“[Hwangban], [Tan]!”
Fwish! Fwish! Fwish!
With a rapid chant, the spikes fired by Hwangban shot toward Gojo.
“I did tell you to come at me like you meant to kill me, but you’re really trying to kill me, huh?”
Gojo’s [Six Eyes] caught the trajectory of the barrage.
Head, heart, and liver. Every one of them a fatal human weak point.
Not only fast, but sharp and precise as well.
For most jujutsushi, this kind of attack would mean being prepared to lose at least one organ.
But it was still a long way from reaching Gojo.
He wasn’t using [Limitless]. There was no need to kill the mood from the start.
With nothing more than pure martial skill, keen eyesight, and a little trick using [Blue], he could dodge it easily.
Gojo twisted his body slightly and let the incoming spikes slide past him.
They passed by at a distance so close to zero they didn’t even graze him.
It was a feat only Gojo could pull off.
Junpei’s eyebrow twitched at the fact that they hadn’t even come close to touching him.
“A technique? No. That’s... just pure physical ability dodging it.”
Junpei didn’t have any information on Gojo’s technique, [Limitless].
In situations like this, it was only natural to suspect a technique. Most of a jujutsushi’s power tended to depend on their technique.
And yet Gojo had dodged so casually, as if he didn’t need a technique at all.
He might have even omitted hand signs and chanting entirely, but Junpei didn’t want to believe a monster like that existed.
“I should hide my own technique info too. I’ll save [Black Scale] as much as possible, since it’s the only thing that might actually reach him.”
“Sorry I’m late telling you. My technique is [Limitless]. As the name suggests, it handles infinity and can manipulate various concepts, including space. For the record, I wasn’t using it just now.”
As if strategy meant nothing, Gojo started bragging about his technique with a delighted expression.
Junpei was speechless.
“Weren’t you supposed to be hiding it?”
“Why would I?”
“So you can judge how much I can do in a real fight...?”
“Hmm... that’s not wrong, but it wouldn’t make much difference even if you knew. You don’t need to worry about things like technique activation. My technique is so famous that everybody and their dog knows it.”
He looked as though he didn’t even think Junpei’s attacks could touch him.
Junpei genuinely wanted to knock that teacher flat at least once.
“So, is that it?”
“As if!”
Junpei leaped into the air, riding on Hwangban as he flew toward Gojo.
With his cursed energy maxed out, Hwangban’s speed was about 160 kilometers per hour.
For an ordinary person standing close by, it would be hard to even track with the eye. It was also the highest output Junpei could currently produce.
He had to avoid any attack that was too straightforward.
His face felt like it was being crushed from the acrobatic flight through the air, but he still couldn’t slow down.
“Faster!”
Junpei secretly coated his fist with [Black Scale], forming a vicious-looking knuckle guard.
Gojo still showed no sign of moving.
“Now!”
Screeeeech!
Dropping his altitude, Junpei scraped the ground with the protruding part of the knuckle guard, kicking up a massive cloud of dirt and dust.
Gojo’s vision was instantly filled with yellow-brown haze.
“Oh?”
While Gojo was admiring that, Junpei quickly gained altitude again, then accelerated straight down toward his target.
“I’m smashing straight down!”
The [Black Scale] clinging to Junpei’s right hand buzzed and vibrated.
Junpei, wrapping his right hand and plunging downward at unbelievable speed, looked like a pair of meteors.
Hwangban’s acceleration, the force of a vertical dive, and the killing power of [Black Scale] all combined.
Kwooooooo!
Power is weight and speed.
All that destructive force concentrated into a single point aimed squarely at the crown of Gojo’s head.
And then Junpei’s eyes met Gojo’s, who had already tilted his head up and was smiling eerily.
Crack!
The strike stopped in an instant.
Junpei’s fist halted right in front of Gojo’s face, wrapped in a repelling force, and Junpei himself froze in midair.
“How...?”
“Nice strike. You’re not afraid of close combat, huh?”
“Then I guess I should go too.”
Thud!
For a moment it looked as if Junpei’s body was being yanked forward, and then Gojo’s uppercut slammed hard into Junpei’s stomach.
The pulling force, [Blue].
By applying it, Gojo could make a punch devastating from any angle.
“Ghk!”
Junpei was flung backward and rolled across the ground.
He didn’t know how, but it hurt more than Yuji’s punches had before. Even more than Hanami’s.
His lungs cramped up, and he couldn’t breathe properly.
“Guh, hhh, ugh!”
“Wow, you’re the first student I’ve hit like that who didn’t throw up.”
Watching Junpei desperately hold back his gag reflex, Gojo recalled the hard, smooth sensation he’d felt at the end of his fist when the punch landed.
When the strike was stopped, Junpei had quickly released Hwangban and gathered [Black Scale] around his stomach to absorb the impact.
He’d done it purely on instinct. Good sense.
He blocked it.
It hurt. It hurt like hell.
It felt like his organs were about to come out through his mouth.
But he didn’t want to go down.
“U-uaaah!”
Junpei sprang to his feet and, though staggering, charged at Gojo.
His face twisted in pain as it closed in on Gojo.
Pow! Tap-tat! Tak!
The exchange of fists went back and forth.
Gojo, his body wrapped in cursed energy, and Junpei, with [Black Scale] around his hands and feet, collided and cracked the air with each blow.
Pow! Thud!
“Good, good!”
Clang!
“Kgh!”
Gojo fought using nothing but the toughness of his body and cursed energy reinforcement. Junpei fought with [Black Scale].
In a contest of fundamentals versus technique, Gojo’s fundamentals held the advantage, thanks to his overwhelming physical superiority.
Gojo’s body remained unmarked, while Junpei picked up more bruises with every exchange.
But as always, the weak find their own way.
Thunk!
“Huh?”
It felt different from simply striking [Black Scale].
Beyond the black-scaled armor, a soft sensation absorbed the impact.
As Gojo’s fist sank in, Junpei wrapped around his arm and activated his trump card.
The expansion technique that had crushed even Hanami’s absurdly hard outer shell.
He didn’t know whether it would work on Gojo too, but you never know unless you try.
“[Convergent Ember Prison]!”
Kagagagagak!
[Limitless] wrapped around Gojo’s arm and the faintly vibrating black scales scraped against each other, grinding with friction.
Of course, after a little resistance, it stopped quickly enough, but Gojo couldn’t help admiring Junpei’s adaptability and delicate cursed energy control.
“This is pretty...”
“Aaaah! Why won’t this work either?!”
Grinding his teeth, Junpei still didn’t break his stance. Hidden tentacles of [Sediment Moon] burst out between the gaps in his armor.
It was a move Junpei had come up with in his final fight against Hanami.
Inspired by that battle, he had managed to complete it in the middle of combat.
[Black Scale] alone wasn’t hard enough to fully block Gojo’s special kind of impact.
So he used its property as a cursed tool, laying partially summoned [Sediment Moon] beneath [Black Scale] to create a double layer.
Slashes and stabs were blocked by [Black Scale], while impacts were absorbed by [Sediment Moon]. Theoretically, he’d created an invincible shield.
Expansion of technique — Fortress.
A fortress of heavenly blessing built up from cursed energy protected its master from outside invasion.
And now that the distance had closed, it would drag the enemy fully into the swamp and swallow him whole!
The protruding tentacles wrapped around both Gojo and Junpei, sealing off all outside intrusion.
In the darkness where neither light nor air could enter, Junpei’s poison revealed its true form.
“[Kan]!”
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
Poisonous spikes flew in from every direction, targeting Gojo, only to be blocked by the [Limitless] surrounding him.
But that had already been expected.
From the moment Junpei drew Gojo in, he had sprayed poison into the space inside the tentacles.
Junpei’s poison did not affect him.
Impacts could not pierce [Sediment Moon]. And if Gojo tried to use another technique, the instant he relaxed [Limitless], the poison spikes surrounding him would strike.
On the other hand, the longer he endured, the more poison would accumulate in his body.
It was like an area enclosed by a barrier.
Of course, Junpei still didn’t know about domain expansion or its sure-hit effect.
But by using his own application, he had created a sure-hit situation now.
It was a perfect checkmate.
Confident of victory, Junpei smiled darkly inside his helmet.
“If you keep holding out like this, I win. So what are you going to do now?”
He wanted to throw Gojo’s earlier teasing back in his face.
“Go on, struggle a little...”
“I’ll admit it. I can’t beat you if I’m just playing around.”
What?
“I don’t remember showing you a domain yet, though. To think you could reproduce something similar at your current level. Honestly, I’m impressed.”
So it really wasn’t just taunting.
He really had been playing around?
“As a reward, I’ll show you something good.”
With those words, an enormous amount of cursed energy began to condense at the tip of Gojo’s finger.
An ominous red light gathered and illuminated the darkness, then compressed into the size of a bead and took shape.
It was only the size of a speck of light, but Junpei felt the terror of death crawling up his spine the moment he saw it.
What the hell is that? He’s not human.
Its power was incomparable to anything he’d seen so far.
Even more than Mahito, even more than that ground-sprout curse...
Now he could see it.
The wall he could never cross between that man and himself.
Heaven beyond heaven.
The heaven beyond the sky.
This was the strongest of this era...!
“Cursed technique reversal — [Red].”
Kwoooaaang!
With a wide burst of red light, the wall of tentacles surrounding Junpei and Gojo exploded apart.
The [Fortress] wrapped around Junpei’s body also lost its shape and was torn apart by the flow of cursed energy.
“Ah...”
Flying backward, Junpei let out a hollow smile.
“I shouldn’t have been so cocky...”
Junpei’s body flew through the air for a long while before crashing miserably across the ground and slamming into a large tree, where it finally stopped.
His cursed energy was exhausted. His body was in tatters.
Through his slowly closing eyelids, he caught sight of Gojo grinning brightly.
“That was fun for a change. Good work, Junpei.”
With that, Junpei’s consciousness went dark.
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