IMPACT.
IMPACT.
Amid the sounds of explosions and collapses, in a moment of unknown danger, his Cursed Inventory tattoo began to throb fiercely, gradually diverting his cursed energy and weakening him.
Run. That was the only thought Toji could focus on as he watched his cursed energy rapidly consumed by the Cursed Inventory seal and not recovering.
Without caring if everyone died at that moment, he had only one priority: to save himself and Nakame.
Running, using only his physical energy and his body as a motor, Toji shot forward at a speed faster than before, becoming nothing but a blurry streak to the naked eye.
"15, 14, 13, 12." As the explosions reverberated behind him, Toji kept counting the seconds because he knew that the Weapon Demon had only been active for 26 seconds before dying, and its flesh would scatter.
IMPACT.
Toji narrowly avoided an explosion and kept running, unaware of the world around him.
IMPACT.
PULSE.
When an explosion sounded behind him, he felt his Cursed Inventory seal pulse, which was strange because all it had been doing so far was absorbing his cursed energy and nothing more.
"5, 4, 3, 2." Without finishing his mental countdown, Toji incredibly saw a car flying in front of him and crashing into a house.
"1." Finishing his mental count, Toji, along with an unconscious Nakame who had fainted from the shock, entered a medium-sized white house that appeared luxurious but was half-destroyed with a hole in the center. It seemed to belong to an average family, but Toji stepped back after seeing completely unrecognizable crushed corpses and lifeless children.
Toji felt the urge to vomit but stopped to think.
"I can search the house and take valuable items," Toji said, climbing the stairs and leaving Nakame at the door of one of the rooms.
He had never stolen before and didn't want to, especially from the deceased, but he couldn't help it because in this cursed world, "survival is the only thing that matters."
Toji knew that in a world like this, there were no good or bad people, only the strong and those who knew how to survive according to their interests.
You had to seize the opportunities the world gave you. If you could get a strong ally, get it at any cost. If you could improve your position but had to step on others, there would be no mercy because only you could be the king, and only you would decide how your life would be.
However, he had to hurry; he knew the police would arrive in the area soon, along with firefighters and ambulances to help the injured and rescue the dead from the rubble.
Entering the first room, he saw it was a child's bedroom. Without hesitation, he went over to the closet, where he found sleeping bags and backpacks, things that would serve him well for survival.
Taking the backpacks and sleeping bags, he left them where Nakame was and focused on heading to the adult's room, where he immediately saw a large painting. Without thinking twice, he hit the wall, breaking the painting in the process, not caring if it was valuable or not.
Seeing what he was looking for, which was a safe containing three large bundles of cash, he grabbed them and returned to where Nakame was, stuffing the money into his backpack.
(3 hours later)
After thoroughly searching the house, he found a room that looked more like an office with another safe.
In total, he had 3 million yen, more than enough to leave Tokyo for a while.
When he arrived where Nakame was, he found her staring blankly, visibly dimmed and sad, looking in the direction where the bodies had been destroyed.
Approaching, Toji hugged Nakame from behind, holding her protectively, making her tremble for a moment before she turned toward him and buried her face in his chest, bursting into a sharp, broken scream.
Gently stroking her head, he let her cry while making a decision in his mind.
"Once we turn 17, I'll get her out of Japan. She should live a life away from here," Toji thought to himself as he gently stroked the girl's hair. She turned around and hugged him tightly while continuing to cry.
"Cry as much as you want, I'll be here," Toji said softly, focusing on gently stroking the girl's hair as she sank deeper into his chest while letting out a muffled scream due to her position.
After 10 minutes, sirens began to sound, and quickly, Toji had to react.
Stepping back slightly and gently caressing her face, Toji hugged Nakame again and spoke to the girl, who no longer had the angelic appearance he liked. Instead, her eyes were red from crying, and her soft green hair was stained with dirt.
"We need to move," Toji said, pulling away from her and grabbing the heaviest backpack before starting to walk.
PULSE
With a groan, Toji fell to his knees due to the pain emanating from his shoulder where the seal was.
"TOJI!!!" Nakame shouted, worried, rushing to help him.
Struggling to get up due to the pain, suddenly Nakame helped him and forced him to place his hand on her shoulder.
The two orphans, now without parents or family, left the house with only each other to rely on and no one to trust to survive. Now, it was just the two of them in a Cursed World.
(13 years later, October 2014).
After the catastrophe, they spent the money they had obtained in 5 months. The men, or whoever Kiyoshi had said would come for her, never arrived, and he believed it was because of the unexpected attack by the Gun Devil.
They had to bribe several people to secure a house and protection from the gang leaders in case someone came looking for Nakame, whoever that might be.
If you're wondering why protection, the original plan was for the gangsters to die first if they were assassins or agents from the association. This would give them time to escape and plan something.
However, they never arrived, and Toji was forced to eliminate the gang that had been guarding them in a bloody battle. He won, and that finally awakened his Cursed Inventory, which was the most painful thing in the world. It felt as though a piece of his body was being torn away. He almost died because, even though the bastards were weak, their leader was a Fork Demon—yes, a damn demon with rare powers, but the bastard was incredibly resistant. During that time, he discovered something quite interesting.
His Cursed Inventory holds all of Toji's canonical weapons, meaning the Inverted Spear of Heaven, the Thousand Mile Chain, and the Wandering Cloud were all stored in his "Cursed Inventory Pet." Seeing them all together was a surprise to him, and obviously, it caused him quite an intense pleasure.
His cursed energy allows him to heal minor wounds, but it depletes very quickly and can only be used for a maximum of 1 minute.
He forced Nakame to leave the country and study abroad in the United States under the name Rita Watanabe. Although she was reluctant, her name as an assassin and demon hunter in her profession—growing little by little, or at least that's what she was referred to as—allowed her to improve and make money easily. He was already gaining strength rapidly and had become known as "one of the strongest uncontracted human hunters" in the Chainsaw Man underworld.
(4:00 p.m. in Tokyo, in an unknown location)
In an elegant house, a tall man with small eyes and long black hair, with bangs that reached his chin, framing his face slightly, and a scar starting near his lower left lip and going up to his upper left lip, was present. He wore a tight black short-sleeve shirt that clung to his body, emphasizing his powerful physique. His light-colored loose pants were held up by a dark belt, and he wore black loafers.
Wrapped around his body was a giant brown worm that coiled around his left abdomen, moved across his lower back, continued through his right ribs, passed over his chest, and finally wrapped around his right shoulder.
In front of him stood a man with a curious look, smiling emotionlessly.
"Are you Toji Fushiguro, or should I call you Toji Zenin?" the man asked, looking at the powerful figure before him.
Without a word, Toji reached his hand toward his Cursed Inventory with speed. The strange worm smiled wickedly and spat out a weapon. The man didn't flinch, even as Toji's weapon pointed directly at his head.
"What is it?" Toji asked, aiming straight at the man's head without hesitation or shaking, presenting himself as an experienced assassin.
The man looked at him with a pleased, curious smile, observing the worm that had provided a weapon to the assassin before him.
"So, this is the great Toji Zenin, the famous prodigy who's been the talk of the underworld, the one who's completed all his jobs without fail and always on time, right?" the man said, very curious to gather information. However, seeing the man's apathy and how the weapon remained aimed at him, he sighed.
"I want you to go find some demon corpses and, by the way, kill some associates of a certain man along with a recruit who has a contract with the fox demon. I need to show him who's in charge," the man in front of Toji said with a pleased yet slightly eerie smile, something that didn't seem to bother Toji.
Lowering the weapon slightly, Toji simply asked with some indifference: "What are the names of the man and the boy?"
"Kishibe and Aki Hayakawa, though I'll understand if you can't catch them. After all, Kishibe is the strongest," the man said with a bored smile, mocking the assassin before him.
"Accepted," Toji said indifferently as he lowered the weapon.
(Timeskip).
Walking leisurely with his hands in his pockets, a tall man with long black hair that reached the nape of his neck, framing his face with bangs, and a muscular build, dressed in a black short-sleeve shirt, loose light-colored pants, and black loafers, all with a peculiar brown hue. The worm wrapped around his body coiled around his torso and back, eventually winding around his shoulders. He strolled across the rooftops of Tokyo, what, in his opinion, was a rather peaceful night.
With powerful jumps between the spaces between the rooftops, this visibly powerful figure seemed lost in his thoughts. Leaping from a small building and landing on the ground, the man gazed at the sky with a relaxed sigh.
Toji Fushiguro, or as he was known in this world, wasn't a good person. He wasn't the type of person you'd give a chance, especially in a world full of alluring women and overpowered abilities. In his mind, he reflected that these opportunities were usually granted to virgins or those with miserable lives, neither of which he had.
A/N: Yeah I know rushed as hell but that was my first time writing so try to be patient
However, he had no intention of joining the main cast and living an eccentric life surrounded by top-tier waifus, or participating in wild, exciting battles while breaking his limits and creating more OP techniques. Deaths here were real, his life was real, his strength and the demons here were real, and he would never allow himself to weaken knowing these things existed, and Nakame was in the United States without protection.
If he had to kill a protagonist, he would. If he had to eliminate the entire main cast, he would. "Kill to survive," this phrase constantly echoed in his mind as he approached his final target.
Unlike those who believed strength was everything, he thought differently. Strength and intelligence were everything to him. Being strong meant nothing if you didn't know how to wield that strength or what to do with it. If you wanted to win, strength and intelligence were the keys.
Pulling himself out of his thoughts and reflections, he focused on reviewing the mission's objectives.
The man who had hired him was a fanatic of some strange religion. He had offered Toji a reward of 25 million yen if he could complete the following tasks:
Kill Aki Hayakawa and, if possible, recover his body. Aki was the only known user of the Fox Devil Contract, as the way he obtained that contract was public, and there were even videos of it. His body was needed for some kind of offering to a "god" that the fanatic believed in fervently.
Recover two demon corpses: the Rat Devil and a strange amorphous demon known as the "Nid Devil."
Humiliate the Demon Hunters, possibly killing most of them, including Kishibe (but if not, simply try to humiliate them as much as possible).
"Should I approach this strategically or just shoot with the weapons?" After thinking about it for three minutes and arriving at a large warehouse that had been destroyed by battle, it looked barely standing, mostly stained with blood and rusted, as if a simple attack would bring it down. He just smiled.
But it wasn't a normal smile; it was a wild grin, full of emotion and anticipation to prove that he was the strongest and indisputable. Stretching as a warm-up, while his wild smile spread across his face, Toji murmured, "I must honor my name."
Entering the warehouse ahead of him, Toji repeated that phrase softly as he reached for his Cursed Inventory, and immediately summoned his favorite weapon, the "Inverted Sky Spear" and a gun.
Upon entering, the first thing he saw was five Demon Hunters standing in a circle, disheveled, with a few more scattered around them, and Aki visibly tired but in good condition.
In front of them was Kishibe, and behind him lay the body of a giant rat, at least 30 meters tall, missing its right arm, with the left half of its body bearing a massive bite mark, no doubt inflicted by Kon.
They were all focused on Kishibe, who was taking a drag from his cigarette while sitting atop the rat's corpse.
Just as he was about to speak, the sound of a gunshot rang out, and immediately, the hunter closest to Aki collapsed with a bullet hole in his head.
"One down, four to go." With that wild smile still on his face, Toji spoke as the barrel of his gun emitted smoke.
Hearing his voice and snapping out of their shock, the hunters immediately turned toward him, with expressions of surprise and some of fear, but the face that interested him most, Kishibe's, remained expressionless and indifferent to the situation as he stared at him.
The moment Toji saw him, he was taken aback. Both Aki and another hunter had their hands placed on Kon's summoning seal.