One week later.
Satoru Gojo stepped out of the car, standing on the edge of the mountain road, looking down into the valley below. It was a sprawling field of flowers. Even though it was entirely the wrong season for them to bloom, an infinite sea of vibrant blossoms was fiercely competing to unfurl their petals. As the mountain wind swept through, a torrential blizzard of flower petals was violently thrown into the sky.
The kidnapped Utahime Iori was down there. She was tied securely to a wooden chair, her mouth sealed with a heavy strip of tape. The endless storm of petals danced violently around her. In this moment, the famously fierce 'Ghost Shrine Maiden' projected a bizarre aura of profound vulnerability and fragile beauty.
Standing right beside her were two "people."
Gojo didn't even need to activate the analytical capabilities of the Six Eyes; a single glance was enough to confirm that one of them was an intelligent Cursed Spirit. While this Curse possessed the four limbs of a humanoid, its head completely lacked human facial features. Instead, its head was shaped exactly like a volcanic crater. A single, massive, grotesque eye dominated the upper half of its face, and it stood with the severe hunch of a decrepit old man.
In terms of sheer, glaring presence, this Cursed Spirit was overwhelming. Its terrifying visage and the suffocating, heatwave-like Cursed Energy it constantly radiated were more than enough to completely eclipse the 'person' standing next to it.
Yet, Gojo's gaze merely swept past the volcano-head, locking 100% of his absolute focus onto the 'person' standing right beside it.
It was a man exuding a profound aura of elegant refinement. His attire perfectly mirrored Gojo's idealized image of an ancient swordmaster. He wore a traditional *haori* draped over a kimono and *hakama*, his feet clad in white *tabi* socks and wooden *geta* sandals. An impossibly long katana was strapped across his back. His arms hung naturally at his sides, his hands emerging from the wide sleeves, fingers slightly curled, radiating an aura of absolute, terrifying relaxation.
He wore a wide-brimmed bamboo hat, the rim decorated with dangling sun and moon ornaments. The hat completely shrouded the upper half of his face in shadow, but from within that darkness, the faint, piercing glow of heterochromatic eyes pulsed rhythmically.
Unlike the volcano-head beside him, this man radiated almost zero external Cursed Energy. Every single drop of his Cursed Energy was flowing silently, flawlessly within his own body. Gojo's Six Eyes could clearly trace this perfectly smooth, sluggish current. The Cursed Energy cascaded from his abdomen, flowing out to every extreme extremity of his limbs and bones, before cycling seamlessly right back into his core. This uninterrupted, infinite loop of Cursed Energy operated like a flawless, natural ecosystem.
Merely witnessing that terrifyingly perfect, frictionless Cursed Energy circulation was enough for Gojo to instantly deduce that this man was unfathomably strong.
"The Lord of Cursed Spirits, Mahito," Gojo murmured softly. "I finally get to meet you."
As soon as the words left his lips, the Lord of Cursed Spirits suddenly tilted his head up. Those heterochromatic eyes, previously hidden beneath the bamboo hat, were finally completely exposed to Gojo's gaze. The King of Curses smiled and gave Gojo a polite, shallow nod.
Right now, the King of Curses was dressed in the garb of a legendary swordmaster, standing with supreme relaxation in the dead center of a blooming flower field. The endless mountain winds relentlessly whipped the petals against his robes. He stood there like a figure ripped straight from an ancient ink painting. He looked up, his gaze crossing an infinite distance to violently crash into Gojo's, a welcoming smile on his face, as if he were eagerly awaiting the arrival of a dear, long-lost friend.
Even with Gojo's unshakable state of mind, he couldn't help but genuinely marvel, "How incredibly elegant."
"Mr. Gojo, is this far enough?" The driver's side window of the car rolled down, revealing the weather-beaten face of a middle-aged man. He wore plain, square-rimmed glasses, his expression etched with years of exhaustion.
"Any further will be incredibly dangerous."
"I understand," the man replied. "I will wait for you right here."
"Are you sure about that? Even standing here could prove lethal," Gojo stated with absolute bluntness. "Don't be fooled by the fact that he currently looks human. If that guy actually gets serious, he could vaporize this entire mountain range in a microsecond. In terms of pure, raw destructive output, he's absolutely on par with the nukes dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tsutomu Yamaguchi managed to survive both of those nukes, but if this guy goes completely insane, even Yamaguchi wouldn't walk away from it."
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was the famous survivor who lived through the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was a completely ordinary human. The driver instantly understood Gojo's implication: while the driver wasn't technically an ordinary human, the gap in power made him practically indistinguishable from one. If he stayed here, he would essentially be volunteering to experience Yamaguchi's trauma firsthand.
"You will eventually need a ride home," the man stated simply. "And I am your driver."
"Fall back another five kilometers. This current perimeter is genuinely, absolutely not safe," a wide grin broke out across Gojo's face. "Besides, Ijichi, that line just scored you major style points."
The absolute most terrifying nuclear weapon in human history boasted a lethal blast radius of roughly 55 kilometers—the Tsar Bomba. Gojo assessed that even if the Lord of Cursed Spirits genuinely possessed nuclear-level destructive capabilities, the collateral damage likely wouldn't extend past five kilometers.
Ijichi hesitated, but ultimately swallowed his words of concern, smiling instead. "Mr. Gojo. May fortune favor your blade."
Gojo aggressively jammed his thumb into his own chest, flashing a grin devoid of a single ounce of fear, and shot back with absolute, unbreakable conviction, "—Who the hell do you think I am?"
Gojo violently expanded his Cursed Energy perception. In a fraction of a microsecond, his sensory net engulfed the entire mountain range, spanning a diameter exceeding ten kilometers! But this was nowhere near his absolute limit. His body hadn't experienced a genuine, life-or-death workout in far too long. Even though his heart was already pounding with the intoxicating anticipation of battling the King of Curses, the internal Cursed Energy circulation within his body hadn't yet reached a state of flawless, combat-ready perfection.
Ijichi didn't even feel the brush of displaced air. Gojo, who had just been standing with his back to him, staring down into the valley, vanished into thin air.
Ijichi calmly put the car into gear, obediently driving exactly five kilometers away.
—Technique Release: Limitless.
No, to be strictly accurate, this was not a conventional 'release'. Generally speaking, maintaining a Cursed Technique imposes a severe, constant physical burden on a sorcerer. Absolutely no sorcerer is capable of keeping their technique active 24/7. Not even Kinji Hakari, with his infinite Cursed Energy, could pull it off; his brain still required rest.
But Satoru Gojo was the absolute exception.
Thanks to the Six Eyes, his Cursed Energy efficiency was astronomically high. He could maintain the Limitless technique in a state of perpetual, uninterrupted activation. He could even keep it running flawlessly while he was asleep. This meant he was constantly, endlessly refining his mastery over the technique, every single second of every day.
For him, using the technique wasn't a 'release'; it was merely the fundamental act of using it. Exactly like right now.
Gojo didn't form a single hand sign, nor did he chant a single incantation. He merely tapped the tip of his toe against the pavement. The Limitless autonomously engaged in perfect synchronization with his sheer willpower, operating as effortlessly and naturally as moving his own arms and legs.
And then, he violently collapsed a distance of over three hundred meters, arriving in a fraction of a microsecond.
He lifted his foot from the asphalt of the mountain road, and brought it down dead center in the blooming flower field.
Jogo flinched, violently stumbling backward in shock. "H-How is this possible? Was that spatial teleportation? No, the sensation was entirely different!"
A mere distance of three hundred meters was utterly trivial to everyone present, excluding Utahime. But no matter how trivial, crossing that physical space still fundamentally required *time*. No matter how blindingly fast someone moved, there would always be a measurable delay between departure and arrival.
But Gojo crossed that three-hundred-meter gap without a single microsecond passing. He merely lifted his toe and set it down, teleporting from the mountain road directly to this spot. It was fundamentally faster than instantaneous teleportation! Teleportation still required locking onto coordinates and executing a technique release. Gojo required absolutely none of that.
"It's spatial dominance," Gojo smiled broadly. "I assumed that if you had the sheer audacity to stand before me, you would have at least thoroughly dissected every scrap of intel regarding the Limitless."
Jogo glared viciously at Gojo with his single, massive eye, letting out a low, aggressive growl of furious defiance.
Of course Jogo understood the theoretical mechanics of the Limitless. The core concept of the Limitless was to manifest the mathematical concept of 'infinite convergence' into physical reality. As long as a point in space fell within Gojo's Cursed Energy perception range, he could directly bypass the intervening space, or violently compress that space down to a singular point, warping reality itself.
The most glaringly obvious application was exactly what they had just witnessed. Gojo violently compressed and warped the three-hundred-meter spatial gap down to absolute zero. Consequently, from his perspective, he merely took a single, casual step, and that step instantly deposited him in the flower field.
Simultaneously, he could infinitely expand the spatial distance between himself and any incoming threat, ensuring that absolutely no attack could ever physically touch his skin.
As long as he could perpetually maintain the Limitless, Satoru Gojo was, in the most literal, uncompromising sense of the word: Invincible.
In canon, there were exactly three methods capable of bypassing Gojo's defenses and actually landing a hit:
First: The guaranteed-hit effect of a Domain Expansion. Not even the Limitless could grant immunity to a Domain's absolute rules.
Second: Utilizing a Cursed Tool explicitly designed to nullify Cursed Techniques. Toji Fushiguro had wielded exactly such a weapon to shatter Gojo's Limitless, nearly murdering him in the process.
Third: Domain Amplification. This technique functioned by wrapping the user in a fluid, skin-tight Domain designed to violently neutralize any Cursed Technique it came into contact with, including the Limitless. However, the crippling drawback was that the user could not activate their own Innate Technique while maintaining Amplification. In canon, Jogo and Hanami had utilized this exact tactic to force Gojo into pure, brutal hand-to-hand combat within a crowded subway station. Ryomen Sukuna had also relentlessly deployed this tactic against Gojo during their final, apocalyptic showdown.
These were the only three conceivable methods to shatter the absolute defense of the Limitless. But even if the defense was shattered... just as Jogo and Hanami had discovered during their brutal close-quarters brawl with Gojo in canon... even without the Limitless, Satoru Gojo remained the undisputed, absolute strongest combatant on the planet.
The modern era's absolute apex predator was standing right in front of Mahito!
Mahito took a proactive step forward.
He stared intensely at the man universally hailed as the strongest in the world. Satoru Gojo stood with his spine perfectly straight. Standing at nearly two meters tall, he loomed over almost everyone. He was dressed in the standard, high-collared uniform of the Jujutsu High faculty, clad entirely in pitch black. From a distance, he looked like a solitary, unyielding black pine tree.
He had stark white hair, and his eyes were completely bound by a jet-black blindfold that covered the entirety of his upper face. His hair was spiked straight up, defying gravity like a stiff broom. He possessed an insanely handsome, sculpted face, yet the arrogant, perpetually mocking grin plastered across it completely shattered any illusion of refined grace.
Mahito extended a single hand, exactly like a gracious host welcoming a friend who had traveled a vast distance:
"Welcome. Welcome, Mr. Gojo. Your reputation precedes you. The strongest man in the world. The pinnacle of the modern era, Satoru Gojo."
Gojo smirked smugly. "Heh. Seems my reputation genuinely precedes me."
"Although I already know the answer is a foregone conclusion, please allow me the formality of asking one final time," Mahito said with absolute solemnity. "Mr. Gojo, it is not an absolute necessity that we stand here as enemies. Quite the opposite. The idealized world I am striving to create absolutely has a place for you. If you are willing, I can grant you true immortality. I swear this upon my soul; it is absolutely no lie."
Gojo wasn't surprised in the slightest that Mahito would make the offer.
He had already extracted a comprehensive psychological profile of Mahito from Kinji Hakari, and he had thoroughly synthesized Mahito's ideals and worldview from his discussions with Tengen. To be perfectly blunt, judging purely by the toxic standards of modern Jujutsu society, the Lord of Cursed Spirits' actions and philosophy practically qualified him as a hyper-benevolent, enlightened sovereign.
If you dragged a completely ignorant bystander off the street and forced them to choose between the current Jujutsu Headquarters or the Lord of Cursed Spirits, nine out of ten would unhesitatingly pick the Cursed Spirit.
Hell, even fully informed participants like Kinji Hakari had actively chosen to side with the King of Curses!
What was even more absurd was that Yuki Tsukumo—a woman whose absolute, defining life goal was the total eradication of Cursed Spirits—after trading blows with the King of Curses, had coldly and rationally concluded that handing the world over to him absolutely wouldn't be the worst-case scenario. In fact, under his hyper-pragmatic rule, the world might actually thrive.
In many ways, the King of Curses' ultimate goals violently overlapped with Gojo's own ideals. The potential for a dialogue and an alliance between them was theoretically massive.
But there was one, singular, insurmountable problem:
"I am the type of man," Gojo drawled slowly, his tone dripping with absolute arrogance, "who is biologically incapable of tolerating the possibility of humanity being subjugated by another species."
Mahito stared directly into Gojo's eyes. Even though those eyes were heavily suppressed beneath the blindfold, Mahito could physically feel a crushing, suffocating pressure radiating from them. Gojo didn't look away, directly tanking the overwhelming, god-like pressure Mahito projected in return.
After a tense, deafening silence lasting two or three seconds, Mahito gave a polite, shallow nod. "Yes. I assumed as much."
Mahito waved his hand casually. "Jogo. You may release Ms. Iori."
Gojo let out a low whistle, laughing brightly. "As expected of the King of Curses, upholding the absolute peak of ancient honor! You're surprisingly easy to talk to. I totally thought I was going to have to violently rip her out of your hands the second I rejected your offer. This makes things infinitely easier for me."
Jogo raised a hand. In a fraction of a microsecond, a localized burst of hyper-concentrated heat instantly incinerated the ropes binding Utahime. Utahime immediately shot up from the chair, violently ripping the heavy tape off her mouth. Without a second of hesitation, she screamed at the top of her lungs:
"Watch out! Toj—"
"Domain Expansion—"
Jogo's hands blurred into a complex hand sign, and he exhaled a slow, rolling breath of ash as he chanted:
"—Coffin of the Iron Mountain."
In a blinding microsecond, an apocalyptic world of hyper-compressed, molten heat violently erupted from beneath Jogo's feet, expanding outward infinitely in all directions. Utahime desperately tried to scream the rest of her warning, but before the sound could even leave her throat, the molten world had already violently swallowed both Mahito and Gojo.
Rivers of boiling, crimson magma flowed sluggishly beneath Gojo's feet. The entire localized reality was violently sealed within the suffocating, claustrophobic walls of an actively erupting volcano. The ambient temperature skyrocketed exponentially without end. Jogo maintained his hand sign, utterly motionless, as the reality-warping, logic-defying temperatures radiated an aura of pure, absolute divine authority.
Jogo's Domain Expansion possessed absolutely zero flashy, complex mechanics or intricate rulesets. Its sole, terrifying function was a pure, unadulterated amplification of heat and fire! What he unleashed was a barrage of pure, overwhelming numerical stats. To him, there was absolutely nothing in this world that could not be incinerated. No physical matter in existence could withstand temperatures this catastrophic. The melting point was so absurdly high that even reinforced steel would instantly liquify into slag, before being violently flash-vaporized into nothingness.
The purer and more fundamentally simple a Domain Expansion was, the more catastrophically it amplified the user's Innate Technique. This was the absolute ultimate trump card Jogo had kept hidden: [Coffin of the Iron Mountain]!
Just as the name implied, the Domain trapped its victims deep within the suffocating, inescapable core of a super-heated volcanic furnace. Any biological entity unfortunate enough to be dragged inside was instantly reduced to nothing more than fuel for the magma.
"Mr. Gojo, against a man of your caliber, I dare not hold back a single fraction of my power, nor will I afford you a single ounce of disrespect," Mahito declared with absolute, earth-shattering solemnity. "From the very first second of this engagement, I will unleash absolutely everything I possess."
Gojo slowly raised a hand and casually hooked his fingers under his blindfold, pulling it off. His gravity-defying hair instantly collapsed, the long bangs falling to almost completely cover his eyes. The flawlessly handsome face that had been sealed away was finally fully exposed—a face so staggeringly perfect it would make any woman with functioning eyesight scream. But the true focal point was his eyes. They were like two fragments of an infinitely expanding, boundless sky, radiating a faint, mesmerizing azure glow.
He casually tossed the blindfold aside. The moment the fabric left his hand, it lost the protective reinforcement of his Cursed Energy. Suspended in mid-air, it instantly combusted, reduced to drifting ash in a microsecond, utterly annihilated by the apocalyptic heatwaves.
Gojo ran a hand through his hair, sweeping his bangs up and fully exposing those faintly glowing, azure Six Eyes. A massive, feral grin ripped across his face.
"I'm looking forward to it," Gojo stated.
Mahito reached out, placing his hand firmly on the shoulder of Jogo, who was still locked in the hand sign sustaining the [Coffin of the Iron Mountain].
Gojo's feral grin froze, his pupils violently contracting in sheer, unadulterated shock.
Jogo's physical body began to violently liquify, melting down like super-heated fluid. This viscous, molten fluid then surged aggressively onto Mahito's body. The color of Jogo's liquified form was a blinding, incandescent crimson. As this crimson tide fully engulfed Mahito, a catastrophic surge of thermal energy violently detonated outward. Every single trace of ambient thermal energy trapped within the [Coffin of the Iron Mountain] began to skyrocket exponentially, as if the very concept of heat was cheering in ecstasy.
*Cursed Spirit Manipulation? No, this sensation is fundamentally different from Cursed Spirit Manipulation.* Gojo muttered under his breath. *The soul of the Cursed Spirit and the soul of the King of Curses are aggressively, flawlessly fusing together. There are zero gaps, zero dissonance. It's exactly like...*
*A completely new lifeform birthed from the absolute unification of two souls.*
The heatwave violently detonated, and a brand-new Mahito emerged from the blinding inferno.
He had entirely shed the *haori* and *hakama*. He was now clad head-to-toe in a set of hyper-advanced, crimson *Tosei Gusoku* armor. A network of glowing, sun-like circuit-patterns violently spread from the edges of the armor plating, converging directly on the center of his chest. Embedded directly into the breastplate was a single, massive eye—Jogo's eye.
A menacing metallic *menpo* mask completely covered Mahito's face, heavily stylized with the jagged, terrifying teeth of a great white shark. Protruding from the top of the helmet, resembling aggressive, swept-back cat ears, were two miniature volcanic craters. From deep within the shadowed visor of the helmet, a pair of piercing, crimson eyes blazed to life.
Mahito rolled his shoulders. A magnificent, gold-and-crimson *haori* materialized out of thin air, draping heavily over the shoulders of the *Tosei Gusoku* armor.
The sheer mass of the fusion had triggered a massive physical expansion. By the time Mahito fully stabilized his stance, his height easily eclipsed three meters. But he wasn't just tall and lanky; his physical width and muscle mass had expanded proportionally. The final result was a towering, heavily armored juggernaut that looked as impossibly dense and immovable as a small mountain.
He extended a massive, armored hand, and a gargantuan, straight-edged odachi materialized in his grip. He casually hoisted the massive blade, resting the flat of the steel against his shoulder as if he were holding a simple spear. The absurdly long blade furiously reflected the crimson, apocalyptic glow of the [Coffin of the Iron Mountain].
Mahito lifted his head. The crimson glow in his eyes slowly faded, replaced by the brilliant, piercing glow of one golden and one azure heterochromatic eye. These eyes radiated an overwhelming, suffocating intensity, flashing with a highly anomalous, mesmerizing light against the backdrop of the crimson inferno.
"Thank you for waiting, Mr. Gojo." Mahito's voice was no longer his own; it was a deeply resonant, perfectly synchronized dual-layered distortion, sounding exactly as if two entities were speaking the exact same words in absolute, flawless unison. "A user of Cursed Spirit Manipulation merely wields the subjugated Cursed Spirits as extensions of their own power. But I have physically equipped this *Tosei Gusoku* armor known as 'Jogo'. You don't have any complaints about this arrangement, do you?"
Gojo licked his lips, his blood boiling. "What the hell is this? A Kamen Rider transformation?"
Mahito's dual-layered voice boomed with earth-shattering authority:
"The curse of humanity upon humanity / The curse of humanity upon the earth—Mahito / Jogo."
"[Fusion Soul Knight: Roaring Leyline, Calamity of the Blazing Earth]. Please, Mr. Gojo, show me what you can do!"
Gojo stared at the heavily armored juggernaut standing before him, roaring with intoxicating excitement, "Excellent! I actually get to throw down with a real-life Kamen Rider! What an absolute honor!"
He threw his arms wide open, as if trying to physically embrace the entire world. He could feel his core temperature rapidly rising. This meant his body was finally, desperately warming up, instinctively reacting to a genuine, lethal threat. He was currently trapped inside an apocalyptic furnace, but the blood roaring through his veins burned infinitely hotter.
He unleashed a deafening battle cry:
"Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College!"
"Special Grade Jujutsu Sorcerer, Satoru Gojo!"
"—LET'S DANCE!"