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Once all the curse users were done being silenced, Cupcake, Frosting, and Snow walked out of the shadow dome. Their fangs and claws were covered in blood, but the shikigami just sank back into the shadows to clean themselves.
Naoya undid the dome, and it revealed the pile of curse users lying lifelessly and covered in a small pool of blood with bite and claw marks on their bodies.
Naoya gave them one last glance before turning away and forming a hand sign.
[Rabbit Escape]
Maou and the demon army jumped out of the shadows, with Maou landing on Naoya's shoulder, saluting him.
"Maou, surround the perimeter. Check the area for any suspicious persons. Also, Senpai, Suguru and Shoko would be coming later. Do guide them to me."
Maou and the rabbit army gave a salute before the rabbits dispersed in the surroundings encircling the entire curtain dome.
Once the shikigami were spread out, Naoya looked around before going around to check the surroundings.
The hospital was huge with a lot of buildings and even a track for people to go on walks, though the entire property looked like it was still in the construction phase.
"Well, it will be a pain to look around. Still, better to look around without making a commotion," muttered Naoya and descended into his shadow.
-----
Back to Suguru and the others:
Currently, the other three students of Jujutsu High were riding on top of Suguru's flying cursed spirit and heading towards the location.
Naoya forgot to tell them where they needed to come, but seeing the giant curtain in the middle of the city, it wasn't hard for them to guess where they needed to go.
"Seriously, that idiot. Couldn't he give a heads up beforehand?" muttered Utahime.
"He told me earlier that he was just gonna check on a lead. Turns out it actually led him to the location. He didn't want to needlessly make everyone work up," said Suguru, defending Naoya's case.
Utahime thought for a while and then sighed. That did sound like Naoya. Though he liked to mess around, he made sure no one felt uncomfortable unless it was necessary.
'Haah, just because he is strong doesn't mean he should take everything on his own,' thought Utahime and massaged her forehead.
'Well, he should be safe and sound. Just don't bomb the entire site. We are in the middle of the city, and there might be hostages.' thought Utahime and prayed to the gods.
As she prayed, the three of them got closer and closer to the curtain barrier, ready to join Naoya in the mission.
-----
Back to the hospital:
It has been around 30 minutes since Naoya entered the first hospital building, and even after checking it for the entire time, he has neither spotted a curse-user nor a hostage.
Funnily enough, he was still not done with looking at every corner of the building. It was just that big.
'How the f*ck did they get this huge of an abandoned facility?' thought Naoya as he started to feel annoyed.
"And where the hell are they? It has been around half an hour. How much longer are they gonna take to reach here?" muttered Naoya and then glanced at the rabbit sitting on top of his shoulder.
"Any response from the demon army maou? Did they find anyone suspicious?" asked Naoya.
The rabbit shook his head, but suddenly stopped as his ears perked up.
Naoya's brows raised at that reaction.
"Got something?"
But the rabbit didn't respond. It started looking around frantically before turning towards Naoya and jumping off his shoulder.
More rabbits jumped out of Maou and started arranging themselves in a formation.
"You cannot sense the demon army?" said Naoya after reading what the rabbit formation.
The rabbits were trained in the art of forming words by arranging themselves in various formations and used that method to communicate with Naoya.
Naoya blinked in surprise and then walked towards the nearest window.
"But the rabbits are right there. You are telling me you can't sense them?"
Maou nodded.
Naoya looked through the window once again before he punched through it and broke it.
Once he did, the entire scenery in front of him changed and revealed a dark space.
"Great, a barrier," muttered Naoya.
He touched the barrier wall, and instead of being blocked, his hand seemed to phase through it.
"...A bit complex barrier. Maou, get in the shadows."
Maou nodded and jumped into the shadows along with the rest of the rabbits.
Once he was gone, Naoya jumped through the window and passed through the barrier wall.
Naoya appeared in a completely different part of the hospital, breaking through a window.
"A warp-type barrier. Troublesome."
Warp-type barriers were some of the few high-level barriers known to sorcerers. These types of barriers were troublesome because the space is surrounded by barriers that are made of nodes. These nodes connect to a different node of the barrier, making it almost impossible to leave. It's just like how Pac-Man can warp out of walls and appear on the other side of the map, but here you don't know from which point of the map you are gonna emerge.
"I can send out the rabbit horde to go through every entry point until one succeeds, but that will alert them, and they may harm the hostages. Destroying the barrier causes the same issues....Welp, time to use the big guns," said Naoya and took out the [Inverted Spear of Heaven]
He was not going to try every node possible until he succeeded. If he needs to break the barrier anyway, then better not make a huge commotion with it.
Naoya simply stabbed the barrier, and the entire space around him started cracking.
*SHATTER!!!*
The moment space returned to normal, Naoya saw a large number of cursed spirits flying around trying to destroy the rabbits.
The rabbits were fighting back as well, but the stronger cursed spirits were easily destroying them.
*BOOM!**BOOM!*
The rabbits kept exploding right in front of Naoya's eyes, and without wasting a second, he unsummoned the rabbits.
"What the hell happened in the time I was away? Did Suguru change sides?" said Naoya.
Naoya jumped out of the hospital building, and his entry was immediately noticed by the cursed spirits who were ready to charge at him.
"I can end them if I wanted but let's not weaken Suguru if it is just a misunderstanding."
[Solid Shadow]
[Will of Shadows: Rabbit Escape - Horde Glow]
The amulet around Naoya's neck morphed into a glow around his hands. The shadows then gathered around his arms and extended into giant shadowy arms.
The glow around him extended to the shadowy arms as well, and a second later, countless shadow arms came into existence.
[Horde Glow] had a simple feature: any technique or weapon that is covered in the glow gets multiplied and is under the user's control. In the base form, it made copies of Naoya's arms, each of which contained Naoya's strength, which was not weak by any chance, but with a technique active, increasing the technique output gets quite easy. It also worked on weapons, so if hypothetically, Naoya were to hold a special grade cursed tool or, if at all necessary, a giant shadow meteor in hand, he could use every copy to strike his foes. The only exception to this was the [Inverted Spear of Heaven]. It simply negated the effect of the glow.
The shadowy arms lauched forward and grabbed the cursed spirits that were coming towards him.
The spirits were pulled together at a point, and once all the spirits in sight were gathered together, a shadowy dome emerged out of the ground and trapped every cursed spirit without killing them.
Once they were trapped, Naoya deactivated the [Horde Glow] and took out his phone to contact his friends.
After a few rings, the phone picked up.
"Hello, senpai."
"Ara ara~ calling me senpai? I am way older than you for you to call me that."
Instead of Utahime, a completely different voice came....it was kinda erotic voice too.
"...who am I speaking to? Where is senpai?"
"You came all this way for me, and yet you are asking, ' Who am I?'. I expected Naoya Zenin to be smarter."
"Kureha Toujo?"
"Bingo. Great job coming out of the barrier. Honestly, save quite a few of the subjects here. Thank you for that. I thought they would die keeping you trapped."
"...Do all higher-ups at the HQ talk like movie villains?"
"Hey, don't compare me to those imbeciles. It is an insult to me. Anyway, mind getting off my way. I have quite a few hostages with me, even your frie-"
"Hey, mind looking to your left?" asked Naoya.
Kureha paused and looked to her left with slight fear. Only to sigh in relief once she spotted that Naoya was not there.
"Oh, sorry, I meant my left, that would be your right."
Kureha did as she was told and this time spotted something.
A singular rabbit looking straight at her, and the moment their gazes met, the rabbit gave her the middle finger.
*BANG!*
A single bullet pierced through her head, killing her in an instant.
At some distance, Zankyo, with Maou resting on his shoulder, stood with a sniper rifle in hand. Once Maou gave the thumbs up for the success, Zankyo high-fived the rabbit leader.
"You dead yet?" asked Naoya.
"..."
No response came.
"Hello? Anyone there? Senpai?"
"...I am here...." muttered Utahime weakly.
"Wait there. I am coming."
Naoya ran straight towards their location.
Naoya had indeed unsummoned his rabbits earlier, but there were still others present.
A couple of rabbits were given to Utahime and Shoko for their safety too, and from them one of them hid themselves from the fight and gave away their location to Maou, who inturn help Zankyo take the shot.
Naoya unsummoned Maou and Zankyo and then resummoned Maou to lead him to others.
Once he arrived there, the entire scene was in a mess.
Utahime was heavily injured, Shoko was busy healing herself, and what looked like little kids who were hitting her back and screaming in terror. Suguru was in panic, looking around frantically. He had some cursed spirits around him as well that were fighting against the curse users....those who were alive at least. Many of the curse users were lying lifelessly, and even many kids and what looked like civilians were dead too.
Naoya analysed the scene quickly and summoned his shikigami to deal with it.
Without hesitation, he stabbed Geto with [Inverted Spear of Heaven]
"Snap out of it!"
The moment the spear made contact, the panicking Suguru seemed to calm down a bit and wince in pain.
"Wh- What the he- Who? Naoya?"
"You back to normal?" asked Naoya.
Geto looked at Naoya, wondering what he meant, but suddenly a migraine came to him.
His head was in a mess, and it hurt like hell.
"First of all, stop using your technique. I will deal with it," said Naoya and summoned [Round Deer] to help calm down Suguru and heal Utahime.
Once Geto calmed down a bit, he pulled back his curses, and the chaos around them seemed to calm down.
Naoya looked at Utahime, who looked quite battered, and pulled her closer to Senzu, letting her rest for a bit.
Finally, he moved towards Shoko and pulled the kids and civilians who were trying to hurt her off her.
"Another one of them!"
"We will not forgive you!!!"
The people glared at Naoya and were ready to attack him, but a moment later, their enthusiasm simmered down.
"Stay back if you know what's good for you," said Naoya in a cold tone, and behind him, a giant dragon, a giant snake, and a tigress appeared, and they too glared at the people threatening them to stay back.
Once they seemed to understand the situation, Naoya stopped glaring and gave a firm clap.
"We are here to save you. So please calm down. It will make it easier for both of us. So please cooperate," said Naoya in a calm tone and gave a polite bow.
The kids and the civilians dumbly nodded, making Naoya nod back, though his gaze was present on the group for a while.
'...Some of them can use cursed energy?' thought Naoya, feeling the controlled CE release from a few of them.
-----
Once the situation was somewhat calmed down, Naoya called the people from HQ to help the civilians.
He also pulled the other students to the side to get to know what happened during his absence, and honsetly the things spiralled out a bit too much.
Firstly, Naoya was trapped in a slightly time-dilated barrier, so in actuality, he was gone for two hours.
In that time, Utahime and the other two arrived at the location and saw the dead bodies on the ground and the rabbits all around them.
They were about to follow the rabbit's advice and enter the same building as Naoya, but a few more curse users came to check on their comrades and instead spotted the dead bodies and three sorcerers around them.
Connecting the dots, they came to the conclusion that the three of them were responsible and attacked them, only to be destroyed in seconds by Geto.
After following the path from where these curse users came, they arrived at their current location.
In the basement of the farthest building in the compound, Kureha Toujo was doing something with one of the children.
The moment Geto noticed that he launched an attack on her, only for one of the other children who were sitting around to jump into the attack's way and die on the spot.
This made Geto and the other two stop trying to attack Kureha. Geto was also quite shaken by killing a literal child.
Kureha glanced at them and, after taking a look at them, looked away dismissively.
Being part of the HQ, she was well aware of who each of them was and what their techniques were.
She continued doing what she was doing, and a second later, the child that was strapped to the chair started screaming.
Seeing it scream, Geto and the others came back in action, and Geto attacked again, this time with an even stronger cursed spirit, but this time, too many children that were lying around them jumped in, getting killed in the process.
Seeing that long-range attacks were killing the civilians, they decided to go in close quarters.
But it was what Kureha was aiming for. She was quite a capable sorcerer herself, and thanks to that, she was able to hold a position at the HQ.
The moment they got close to her, their bodies seemed not to follow their instructions, and instead, the Geto and Utahime struck each other.
After the initial strike, the two fell, and Kureha came closer to them and placed a hand on their head.
Shoko, who was away from them, looked at the scene cautiously, and while Kureha was busy, sent one of her rabbits, given by Naoya, away.
Once Kureha kept a hand on them, she started explaining her technique to get the boost from the Binding Vow.
Her technique was called [Thought Circuit]. It let her make her target's brain make their targets do what she wanted. It had some limits, like not being able to use it on people who are out of her range, and even those who were in range could snap free depending on how strong their brains were.
Though that was different for those who were directly in contact with her. For them, the effect was stronger, and breaking free was also quite difficult.
She first used it to make Utahime give a boost to her, and then used the boosted output to put Geto in a panic situation that made him use his cursed spirits to attack everyone around him randomly.
It killed quite some people around them and even injured Kureha and Utahime, but after a while, most of the cursed spirits ran out, maybe done by Kureha too.
Once things were under control and she saw that many of her 'subjects' were dying, she ordered Shoko to heal those who could be healed.
At first, Shoko refused, but once more, curse users arrived. She had no choice but to comply.
After that, Naoya's call came, and rest followed.
Naoya looked at all of them and was honestly quite speechless.... firstly, he was trapped in a super complex barrier, then his friends were defeated, quite easily if he might add, and then one of them was used to boost the enemy and restrain the other strongest guy....all of this felt quite coincidental to him. Things fell way too easily into the hands of the enemy.
Granted that seeing the kids die shook the sorcerers a bit, but even then neutralising him and Suguru for a while.....he cannot imagine the enemy being able to do that, even if they somewhat knew how their techniques worked.
'...To specifically target senpai first before going after Suguru....it's as if they were already planning to do so,' thought Naoya.
He looked at the dead body of Kureha and narrowed his eyes.
Something didn't feel right to him.
"...Did you guys know what she was using the hostages for? Did she reveal anything?"
All of them shook their heads, making Naoya frown even more.
'Is the HQ involved? Or is someone from the HQ involved? What was she after.....or what were 'they' after?' thought Naoya.
There were too many questions swirling around his mind.
-----
Tokyo:
In a house in the middle of the city, a lady with a scar around her forehead was smiling.
In her hand was an eyeball covered in various cursed markings.
Just a few moments ago, an influx of cursed energy came inside her house and merged with the eyeball.
"Hope you are done with your job, Kureha." said the lady with a smile, thinking of the future and how it was going to unfold.