JJK: Chapter 63

Title: Artificial Sorcerer

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“Shin-kun, the information I’m about to share is classified and known only to a select few within the higher echelons of the jujutsu world. Please refrain from sharing it with others, as doing so could lead to unnecessary trouble.”

Walking ahead, Kazuya Suzuki explained calmly to Shin Shuichi. Shin, recalling the few cryptic words on the burnt paper he had seen earlier, let out a faint, ambiguous smile. “That makes sense. After all, the so-called ‘artificial sorcerer’ is an unprecedented concept.”

For the first time, Kazuya Suzuki showed a gentle smile. “It’s not as powerful as you might imagine. There are numerous side effects, for instance. One of our former allies lost control during the process, completely losing their sense of self and turning into a monster driven purely by the instinct to kill.”

Despite being older and holding a senior position, Kazuya consistently addressed Shin with respect, without a trace of awkwardness.

Don’t let his casual tone fool you—when Shin first heard about this, he had been utterly shocked. By combining cursed tools or objects with individuals possessing incomplete jujutsu potential, it was possible to create artificial sorcerers who could transform the abilities of the cursed tools into their own techniques!

The concept was entirely unheard of. Even though the specifics were likely left unsaid—limitations, side effects, and the difficulty of the process must be considerable—it still raised countless questions. Otherwise, wouldn’t every cursed tool or object become a potential sorcerer generator?

Shin wondered why such information was being revealed now, especially to him—a member of Gojo Satoru’s faction, which often opposed these clans. Claims of being unable to handle the target felt like an excuse. Shin doubted that those who had mastered such advanced technology hadn’t already created artificial sorcerers to serve their purposes.

Was this a display of power? No, that would be too foolish. True strength could not be achieved through mere tricks. Was it an attempt to curry favor? Perhaps, after their failed attempt to harm Itadori and his team, they now sought to appease Gojo’s faction. But would the old guard really resort to such diplomacy?

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Kazuya pointed to the strange phenomenon ahead. “That’s the barrier we set up to contain the out-of-control individual. Everyone inside the area has been evacuated. Once the barrier is opened, its effects will quickly fade. The mission target is beyond salvation. Please exorcise them on the spot.”

The scene before them was extraordinary. From a distance, the area looked normal—trees, houses, and sky appeared undisturbed. But upon closer inspection, a distinct boundary became apparent. It was as if two landscapes had been crudely stitched together, the seam glaringly obvious to anyone paying attention.

As they neared the barrier, Kazuya began to brief Shin on the target. “The berserk individual is using a cursed object associated with the legendary Tengu. Known abilities include exceptional close combat skills and rapid learning. Its combat intuition and adaptive progression are terrifying—it can observe, imitate, and surpass human techniques with ease.”

“Even Naoya Zen’in fought it once. While his technique fared decently in the first encounter, by the second round, the target had already analyzed and countered his abilities, defeating him effortlessly. None of our deployed sorcerers have been able to survive close combat with it for more than ten exchanges.”

Shin quickly grasped the situation: a foe against whom close-range combat was suicidal, with battle instincts capable of identifying and exploiting the weaknesses of its opponent’s techniques. It was practically a perfect killing machine for melee encounters.

The solution, however, was simple—overwhelming it with raw power. For instance, if Gojo were here, a single Hollow Purple would obliterate it regardless of its techniques. Alternatively, techniques impervious to analysis or counters would also suffice. Shin now understood why they had come to him.

“Finally, there’s the matter of its wind manipulation. Whether it’s a technique or a property of its cursed energy, the target can control wind mixed with its cursed energy to deal significant damage. That, however, shouldn’t pose any issue for you.”

After Kazuya Suzuki finished speaking, he took out a talisman. As it approached the barrier, the talisman spontaneously ignited, and soon the scenery began to ripple. At the spot where the talisman fell, a human-sized hole appeared.

As they ventured deeper into the village, the destruction surrounding them caught Shin Shuichi’s attention. The mud-brick houses, already fragile to begin with, had been utterly demolished. Scattered debris suggested something had torn through them with brute force, disassembling them entirely.

'Small in size, but its cursed energy or technique has a wide attack range with strong cutting power. Just as he said. It also seems the target has a durable body—and it can fly.'

After analyzing the damage, Shin deduced this much. He could vividly picture the mission target darting through the houses, wind swirling around it and effortlessly shredding the brick and tiles into fragments.

Following the chaotic traces of cursed energy, Shin arrived near the coastline, where an open field revealed a still figure. It stood over two meters tall, with enormous black wings folded behind its back. In its right hand, it held a katana, while its drooping left hand gripped a black feathered fan.

Sensing Shin’s unrestrained approach, the creature turned around, its wings suddenly spreading wide. A violent gust erupted, scattering grass and sand. A sharp blade of wind slashed directly toward Shin’s face.

But the towering figure was sent flying backward even faster than it had attacked, slamming into the ground and creating a large crater. Dirt and sand rained down from the impact.

“It does look quite like the mythical tengu,” Shin mused, observing the disheveled figure on the ground. Its face had been twisted and mangled, a grotesque mix of bone growths and flesh. Beneath its messy hair, its warped features included a nose that jutted out unnaturally long. Its blood-red eyes burned with a singular desire for slaughter.

The fan in its left hand wasn’t being gripped with fingers—it was fused into its hand, embedded into its palm bones. Whether the fan had stabbed into the hand or had become one with its skeleton was unclear.

The creature gave off a dual aura of curses and humanity, reminiscent of people modified by Mahito or the half-cursed, half-human state of Yuji Itadori when Sukuna took over his body.

This suggested that ordinary people might also be able to see it. Confirming Shin’s suspicion, it was indeed a human-turned-monstrosity.

Despite this, Shin did not immediately kill the target. Although the payment for this mission was the fan in the creature’s hand—the cursed object fused with it—the creature itself, though an unstable failure, was still a successful prototype. Killing it outright seemed wasteful.

“For now, I'll just call it Tengu,” Shin decided. His earlier probing strike hadn’t seriously injured the creature, which soon leapt back to its feet. With a light flap of its massive wings, it hovered in the air.

Logically, a creature of its size should generate significant wind to stay aloft, and its wings should have to flap much faster. Upon closer inspection, Shin noticed something unusual.

The wind currents surrounding the Tengu appeared infused with some unknown cursed energy, and it was these eerie currents that were keeping it airborne. The Tengu raised its katana once more, the winds swirling violently around it, intensifying into a deafening roar.

“Can you still understand speech?”

Shin’s question was more of an idle probe. He didn’t expect an answer, but he wanted to test whether the creature retained any trace of human consciousness or had developed a curse’s instincts.

Judging by its lack of reaction, Shin confirmed that while the Tengu was powerful, its intelligence was low. It seemed to rely solely on its combat instincts.

“Let’s see what happens if we cut that fan off. What would it become without this cursed object?”

The Tengu’s form was nearly obscured by the chaotic winds surrounding it. What surged toward Shin Shuichi was no ordinary gale—it was a cyclone of blade-like winds, a veritable “meat grinder.”

Drawing his bow, Shin formed the bowstring and arrow through sheer cursed energy, forgoing any techniques and relying solely on raw power to enhance its strength.

The arrow, roaring like a rampaging dragon, collided with the Tengu’s offensive storm. The winds, disrupted by the clash, briefly revealed what lay within. The arrow Shin had fired had been severed cleanly in two by the katana in the Tengu’s hand.

At the same time, the creature’s left hand was already raised, its feathered fan poised for a strike. When the fan swung down, it unleashed a spiraling surge of cursed energy, summoning a fearsome tornado.

The wind column tore into the ground, carving away the surface layer and leaving a noticeable depression. However, Shin’s figure was nowhere to be seen. The Tengu, still airborne, showed no hesitation as it began to turn. Mid-turn, it raised its blade defensively—but it was still too slow.

Feathers, mingled with blood, rained down as the Tengu’s body plummeted toward the ground. Its form was riddled with gaping wounds, the most severe of which had shredded one of its massive wings and a large portion of its left shoulder.

Even so, the Tengu quickly stabilized itself mid-air, landing lightly on the ground with an agility that belied its large frame. Without hesitation, it reversed its grip on its blade and severed the damaged, useless wing. The severed appendage fell as a cloud of dust and sand erupted where the Tengu had landed.

In an instant, five sword strikes simultaneously pierced the space around Shin. These were no illusions—the genuine, deadly sharpness of the blows left no doubt. Yet Shin remained unnervingly calm, more like a detached observer than a combatant.

This so-called “Tengu” was undeniably formidable. Its powerful body, cursed energy imbued with a razor-sharp cutting attribute, and exceptional combat skills and learning capabilities would be a nightmare for most curse-hunting sorcerers reliant on close combat.

Unfortunately for it, Shin’s evaluation was straightforward: 'Still not good enough.'

Moreover, the Tengu didn’t seem to possess a domain. If it did, it would have used it by now.

Shin appeared silently behind the Tengu, wielding Dojigiri in his right hand and a black feathered fan in his left. Attached to the fan was a severed hand, blood only now dripping from the fresh wound.

The Tengu, now missing its left hand and the fan that had fused with it, spun around in an instant as Shin deactivated his technique. Despite the Tengu’s almost supernatural combat instincts and unparalleled reflexes, it had no answer for an attack it couldn’t block. The two were simply on entirely different levels.

Even in this state, the Tengu displayed no intent to flee, though whether it could even escape was another question. Shin, having severed its left hand along with the fan, stepped back to observe what would happen now that it had lost the cursed object.

Losing half of its wings didn’t leave the Tengu in an unbalanced state for long. It adapted quickly, continuing to move fluidly without any sign of hindrance. The remaining wing was even incorporated into its attacks, wielded as a weapon in its relentless onslaught.

Blocking and countering the Tengu’s chaotic wind blades multiple times, Shin Shuichi noticed its attacks had significantly weakened. While it could still use its abilities, the loss of the fan had undeniably reduced its strength.

The Tengu had clearly transcended the category of an ordinary cursed spirit. Its injuries were healed through the use of Reverse Cursed Technique. After being gravely wounded mid-air during Shin’s Timeless state, the Tengu, unable to comprehend the nature of that assault, abandoned aerial combat. It chose instead to conserve its cursed energy by forgoing the repair of its wings, redirecting its focus entirely to close-quarters combat.

Its combat instincts and talent were formidable. In its presence, every technique seemed futile and transparent. Shin relied on the effects of his techniques to evade its sharp and deadly attacks at crucial moments.

Conventional speed alone was ineffective against the Tengu. Shin surmised that it used its instincts, detecting killing intent or even the trajectory of his gaze, to anticipate the direction and timing of incoming moves.

This allowed the Tengu to consistently achieve what could be described as ‘first-move advantage.’ With Shin now having a good grasp of its capabilities, he estimated its strength to be slightly above that of a first-grade sorcerer. Against melee combatants, it could likely dominate outright.

However, Shin couldn’t help but wonder—was it this strong even before losing control, while it was still human? Despite being severed from its user, the cursed object remained somehow connected to the Tengu. Shin couldn’t use or destroy it himself, and the method by which its power was transferred to the host remained unclear.

“Well, that’s about it. Anything more specific would probably only be known by those directly involved in this project. Too bad I probably won’t be allowed to take this corpse back with me,” Shin muttered to himself.

After all, the Tengu was technically their comrade, even in its altered state. Asking to bring the body back “for research” would be inappropriate—especially since relations hadn’t completely broken down yet.

The bigger issue, though, was that this Tengu wasn’t unique. It was just a failed experiment that had spiraled out of control. The decision by the higher-ups to disclose such sensitive information indicated there was more to come. The Kamo and Zen’in clans seemed to be deeply entangled in this matter.

Blood splattered across the sand, staining it red. The Tengu’s body remained poised mid-strike, but its torso suddenly separated from its legs and collapsed forward. Simultaneously, the ordinary cursed blade in its hand shattered into fragments.

This seemed to trigger a chain reaction. The Tengu’s arms, body, and wings all began to twist and dislocate, with blood gushing from the points of disjunction. Its grotesque face, along with the bony growths protruding from it, fractured into pieces, while the light in its eyes faded completely.