Sukuna: The Last Sorcerer 9

The next lesson was just pain.

That’s it. 

The whole-ass lesson. Like a tutorial level from some video game designed in hell, where the final boss was also your teacher and every wrong button press got you a game over screen written in your own blood.

He’d barely gotten his breath back, lungs and throat still ragged from screaming, when Sukuna started talking again. “Reinforcement,” he let the word roll out slow, as if he was tasting it, savoring the flavor of each syllable on his tongue. 

A tongue that Ryo was surprised wasn’t forked.

The demon circled around Ryo, footsteps silent in the ankle-deep blood ocean. “This dark chi, ‘Cursed Energy’ as it was once known… it is not merely a weapon to be thrown. It is armor to be worn. It can be flowed through the body to make it harder. Stronger. Faster.”

A clawed finger tapped against his chest — once, twice, slower each time — Sukuna almost seeming to go for his heart before “…this vessel is already stronger simply from the weight of my existence, but that is a passive gift. A leaking faucet. It is nothing compared to what it could be if you learned to open the dam.”

Great. More metaphors.

Training, if you could even call it that, was simple enough. Sukuna would attack him. Ryo’s job was to flow that nasty, bitter energy coiling in his gut to wherever the hit was coming. Build a wall before the wrecking ball connected.

Sure, it sounded easy, just uick-time event shit, right? Press X to not die.

The first time, Sukuna aimed this casual, almost lazy kick at his leg. It wasn’t particularly fast or scary looking, just a clean, simple motion that looked boring as hell. 

He tried to dodge back, not trusting anything from Sukuna, but somehow it landed anyway.

All he heard was the sound of a thick, dead branch being snapped over someone’s knee. A wet, hollow CRACK that echoed through the bone cathedral of his own soul.

His shin bone didn’t just break.

It exploded.

White shards punched through his skin, slick with blood and marrow as his leg folded under him like wet paper. Once again, Ryo hit the blood ocean with a splash, another scream tearing out from his throat as pain burned out everything except the immediate reality of bone fragments grinding against muscle.

“Weak,” was all he got from his demon sensei. To add insult to literal injury, he didn’t even really sound dissapointed. Almost… tired, if anything. “Try again.”

Try again. Right.

The bone was already knitting back together, a million fire ants crawling under his skin, rebuilding what got destroyed. …f-fuck. A few minutes later, Ryo pushed himself up, whole body shaking from the effort.

Ryo reacted faster next time, nothing but pure animal instinct guiding him the instant he spotted even a flicker of movement. That hot dark energy in his gut shoved itself down and into his legs, a flicker of blackish-red light racing under skin just as Sukuna’s heel connected.

The impact still hurt like someone swung a sledgehammer full-force into his thigh, a deep bruise blooming instant and ugly. But the bone didn’t break. His eyes went wide. I did i-!

His jaw flew free, his excitement shattered with the rest of his skull.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

This went on for what felt like days. Although it could have been hours.

Maybe just minutes, honestly. 

Time didn’t work right in here anyway, and he knew that as well as anyone. Until he woke up, he was stuck in an endless repeating cycle of pain and reaction, a glitchy tutorial where the only way to level up was getting your ass beat in new and interesting ways.

Sukuna would attack. Ryo would try to react. Sometimes he managed to get that cursed energy flowing before impact. Sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes he got it partially right, which just meant breaking fewer bones.

His left wrist snapped backward at an angle that made his stomach lurch. Too slow.

Ribs cracked under a palm strike that felt gentle until it connected. Wrong spot.

Jaw got dislocated by what looked like a love tap. Not enough energy.

Each time, that bored voice would comment. “Pathetic.” 

“Are you asking to die?” 

“A corpse would react faster.”

Thanks for the encouragement, teach.

Despite the terrible teaching method, something was sticking. He was learning.

Well, his body was.

The rhythm, the timing, the feeling, the force. His brain was already pushing the flow of that dark chi through his limbs before conscious thought caught up.

A kick that should have shattered his knee only sent him flying, a forearm that should have snapped only stung. When his shoulder only bruised instead of outright dislocating, he knew he was getting it. Almost.

“Adequate,” Sukuna finally said after Ryo managed to reinforce his entire torso before a body blow that would’ve caved in his ribs. The word came out grudging, like it physically hurt him to admit Ryo wasn’t completely hopeless.

I’ll take it.

“Again,” Sukuna said, already moving forward again.

Kill me.

“You die when I will it.”

Fuck.

“Head.”

That dark enerrgy rushed to his skull, coating it thick in a helmet out of spite and anger before his jaw went stratospheric for the second time. 

An instant later, Sukuna’s finger flicked out, the movement bored and slow.

Somehow, that lazy finger had all the force of a brick to the skull, vision swimming and brain rattling around in Ryo’s skull.

“Chest.” A lazy bored jab.

Ribs would crack like dry twigs if his Reinforcement wasn’t thick enough, the sound loud in his own ears. If it was strong enough, he’d just go flying backward maybe a hundred feet, skipping across the blood surface like a stone someone chucked at a lake.

Which would have been really cool if he wasn’t the one it was happening to.

“Arm.”

He learned real quick to just flood the whole limb with cursed energy the second he heard the word. He wasn’t about to lose another one if he could help it. The phantom itch from the first time still crawled under his skin sometimes.

He lost count of how many times he got dismembered, how many bones snapped and reset by this place’s bullshit healing factor. Soon, he got used to the feeling of his own spine realigning itself, the wet pop of dislocated shoulders sliding back where they belonged.

Slowly, horribly, he started getting the hang of it.

It stopped being something to think about and became instinct, the way you’d duck when something flew at your face. That burning angry energy flooding whatever body part was about to get destroyed became second-nature; pain the trigger and death the fail-state. 

A perfect parry system where screwing up the timing meant getting turned into a bloody pile of broken parts.

Learning to anticipate came next. 

Feeling the shift in air, the subtle displacement of thick, coppery atmosphere a millisecond before an attack. Learning to coat his entire body in this thin, shimmering layer of cursed energy, second skin made of pure spite that turned crushing blows into painful, jarring shoves.

At one point, after having his legs torn clean off for what was probably the third time that “day” (whatever days meant here), he was just lying in the blood, waiting for that slow, agonizing itch of them regrowing.

Maaan, I feel like a necromorph, he thought, weirdly calm observation bubbling up through the horror. Just gotta stomp on the limbs before they get back up. The thought was so stupid, so out of place as he remembered the one game that always kinda scared him back then, that he almost laughed.

Video games made everything make sense, somehow. 

Even getting dismembered by Satan.

After what felt like forever, after he could finally withstand a solid minute of Sukuna’s casual, half-assed attacks without becoming a modern art installation titled ‘Boy, Dismembered,’ the next lesson started.

“Reinforcement… that alone is for the weak, a tool for struggle,” Sukuna sneered, just circling him again with that same predator patience. “It is the desperate act of survival. A sorcerer is one that dominates.”

…okay.

Sukuna told him to gather the cursed energy into his palm, same as that first time, but now to release it. Push it out into the world instead of keeping it inside.

Ryo held out his hand, arm still aching from the last couple dozen hits it had taken. He focused and the black-and-red energy moved from his gut to his arm and slowly, finally, it swirled in his palm as he stared down at it.

A chaotic little vortex of bad vibes made visible.

He pushed. “RASENGAN!”

It was no Rasengan.

More like a weak pulse of energy, like a puff of static electricity, shot out about a foot before fizzling into nothing. Less of an attack and more of a… a cursed fart, honestly.

Sukuna’s sigh was almost as painful as one of his flicks to the head. “Again.”

Ryo tried again. And again. And fucking again.

Each attempt was just as pathetic as the last, that cursed energy refusing to leave his palm like it was scared of the outside world. Part of him, born from his own feelings, and it didn’t want to go anywhere. Trying to spit out your own teeth would’ve been easier.

Come on. Come on, he was begging it now, actually pleading with it to work with him, just do this one thing for me, c’mon!

“No intent. No focus, brat. And just when I thought you were doing somewhat well,” Sukuna let out a low sigh, voice flat. “Once again, I will provide motivation.“

The blood ocean around them started churning while Sukuna spoke, that placid red surface bubbling and frothing up into something that looked angry. From the depths, skeletal figures began rising. 

Dozens of them. 

Maybe hundreds, honestly, just too many to count fast.

All of them unclean and half-rotted; caked in old, clotted blood and bits of meat that probably used to be important organs, moving with a jerky, unnatural speed, their empty sockets somehow all fixed on him.

“These are the fools who thought to stand in my way over the ages,” Sukuna said, gesturing at the rising horde with a lazy wave like he was introducing houseguests. “They bear a grudge, their own hatred and fear cursing them to this state. They blame me for their deaths, which is fair. Now, they will blame you for the same.”

Oh, that’s just perfect.

“Kill them. Or they will tear the flesh from your bones and drag what’s left of you into the depths. Your choice, really.”

He didn’t hear what else Sukuna had to say, not as the skeletons were already on him, all of them swarming him, moving faster than zombies or skeletons should be able to move. “St-stay back! I’m warning you!”

They didn’t seem to care about warnings.

Not as their bony claws scraped against his reinforced skin, jaws clacking as they tried to take bites out of whatever they could reach.

Roaring, he reared back a reinforced fist and swung out at one, its skull shattering into dusty bone fragments that tasted like chalk when he breathed them in. He spun around, kicked another one in the chest, and watched its entire ribcage collapse inward with a sound like stepping on a bag of chips.

Too many, though. Way too many.

They were climbing over him, combined weight dragging him down into the thick, warm blood that was starting to feel less like an ocean and more like quicksand made of copper and iron.

Long, needle-like fingers clawed him, tearing at his face and leaving thin deep lines that burned raw. Raw and ragged, Ryo let out a scream, equal parts terror and pure rage as he thrust his palm forward.

All his rage, anger, hatred — at Sukuna, this place, these goddamn spooky scary skeletons —focused into that single point.

BOOM.

Black-and-red energy roared out from his hand, a chaotic burst of crimson torn through with black sparks. No beam, wave, or a neat little fireball; more a shotgun blast made of pure force and malice, tearing a five-foot-wide hole through the swarm in front of him. Skeletons shattered into bone dust, blood around them vaporizing in a hiss of steam that smelled like burnt copper.

He stood there, panting, hand smoking as he stared at the half-stunned skeletons.

Then grinned.

Holy shit, I actually did it.

His grin went wider, tearing against the edge of his cheeks as he threw his hands back and did it again. And again. And again. He didn’t know how long he kept at it but he didn’t care, too caught up in blasting the creatures apart with crude, violent explosions that made his ears ring and left craters in the blood ocean’s surface.

It wasn’t elegant like Azula’s blue flames. It wasn’t precise or controlled or pretty. 

It was messy, brutal, loud as hell.

And it was his.

Finally, vision blurry from the effort and all the skeletons turned to fragments of bone, he looked up to see Sukuna back on his throne, looking down with that same infuriating smirk.

“Your techniques are crude. Inefficient. A bender of any real skill could dance around your clumsy blasts. Your reinforcement would buckle under a truly focused blow. And your presence… passable.”

Ryo frowned deept, well aware of how much that last skill had drained him just to use, let alone learn. 

Sukuna leaned forward, all four eyes locking onto his. “But… it is violent. It is terrifying. And to these sheltered fools who have only ever known the gentle harmony of bending, your power will feel like the end of the world.”

The smirk widened into something that showed too many teeth.

“It will be enough.”

The world started to fade around the edges, vision going gray and soft like someone was turning down the contrast on a TV screen.

He opened his eyes.

He was back, still criss-cross apple sauce, on the palace floor, his unmade bed right behind him and the sun just now beginning to set. I did it… ow. Every inch of him, despite looking untouched, felt battered, broken, almost like he’d gone ten rounds with a blender.

But for the first time since this whole nightmare started, he had something.

A weapon. A way to cheat. A way to fight back instead of just taking whatever shit people wanted to throw at him.

He flexed his hand, the one that had just blasted skeletons into dust and bad memories. Faint, almost invisible flicker of blackish-red energy sparked around his knuckles before disappearing.

“Fuck yeah.”