Meanwhile, over in the far-off city of Tokyo.
The battle at the power station had long since ended.
At this moment Mahiru was still tallying up whether she'd come out ahead or behind tonight.
All of a sudden, she sensed something was off, and her head whipped around to look at Itadori. Itadori was startled by her abrupt stare: "…What's wrong?"
Mahiru's eyes flickered, she wrinkled her nose, then shook her head: "Something's not quite right—your soul feels different from before." The girl was sharp.
Even though to all appearances there'd been no change whatsoever, still… the aura of Itadori's soul had quietly shifted.
Yes, the girl had already begun to faintly realize it.
Something bad… had already happened.
"Itadori, come here." Mahiru reached out a hand, her gaze serious. "Let me examine you."
Staying on guard, Mahiru didn't directly use Idle Transfiguration to inspect Itadori's body; instead she first probed him with Cursed Energy. Itadori was puzzled: "What's the matter?"
Mahiru frowned: "You don't feel anything off yourself?"
Hearing this, Itadori scratched his head: "I don't feel anything, but if there's anything at all, it's that the guy's been way too quiet."
Normally Sukuna, with nothing better to do, would pop out to pester him a few times, but today there hadn't been a peep out of him all day long—and that was very unusual.
"Huh?" Mahiru rubbed her chin. "The one who's off is Sukuna?"
The girl mulled it over a couple of times and decided to act, using her Technique to make contact with Sukuna.
The danger of touching Sukuna with Idle Transfiguration was that, while using the Technique, Mahiru herself would be relatively defenseless, and taking a slash to the soul from Sukuna would be quite a lot to bear.
But it didn't matter—the girl recovered quickly.
In any case, no matter how unguarded Mahiru was, there was no way Sukuna could cleave her dead in a single stroke. So…
"Sukuna?" Mahiru pinched Itadori's wrist, just like taking a pulse, her face filling with surprise. "He's asleep?"
The girl had already used Idle Transfiguration on Itadori, yet Sukuna gave no reaction at all.
Examining Itadori's soul more deeply, she could feel Sukuna's familiar aura even less.
"Eh??" The girl was baffled. "What's going on here?"
Actually, before her examination, Mahiru hadn't had any expectations about the result.
She'd assumed Sukuna would huff and snarl at her, but instead Sukuna didn't stir in the slightest.
"Sukuna's gone to sleep?" Itadori was likewise confused. "Want to try waking him up?"
The girl and Itadori exchanged a glance, and both nodded.
Clang! Clang! Clang! And so Mahiru began fiercely banging a gong right beside Itadori's belly, banging so hard that even Fushiguro Maki, far away, covered her ears. Setting down the gong, she went on feeling around Itadori's stomach.
"Anything?" Itadori asked.
"No reaction." Mahiru shook her head gravely.
Then let's go again.
"Hrgh—"
Itadori lay on the ground, and Mahiru started performing the "smash-a-boulder-on-the-chest" act on Itadori's body.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three slabs of reinforced concrete smashed in a row—Itadori nearly puked up his own dinner.
But astonishingly there was still not even the slightest reaction. How strange. "What's going on? Still not coming out?" Mahiru tilted her ear and listened to the goings-on inside Itadori's belly. "Is this guy playing dead?—Hey, hurry up and come out, Sukuna. If you don't come out, I'm going to turn your vessel into a girl…"
"Whoa, calm down." Itadori flinched and shrank back in fright. "Show some mercy…"
—The facts proved that Sukuna had indeed vanished.
Mahiru couldn't comprehend why he'd disappeared.
No such situation had ever occurred in the original work.
The girl pondered for one minute, five minutes, ten minutes, and only then did she gradually arrive at a few possibilities.
"Don't tell me he actually slipped away…?"
Or had he been picked up by someone?
No matter what, that was the only way to explain it.
Though she had no idea how he'd escaped, the situation had clearly turned dire.
She took out her phone and contacted the staff at Jujutsu High, inquiring about Satoru Gojo's status.
The reply from the other end was that Satoru Gojo was expected to come out of his Domain Expansion state in a little over ten minutes. "Wait for me, I'll be right there." The girl hung up the phone.
She immediately dragged Itadori along and ran in the direction of where Satoru Gojo was.
Fushiguro Maki wanted to follow, but ended up being held back by the power station's staff.
"Hold on, if you all just leave, then who's going to pay for the damages?"
The account ledger had finally been tallied, only for it to turn out there were still damages to pay.
Fushiguro's face tightened, then, perfectly composed, she pulled out Megumi Fushiguro's ID card: "Here—just put all the debt on this person's tab."
Then the girl turned and walked off, leaving the staff member staring at the ID card in his hand, at a loss for what to do.
Luckily, the trip didn't take too much time.
Mahiru lifted Itadori by the scruff of his neck and flew to where Satoru Gojo was.
"Yo." Satoru Gojo waved a hand. "Made quite a racket, didn't you?"
Mahiru then recounted the whole affair to him from start to finish.
Satoru Gojo's expression turned serious along with it. "Sukuna's gone?"
Satoru Gojo clearly trusted Mahiru a great deal.
When it came to observing souls, even his Six Eyes weren't as useful as Mahiru's Idle Transfiguration.
"So in other words, there's a strong chance Sukuna has already broken free." Mahiru rubbed her eye sockets, feeling a headache coming on. "But who else is there for him to take a body in?"
In the original work, the only ones qualified to be Sukuna's vessel were Itadori and Megumi Fushiguro; no one else had ever been mentioned.
For the moment Mahiru couldn't guess who Sukuna's vessel might be either.
But if she were to rank them from top to bottom by threat level… "Itadori, could you go down for a bit?" Mahiru suddenly turned her head and said to Itadori.
Itadori was taken aback. Looking at the girl's expression, he understood that the coming content probably wasn't for his ears, so he nodded and walked down off the rooftop. And so, on the rooftop, only Mahiru and Satoru Gojo were left.
"Could you lend me a bit of money?" The girl pressed her palms together and stuck out her tongue cutely. "I got a little carried away just now and blew up Tokyo's power grid, and those people are after me to pay for it…"
On the surface, this was the girl wanting to borrow money but feeling too embarrassed to bring it up in front of Itadori, which was why she'd sent Itadori off. But in reality, Mahiru was still using a clone to secretly carry on another layer of conversation with Satoru Gojo.
["Satoru Gojo… though you yourself might not think so, the situation right now is actually very dangerous."]
Over the clone's communication channel, Mahiru spoke thus.
["I have some intel here whose source I can't tell you—I hope you'll commit it to memory carefully…"]
Very bad—the situation really was very bad.
The course of events had stepped entirely onto a track that Mahiru could no longer predict.
What move Kenjaku would make next, no one could say for certain.
The only thing certain at present was Kenjaku's objective.
The best opportunity for Kenjaku to seal Satoru Gojo was the night of the day after tomorrow.
Satoru Gojo would release his Domain Expansion for the final time and enter Technique Burnout.
At that time, according to plan, Mahiru would also enter the singularity to attempt to rescue Yuki Tsukumo.
With Mahiru absent and Satoru Gojo fallen into vulnerability, Kenjaku would inevitably strike at that moment.
And what made it even worse was that Sukuna had already revived as well.
Right now Sukuna had three fingers inside Itadori and one finger on Satoru Gojo, leaving sixteen fingers; on top of that, Sukuna himself had methods to recover his power, so conservatively he could muster the combat strength of sixteen to seventeen fingers—and that level of strength was no longer something anyone but Satoru Gojo could confront head-on.
Mahiru didn't know who Sukuna's new host body was, so she told Satoru Gojo all the intel on everyone she thought could possibly be the host.
And the one among them who posed the greatest threat to Satoru Gojo was, in fact, the Angel.
"What? You blew up all the power lines in the whole city of Tokyo?" On the rooftop, Satoru Gojo stroked his chin. "That's an awfully big sum, isn't it? You can have them put the bill on Megumi Fushiguro's tab for now, and once this is all over, let Megumi Fushiguro pay it back with the Zenin estate's inheritance…"
["A Technique that can annihilate Techniques?"] And in the hidden layer, Satoru Gojo murmured it in repetition. ["I see—so that's how it is. Understood."]
The most aggravating thing about Satoru Gojo was his Limitless defense.
In the original work's Gojo-Sukuna War, it was only by relying on Mahoraga that Sukuna obtained the move to cut through Limitless, which is why many people believed that without Mahoraga, Sukuna would have no way to deal with Satoru Gojo—whether that's actually true aside, but there's no doubt that when facing Sukuna, Satoru Gojo's Limitless would play a pivotal role.
But if the host body were the Angel, the situation would be utterly different.
The Angel's Technique can annihilate the workings of Jujutsu, and so of course it can also break through Satoru Gojo's Limitless.
Sukuna would have a severe counter against Satoru Gojo.
It could even make up for Sukuna's current shortcoming of not yet having obtained all his fingers.
The only one who can fight Sukuna is Satoru Gojo; between the Jujutsu side and Kenjaku's side, whichever side's top dog is stronger, that side has the higher win rate.
To put it bluntly, if Sukuna's new host really is the Angel, then the sorcerers' side will fall into an enormously passive position.
["Alright, thank you for the intel."]
Satoru Gojo's tone of reply was very relaxed.
He sat at the edge of the rooftop, stretched lazily, looking not the least bit tense.
"There really are so many troublesome things… No, come to think of it, until the night of the day after tomorrow—the end of all this—there are actually only two days left…" Gojo's slightly wistful voice drifted on the night breeze.
Listening to the man's words, the girl blinked, and let out an inexplicable soft chuckle of her own. "Yeah… so, let's get ready together." Mahiru said softly. "There are only two days left anyway."
From the transmigration, to the reincarnation, up until now, so much had happened that it made Mahiru feel as though a very long time had passed.
Since when had she begun deceiving Kenjaku?
And since when had she fallen out with Kenjaku?
When had she thrown both the sorcerers and the cursers into utter chaos?
And when had she been driven to her wits' end by this black hole?
In the blink of an eye, she had actually walked all the way here.
In the blink of an eye, the crucial round that could decide the future course of the world had already arrived before her.
Actually, Satoru Gojo could stall. He could drag things out and not deal with the black hole.
But stalling, in fact, held no meaning whatsoever.
Sukuna needed time too in order to obtain the strength of seventeen fingers, and deliberate delay would also let Kenjaku carry out an even more thorough plan… Unlike that slack, fun-loving Kenjaku in the original work, the present Kenjaku had been completely turned into a person of hair-trigger sensitivity by Mahiru.
Certain most-crucial information gaps had a shelf life; stall any longer and they would lose these advantages.
Let's make it two days from now.
That would be the worst timing, and it would also be the best timing.
The girl suddenly felt even her heartbeat quicken.
Smiling, she met Satoru Gojo's azure-blue eyes.
Satoru Gojo didn't understand the girl's words just now: "Get ready? Get ready for what?"
"For all sorts of preparations, of course." Mahiru smiled broadly. "First point: I'm giving you advance notice—I might be doing some serious modifications to your various students next."
Especially Itadori.
The boy was the protagonist of the original work, with terrifyingly strong talent.
Mahiru had long wanted to load up and power up Itadori… but, restricted by Sukuna being inside Itadori's body, she'd never had the chance.
And now, the situation was different.
With Sukuna gone, leaving behind only the Cursed Energy of three fingers… if Mahiru didn't give Itadori a little overhaul now, that would be completely unjustifiable.
"No matter what your students turn into two days from now… you'd best not be surprised." The blue-haired girl smiled, rubbing her fists eagerly.
There was also Fushiguro.
And Kugisaki, too.
With Sukuna gone, and Mahiru having squared things with Satoru Gojo, next up, the students of Jujutsu High were in for a nightmare… This time, Mahiru would hold nothing back! Not a single one of them would escape her super-thunderbolt grand overhaul!
"Sure, whatever makes you happy." Gojo laughed. "Manpower really is important… In that case, how about I ask you for one more favor." "What?"
"I have a third-year student who's already dropped out, named Kinji Hakari." Satoru Gojo wagged a finger. "Please call him over to help out too."
Ah, now that's a pretty troublesome guy. But sure, fine. "Fine… oh, that's right! Hahaha…"
The girl rubbed her chin and agreed, but then all of a sudden, as if she'd thought of something fun, she burst out laughing "hahaha,"
"Right, right, right—you reminded me… I also need to request some other people from you. Back when I did my Domain Expansion for the very first time, I gave a lot of ordinary people Cursed Energy—you still remember that, right?"
"Of course I remember that. What about it??"
"I'd like to put in a request… please lend those people to me for a bit."
The people who'd gained Cursed Energy because they'd once been assimilated by Mahiru's Domain numbered, by later tallies, around a dozen-odd.
Most of these people were under the protection of Jujutsu High.
Little Cursed Energy, no Technique, and untrained…
These people actually had no truly practical battlefield value whatsoever. But… hahaha… hahahaha…
The moment the girl thought of what she was about to do, she couldn't help laughing nonstop.
These people who possessed nothing but Cursed Energy were, in her eyes, on the contrary the finest molds.
And what came next, she was going to carry out a truly, truly rotten operation.
"Quick, quick, quick—no time to lose, Teacher Gojo… Hurry and summon those people over through the night, together with Kugisaki, the faster the better." The girl smiled and stretched out her hand toward Satoru Gojo. "And also, also—give me that whatchamacallit…"
"What…?" At this point Satoru Gojo really didn't get what the girl was laughing about. "I don't follow…" Not following? What's so hard to understand about this?
What do you think I'd be asking you for right now?
I've already requested this many people, and called in Nobara Kugisaki at the same time.
So as for what I want to ask you for now… isn't it already practically begging to be said aloud?
"Sukuna's last finger, of course." The girl smiled mischievously.
And so, that very night, an hour and a half after Mahiru finished her conversation with Satoru Gojo, Jujutsu High urgently gathered up everyone who fit Mahiru's requirements and delivered them into a Jujutsu High classroom.
Everyone was utterly mystified, unsure what on earth the Jujutsu High people wanted them for.
And just as they were wondering, Mahiru—wearing glasses, dressed in a uniform, cosplaying a teacher—walked in, with Fushiguro, Itadori, and Kugisaki following behind her.
Slam!
The teaching material was set down on the desk.
It was a mysterious object wrapped in a special cloth strip bearing cursed seals.
"Everyone! Look this way, at me! Next, I'm going to assign all of you an important but simple task!"
Mahiru gave a grand sweep of her hand. "Over the coming stretch of time, I'll help each and every one of you learn a Technique, and I'll pay each of you a handsome wage. And once you've learned the Technique, you only need to do one thing!"
The object on Mahiru's desk wrapped in the cursed-seal cloth strip was opened.
The cloth strip fell away.
Revealed inside was a crimson, withered finger—it was one of Sukuna's fingers.
And the girl pointed at this finger and declared loudly.
"In the seventy-two hours after you've learned the Technique, I want you to split into four groups and use the Technique in rotating shifts, ceaselessly striking this finger with hammers and nails! Until I say stop…"
The girl's wicked smile was grand beyond compare. "—Never resting!"
____
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