Satoru's eyes narrowed as the wine-red Space Marine stepped forward, wreathed in a cloak of Cursed Energy, powerful and refined, the Cursed Energy signature of someone who'd spent ages honing their technique, training and training and training mindlessly until they reached the absolute pinnacle of what they could accomplish with their ability. This was the presence of a master of Jujutsu, Satoru realized. It also meant that Jujutsu Sorcerers did exist in this weird new sci-fi universe he found himself in. He just hadn't met them yet.
And it still didn't explain the marks, however. Why did this guy, who just so happened to be a user of Jujutsu, have Ryomen Sukuna's shitty tattoos marked on his armor? Oh, he was gonna have to find out the hard way, even if he had to break every single bone in the Space Marine's body to do it. Or he could try asking nicely, but that always never worked for him.
Still, can't hurt to try, right?
Smiling, Satoru surged forward, appearing merely a few meters away from the Jujutsu Space Marine guy. He grinned and skidded to a stop. "Hey, how's it going, big fella?"
The Space Marine shrugged and raised his bolter pistol and unloaded the whole magazine. Satoru flicked away the bolt rounds caught in his Infinity and smiled. The Space Marine then rushed towards him, faster than any other Space Marine he'd ever fought. Satoru grinned. Yep, that was definitely Cursed Energy Augmentation at work there. The surging Space Marine threw a punch that definitely had enough power to shatter a human's whole body, breaking every bone and ripping every muscle.
It didn't touch him. No amount of physical strength or power could break through Infinity. The Space Marine must've noticed this immediately, however, as he leapt back and threw a grenade right at Satoru, which stopped inches from his face before detonating in a shower of fire and shrapnel, none of which reached him. "Calm down, dude."
The Space Marine rushed him once more, sprinting forward. Satoru raised a brow as the Astartes threw a grenade and waited for it to detonate before, once more, attacking him with a punch. Ah, Satoru realized, the Space Marine was probing his defense, trying to figure out how Infinity worked before committing to anything. Interesting. Smart. "Boring."
A flicker of Red sent the Space Marine crashing right through his own drop pod. Satoru jumped after the Space Marine and caught him by the ankle, before then slamming him down onto the ground with enough force to crack the Astartes' Power Armor. Still, Satoru recognized the burst of Reverse Cursed Energy and it seemed like the Space Marine was highly-proficient in its use, healing through his injuries instantly before pushing himself up on his feet.
Satoru grinned and sent the Space Marine back onto the ground with Red, before jumping a few feet away. Briefly, Satoru wondered why this one was all alone. As far as he was aware, Space Marines liked attacking in groups, like wolves. Their strength wasn't in their individual prowess, the last time he bothered checking, but in their ability to move as one. "Come on, dude! Show me a little more!"
The Astartes didn't even bother using his Innate Technique against him. That was very disrespectful in a fight. It meant he wasn't taking this seriously... or that his Innate Technique was just useless in this particular situation. Satoru wasn't sure which was which. And it honestly probably didn't matter that much. Still ultimately disrespectful, regardless of the reason. But this was getting boring. The Space Marine roared as he surged upright, sending a powerful punch that, Satoru noted, carved right through the low-output Infinity as though it wasn't there. Satoru grinned. That was Domain Amplification. Definitely very interesting. Unfortunately, the Space Marine's domain wasn't nearly refined or powerful enough to be challenging him today or a thousand years from now. Satoru merely took a step back and increased the output of Infinity, sending the Astartes skidding backwards. This Space Marine was maybe a tiny bit stronger than the... weird Cursed Energy with sticks for eyes, the one he splattered against a wall in Shibuya. "Nah, that trick is good, but you're not nearly good enough to be using it against me, buddy."
He held out his right hand and pulled the Space Marine towards him with Blue, trapping the armored giant in a gravity well that was nearly impossible to escape from or move around in, securing the lone Space Marine in place, a little trick with Blue he'd developed rather recently. The idea was to use the pulling of space-time to keep a target in place. Very useful. And the best part was that the Space Marine couldn't use Domain Amplification to get out of this one as Satoru kept the output freakishly high, something only made possibly by all the Aeldari Souls he'd absorbed. Satoru grinned as he flicked the Astartes' helmet between the eyes, cracking the ceramite plate open. "That was very rude of you to just attack me like that. I was only trying to talk."
With the Astartes bound, Satoru asked, "Now, why don't you tell me where you got these markings from, hmm? If you answer me quickly, I promise not to make your death painful. If not, then I can't promise anything."
War and death raged around them as the Aeldari and the Mechanicus clashed. But it didn't take a genius to see that the Mechanicus were losing. They lost the war the moment Satoru shattered their fleet apart. The ones here, fighting desperately, were all going to die. So, it didn't matter that Satoru didn't join the battle, even if only for a moment; though, to be certain, he'd already killed thousands of the Mechanicus, destroyed a few of their titans, and even blunted their initial drop. The Aeldari were certainly fervent enough to defend themselves.
And, most importantly, their Farseers were now totally unhinged. Caoimhe was throwing around lightning bolts like there was no tomorrow, each one large and powerful enough to carve furrows on the face of mountains or rip those metal titans apart like they were made of paper.
Fucking awesome.
Anyway...
Satoru frowned as bullets and bombs and shrapnel of all sorts and sizes stopped inches away from his form. And then, he sighed. Caoimhe told him enough about Space Marines to figure out what made them tick and, honestly, torture was one of the least-effective things he could do and the same was true for intimidation. Nothing short of forcibly pulling their memories out of their minds worked as a means of extracting information and, even then, Caoimhe stated that Space Marines were notoriously resilient little buggers.
"You're not going to speak no matter what I do, are you?" Satoru sighed, amused as the Astartes' Cursed Energies raged and surged; stuck in the pull of Blue, however, the Space Marine could do little, except maybe scream in his own head. Still, Satoru wondered just what the guy's Innate Technique actually was, considering the absolutely insane refinement of his Cursed Energy. Oddly, it reminded Satoru of himself. The Astartes' Cursed Energy refinement was incredible, but still nowhere near his own.
"Domain Exp-" The Astartes began, forming a hand sign, but Satoru reached out with his right hand slapped the Space Marine's helmet so hard that its lower-right side completely shattered, revealing some kind of blackened mesh underneath. Satoru then blasted off the Space Marine's fingers with Red, fully interrupting the Domain Expansion.
"Nope, none of that right now." Satoru smiled. "Not in the mood for dealing with whatever bullshit you might have. Besides, you still haven't shown me your Innate Technique, just yet, and that's very rude of you, my dude."
Before the Space Marine could react, Satoru sent a Cursed Energy Augmented kick right into the power armor's breast plate, denting and then cracking it inwards as the Space Marine flew off and crashed into the metal carcass of a fallen titan.
Before the Space Marine could even then to recover, Satoru held out his right hand and pulled the Astartes towards him with Blue and then, once more, held the armored giant in place with a sustained well of gravity, a rigid prison of static space-time. The Space Marine struggled against the gravity well, but there was no hope of escape, not when Satoru's Cursed Energy Reserves and Cursed Enegery Output far eclipsed the Space Marine's.
Curiosity aside, this really wasn't the time to be playing around. The Aeldari were literally fighting to defend their homeland and, despite winning overall, a bunch of them were still dying. And, as Caoimhe said, their birthrates have never been amazing to begin with. So every single Aeldari lost was someone precious, someone incredibly important. Humans, meanwhile, multiplied like a bunch of rats.
Still, since he was already here...
"I'm terribly sorry if this is going to hurt," Satoru shrugged. "But those marks in your armor remind me of someone I really don't like and now I have to take my anger out on you. Terribly sorry about that. There is a slight chance that it won't hurt at all, however. But, if it does cause pain, then... don't scream too hard."
Satoru smiled as he focused just the tiniest amount of Cursed Energy into the tip of his pointer finger, which he then poked into the crack in the Space Marine's helmet. And, with a quick breath, he transformed that tiny amount of Neutral Cursed Energy into True Negative Cursed Energy. The immediate effect wasn't nearly as pronounced or as devastating as turning all of his Cursed Energy, but it was no less noticeable. Nearly every single soul in the battlefield paused as a wave of wrongness surged across the Craftworld. Even the machines were affected, staggering out of position or locking up in place. And, within his Power Armor, the Astartes could do nothing but scream as the flicker of True Negative Cursed Energy tore his soul to shreds.
Beautiful...
Six Eyes saw darkness – the black and white color that briefly encompassed all of reality each time Satoru brought forth the True Negative Cursed Energy. And he watched as the Space Marine's soul crumbled into nothing. An explosive feedback of Neutral Cursed Energy that canceled out the gravity well of Blue sent Satoru skidding back, the beginnings of a painful headache gnawing at his skull as he fell to a single knee. What the fuck was that?
He shook his head. Good thing Infinity stayed up or else that temporary lapse of concentration would've straight up killed him.
Honestly, Satoru wasn't quite sure why that explosion happened or how it seemed to blind his Six Eyes, even for just a moment. His best guess was that it had something to do with the soul. The same way an atom released plenty of energy when it was ripped apart, a soul likely did the same thing.
Probably. He was gonna have to experiment a bit more before drawing conclusions.
Satoru watched with avid fascination as the Space Marine shuddered and convulsed on the ground for a while before finally expiring – soul dead, the worst kind of dead, the sort of dead that prevented one from reentering the cycle of rebirth, Samsara. Satoru walked up to the dead Astartes and kicked him a bunch of times. The Space Marine did not rise, dying without ever getting to use his Innate Technique; instead, the Astartes crumbled and fell apart into black dust. What a shame. "Well, that shit was anti-climatic."
In the end, Satoru didn't even figure out how and where the Space Marine got the idea to paint Sukuna's tattoos all over his armor. But, where there was one, there would be others. Caoimhe told him that these Astartes operated in large hosts – usually, at least. Surely, this guy wasn't the only one with Sukuna's tattoos on his armor? He'd find more of them.
Sooner or later, Satoru mused, he was bound to run into more of these guys. It was inevitable.
On the flip side, Satoru was now, more than ever, aware of just how dangerous True Negative Cursed Energy actually was. As he'd hypothesized, it didn't merely destroyed the body, but shredded the soul as well. Any technique he developed with True Negative Cursed Energy was going to soul-kill everything it touched. Incredibly dangerous and deadly. It could even probably killed machines, which were supposed to lack souls.
No, it was more than just that, wasn't it?
Six-Eyes narrowed in contemplation for just a brief moment before realization dawned. Satoru's breath hitched. True Negative Cursed Energy wasn't just emptiness, no. True Negative Cursed Energy, quite literally, represented the truest and purest form of Universal Absolute Entropy, the end of all things, the dark at the edge of creation, the cold death that awaited... everything.
Satoru shuddered.
Yep, he definitely wasn't going to play around with that ability until he figured out exactly how it worked and how he could avoid getting killed by it.
"Hail the Britheim!" An Aeldari Warrior knelt before him, roaring. "He wields dark and light! As written!"
"Hail the Britheim!"
Satoru raised a brow. Seriously?
Thunder boomed as Caoimhe unleashed yet another lightning bolt, this one jumping from one Titan to another, before dispersing into hundreds of tinier bolts that fried and killed hundreds of Mechanicus soldiers. But then one of the seemingly dead titans arose and began rampaging. Its weapons were busted, but its size meant just about every part of its body was technically a weapon. It moved faster than its size should've allowed. Satoru found that out firsthand when he leapt for the titan's head, ready to blast it open with Red, only for the colossal engine of war to swat him aside. Normally, the titan's limb should never have touched or reached him. But, for the briefest of moments, a strange shield flickered to life around the titan for a split-second, a shield that canceled out Infinity just long enough for the limb to reach and touch him.
"Shit!" Satoru cursed negated his momentum with Infinity, just moments before he crashed through a wall and-
"You come into my shrine, uninvited, human."
AN: Chapter 35 is up on (Pat)reon!