Since Todo and Yuji could protect Mahiru, Satoru Gojo chose not to step in; instead he kept watch over the surroundings, guarding against any more dangerous enemy slipping in to exploit an opening.
"Brother!" Todo's grin widened. "Here it comes!"
Yuki Tsukumo's Shikigami... was no longer what it had been.
Originally the Shikigami had been a flying creature resembling a serpent's skeleton, but now it was charred black all over, with parts of it broken away.
Those were likely the marks left after its battle with Kenjaku.
After Todo's [Boogie Woogie] swapped it away, it quickly reoriented itself and came charging straight back toward Mahiru—so blunt and single-minded that anyone could tell at a glance no one was controlling it. But the truly troublesome thing about this Shikigami was that merely touching it meant death or grievous injury.
It rushed at Mahiru once more. Todo clapped his hands and [Boogie Woogie] activated, swapping the positions of Yuji and the Shikigami—like a bullfight, luring the Shikigami to charge off in the wrong direction. At that same instant Todo turned his body, Cursed Energy erupting through his whole frame, and slammed out a punch that crashed into the Shikigami.
Bang! The fist landed, yet the Shikigami's body, floating in midair, didn't budge in the slightest. Instead, Todo felt as though he were an ordinary man punching a massive boulder—the bones of his fist screaming in pain, utterly unable to harm his opponent.
"Haha! So this is imaginary mass!" Todo's grin grew even more exhilarated. Far from being intimidated by the Shikigami's hardness and mass, he swung an even heavier punch and smashed into it again.
Bang!!!——
The Shikigami seemed to grow furious.
It whipped its tail at Todo.
Todo dodged swiftly.
The tail struck nothing but air, lashing into the rooftop instead and crushing the reinforced concrete as easily as smashing tofu.
And in that pause, that counterattack, something caught the corner of Mahiru's eye.
"The sixth bone joint counting from the tail!" Mahiru shouted. "There—the Cursed Energy is unstable!"
That spot was the Shikigami's weak point!
Whoosh—— Flames of Cursed Energy ignited around Yuji's fist—and with them, black lightning.
"Todo!" "Got it! Hit right there!" [Black Flash].
This was a top-tier skill from the original Jujutsu Kaisen story, a move that no one could ever land on purpose.
It amounted to a high-level [Critical Hit].
When a Black Flash landed, the user's Cursed Energy would be wrapped in black lightning and fire; the power of that attack would be multiplied to the 2.5th power, and the user would enter the "state of selflessness," drawing out 120% of their potential.
In battle, the side that landed a Black Flash would enter an unprecedented peak condition.
In the jujutsu world, there was a world of difference in attainment between a sorcerer who had landed a Black Flash and one who never had.
Landing a Black Flash was absurdly difficult.
A Black Flash required the margin between physical impact and Cursed Energy impact to fall within 0.000001 seconds. In all of jujutsu, no one could land a Black Flash on purpose.
——Only one person could.
Yuji Itadori—he was the only one.
And now, to guard Mahiru's back, the boy had landed the first Black Flash of his life in this timeline.
Boom!!—— Crack——
Black lightning blazed across the rooftop, and even the Shikigami—backed by a Special Grade sorcerer's Technique—was struck by that single Black Flash until cracks spread across it.
"Hahaha!" The light of the Black Flash reflected in Todo's eyes as he burst into laughter. "My best friend! That's just like you!"
Yuji said nothing. Having landed the Black Flash, he had already entered the state of selflessness.
He kept hammering the Shikigami with his fists.
The Shikigami thrashed and writhed, trying to lash its tail in retaliation.
Todo clapped to swap places, laughing as he brought down another punch.
Strike the weak point, clap to swap, strike the weak point, clap to swap...
The two of them launched into a perfectly coordinated combo.
Each punch was heavier than the last.
Then the Heavy-Armed Darting Hare joined in as well.
"Come to think of it, you actually kept this from me all along! Blue-haired Cursed Spirit!" Todo shouted, laughing. "Do you have any idea how long I've longed to meet you!"
"Huh? What would I want with you? A fight?" Mahiru shot back, glancing sideways as she strained with all her might to maintain her Cursed Energy. "I'm nothing like you, you ultra-macho battle junkie!"
"A battle junkie! Hahaha! The reason I sought you out wasn't to fight—it was to ask you something!" Todo's voice was deafening. "But at this point, there's really no need to ask anymore, because I've already found my answer!"
Boom. At that moment, black lightning flashed again at the edge of Mahiru's vision.
Another Black Flash? Was it Yuji again?
Mahiru spared a sliver of attention to look—and found that the one with black lightning blazing in his fist was, astonishingly, Todo.
"There are many ways to judge whether someone is worth befriending. One is to understand that person's interests! And another is to grasp just what that person fights for!"
The black lightning blazed fierce as flame.
Todo's hips drove his shoulders, pouring his whole body's strength into it— a single [Black Flash] came smashing down with savage force!
—"Blue-haired Cursed Spirit! You are someone worthy of having my back entrusted to you!" Bang!!——
Two Black Flashes—who could possibly take them head-on?
The Shikigami was utterly smashed down by the punch, its midsection snapping apart as it broke into two halves in midair.
"?"
Yuji and Todo dispatched the Shikigami so quickly that it took everyone by surprise.
Mai and Maki hadn't even had time to arrive before the Shikigami plummeted from the high-rise.
"So fast." Maki was genuinely shocked. "Were they... this strong all along?"
She had thought her own growth had been advancing by leaps and bounds, but she'd never imagined that Yuji and Todo had grown this fast too... Todo was one thing, but Yuji especially—he was now a world apart from how he'd been when he first enrolled.
That Black Flash just now, and the power behind those few punches... had basically surpassed the threshold of a Grade 1 sorcerer.
How had he managed it...?
"Me too." Yuji looked at his own fist, opening it and clenching it again. "Mahiru, no matter what good or bad things happened before, I believe in you now—and you can believe in us too..."
Right now, right here, as long as we're at your side, we absolutely won't let anyone get near you.
If that being is stronger than me, then I'll become stronger than that being.
The boy's resolve burned just like that within his chest.
"So, Mahiru, that thing is up to you." Todo stood on Mahiru's other side with his arms crossed, looking up at the black hole. "You can handle it, right?"
The girl let out a soft laugh. "You two are honestly a bit out of your minds..."
She returned her gaze to that terrifying black hole in the sky.
She understood that Satoru Gojo had never directly promised these students that he could save everyone once the black hole descended. So the two standing beside her had surely already steeled themselves with the resolve that "if Mahiru fails, we die together."
That was why she called the two of them out of their minds.
Wouldn't it be fine to just leave everything to Satoru Gojo? Why did they have to come get tangled up over here?
And besides... why ask me whether I can handle it?
Isn't the situation obvious? Can't you see it for yourself?
In the sky, the canvas of space was being torn open with rifts; it had pulled itself together slightly before, but now it was continuing to collapse.
Anyone could tell things were looking bad, right? Even Satoru Gojo was clearly making plans for "after Mahiru fails."
The mechanism itself had never been favorable to begin with, and now her Cursed Energy output was clearly falling short by a notch... at this point even Mahiru herself no longer had the confidence to stop the black hole...
And yet these two lunatics were still behind her, burning, burning, burning—never stopping...
"Heh... who do you think I am?"
——Wasn't that enough to stir up her competitive spirit too?
"As if there's any way I can't handle it!!——"
"Hm?" Satoru Gojo suddenly froze, then urgently whipped his head around to look toward Mahiru.
"So her Cursed Energy output really isn't enough after all... no, wait—" Watching the battlefield from afar, Kenjaku—who had already concluded in his heart that Mahiru was doomed to fail and was shaking his head in regret—suddenly changed his expression. "Could it be..."
Cursed Energy surged into the heavens.
A magnificent light blazed in her eyes.
The colossal, godlike entity let out a shriek.
The girl's blue hair streamed and danced in the raging wind.
With the explosion of Cursed Energy, with the girl's wild laughter, a dazzling darkness spread out from beneath the deity's feet, instantly surging skyward to blot out the heavens.
And so, throughout the Tokyo area, everyone—whether they had evacuated or not—saw the daylight that had already been half-devoured by the black hole: now its other half, too, was being swallowed by an entirely different kind of darkness.
The heavens went utterly dark. The whole city was dyed black.
So much so that Yaga and Kusakabe of Jujutsu High both looked up in bewilderment.
"A total solar eclipse? Or has the black hole completely engulfed everything...?"
"No... this darkness... it's glowing..." Kusakabe's pupils contracted. "This is..."
Rumble, rumble——
Then the darkness across half the sky burst open, and only then did people realize that what shrouded the heavens was not the black of night—but black lightning that spanned the entire city and blanketed the firmament.
—[Black Flash]. ——Ushura Bullet!!"
The eerie deity let out a shriek, and a single fist came down trailing sky-spanning lightning, swallowing up the black hole along with the shattered space all at once.
____
👻🔥Heey! Walnut-chan for more chapters!🔥👻
🔥 New history:Homelander: Founding the Hero Association
Help us reach these goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 universal bonus chapter