21:15.
Tokyo Metro Shibuya Station, Fukutoshin Line platform.
“Aaaagh!!!”
“Run!!!”
Before anyone had time to feel relieved that Kuro'ushi had been exorcised, Mahito jumped into the battlefield.
The transfigured humans he had brought on the train leaped out the moment the doors opened and began slaughtering the humans.
Unlike Kuro'ushi’s swarm of cockroaches, these things were not being directly controlled by a sorcerer. And they moved with one purpose only: killing.
The situation that Gojo’s tiny [Hollow Purple] had overturned was entering a new phase.
“Haven’t we already used up enough humans? If the numbers drop any further, you’re the ones who’ll lose!”
He had thought they’d already dug up nearly everything, but the curses still had hidden cards left to play. It was unsettling to be dragged along by their plan, but there was no time to dwell on it.
Letting the transfigured humans massacre the non-sorcerers would give their side the advantage, but standing by and allowing it would go against a jujutsushi’s duty.
As Gojo’s mind grew more tangled, his body began moving mechanically. One by one, the transfigured humans swarming around him had their heads torn off and met their deaths.
Whoosh, thud!
In the middle of all that, Mahito stretched a transfigured human long and used it to close the distance in an instant, ambushing Gojo.
Blocked by [Limitless], he couldn’t deal any damage, but a sneer was already on his face.
“Hah! It really doesn’t reach!”
“That stitched-up curse! It’s the one Junpei talked about!”
From what he had heard, it was some kind of death-touch technique.
In terms of raw power, the volcano-headed one was probably the strongest of the bunch. But in terms of danger, this one was the worst.
Gojo immediately shifted targets and struck Mahito with rapid blows.
Thud, thud, thud.
One, two, three. The short, clipped punches struck Mahito’s face and solar plexus in turn. Even a Grade 1 curse should have taken serious damage from that.
But to Gojo’s surprise, Mahito looked completely unharmed. Attacks that couldn’t touch the soul meant nothing to Mahito. Even if the attacker was Gojo Satoru.
Confident that Gojo still couldn’t kill him, Mahito smiled thinly and turned the next page of the plan.
“I’ll tell you something annoying about humans.”
“There are a hell of a lot of them.”
At the same time, through the hole above the Fukutoshin Line platform, non-sorcerers began pouring down like a waterfall.
There were more than enough to replace everyone killed by Jogo, Dagon, Kuro'ushi, and Mahito.
Their bodies spread out in a writhing mass, like a swarm of cockroaches. Beyond them, the curses’ incantation rang out.
“There are curses or curse users up above too!”
“Crimson Blood Manipulation, [Piercing Blood].”
“Idle Transfiguration, Multiple Souls.”
“[Supernova] & [Body Repulsion].”
Kwo-gagagagagak!
Blood fireworks burst in every direction. Twisted flesh swept across the front like a tidal wave.
Those attacks targeted Gojo while crushing the non-sorcerers nearby like insects.
In a single massive strike, countless lives were snuffed out, only for fresh ones to immediately fill the gaps.
“Kuro'ushi was only a temporary card to shut down your close-range combat. The real move is this side.”
Kill them, and they’re replaced. Kill them again.
A madhouse where the living and the dead no longer mattered.
This chaos, in which transfigured humans, humans, and curses all mixed together as if they were one body, was exactly what they had drawn out.
In a situation where friend and foe could no longer be distinguished, where the value of life itself could not be judged, what could Gojo Satoru do?
The best answer would be to deploy his Domain, [Unlimited Void], and annihilate every living thing inside it.
Then, afterward, rescue the humans who had been about to be sent into Basement 5.
But hadn’t they just seen it?
There was no need to use [Hollow Purple] to exorcise Kuro'ushi. If he had been willing to sacrifice a few non-sorcerers, normal-output [Red] would have been enough to exorcise it.
But he hadn’t done that.
To save the non-sorcerers, he restrained himself to an extreme degree. He would search for another way and drive himself harder, but he would not stain his own hands with the blood of the innocent.
That was the limit of Gojo Satoru as a human being, and the line he had drawn in his own heart.
Jogo was genuinely looking forward to seeing how long he could endure while being tested on that line.
And the answer he gave was,
the all-or-nothing 0.2-second Domain Expansion!
The 0.2 seconds was the amount of time Gojo Satoru had, by instinct, calculated as the maximum stay inside [Unlimited Void] without turning non-sorcerers into vegetables.
During those 0.2 seconds, roughly six months’ worth of information flooded the brains of everyone present, leaving them standing there unconscious.
As he intended, the survivors returned to society in full after two months.
However, because this was only that level of [Unlimited Void], it might not work on special-grade curses. Even now, there was a chance they were still awake.
As for the countermeasure, and with Mahito, who excelled at deception, present, targeting them was inefficient.
So he limited his target to the transfigured humans.
One second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds.....
299 seconds.
The time it took the strongest jujutsushi of the modern age to annihilate roughly 1,000 transfigured humans released into Basement 5.
“Haa, haa......”
Gojo Satoru had deployed his Domain, then immediately released it and spent the next five minutes sprinting around killing transfigured humans.
Having thrown in a gamble while drawing out everything he could, he was more on edge than ever before.
As he kept his guard up and scouted the surroundings, one curse suddenly rushed him.
“I!! LOVE!! THE TASTE OF IRON!!!”
Kuro'ushi’s offspring, having finished reproducing asexually, charged at him with a cursed blade, [Egg-Born Blade], in hand.
A special-grade curse revived by drawing on the nation’s fear and disgust toward cockroaches. But with his senses pushed to the limit, Gojo Satoru only found it irritating.
The non-sorcerers had already experienced [Unlimited Void] and were frozen in place. There was no need to worry about them getting caught up in this.
“[Blue].”
Kzzzzzt.
A sphere of attraction that sucked in everything formed at Kuro'ushi’s center and crushed it beyond recognition.
Just when Gojo thought it was finally over and let out a breath of relief....
“[Prison Realm], Open.”
A grotesque box appeared before his eyes.
------------------------------
There was once a monk who lived during the Heian era.
His name was Genshin.
Over the course of his life, he sealed countless curses within his own body using barrier techniques.
His purpose was noble, but as with so many jujutsushi, his end was not a happy one.
Seal and curse.
After Genshin’s death, his corpse became a special-grade cursed object: the [Prison Realm].
A prison that could seal only one person, yet could seal any being.
There was a condition to sealing with the [Prison Realm].
The target had to be held within a 4-meter radius for one minute.
“Hey. You wanna die?”
“It’s hot, Jogo. Don’t worry about it.”
Of course, keeping Gojo Satoru in one place for a full minute was impossible.
But if the condition had truly been that unreasonable, the [Prison Realm] would not have been valued so highly.
The one minute in question meant—
one minute of brain time.
Shrrrk.
The [Prison Realm] unfolded, flesh spreading out like a tent.
An eye embedded at its center stared at Gojo.
He didn’t know what it was, but it felt ominous. Bad. He had to keep moving.
The moment Gojo made that judgment and turned his body, what he saw was,
“Yo. Satoru.”
“Huh?”
his friend, the one he had killed with his own hands last year.
A fake?
A transformation technique?
His [Six Eyes] rejected every one of those possibilities.
The person in front of him was unquestionably Geto Suguru himself.
His dead friend had come back to life.
The instant he recognized that fact, three years of blue spring overflowed inside Gojo Satoru’s mind.
Even if it was only for a moment, one minute had already passed inside his brain.
Swoosh!
“Ghk!”
The flesh of the unfolded [Prison Realm] scattered and wrapped around him.
What looked like a shattered cube peeled off strips of flesh, binding Gojo Satoru until he could no longer move an inch.
No cursed energy. No strength in his body.
A perfect checkmate.
“That’s no good, Satoru. Thinking during a fight, I mean.”
The man before him, wearing that familiar face, smiled lazily.
The [Prison Realm]’s condition, the imprisonment caused by carelessness—none of it remained in Gojo Satoru’s mind anymore.
What mattered, what was most infuriating, was this thing wearing the skin of his friend Geto Suguru.
“...So who are you?”
“I’m Geto Suguru, aren’t I? You forgot already? That hurts.”
“...My body and cursed energy. The information my [Six Eyes] are seeing says you’re Geto Suguru.”
But that was impossible.
Because I killed my friend myself last year.
And there was one piece of evidence that was even more certain.
The stitched scar on the forehead. It matched the man Tsumiki had described.
This guy was the one behind feeding cursed objects to non-sorcerers. He had clearly been alive since at least the Heian era, so there was no way he could be Geto Suguru.
His motives didn’t fit Geto either.
Geto may have fallen, but he moved for a belief. To exterminate non-sorcerers and leave only jujutsushi behind, creating a world where curses would never be born.
Even if his methods were cruel, he had still retained some affection for the friends who had been talented jujutsushi beside him....
But this man felt none of that.
“My soul is denying it! Answer me already! Who are you?”
At Gojo Satoru’s shout, the one using Geto’s body let out a silent laugh inside.
What a truly stubborn remnant of a bond. Even like this, he could still tell. Anyone watching would think they were lovers or something.
To mock him for it, he decided to answer the man who had identified him.
The stitches on Geto’s forehead came undone, and the top of his head opened.
Sticky fluid ran down his face, revealing the identity of the sorcerer inside.
A brain with teeth.
That was the true body of the bastard toying with the dead Geto Suguru.
Grrrk.
Gojo clenched his teeth at the pitiful sight of his friend, unable to rest even in death and still being used.
As if he didn’t care about that cold fury at all, the one occupying Geto’s body spun the peeled-off top of the head between his fingertips.
“It’s a type of technique like this. If I swap out the brain, I can move from body to body. Of course, I can also use the technique engraved in the body.”
As if he had been waiting for this moment, he began explaining in a friendly tone.
It was both the expression of joy at having achieved his plan and a display of superiority over the loser.
“I needed Geto’s curse manipulation and this situation. You didn’t leave Geto Suguru’s body to Ieiri Shoko, did you? You were considerate in a weird place. Thanks to that, I got my hands on this body without any trouble. Don’t worry, the seal will be undone later. A hundred years.... no, a thousand years from now? You’re too strong, so you’d get in the way of my goal.”
After sewing the toyed-with head back together, Gojo gave a hollow laugh.
So you went to all this trouble just to catch me.
He didn’t know how strong this guy was, but the jujutsushi side’s combat power wasn’t limited to him alone.
“Ha! Did you forget already? Who beat that body up before I killed it?”
“Okkotsu Yuta, was it? I don’t find that child nearly so interesting. Unconditional technique copying. Endless cursed energy. Both are merely established through a binding that imprisons the soul of the one he loves. Unfortunately, Okkotsu Yuta can’t become you.”
No matter how strong Okkotsu was, he could not match Gojo Satoru’s power or influence.
What mattered was not individual force, but balance. Now that the jujutsushi side’s greatest combat power had fallen, the balance had been restored.
“If anything, Yoshino Junpei is more interesting.”
“......You’re the one who left the finger at that kid’s house?”
“Correct. At first I only thought of it as a way to attach it to Itadori Yuji, but he had potential. The potential to show the birth of a new cursed energy. It’s a different direction from you, but it’s interesting, isn’t it? Maybe it’s because I’ve lived so long, but I like things that aren’t boring.”
“I hope that kid breaks your prediction. Think it over carefully with that pathetic udon noodle brain of yours.”
“I see. That would be entertaining in its own way. I enjoyed talking with you. I’d like to keep watching, but I’d rather not have anything else happen.”
Good night, Gojo Satoru.
Let’s meet again in the new world.
“[Prison Realm], Close.”
------------------------------
[Can you hear me? Yoshino Junpei.]
The moment Junpei heard that voice, he quickly hurled the device stuck to his ear onto the floor.
He was about to stomp on it and smash it, but the unidentified voice stopped him.
[Wait! I’m on your side! I’m Mechamaru from Kyoto High!]
“I know. You traitorous bastard.”
[I have urgent news! Just listen first and then decide!]
What was this guy’s angle?
What was his intention in shamelessly coming back after betraying them? And why come to me, of all people, when we weren’t even close?
With the attitude of fine, I’ll hear you out, Junpei stopped moving.
[Gojo Satoru has been sealed.]
“........”
Has this guy lost his mind?
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