Chapter 27

  Hibana Teira was simultaneously everything that Satoru was expecting, and completely outside of his realm of expectations.

  He had heard from the clan that she generally looked rather grotesque: sheet-white skin, black orbs for eyes, and an antennae-like hairband that lended her an insectile aspect, and also had the feel of cursed tools in their own right.

  Seeing her up-close, Satoru couldn’t blame those old fogies for missing some key points.

  The antennae were cursed tools, yes.

  They were also lodged inside of her brain, through her skull, where they had taken root somehow. Numerous tiny tendrils of black had anchored themselves to her brain to the point that the tools felt a part of her, and not just separate objects.

  It was the same with the orbs inside her eyeholes—they were cursed tools, as well. And they were also a part of her. Why? Because the contours of her soul included them. Both the eyes and the antennae.

  That and some weird… inert, tumorous growth at its core. Like there was some more soul inside of her, waiting to pop out at any moment. Not a cursed technique, of course—this was far from being Jujutsu.

  Perhaps… even more cursed than Jujutsu.

  Something was really, really fucking wrong with her, and Satoru loved it. What an absurdly interesting body she had! With his Six Eyes, he could see how her cursed energy interacted with her body, and he could make inferences on the statistics of her body as a result. He could also make out the contours of her soul for additional information.

  Well-developed musculature, bones dense with a near-constant infusion of cursed energy, and a wellspring that was truly above the average amount for sorcerers, by a fair margin. People’s cursed energy generally stopped growing in magnitude altogether near the end of childhood, once physical development had reached its peak, around the ages between fifteen and twenty. She already had a body to rival any seasoned sorcerer at only fifteen. Satoru could only imagine how much more physically dominant she would become given a few more years. Her body was incredible!

  Of course, it couldn’t really compare to his own physical conditioning. He had the inherent advantage of being born male, and his cursed energy infusion into his body was perfectly efficient. What was more, he had maintained this perfect infusion for so many years, all throughout puberty even, that he had artificially forged his body into an even more efficient conduit for the powers of cursed energy. Without the Six Eyes, such an act would have been impossible.

  Still, he’d give her points for getting this far without the Six Eyes.

  In any case, Hibana Teira didn’t need efficiency, when there were several millions of threads of cursed energy beaming her more power at any given moment. She had a functionally infinite amount of cursed energy to play with. The Juchū technique was a remarkable shikigami technique in the sense that the bugs were permanently formed, and could phase-shift from metaphysical to physical without any additional cursed energy cost.

  Unlike the fabled Ten Shadows technique of the Zen'in clan, Teira could easily and nigh-instantly summon any of her Juchū, from even a single solitary one to even the giant merged ones, without actually expending any more cursed energy. The only expenditure required was when the Juchū depleted their own local stores of energy due to over-exertion and needed replenishment.

  Luckily for her, her Juchū were able to parasitize energy directly from cursed spirits everywhere, all across Japan—except for Hokkaido, of course—, allowing her to replenish at will.

  In summary, she had infinite cursed energy, as long as her network held. Of course, she could have an infinite amount of cursed energy to the power of infinity, and it still wouldn’t get past his Infinity. Mere power was not enough for that.

  Satoru threw his thumb over his shoulder, pointing towards the hole in the windows. “Let’s take this outside, ladybug.”

  “Cute,” she summoned two grass-hopper like shikigami the size of grown men, with two sets of arms—ones with hands and fingers, and another with blades. Then she opened up a portal on the ground, through which the grasshopper shikigami pulled out—

  Panes of glass.

  She then walked past him, jumping out of the broken window, summoning another shikigami beneath her while she herself grew enormous, several-meter long butterfly wings from her back.

  That one was cleaning up the shattered glass outside. While the one inside the classroom was going to replace the window.

  Ugh. Straight-laced to a fault. How boring.

  Satoru joined her outside.

  Mob one and mob two had just about regained consciousness from their sudden flight. Their uniforms had survived, but they looked slightly scraped up. Dogshit cursed energy infusion would do that to you.

  Satoru and Teira landed in front of them. “I’ll ask you both kindly to leave while we fight,” Teira said.

  “Are you joking?” Sa… Sa something shouted. Wait, his given name was Ren, right? Well, Ren shouted.

  The girl version of Ren growled. “I’ll get you back for that!”

  Satoru noticed as Teira snuck two Juchū to the backs of their necks before nodding. “Okay.”

  Instantly, the pair of them stiffened and fell down. Teira summoned more large shikigami, the grasshopper-workmen type, to carry the two away.

  “Poison,” Satoru said.

  “A paralytic. It’ll wear off in a few minutes—it’s extremely fast-acting but also extremely weak. It requires that I inject them directly in their cervical spine to work.”

  What Satoru couldn’t quite wrap his head around was how toxic she was being. Seriously! Just because her cursed energy felt like the extracted essence of a spider’s poison didn’t mean that she had to carry that all the way to her attitude.

  “You know, I don’t dislike you or anything, right?” Satoru tilted his head. “I just wanted us to meet and talk, from one young special grade to another. They did rank you a special grade, right?”

  She scoffed. “Of course they did.”

  “What class?”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s on your student ID,” Satoru explained. “They added a new classification after the mess in Okinawa. Special Grade has subcategories, now. Class Zero is for unrealized Special Grades who have raw potential, but no fundamentals. Little kids and total rookies, basically. There’s four of them in our generation alone. One here in Tokyo and three in Kyoto. Class Ones are rookies in Jujutsu with some grasp on fundamentals. They’re not helpless, and they’ve learned to leverage the power of their technique. Still, a good-enough Grade One could take them out. Class Two puts you a step above even that. Excellent fundamentals and skills in Jujutsu that isn’t directly tied to the use of their Innate Technique. A team of Grade Ones would have to work together to maybe have a chance, and even then, they’d take heavy losses. Victory is, of course, not a guarantee at all. Class Threes are basically invincible. No one except for a Special Grade could conceivably take them on. I’m Class Three.”

  Of course, Satoru himself didn’t really care about what silly details that weaklings kept trying to attach to his strength. Still, it was fun to see how they quibbled about it. Class Three. All but telling him that he could just do whatever he wanted.

  The Gojo clan had pushed for the formation of this rating system, and the Big Three had hoped for it to be able to create pressure on Hibana Teira to reveal her own strength, so they could maneuver her into place or whatever. Some dumbass weakling crap.

  “Fascinating,” she said dryly as she reached into her kosode, pulled out her card, and put it back in her kosode. She wasn’t actually reaching for a pocket, but a portal. An extradimensional storage space hidden from normal view.

  How in the hell did that connect with her Juchū technique?

  …It didn’t.

  She was hiding something in her cursed energy.

  A cursed tool?

  No. The portals felt like they contained a living intention.

  …A cursed spirit.

  Satoru put a pin on that, refusing to let it take him by surprise should it become relevant.

  “Class One,” she said. Huh?! “I expected as much. Alright. Let us begin.”

  “Start slow and go from there?” Satoru asked.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “No innate techniques. No Juchū or Infinity. Just my body against yours.” Of course, he couldn’t turn off his Six Eyes even if he wanted to, but neither could Teira turn off the cursed trait that allowed her to become such a standout among her clan.

  Infinite multitasking, no doubt.

  “I’ll allow you to keep your other Juchū out, of course,” Satoru said. “The ones siphoning power to you. I don’t care if you have infinite cursed energy.”

  She grinned. “Are you sure you want to do this? I consider my body to be quite a potent weapon.”

  “It’s the only way you’ll have a chance to not embarrass yourself in front of the entire school,” he pointed his thumb at the school building, where he could see so many faces peaking out through the windows. “You won’t look totally helpless before I put you on the ground. Consider it an apology for winding you up all those years ago.”

  She grinned. Then giggled.

  And then laughed.

  Satoru laughed with her. Good, good! Let the confidence flow through you.

  “You really are a good-for-nothing, thrill-seeking, piece of shit child. That’s okay. I don’t hate impudent brats like you,” she said. Every word of hers was laced with such a potent miasma of toxicity. Such an ability to curse without holding an ounce of vitriol back. “On the contrary, I always relish the opportunity to discipline the unruly. Very well. Let us not use our innate techniques.”

  Then, her face changed.

  Markings extended from the sides of her lips horizontally, curving in a right angle towards her cheekbones before disappearing behind her ears. She grew black mandibles like fangs jutting out from her chin. Then, insectile eyes popped up on her forehead, eight in number.

  Her antennae grew even longer and started growing bristles, until they became moth-like and ovaloid.

  She opened her mouth, revealing the lines to actually be extensions of her mouth, showing a horrifyingly wide cavern of blackened, needle-sharp teeth the same color as her eyes. She licked her upper lip with a freakishly long, purple tongue, as if savoring the idea of the incoming melee.

  The most dramatic change, however, occurred in her spirit.

  Her aura had multiplied in strength. Her cursed energy output had doubled, no, tripled. And it kept growing with each second, revealing additional depths to her power.

  “Do you need a count?” Teira crooned, her voice smoky and filled with darkness. “Or should we just… get right down to it?”

  Satoru giggled silently, eyes as wide as he could bring them. “Nope! Whenever you’re ready.”

  This is going to be so much fun!

  That was the last thing he thought before he saw Teira hit a Black Flash against the ground, appearing right in his face to punch him.

  With the force of a thousand speeding cars.

  000

  The only reason why Yaga Masamichi had given the final green light for Gojo Satoru and Hibana Teira to share a classroom had been due to one thing: the brief conversations he had had with each of them.

  Both times, he had come to determine that arrogant to a fault as they both were, they were fully capable of setting their egos aside for a greater good. Even people as powerful as them were beholden to the strict judgment of a responsible adult.

  That was why he fully expected their inevitable showdown to not turn into a disaster for Tokyo Jujutsu Academy. They would stop before any major property damage or collateral injuries occurred. They were foolish children too hopped up on pride and ego for their own good, but they had a spark of righteousness each that was difficult to ignore.

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  That didn’t make it any less of a headache as he stomped through the hallways of the school. “You there! Go inside, now!” he barked at a few seventh-graders who were still milling about in the hallways. They immediately jumped to attention and rushed into their classrooms as if to escape a horrible monster. Yaga hated shouting at children, but the protections inside each of the classrooms were extra sturdy. They would be safer inside of them than outside.

  An Assistant Manager ran up to him. “Sir Yaga! We’ve activated all three protective barriers around the main building, including the single-use Special Grade barrier.”

  “Good,” Yaga said. There would be hell to pay once this was said and done. In terms of money. The Hibana and Gojo clans would owe HQ for this to cover up this embarrassment to their names.

  The Assistant Manager, Joichiro, followed him as Yaga made his rounds. “S-sir… why aren’t we stopping them from fighting? One word from HQ—“

  “And they’ll just find some other place to duke it out,” Yaga said tiredly. “In the woods, while no one is watching, and then one of them might really die.” Dammit. Yaga hated feeling this helpless. “No, this fight was inevitable. It’s been in the making for years, ever since the head of the Hibana clan threatened to go to war against Jujutsu Society should they allow Gojo Satoru to locate the hidden Hibana clan compound. At least this way, what little shame they have will keep them in check.”

  For years, they had tried to enroll them to different schools. Gojo had seen through all their attempts and had put his foot down time and time again, shattering all opposition. He had pursued this meeting with Hibana with a single-minded, and quite-frankly manic dedication for several years.

  The reason was simple to anyone who understood the psychology of children: he needed a peer.

  This was how they would bond. For better or for worse. To become friends or rivals. Nevertheless, this would form the basis of their connection.

  And rather than futilely try to stand in the way of this collision of two irresistible forces, Yaga would rather dedicate his efforts towards protecting that which he could.

  000

  As the two craziest people Shoko had ever met in her life jumped out of the hole they made in the window—from blowing away two people like they weighed nothing at all—with one of them growing the wings of a butterfly to fly away…

  Shoko took a moment to blink to cut short her train of thought, as it was becoming increasingly confusing by the second.

  Instead, she latched onto one island in an ocean of weirdness. She focused on the white-haired guy—Gojo’s friend. She also ignored the grasshopper workmen quickly working to clean up the mess and replace the broken windows.

  “What did he do to piss her off?” She asked him.

  He was still staring out the window. “No clue. Just met the guy.”

  Shoko laughed. “No kidding! I just got adopted by my psycho not one hour ago.”

  He turned to her with an expression of mild disbelief. “Satoru… was quite insistent that we become friends. I simply went with the flow.”

  “That’ll do it,” Shoko nodded. “But I mean, she seems nice, honestly. I like her.”

  The guy cracked a grin. “My… psycho… well, he seems nice, too. Despite everything. Geto Suguru. You?”

  “Ieiri Shoko.”

  “Pleasure.”

  He seemed… delightfully normal.

  She wondered if they could all become friends—at least, if Teira and Gojo didn’t kill one another. She skipped up to the windows to get a good look at the fight.

  000

  As expected, I couldn’t land a Black Flash on Gojo directly. As I reached him, I both grabbed him by his jacket and punched his face, ensuring that he wouldn’t escape my reach. In the split second before I managed to make contact, he dampened the power of my blow by reinforcing his face with the precision of a surgeon, wildly cutting the energy transferred.

  I stomped the ground and unleashed a second Black Flash, using it to propel my punch. This one, Gojo blocked with his bare hands. I still managed to make his hands hit his face.

  I stomped the ground again, unleashing a third Black Flash through my foot, and transferring that energy to my fists.

  Striking was a full-body movement. Half the energy came from your lower body. The other half, from your upper body. I had learned very early on that I couldn’t hit a Black Flash at will against a target whom I didn’t have an overwhelming understanding about—a target that I couldn’t recognize easily as an object no different or separate from the world itself.

  To get around this glaring weakness, I decided to give up on hitting them directly entirely.

  By using the ground as a target, I could hit a Black Flash without any impediment. Using the power gained from this explosive force, I could twist my body and throw a punch that managed to conduct most of this energy.

  Before I could land my fourth punch, Gojo had already wrested my hand away from his jacket, and he ducked it.

  Before I could reposition my own body, he struck. I met that strike with enforcement, funneling a great percentage of my cursed energy output towards the place that he intended to strike.

  I rendered the strike entirely harmless while focusing another substantial portion of my energy on my footing—

  Black Flash

  —and my fist as it collided into Gojo’s face.

  This time, he did fly back, skidding against the field, his face steaming and his expression twisted into manic glee.

  I caressed the part of my face he punched, and started sucking each of my fingers sequentially, before kissing all of them. Yum.

  Gojo cut the distance.

  He was fast. Or, at least, he thought he was. Unfortunately for him, my senses were so keen that he might as well have mailed me a detailed breakdown of his choreography a week in advance.

  Not that it mattered to me one bit while I was in this form.

  My senses were obviously the most powerful aspect of me, but my body seemed forever fated to lag behind them.

  Still, while he was physically faster, that didn’t mean I was helpless.

  He directed a punch to my body. I reinforced the spot and countered with a punch aimed at him as well. I couldn’t move my body fast enough to dodge his blows, but I could move my cursed energy fast enough to invalidate their impact. And each time I made contact, I could feel Gojo recoil. I could hear all the thousands of capillaries under his skin bursting. I could make out the beginnings of bruises that would form in a scant few hours.

  Those bruises became promised sooner and sooner as I added to the network of breakage on his body.

  I prepared a surprise for him as I punched him.

  He was losing the battle of attrition. Could he even sense it with his Six Eyes, or was energy all he could see with those eyes of his?

  In that moment of realization, one fact crystallized: I had figured him out.

  I stomped.

  Black Flash.

  And I hit him in his chest. And from my fist, black sparks of lightning bloomed like a flower of pure, divine power. The air cracked and I fed my fist into the impact as hard as I could, screaming shrilly as I did. “BLACK FLASH!”

  I pointed my fist downwards, blowing him to the ground—

  —burying him under the soil.

  Crack, crack came the silent, but assuring sound of several of his ribs fracturing in hair-thin lines.

  I pulled my fist back for a second punch, but I sensed that I would be too late to strike him again.

  He was ready for his own punch that landed harmlessly against my chest, pushing me away and giving himself space to right himself in the crater I had dug him into.

  His smile was gone.

  All that remained on his expression were wide eyes.

  Scared? Hahahahahahahah!

  Why wouldn’t he be? This was the first time he had ever faced off against a curse capable of challenging him! I widened my grin as well, revealing all my needle-thin teeth, hoping to add to his mental horror.

  “You’re a genius,” Gojo said to me. His lips quirked upwards. He looked like he had cracked already. “I’ve never seen the like! Very well. Prepare your—“

  I rushed him instead.

  Before my punch could land, I already sensed the combo he had prepared for me. He deflected my punch and rained down over a dozen blows on my face in one second, each of them blocked by cursed energy during their exact points of contact.

  He kept my body physically stunned, easily dodging away from my range of motion before continuing the rain of blows, having somehow grown faster.

  He pulled one blow back a fraction of a fraction of a second before making contact. I had brought my cursed energy to bear at exactly that particular spot over my abs in order to block that attack.

  Gojo had shattered the rhythm.

  A feint. How could I be so—

  The hit went through. My first true bit of substantial damage, though it wasn’t much at all. I tried to counter-attack. He deflected the blow and rained down more strikes on me.

  He feinted again, this time on my shoulder.

  Ah… I see. This is the game now.

  I didn’t wait for a third data-point—the third time he would throw a feint and throw off my rhythm of blocking his strikes. He had moved far beyond my ability to predict him, now. His movements had become more erratic—tighter as well. He no longer threw wide, winding punches, but short strikes akin to kung fu.

  No. Wing Chun.

  How the hell is he making that showy bullshit work?

  …cursed energy, of course. With cursed energy, one could transcend the limitations of biomechanics. Boxing and mixed martial arts no longer became the dominant doctrines of hand-to-hand combat. Not while we were operating under the realm of extreme reaction speeds and sensory capabilities.

  His body, oriented perfectly straight, seemed to eschew the force that he might gather from his legwork.

  This is why I’m being pushed back. He’s reading my body, too.

  Rather than wait for a third feint, I adopted his style, intercepting his blows where they arrived, eschewing sensible fighting arts and my training in the PRT for something wholly nonsensical out of context.

  Then—

  He tried to feint me. I struck him on his liver. He dampened the blow with cursed energy, as it was a debilitating hit.

  Leaving his groin undefended against my rising knee that struck him right in the crotch.

  Gojo’s expression twisted into shock and disgust at my nakedly psychopathic tactic, but I didn’t care. I widened my snake grin and threw my elbow at his jaw. He dampened the blow as well and was slow to return the hit. Spiritually, his cursed energy was moving fine, but physically, the lowblow had crippled his movements for the time being.

  What part of a fight is meant to be pleasant, Gojo?

  Remember. You wanted this.

  This was not a manga.

  This was the real world.

  In the end of this fight, Gojo Satoru would hate me.

  I wanted nothing more than that.

  I would teach him, in no uncertain terms, the meaning of weakness, of defeat. Not because I hated him. I didn’t hate him at all, really.

  I hated what he stood for. ‘The Strongest’.

  The ultimate authority of the modern world. And yet, he was a child. Predictably, a child that thought he could get away with anything that he wanted. I would nip this behavior of his in the bud, for while I could forgive a child with delusions of grandeur and entitlement…

  …I was far less patient about a grown man maintaining such principles.

  The next generation of Jujutsu Sorcerers could grow up to be righteous, egalitarian individuals should they look up and see shining examples that didn’t embody chauvinism, or supremacy.

  After injecting in him raw pain from being hit in the nether-regions, I pushed my advantage, compounding it until I had a free shot.

  And then I, Hibana Teira, landed my second Black Flash.

  This one hit him on the left side of his ribs, further aggravating his prior injury and causing new ones to form as he blew away.

  I stomped, creating a Black Flash on the ground, propelling myself so quickly that I floated above the flying Gojo, both of us horizontal, though only my fist was cocked back.

  Black Flash.

  Again in the ribs, sending him crashing into the grass where he dug a six-foot deep trench twenty feet long.

  How much pain had Gojo Satoru ever conceivably felt in his short life? How much pain did he ever allow himself to feel?

  He dug his way out of the trench and got up on two shaky legs, panting in exhaustion. Every breath was agony from his cracked ribs and bruised intercostal muscles, though the bruises weren’t nearly as distracting to him as those that were forming in his face, pinching facial nerves and causing him agony with every beat of his heart putting pressure on them.

  Gojo had slacked in his training.

  He hadn’t enforced deeply enough to disperse the shock of my attacks, even the ones that landed ‘ineffectually’ on his face. Instead, they had travelled deeply, hitting the flesh surrounding the sensory root of his trigeminal nerve.

  And any second now, that damage would accrue.

  The bruising would accrue.

  Until finally, the pressure built.

  His own body would press down on his nerves, attacking him for me.

  “Urghk!” he clasped at his face.

  “Hahahahahahahahaha!”

  I laughed so much that I almost forgot to attack!

  No worries. I can multitask.

  Though my breathing was shot from my uncontrollable cackling, I still managed to land another punch to his face, smacking him down on the ground. It could have been a Black Flash, but my sheer amusement at his agony had gotten the better of me. He kneeled on the floor. I stomped his back, causing him to land flat on his stomach.

  “Go ahead, you worthless embarrassment! Turn on Infinity!”

  He balled his fists.

  I felt a surge of cursed energy within him. His technique?

  No.

  But..

  A binding vow?!

  Before I could stomp him down again, he curled up his body against the ground and sprung, hand-standing and directing a kick at my face, one that I immediately blocked. My foot was still up in the air from my second attempt at stomping him, and he took advantage of that by yanking my ankle and making me fall on the ground.

  Smooth as an oiled snake, he immediately straddled my chest and started raining blow after blow on me. I tried to block, and then he focused all his power on grabbing my wrists and pinning them down.

  Then he drew his head back and sent it crashing into my face.

  He was grinning like a maniac as he did, his spirit remaining stubbornly unbroken. All that suffering hadn’t mattered in the end, had it? This boy had overcome it all, just to get right back into the dirt to fight another day.

  That kind of spirit…

  …didn’t belong on some brat with delusions of grandeur.

  He headbutted me again.

  No. This kid was exhibiting something else entirely.

  He headbutted me again.

  I snapped for his face with my mouth, but he dodged away without even taking a moment to consider the fact that I had almost torn all those pretty features of his off in one bite.

  He barely even saw a monster in me.

  How in the world did a kid like him, grown carefully behind garden walls, obtain this kind of spirit?

  He headbutted me again.

  This time, Black Lightning flashed from our contact, and I did everything that I could to preserve key areas of my brain, leaving the rest of the damage from the concussion to be healed later.

  This wasn’t just raw talent and a luck of the power lottery at work here.

  Gojo Satoru had the mindset of a monstrous fighter in his own right.

  Strip him of his innate technique and trait, and he would still be a monster.

  Only a fellow monster could fight with such ferocity.

  I must punish him. I must break his ego and shatter that wild spirit of his.

  “That sobered me right up!” I screamed.

  Just as he tried to headbutt me again, I grew two extra arms from my sides. Both my new hands shot towards Gojo Satoru’s face, intent on ripping his eyes out from his skull.

  He threw himself away from me in the nick of time, but not before, in a fit of shock and a sudden surge of cursed energy, he managed to shatter my wrists—the ones he had pinned down, of course.

  Still, though I failed to reach his eyes, my newly grown palms managed to catch his fingers.

  And on those palms grew twin mouths rowed with razor-sharp, black teeth.

  They bit.

  He ripped himself free from the maws, leaving behind the skin and fingernails of the four fingers he had on each hand.

  I quickly jumped to my feet as well.

  Gojo looked at me with true shock in his eyes. “That’s… not an innate technique. It’s your soul!”

  “This?” I asked, looking down at my arms. “You’re right. It isn’t. I’m just expressing my true self. This isn’t even my ultimate form, really.”

  I could taste his blood and flesh on my hand-mouths.

  It didn’t taste as revolting as I had expected. If I had to, I could swallow those inverted flaps of finger-skin and fingernails whole without flinching. It would be fun to see Gojo’s reaction to that.

  My cruelty warred with my inner mercy. I meant to discipline Gojo, not irreparably wound his psyche.

  With that in mind, I let go of the inverted finger skins and retracted my hand-mouths.

  Gojo grinned in raw fascination, even as his degloved fingers bled. Meanwhile, I used my new arms to throw my haori and obi off and remove my kosode from my upper body, tying the sleeves around my waist. My upper body was only covered by a modest black sport’s bra, but it allowed my new arms to stick out better.

  My shattered wrists snapped into place from a wisp of the Reverse Cursed Technique.

  “Ah, that’s cheating,” Gojo grinned widely. “The Reverse Cursed Technique is a Cursed Technique! It’s in the name!”

  I chuckled. “Sure, little boy. Would you like for me to re-shatter my wrists? Keep things fair? Alternatively, we can take off the training weights and finally get serious.”

  I didn’t want him to start thinking that the only reason I was beating him was because he wasn’t using his innate technique. I had meant to soften him before he inevitably activated it. Then I’d work to counter it while he was weak from all of the damage he had accrued. It was practically a fool-proof plan.

  Gojo chuckled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Then I felt it. I heard it. I all but saw it.

  Numerous tiny cracks across his ribs fusing together. Burst capillaries restructuring, flesh reabsorbing the blood from the internal bleeding. All his bruising, all his contusions, disappeared by the second.

  The skin on his fingers regrew like plant matter sprouting from the skin on his hands in thousands of twisting tendrils that melted together, taking on the vague shape of healthy matter. In seconds, the shape sharpened, and the skin was good as new.

  Gojo Satoru had the Reverse Cursed Technique.