Chapter 214

Sukuna borrows Megumi's appearance to coax Hana within reach, then sheds the disguise and cuts her down. The brutality drives home for Yuji just how monstrous Sukuna truly is, and the young sorcerer pours his fury into a charge meant to bring him down.

With Hana drawn into the trap, Sukuna rips away her right arm and wing, sneers that she is a foolish human, and flings her off the building's side, where she appears to plummet to her death. Yuji, back on his feet after Sukuna's earlier strike, can only watch in cold horror. A loud crash pulls Sukuna to the edge, where his eyes meet Yuji's; the sound was Yuji touching down after vaulting onto a neighboring rooftop on his way up. Sukuna voices his boredom, only for Yuji to erase the gap between them in one leap.

The pair seize hold of one another as Yuji bellows Sukuna's name, and the impact levels the building, dropping Sukuna to ground level. The instant he lands, a large slab of the structure hurled by Yuji slams into him, and Sukuna marvels at the boy's raw physical power. Yuji bears down, but Sukuna evades and bats him away, suspecting Kenjaku pulled off something warped tied to another time period. Demanding to know why Sukuna and his kind sow misery instead of living ordinary lives, Yuji hears the reply that the weak are owed no happiness and must live braced to take their suffering. Sharpening his resolve, Yuji asks whether Sukuna can stomach his own misery and presses forward straight into a flurry of cuts, every one of them shallow. Baffled by Yuji's durability, Sukuna eats a right hook to the jaw and then grasps the truth: the wounds run shallow not from any toughness of Yuji's but from his own dropping cursed energy output. Annoyed, he curses Megumi for fighting back from within.

This Culling Game arc chapter, collected in Volume 24, delivers Hana Kurusu's apparent death and ramps up the battle of Yuji Itadori, Maki Zenin, and Hana Kurusu against Sukuna. It reveals that Megumi's resistance from inside is draining Sukuna's cursed energy output, which shows itself as Yuji enduring the Dismantle slashes. Kenjaku gets a mention as Sukuna mulls over his origins.