The Devils of Jujutsu

Chapter 26: Zora's discovery

(Yuji's p.o.v.)

Todo and I finally had arrived in the outskirts of the Clover Kingdom's capital with less than 4 weeks to spare before Geto's army got there. We already had a bearing on which direction the cursed spirits would be coming from on the way there, so we just set up the commissioned curtains as soon as we made it to the outskirts. All we had to do then was train in preparation for the battle, but we had to postpone our training due to unforeseen circumstances. As we were about to start sparring, we both sensed something flying over us. We both knew what it was instantly,.....the presence of a cursed object. And from what we were sensing, it was a special grade. We looked up to see what was above us and saw a man on a broomstick. The man had red hair and a black masks covering his mouth, but what really caught our eye was that he was wearing a Black Bulls robe, indicating he was a magic knight. It didn't take us long piece everything together, the magic knight had found a cursed object on his mission and was bringing it back to try and have it examined. Me and Todo started discussing what to do. "Damn it, this is just what we needed?! What do we do, Todo? Recover it as soon as possible or wait until after we fend off the cursed spirits?" I asked him. He replied, "We need to recover it as soon as possible. Remember, curiosity is part of human nature, they're going to want to remove the talisman to see what's inside, and then any cursed spirit in the area will come running after the cursed object, and anyone who's near it will get kill, plus if a cursed spirit eats it, we'll have another problem to deal with than the army of cursed spirits. So, if we wait until after we deter the invasion, many innocent people will still die, though I'm sure neither of us could care less about the aristocrats." I agreed with everything Todo said. So, then we started to talk about our plan get the cursed object away from the magic knights.

Flashback - 5 hours ago

(Zora's p.o.v.)

I was sent on a mission to Northwest side of the Clover Kingdom to investigate and apprehend a report group of smugglers. I had found them in a remote village, and captured them. After I called in some mages to pick them up, a young boy from the village called out to me, "Excuse me, Mr. Magic Knight?!" I walked over to him and said, "What's up, kid?" The boy replied, "I found something in some old ruin to the north of here and I was wondering if you know what it was." He handed me a small wooden box, which seemed very ancient. I opened the box to see that inside there was something wrapped up in what I can only describe as a type of narrow bandage, covered in marking I've never seen before. It was indeed curious, why would something like that be in some old in the middle of nowhere. I answered the kid's question, "I've never seen anything like this before, but it is interesting that it would be in some old ruins. Can you take me to where you found this?" He said, "Sure." We walked for an hour before finally arriving at the remote ruins the boy told me about, and the architecture was familiar to me. I said to him, "The design of these ruins looks like that of the buildings in my Captain's homeland. I know because he showed me some sketches of the temples and homes while he and I talked about his home." The boy was surprised to hear what I said. He asked me, "But why would a building like this be out here?" I answered, "I can only guess that someone from came from across the seas and built this, but why, I don't know. I'll report this to my superiors about this." I asked him something I forget to earlier, "By the way, what's your name, kid?" He replied, "I'm Mark, sir." I said, "Well Mark, I'm Zora. Thanks for letting me know about all this. If you don't mind, I'd like to take that thing you found to the Wizard King, he knows a lot of ancient languages, he might recognize the symbols on it." Mark nodded and gave me the box. With that, I lead him brought him back to his village, grabbed my broomstick and bid Mark farewell before heading back to report to the Wizard King.

Flashback ends

Present

I landed outside the Wizard King's castle, and Marx lead me to Julius. We got to his office and Marx let me in. I walked up to the Wizard King. He greeted me, "Welcome back, Zora! So, how did it go?" I told him everything about how the mission and what the village kid, Mark showed me. Julius was rather curious about what I told him. I handed him the box that Mark found and asked him as he opened it, "Do you recognize those symbols?" He answered, "No, I've never seen these symbols before. But if what you found in that village did indeed originate in Yami's home country, maybe he can tell us what it is?" I nodded in agreement. "Marx, call Yami here. Tell him there's something he should know about." The Wizard King ordered his assistant. After waiting for half an hour, Yami arrived through one of Finral's portals. "So, what is it that you want to tell me?" He asked. I explained what I found during my mission and he was surprised about what I found. I gave him the box and he opened it. He replied, "It looks like some kind of charm." "A charm?" The Wizard King asked. Yami explained, "Magic isn't widely used in the land of the sun. So, only a small number of people use it. The common use for it is to channel into paper charms to use as tools to set up a protective barrier. But this, it looks like charms were wrapped around something as a seal. Whatever this is, it's probably very dangerous." The Wizard King and I looked at each other, and looked back at Yami. I asked, "How come I don't sense any mana from it?" "I don't know." He answered. The Wizard King said, "Well, it's late, so let's worry about this tomorrow, shall we?" Since it was already dark, we both nodded and left the box with Julius for safe keeping. We all left the office, but what happened the next morning, made us all scratch our heads.