the barrier, tearing it open. Stepping out, he found himself on the familiar nine-tiered platform. Scattered around his feet were pale gray fragments of shell, which stirred in the light breeze as he moved.
He looked up and saw another version of himself standing across from him. Something felt off, and that version's expression mirrored the strangeness.
He was already a fully developed Special Grade Curse.
Through the reflection of the other, he observed his cursed form.
Humanoid in structure, his face was smooth and featureless like a mirror, filled with glimmering star-like points. The brightest one sat roughly where the left eye should be, while a colder light gleamed in the right.
A black hole pierced through his left chest, stretching front to back. Nine star rings were embedded within it, rotating at varying speeds in both directions. The rotation was so subtle it couldn't be seen with the naked eye when looking at the whole.
His muscles bulged with power, thorn-like patterns tracing along them. His hands were sharply defined, wrists adorned with pure gold rings. His long, straight legs ended in talon-like feet that hovered just inches above the ground, never touching it.
Across his body, broken swords of varying lengths jutted out. One especially gruesome detail was the half blade lodged through his temple, embedded deep in what would be his brain.
Of course, things like temples, brains, and hearts didn't actually exist for him anymore...
He was a curse now.
During his formation, drawing on his knowledge of the human body, he had intentionally hidden his weaknesses deep within.
If someone mistook that black hole in his chest as a weakness and paid dearly to exploit it... they'd die horribly.
Well, well... Sōjun Minamoto clapped with a satisfied grin. The more he looked, the more pleased he felt.
So this was the true form of his curse?
Not bad at all—at least, it looked formidable.
Now, it was time to test what this cursed body could do.
His existing techniques were still intact. He could sense the presence of the Unlimited Cursed Technique.
Sōjun Minamoto transformed into Riko Amanai with ease, far more effortlessly than before.
Then into Satoru Gojo. Then Masamichi Yaga. Then, his lower half reverted to his human body, while the upper half became Shiko Mishima—with no hesitation or delay.
His body shifted freely, far more convenient than any physical form of flesh and blood.
More importantly...
His right hand twisted and warped until it became a chain, shooting straight toward the dome above, extending without end—an infinite reach.
Indeed, there was no limit. If Toji Fushiguro were present, he would've recognized it immediately: the Chain of a Thousand Miles. As long as the head of the chain remained unseen, it could stretch endlessly.
...This kind of transformation even encompassed Special Grade Cursed Tools.
Sōjun Minamoto reverted to his true cursed spirit form and hovered midair. Slowly, he rose past the ceiling into the starry dome above.
He had gained the ability to fly—a sky-type curse. No... more than that.
He was a curse of the stars.
The Jujutsu world had never seen a category like his.
So, he would be the first to define it.
His true form had no wings. The body, light and seemingly unbound, could fly—though the lightness was only relative.
To outsiders, he felt incredibly heavy, dense with substance. It was inevitable. His body held two fragments of the starry sky, and even though they were incomplete, their weight was undeniable.
Sōjun Minamoto flexed his hands twice, feeling the surge of power coursing through him.
He summoned Mahoraga and confronted it head-on. Ripples shimmered across the starry sky embedded in his face. Several soft beams of starlight shot out, striking before Mahoraga had time to react—dissolving a large portion of its body on contact.
He waited for Mahoraga to regenerate and adapt, then unleashed a Black Flash. The attack was caught in Mahoraga's palm.
So even this cursed body could trigger Black Flash.
Thoughtful, Sōjun Minamoto activated a black vortex with a shift of his will. He stepped into it, reappearing behind Mahoraga.
He summoned another vortex, deeper this time. As he stepped through, he disappeared—then emerged inside the dormitory, only to return soon after to the Shrine Domain.
He found that anything involving cursed energy was much easier in this cursed body than in his previous flesh-and-blood one.
Where he once feared spatial movement within a Domain, now it posed no danger.
But there were drawbacks...
He shifted slightly, dodging a descending Sword of Extermination.
Positive cursed energy was like poison to him now. A direct hit would lead to total disintegration.
That was something even the power of adaptation couldn't change. Positive and negative energies naturally merged, but no amount of adaptation could turn them into layered forces. It was a fundamental law of the world.
Unless the very essence of positive and negative cursed energy was changed—like the yin-yang fusion Sōjun Minamoto had theorized—this contradiction would remain. But that level of control was still far out of reach for him.
That said, simply restructuring his cursed body from purely negative to purely positive energy was possible.
He didn't need to rely on the Reverse Cursed Technique either. As long as a cursed spirit had a deep enough understanding of curses, it could use cursed energy directly for healing.
Even if his cursed energy was depleted, a single lingering trace would be enough for him to regenerate. That was the eerie quality of his cursed body.
Overall, the experiment had gone remarkably well. Sōjun Minamoto was thoroughly satisfied.
Flesh and cursed bodies each had their advantages, making them more effective in different situations. The combination gave him greater versatility.
And finally, he understood what had felt off at the beginning—
His cursed body was only 1.4 meters tall.
A premature birth.
That was the cost of accelerating his plans. Had he waited, he could have emerged in a perfected form. But with the early arrival, he had chosen to compromise on size rather than quality.
It didn't matter.
What could suit the Seven Deadly Sins better than a cursed form built to stir emotion? From the moment of his birth, he had already carried four emotional links.
There would be no shortage of curses in the future.
And he'd still grow.
He lifted his gaze toward the other version of himself. Human and spirit—two halves of one whole. They nodded at each other, already aware of their roles to come.
The result was flawless. That was enough.
He crossed space to appear at the Church of Stars, no longer lingering in the Domain—and so, naturally, he wasn't targeted.
The balance mechanism was laughable.
The sorcerer side was already stretched thin, but the cursed side? It was in the middle of a massive surge.
Frankly speaking, Sōjun was ready to feast from both ends—playing both sides to the fullest.
...
(40 Chapters Ahead)
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