In truth, over these years of playing political games with the upper echelons of the sorcerer world, Satoru Gojo had long since trained himself into a slippery old hand.
He recognized at a glance who Mahiru was — during the rest breaks of his business trips abroad, Satoru Gojo had been keeping a constant eye on the situation back home. Naturally, he knew all about the things that blue-haired Cursed Spirit had been doing.
Not to mention that his Six Eyes could see through all falsehood.
"Yo? Itadori, Nanami, you're here too." The man landed lightly, his tone equally easygoing, then pretended he'd only just noticed Mahiru. "Huh? Is this that reserve-duty student they mentioned before? She's here as well? Recruiting students this young — don't tell me we're going to have to open up a Jujutsu Middle School or a Jujutsu Elementary School too?"
Right now, Satoru Gojo had chosen to play dumb.
Mahiru was a Cursed Spirit, and cooperating with Mahiru might later get him saddled by the higher-ups of the sorcerer world with some irritating label like "colluding with a Cursed Spirit."
Though he wasn't afraid of those old codgers at the top of the jujutsu world, with disaster bearing down on them, it was better to have one less problem than one more.
He'd just pretend he didn't know Mahiru was a Cursed Spirit — that would do.
"Truly impressive — opening up a Domain at such a young age." The man smiled, lying without so much as drafting a script in his head. "Honestly more outrageous than Yuta… Want me to put in for a Special Grade title for you later on?…"
Satoru Gojo was spouting nonsense.
Mahiru understood his meaning too, and didn't respond to his idle chatter; instead she looked up at the Black Hole in the sky. "Actually, I get the feeling that Tsukumo… auntie, might still be alive."
"…Oh?" Hearing Mahiru's words, Satoru Gojo paused for a moment, then stroked his chin. "How so?"
"Because the gravity is intensifying."
A Black Hole, in principle, exerts stronger gravity the greater its mass.
Suppose the Black Hole is constantly devouring the surrounding city and land; these devoured things would add to the Black Hole's mass… but in fact, compared to whatever could create the Black Hole's mass, the mass of these devoured things is negligible.
So the increase in gravity must be because Yuki Tsukumo's Technique is still running.
"Oh, now I understand." Satoru Gojo stroked his chin and nodded. "Which means, if we kill Yuki Tsukumo, the Black Hole can be resolved — right?"
The hypothetical Black Hole was sustained jointly by multiple mechanisms. If Yuki Tsukumo — on the verge of death and unconsciously running her Technique to sustain her own life — was likewise an important support of the hypothetical Black Hole, then killing her would presumably cause the Black Hole to collapse completely.
He and Tsukumo were colleagues in name only; if he could make a move, he wouldn't go soft in the slightest.
"Killing her might trigger further loss of control — we have to be cautious." Mahiru crossed both arms in front of her, forming an "X" shape. "And besides, it's just a guess; it still needs to be verified."
In fact, if they really could find the dying Yuki Tsukumo inside the Black Hole, then Mahiru could use Idle Transfiguration to try to manipulate Yuki Tsukumo's Technique, rewrite its operating state, save Yuki Tsukumo, and dismantle the Black Hole at the same time.
So, what they should do after making contact with Yuki Tsukumo was the most trivial point in the whole affair.
The real problem of the affair lay before that.
"Are we going to explore the Black Hole…"
Any of the people from Jujutsu High present, looking up at that all-annihilating black sun in the sky and sensing the terror of being torn apart by gravity the instant one drew near, would think this was a wild fantasy.
Wanting to explore inside it, and to find a single component where "pulling one hair moves the whole body"?
What kind of joke is that?
How is this any different from saying "I'm going to put out the sun with a basin of water"?
Not to mention that the very fact of "Yuki Tsukumo" still being alive was itself only a conjecture.
"But it doesn't matter — I'm not afraid of the sun anyway." The white-haired man broke into a smile. "My student wants to go take a look inside the Black Hole — how could I, as her teacher, pass up a chance to show off?"
Satoru Gojo was an extremely arrogant man, but at the same time he was also an extremely humble one.
Ever since he'd come to understand that his power alone could not change the jujutsu world… he had also come to realize that there were, after all, so many formidable people in this world, waiting for him to encounter them.
The open-type Domain that Satoru Gojo couldn't open, Mahiru had opened — so he was willing to trust Mahiru's abilities and cooperate with her.
Inside the Black Hole, his Limitless Technique could cover one more person; when the girl was agonizing over how to approach the Black Hole, his Technique would be the best protective shield.
However, there was one point that needed attention.
If Satoru Gojo used his Limitless Technique to cover both himself and Mahiru, then there would no longer be any Limitless-space isolation between him and Mahiru.
In other words, if Mahiru had a mind to backstab him, Satoru Gojo's body would suffer a direct attack.
So both Nanami and Mei Mei were quite startled.
Satoru Gojo actually trusted Mahiru this much.
"OK, mister." Mahiru raised a hand. "I'm ready to take off anytime."
"No problem, then let's go." Gojo smiled too, reaching out to grab Mahiru's arm. "Just how old are you, exactly? Am I going to end up moonlighting as an elementary school teacher or a middle school teacher?"
The moment Mahiru's arm was grabbed, the range of the Limitless Technique expanded to encompass them both.
Gojo gave a light leap, and the two of them, as though teleporting, appeared up in the sky.
"Actually, I'm only two or three months old." Mahiru said.
"Ah, so it's jujutsu preschool education, then?…" Satoru Gojo gazed at the Black Hole before him, his joking tone gradually turning serious. "That's really… not good, huh…"
Mahiru's expression turned serious too.
The idle talk was a feigned lightheartedness; when truly facing the Black Hole, Mahiru still felt, profoundly, just how terrifying the thing before her was.
It was just like how viewing a mountain peak from afar and viewing one up close as it comes crashing down from the sky onto your face are completely different things.
Before this, she had always been viewing this colossus from several kilometers away.
But now, with the raging wind in her ears, countless buildings and mountain peaks devoured like grains of sand, and that deep, sun-like Black Hole… their surroundings were already shrouded by a distorted blackness.
They had already entered the outermost region of the Black Hole.
"Actually, with your strength… you should be able to reach this position too." Satoru Gojo's voice had turned serious as well. "Can you sense anything?"
"Nothing at all." Mahiru was amplifying her perception as much as she could, but this place really was too far on the periphery. "Have you seen anything?"
Satoru Gojo's Six Eyes could also observe a vast amount of information.
"I haven't either," Satoru Gojo said. "Then let's keep going in."
They began to slowly delve deeper inside.
The gravity still could not cross the Limitless to touch the two of them. Everything torn to shreds around them, set against the two of them… seemed not to belong to the same layer.
Deeper, deeper, deeper still.
Their surroundings sank into utter darkness; light was completely unable to escape the capture of the gravity. Mahiru could see that, in the glowing blue eyes of the Satoru Gojo beside her, blue light was constantly spilling out, like a blue thread drifting toward the center of the Black Hole.
Here, the naked eye was already useless.
Mahiru closed her eyes.
She began to sense other things.
Such as Cursed Energy.
Such as… the breath of souls.
The world of Jujutsu was exactly like this: some things ran in strict accordance with the laws of physics, but some things completely defied common sense and established theorems.
At this very moment, the two of them instead felt a tranquility within the frenzied realm of destruction that was the Black Hole.
Then, Mahiru opened her eyes.
"Did you hear it?" Mahiru said.
"Hear what?" Satoru Gojo asked.
"The melody of gravity," Mahiru said, her eyes staring straight into the deepest part of the darkness. "This place — it very closely resembles an Innate Domain with its shell turned inside out."
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