Chapter 31: A Crushing Intellectual Victory
"So, Emiya-kun.
You mean... when you got here, this guy's limbs were already completely broken?" Looking at the unrecognizable object not far away, Satoru Gojo finally couldn't help but scratch his head in confusion.
"That's right." Emiya was not only expressionless but even nodded his head.
After a very gentle interrogation just now, he had obtained quite enough intelligence from the Curse User.
Don't misunderstand, it was truly gentle. Because the guy couldn't help but wet his pants just from Emiya's deadpan questioning.
He learned from the Curse User that the man was following someone else's orders and had been lying in ambush in this abandoned hospital ahead of time.
So, who would know precisely that he was coming to this location to eliminate a Cursed Spirit?
Gojo-san himself told him about the promotion from semi-Grade 1 by undertaking Cursed Spirit subjugation missions, and Ijichi-san brought him here. Besides those two, the only other party was the Higher-Ups who set the promotion requirement.
Emiya himself didn't actually have a great desire to climb the ranks in the Jujutsu world, as he neither yearned for power nor planned on staying in this world forever.
The main reason he agreed to this promotion path was that the Jujutsu world was the only place that could provide him with the information he sought, and he was genuinely willing to eliminate Cursed Spirits that only caused tragedies.
If he could kill one more Cursed Spirit, one more person might not have to cry because of it... It was doing what he could, in a sense.
However, the facts proved to him that the Jujutsu world was not as noble as its self-proclaimed purpose, but rather a murky area not much better than the Magecraft world.
Emiya could roughly understand that when facing an uncontrollable variable, their first option is assimilation, and the second is elimination.
In this respect, they were marginally better than the Magecraft world, where the first option is elimination, and the second is assimilation.
So why did those people skip the first part? It's probably because they realized he was getting close to Gojo-san, and upon realizing he couldn't be brought under their control, they chose to act to prevent him from getting any stronger.
So, did he bring trouble to Gojo-san, or did Gojo-san bring trouble to him? Emiya couldn't figure it out immediately, but he would instinctively try to keep others out of his own problems.
As for why he permanently incapacitated this Curse User?
Apart from a minor personal emotion, the most important reason was to prevent this guy from having another chance to harm people. Everyone has heard stories about people who are arrested one day only to swagger out the next.
"Alright, alright, he was a Curse User who actively attacked you anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered even if you had killed him directly.
Isn't this guy's name on the bounty list? I think he was ranked pretty high, too. What was his name again?" Gojo concentrated for a moment, then suddenly made a fist and thumped his palm.
"Right, Jiro Awasaka!" Because the name sounded catchy, he was sure he hadn't misremembered.
"The reason I even remember such a minor character is because his technique, [Inversion], is quite interesting, according to the intel."
"As the name suggests, he can use his technique to reverse the strength of the attacks applied to him: the stronger it is, the weaker it becomes, and the weaker it is, the stronger it becomes.
When I first heard about it, I thought about hitting him with a full-power blast to see what he was capable of."
In terms of raw strength, this kind of person wasn't even worth a proper glance from Gojo, but the technique itself was more fascinating than the person. If it could be manipulated precisely, it might function as a weaker version of the 'Limitless Technique,' though Gojo knew there was no point in expecting anything from this kind of person.
"So, Emiya-kun, how did you deduce his technique? You hadn't heard this information before, right?" Gojo was genuinely curious.
A technique like that, if the information is known, is merely special. But if you have absolutely no prior knowledge of it, that's a different matter entirely.
How did he do it?
"Tricky... was it?" Emiya recalled the fight; he was mostly just chasing the opponent around.
As for how he discovered the technique...
"When he first tried to ambush me, the guy didn't use his technique and was immediately knocked away by my counterattack.
So when the opponent activated his technique, rendering my attack nearly ineffective, I wondered if there was a major weakness in his technique that prevented him from using it immediately at the start of the fight.
Later in the fight, his relaxed state proved that the technique's activation didn't consume much Cursed Energy, so the weakness must be elsewhere.
And, my attack didn't feel blocked; it felt like it simply lost its force..."
Throughout the battle, Emiya remained calm, analyzing the situation of both sides, but the Curse User was desperately trying to provoke him into fighting with maximum effort.
His intention was too obvious.
"I tried testing him with a sufficiently powerful attack. After learning that the upper limit of the technique was quite absurd, I wondered if its weakness was on the opposite side, the lower limit."
"Once I successfully tested that point, all I had to do was finish him off before he realized what happened."
Emiya pointed at the Curse User on the ground and didn't find the battle to have been particularly dangerous. After all, while the guy's technique was powerful, he didn't have the hard power to actually harm Emiya himself.
"I see. So, he was completely crushed in battle intelligence?
This guy truly lost fair and square." Gojo turned to look at the lump on the ground, his expression clearly showing disgust.
Weakness isn't shameful, because it can be changed as long as one has a clear understanding of oneself. But stupidity is different. What if he was so stupid he thought he was smart?
"Emiya-san, you must have some suspicion about this guy's origin, right?
Even if those old geezers in the Higher-Ups weren't directly involved, the information definitely leaked from them.
So, don't worry." A bright smile spread across Gojo's face.
"I won't let one of my own be wronged like this.
Even if I can't directly kill those guys, at least someone has to pay the price, right?" Without giving Emiya a chance to refuse, Gojo directly grabbed the Curse User off the ground and waved at him.
"Wait for my good news."
In an instant, Gojo's figure vanished from the spot, barely causing a ripple. Even with Emiya's current eyesight, he could only barely make out a blur.
"..."
"Thank you."
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