The roar of the delivery truck was the last, pathetic sound Elias heard. One moment he was leaning down to tie a shoelace on a busy crosswalk; the next, the world became a sudden, agonizing burst of white noise and structural rearrangement.
Then, there was nothing.
He didn't wake up in a hospital or a morgue. He woke up in a room that smelled faintly of stale printer toner and desperation. The ceiling was low, the lighting sickly fluorescent, and the walls were institutional beige. In front of him, behind a chipped melamine desk, sat a man.
The man was wearing a slightly stained hoodie, ripped jeans, and Crocs. He was scrolling through a tablet while chewing gum with irritating intensity.
"Took you long enough," the man muttered, without looking up. His name tag simply read: ROBE.
"Where... where am I?" Elias's voice felt thin, like old paper.
Robe sighed, leaning back in his squeaky chair. "Standard staging area. Look, let's skip the existential dread, shall we? You got flattened. Bad luck. Happens fifty thousand times a millisecond across the multiverse. I'm Robe. I'm a god. Specifically, I handle mid-tier reincarnations for Earth-8G. You're in line for a do-over."
Elias stared. "A god... named Robe?"
"Don't worry about the branding," Robe waved a dismissive hand. "The paperwork is a nightmare if I try to use my actual name. Since you died before your statistical probability of death was met, you get the premium package: three wishes, minus any reality-warping nonsense like 'become omnipotent' or 'make me a successful writer.'"
Elias felt the shock of his death receding, replaced by a crystalline focus only a true fan could possess. This was an Isekai moment. He knew exactly where he wanted to go and what he needed to survive there.
"I choose to be reborn into the world of Jujutsu Kaisen," Elias stated, his voice now firm.
Robe paused, pulling up a new filing system on his tablet. "Ah, the Cursed Energy demographic. Popular choice. Violent, though. Alright, lay 'em on me. Three wishes. Make 'em count."
Elias took a deep breath. He didn't wish for the Six Eyes or Limitless. He wished for something versatile, something foundational, and something unstoppable.
"My first wish," Elias began, his eyes burning with conviction, "is for a completely unique Cursed Technique. I want the ability I call Structural Genesis, or the Construction Technique."
Robe arched an eyebrow, chewing slowly. "Construction? Like building things?"
"Yes, but absolute," Elias explained. "I want to be able to instantly manifest and manipulate any non-living, physical structure, material, or tool using Cursed Energy as the fuel and blueprint. I can create specialized armor, complex mechanical weapons, reinforced barriers, or instantly repair or dismantle existing structures by channeling CE. It must be as fast as thought and as durable as my energy allows."
Robe tapped the stylus on the screen. "A high-utility creation ability. Niche, but effective. Requires a lot of gas, though. Granted. What's number two?"
"Number two ties directly into that," Elias declared. "I wish for a Cursed Energy capacity and output equivalent to Yuta Okkotsu's. I want the near-infinite fuel source necessary to spam that technique without exhaustion."
Robe finally looked impressed. "Oh, smart. Very smart. You ask for the gas tank before the engine. That capacity alone puts you in the top echelon, even without a Domain Expansion yet. Done. The paperwork for that much CE is going to be hell, but fine."
Elias let a slow, predatory grin spread across his face—a look he never could have managed in his previous life. He had the technique and the fuel. Now for the positioning.
"My third and final wish," he confirmed, "is to be reborn into the Zenin Clan, specifically as part of the main bloodline. I want to be immediately recognized as having a massive power level, even if my technique isn't traditional, ensuring I avoid the 'Maki treatment' initially."
Robe put down his tablet and looked Elias dead in the eye, a strange, ancient amusement flickering beneath his tired human exterior. "You want to dive into the viper pit with a target painted on your back, but armed to the teeth. Chaotic, power-obsessed family, ludicrous output, non-traditional technique... This is going to be fun to watch." He snapped his fingers.
The sickly fluorescent lights flickered, and the bland office dissolved into a dizzying vortex of green and red Cursed Energy.
"Welcome back to the grind, kid," Robe's voice echoed, fading into the storm. "Try not to get trucked again."
Part II: The Genesis of the Zenin
Ryu Zenin was born with a profound, terrifying silence.
He did not cry immediately. He simply opened eyes the color of polished jade and stared into the high, cold ceilings of the Zenin estate maternity chambers. The midwives flinched, not just from the unnerving stare, but from the sheer weight that pressed down on the room.
The child possessed an immense gravity.
Even before he manifested Structural Genesis, his Cursed Energy reserve was a roaring, contained ocean. It didn't just leak out; it sat coiled, so vast and dense that it was perceptible to even low-grade curse users in the clan as a constant, underlying hum.
Unlike the unfortunate Maki Zenin, who was born with a Heavenly Restriction that made her virtually powerless, or Toji Fushiguro, who abandoned a power he never cared about, Ryu was instantly treated as a precious, volatile asset. He wasn't just the main family; he was a potential monster. The elders, greedy and fearful, kept him close.
By the age of six, the true nature of his power, Structural Genesis, was undeniable.
The Clan Master, Naobito Zenin, had brought the boy into one of the training grounds—an ornate, traditional dojo. He intended to test Ryu's physical aptitude.
"Show me your technique, boy," Naobito commanded, impatient. "Do you have Flowing Red Scale? Ten Shadows? Or are you another aberration of muscle-only?"
Ryu stood silently in the center of the wooden arena. He focused on the simple training katana lying a few feet away. His Cursed Energy, the magnitude of which made the air thick and warm, pulsed into the ground.
Structural Genesis: Manifest.
In a flash of blue energy that looked more like advanced engineering than sorcery, the simple bamboo sword wasn't grabbed or moved—it was instantly re-forged. Thousands of nanoscopic energy threads consumed the bamboo and reformed it into a perfect, razor-sharp replica of a modern military sword crafted from reinforced tungsten carbide. It crackled with residual Cursed Energy.
Ryu casually caught the newly materialized weapon. The weight of the impossibly dense metal barely registered in his small hands.
Naobito's eyes went wide. This wasn't transmutation; it was nearly instantaneous, physical creation. He hadn't just changed the sword; he had created it from thin air and the surrounding ambient materials, optimized for warfare.
"What is that?" Naobito breathed, mesmerized.
Ryu didn't answer with words. He demonstrated his technique's true utility. He flicked his wrist, and the sword's blade instantly dissolved back into pure Cursed Energy. Immediately, the energy flowed around his chest, hardening into a segmented, shock-absorbing breastplate forged of pure diamond-like material.
Attack me, the boy's intent seemed to project. I have the fuel to build the world, and I have built my defense.
"His technique is a marvel of application," a skeptical elder later remarked to Naobito. "But without a Domain, he is still limited."
Naobito only shook his head, looking out at the young Ryu, who was currently practicing creating, shattering, and recreating ornate granite statues purely for practice, generating enough Cursed Waste to fill a landfill.
"Limit? He doesn't have a limit," Naobito muttered, a mixture of awe and terror gripping him. "The boy is a furnace. With that energy reserve, he can maintain an absolute defense until the heat death of the universe. And every single thing he creates, every weapon, every barrier, is temporary only because he chooses it to be."
Ryu Zenin, the architect of destruction, walked among the ancient, decaying power structures of the Zenin Clan, armed with the capacity of a special grade and a technique that allowed him to rewrite his immediate environment at will.
He was the anomaly they had coveted, the resource they desperately needed, and the disaster waiting to happen. The Zenin clan had asked for power, and Robe, the god in the Crocs, had delivered a true monstrosity of efficiency.
Ryu had been born to build, and he would begin by building the foundation of a new era, brick by bloody brick.