*Clap.* Mahito brought his hands together with a sharp crack.
"And that's that. Well, Tengen, are you satisfied with the stage I've set?"
"It's far better than I imagined," Tengen sighed softly. "The only thing I didn't anticipate was your absolute determination to drag normal society into this. Is this Kinji Hakari's ideal?"
Tengen directed that last question to Hakari, who was currently lounging on a sofa in the room.
Unfortunately, Tengen was not currently aboard the private jet bound for the US. Quite the opposite. She and Yuki Tsukumo were sitting perfectly safely inside a sealed room. It was called a 'sealed room', but it was incredibly spacious, resembling a private luxury movie theater. Both women were absolutely certain they were still on Japanese soil; otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to hear the Dream Migration rules being broadcast.
Aside from Tengen and Yuki, who had just been dragged here, Mahito, Kenjaku, and Kinji Hakari were also present. Tengen could tell that this room was the central command hub for the Dream Migration, functioning similarly to how the Tombs of the Star anchored the Japanese Barrier.
"You have to admit one thing, Tengen," Hakari said casually. "The moment Mahito opened the floor to granting immortality, there was no way the existence of Jujutsu could be kept under wraps anymore. I'm sure someone like you can easily imagine how those high-and-mighty elites will react when immortality is on the table."
She could imagine it far too well! Weren't the 'pure' and 'righteous' Higher-ups at Jujutsu Headquarters tempted enough by immortality to willingly offer their absolute loyalty? Even Kyoto, the absolute stronghold of the conservative faction, had been entirely compromised and riddled with holes by Mahito's forces. Tengen remained silent.
Yuki Tsukumo scanned the room and laughed. "You guys sure have some massive balls. Aren't you afraid I'll just self-destruct right here and completely obliterate your command hub?"
She didn't bother threatening to kill anyone in the room. She herself was a resurrected being; she knew perfectly well that death held zero meaning for the Lord of Cursed Spirits' faction. Rather than their lives, this painstakingly constructed ascension ritual was their true vulnerability.
"You won't," Mahito smiled.
"Why not?"
"Because you are also anticipating an earth-shattering paradigm shift." Mahito's smile didn't waver, but his pitch elevated, sounding like a priest reciting scripture. "A storm capable of sweeping across the globe is rising, with me at its epicenter. In this world-altering tempest, everyone will scream and claw to join the fray, as if the entire world has descended into madness."
Those were the exact words Yuki had spoken to the Lord of Cursed Spirits within the void of death. Now fully resurrected with her memories of that death-space intact, hearing those words parroted back made her flush with intense embarrassment.
"I merely said I was looking forward to you whipping up a storm that would shake the heavens and earth! I never said all that other stuff!" she argued defensively.
"I took some artistic liberties."
"That's way too much artistic liberty!" Yuki complained loudly.
Tengen sighed again. Since arriving in this room, she had already sighed twice. She had a sinking premonition that the frequency of her sighs would only increase as time went on, ending with her completely bound and served up as a sacrificial pawn for Mahito's ascension ritual.
The logic was simple. The fact that Mahito had brazenly kidnapped them and brought them into this space meant he had absolutely zero fear of any counterattacks they might attempt. Setting Tengen's own combat abilities aside, with Kenjaku present, absolutely no Barrier Techniques would work. And Yuki's Innate Technique had been completely copied by Mahito. The current Mahito possessed the Six Eyes; his optimized application of Star Rage was undoubtedly far superior to Yuki's original mastery.
Tengen felt the acute, helpless sensation of being meat on a chopping block.
"How exactly did you manage to teleport us out from right under Satoru Gojo's nose?" Yuki asked, genuinely puzzled. "I thought I was being cautious enough."
"You were extremely cautious, and Gojo's Six Eyes are incredibly problematic," Mahito smiled. "Unfortunately, a Mahito wielding the Six Eyes is vastly more terrifying than you could possibly imagine. It's actually quite simple to understand. Boogie Woogie's spatial displacement is already incredibly elusive. At his peak, even Ryomen Sukuna admitted that 50 spatial swaps a second forced him to rely on prediction. A Mahito with the Six Eyes is vastly more terrifying than 50 swaps a second!"
There was another critical factor: Yuki claimed she hadn't let her guard down, but in reality, she absolutely had!
Mahito's 'Thought Imprint' wasn't brainwashing, but it fundamentally solidified Yuki's cognitive state. Because of it, the moment Yuki came into contact with Mahito's Cursed Energy, she subconsciously hesitated instead of reflexively counterattacking.
Despite spending the last few months working diligently in Tokyo, the visceral, sadistic hatred Yuki initially harbored upon learning of the intelligent Cursed Spirits had vanished. Back then, she was a staunch advocate for the complete eradication of Curses. But since her resurrection, no matter how many excuses she made, she couldn't deny that she had strayed completely from her original convictions. She had even entertained the thought that the world might not be so bad under Mahito's rule.
Silently permanently locking that specific thought into place—that was the power of the Thought Imprint.
Because it wasn't brainwashing, they could scan her a million times and never detect an anomaly. It was her own genuine thought; Mahito had simply anchored it so it would never waver.
"I truly didn't expect you to place such high value on me," Tengen noted, sounding perplexed. "The only things I possess that are of any value are my status as the master of the Tombs of the Star, and my Immortality Technique. But I've already transferred control of the Tombs to Yuta Okkotsu, and my Immortality Technique is completely worthless to a faction that already possesses infinite resurrection. I don't understand why you insisted on capturing me."
This had been Gojo's assessment as well.
To Mahito's faction, Tengen was an eyesore, but not a strictly necessary kill. Once Tengen vacated the Tombs of the Star, she was effectively offline for the rest of the war. She could just sit back and watch the clouds roll by. Whether Gojo won or Mahito won, the outcome didn't strictly matter to her survival.
"Under normal circumstances, you'd be absolutely right," Kenjaku rubbed his chin, chuckling. "But our candidate for godhood harbors entirely different ambitions. Ambitions so breathtaking that even my heart races just hearing them."
Tengen frowned. "I'm listening."
"Did Utahime not tell you?" Mahito asked, tilting his head. "I never forced any Binding Vows on her. She should have relayed my entire situation to you. Even with all that data, have you still not realized?"
"Utahime told us everything. My only concern was calculating the raw combat power of your faction and the mechanics behind your resurrection..." Tengen suddenly paused, a thoughtful expression crossing her face. "Wait. Are you implying that what you care about isn't your current ascension ritual, but something that happens *after* you ascend to godhood?"
Utahime really had reported everything she observed during her captivity. But everyone—from Gojo to Tengen—had solely hyper-focused on the five newborn intelligent Cursed Spirits and the resurrection of Toji Fushiguro. While she had briefly mentioned other details, no one had deemed them critical.
One of those details was that Mahito had discovered the existence of other worlds.
"You need my Immortality Technique to explore alternate worlds?" Tengen said, utterly incredulous. "Your ascension ritual is literally happening right now, yet your mind is completely preoccupied with other universes? Are you that confident you can crush Satoru Gojo?"
"The moment Dream Migration went live, my ascension became an inevitable fact," Mahito glanced at Tengen, his tone flat. "You people don't understand the true operational mechanics of Dream Migration, nor the endgame it presents. You simply assumed I launched this game to harvest Cursed Energy and prepare to break the world's power ceiling. You never realized that the mere act of deploying this barrier *is* a core phase of my ascension."
This completely shattered Tengen's expectations. She immediately snapped her gaze to Kenjaku.
"Kenjaku, I know you spent a thousand years meticulously preparing the Culling Game to resurrect sorcerers of the past. But since you're partnered with Mahito now, you shouldn't need me anymore. Are you telling me I serve some other purpose?"
Kenjaku raised his hands defensively. "This really isn't my doing this time."
Tengen eyed him suspiciously before turning her gaze back to Mahito.
"...Is my Immortality Technique truly that special? Enough to make even you desire it?"
"How much do you actually understand about your own Immortality Technique?" Mahito countered.
"I have been intertwined with it for a thousand years. I consider myself intimately familiar with it." Tengen stared hard at Mahito. "But it seems you view it differently?"
"I heard the reason you merge with Star Plasma Vessels is to dilute your divinity, anchoring yourself within the parameters of humanity?" Mahito asked. "Because your Immortality Technique violently rejects natural death, causing you to spontaneously evolve in order to bypass it. It forces you to become a higher-order lifeform. The Star Religious Group reveres this higher-order lifeform as a 'God'."
Tengen nodded slightly. "That is an open secret."
Even the Star Religious Group knew about it. Any Sorcerer—or even a normal civilian with decent underworld connections—could uncover that information. If they couldn't, a cult composed entirely of non-sorcerers would never have been able to hire assassins to target the Star Plasma Vessel, Riko Amanai.
"Knowing that, didn't you realize the implications?" Mahito asked.
"What exactly are you trying to say?" Tengen felt a surge of uncharacteristic frustration. She was the ultimate authority on Jujutsu. Her repository of knowledge was unquestionably the vastest in the world. Yet, presented with this new thesis, she was completely lost. She felt like she had been transported a thousand years into the past, standing bewildered as her mentor grilled her with esoteric questions.
"A higher-tier world," Mahito said deeply.
Both Tengen and Yuki Tsukumo froze.
Yuki couldn't help but ask, "What the hell did you discover at the origin of souls?!"
"Did Utahime really not tell you? I discovered souls entirely devoid of Cursed Energy. Based on that, I deduced the existence of other worlds. In our world, every blade of grass, every tree, every beast, every human, and every Cursed Spirit possesses Cursed Energy. It's simply a matter of volume."
"You aren't trying to say that a world without Cursed Energy is inherently a 'higher-tier' world, are you?" Yuki challenged. "The presence or absence of Cursed Energy is just a biological variable. It doesn't mean our world is inferior to theirs. That logic makes zero sense."
Mahito waved a hand. "Yuki, you're misunderstanding me. I'm not talking about whether our world is superior or inferior to theirs based on Cursed Energy. Think back to the question I just asked Tengen. Because Tengen's lifespan reached its limit, the Immortality Technique aggressively pushed her to evolve upward, propelling her into a higher-order lifeform just so she could bypass death."
Yuki opened her mouth to argue, but Tengen raised a hand to silence her.
Tengen took a deep, shuddering breath, her eyes wide with shock. "I understand what the Lord of Cursed Spirits is saying... Since my Immortality Technique can force my biology to evolve upward into a higher-tier entity, then theoretically, if my technique were embedded into the fabric of the planet itself, it would force the entire world to evolve! It would propel our reality toward a higher-tier existence! And this isn't some baseless fantasy; there is empirical evidence—the fact that alternate worlds operate on entirely different cosmic rules, like lacking Cursed Energy!"
Yuki looked dumbfounded. *Crap. I completely lost the plot!*
Mahito chuckled. "As expected of Tengen."
He paused, his expression turning solemn. "Tengen, I'll be blunt. The potential of your Immortality Technique is far greater than you realize. The crux of it isn't the 'Immortality' itself—it's the technique's absolute, active drive to seek evolution to achieve that immortality! Even Mahoraga requires being struck by an attack before it begins adapting and evolving. But your Immortality evolves passively and continuously. I can confidently say that if you hadn't artificially halted your evolution a thousand years ago, even I cannot fathom what kind of cosmic entity you would be right now. Merely calling you a 'God' is a gross insult to the potential of your technique."
Tengen looked at Mahito, her voice heavy. "Are you absolutely certain you want to take this step?"
"I'd love to casually mock you and say you couldn't stop me anyway," Mahito said, his expression grave and deliberate. "But I won't do that. Quite the opposite. I am formally asking for your help. Because this is no longer just a 'me' problem."
"What exactly did you discover?" Tengen demanded.
"Something cast its gaze upon me while I was touching the realm of the underworld," Mahito said darkly.
Tengen let out a long, heavy sigh.
Yuki felt a primal, suffocating sense of doom wash over her, as if an unspeakable, cosmic horror had locked its sights directly onto her mortal soul. Her heart hammered violently against her ribs in sheer terror. "Hey! What the hell are you guys talking about?! Explain it so I can understand!"
Kenjaku spoke up, his tone unnervingly calm. "I thought Mahito made it perfectly clear. Transcending life and death isn't a concept exclusive to our world. On the contrary, alternate worlds conquered it long ago. When Mahito breached the domain of life and death to enact resurrections, he disturbed the waters. He alerted 'something' in another world. And 'it'—or perhaps 'they'—cast a curious glance down at Mahito."
Yuki felt a paralyzing spike of ice shoot up her spine, piercing straight into her skull. She took a ragged breath. "You... you were spotted?"
"I don't know," Mahito said quietly.
Yuki clutched her forehead and mirrored Tengen, letting out an exhausted sigh. She stopped talking.
Tengen muttered blankly to herself, "I should have known. The cosmos is vast. If I could achieve such things, logic dictates that entities in other worlds could as well. I chose to abandon my evolution, but those entities did not. They evolved infinitely, growing so colossal they transcended life and death entirely, while I sat here fretting over whether becoming a 'God' would threaten human civilization... I was so arrogant. I stagnated for a thousand years."
*Snap.* Mahito lightly snapped his fingers.
"Exactly. Tengen, I need your Immortality Technique," Mahito declared. "I don't know if it's too late, but at the very least, 'those entities' haven't tracked me through the origin of souls into our reality yet. Perhaps there's an unspoken multiversal rule, or perhaps they assumed that since I could reach that realm, I was a peer of equal standing, and so they hesitated, choosing to observe for now."
"Or, to be more optimistic, they simply *can't* cross over. They can only observe, but not interfere."
"We have to seize this window. Our world must violently accelerate its evolutionary speed to keep pace. And in this grand destiny called 'World Evolution,' your existence, Tengen, is absolutely indispensable."
This wasn't fear-mongering. To be discovered is to be destroyed. If cosmic entities like those lacked equals to enforce mutually assured destruction, they would inevitably launch probing attacks out of sheer curiosity. Even if it was merely a 'probe' to them, for the current Earth, it would be an apocalyptic extinction event.
Tengen currently felt exactly like Madara Uchiha realizing he wasn't the invincible final boss, but that the extraterrestrial Otsutsuki were descending from the heavens—a nauseating cocktail of dread, existential insignificance, and bewildered terror.
With everything laid bare, Tengen had no grounds to refuse. But before she conceded, she had one lingering question.
"You could have just forcefully copied my technique without explaining a single thing to me. Why did you bother explaining all of this? Why even bring up the existence of other worlds and 'those entities'?" Tengen asked, genuinely baffled. "I've heard from every source that you possess an archaic, almost noble code of honor, and I can somewhat see it in your actions... but you literally had the power to compel me. Why didn't you?"
This was a question that had haunted Tengen for a long time, not just in this moment.
Anyone who interacted with Mahito quickly realized that if he wanted something, he rarely resorted to brute force. He always laid out the facts logically, and if possible, offered satisfactory compensation. Even when he didn't—for example, when he copied Todo's technique—he didn't torture or force him; he simply acquired it so cleanly that Todo didn't even realize his technique had been stolen.
In the Jujutsu world, this level of civility was total heresy.
Take Satoru Gojo. Gojo was the ultimate anomaly of the Jujutsu world. Before Yuji Itadori arrived, Gojo was easily the most virtuous person in the entire society. Yet, how did he deal with Cursed Tools that threatened his life?
The Inverted Spear of Heaven, the only one of its kind in the world? He destroyed it without a second thought.
He learned about the Black Rope in Africa that could bypass his Limitless? He traveled thousands of miles to a remote corner of the earth just to personally eradicate it.
If even Gojo acted like that, the traditionalist factions were exponentially worse.
The most glaring example was Masamichi Yaga. After Gojo was sealed in the original timeline, Jujutsu Headquarters immediately issued execution orders for anyone trying to unseal him. Simultaneously, they relentlessly dispatched Gakuganji and other assassins to execute Yaga, simply to violently seize his technology for creating artificial souls.
*That* was the brutal reality of the Jujutsu world. Compared to them, Mahito was cleaner than a saint.
"Tengen," Mahito asked earnestly. "Is my way of doing things wrong?"
Tengen froze.
"Does helping others always require a transactional exchange of benefits? Is 'reasoning with people' really some disgusting, despicable act to be spat upon? When something can be clearly explained, is it absolutely mandatory to flex your military might and resort to draconian force? Or rather... is this world truly incapable of tolerating even a sliver of honor and light?" Mahito asked.
"I am currently standing at the absolute apex of this world," Mahito said evenly. "If I, the one at the very top, govern through extreme privilege and tyranny, then everyone beneath me will imitate my tyranny."
"It has always been this way. Trickle-down morality. Those below imitate those above."
"If the sovereign accepts brutality as law, his subjects will naturally follow suit."
"If I do that, this world will relentlessly pursue absolute Social Darwinism. Everyone will sacrifice everything for power, believing that nothing exists in this reality except violence and profit, writing off all beauty and virtue as pathetic, naive delusions. In the past, I was powerless to change that. But now, I have the power to change everything. So why—"
Mahito spoke with casual grace, revealing the deepest, longest-held wish buried in his heart:
"—Why wouldn't I do it?"
Tengen was struck absolutely speechless.
Forget the Jujutsu world, where raw violence dictated everything. Wasn't normal human society—which constantly preached equality—exactly the same beneath the surface? Yet here was a literal 'God' promising everyone: *I want virtue to be exalted. I want true fairness to exist. I want a world where logic and morality dictate nobility, not bloodlines and raw firepower.*
At this exact moment, Tengen finally understood exactly how Kinji Hakari, Yuki Tsukumo, and Satoru Gojo felt. During their deathmatches with Mahito, every single one of them must have sensed the contours of this breathtaking beauty within his soul. It subconsciously compelled them to believe he could truly shatter the current era, to believe he would never corrupt his original intentions, and to believe he would genuinely unleash a majestic storm that would cleanse the earth.
If a normal person vows to change society, they are mocked and spat upon.
If a social elite vows to change society, they are pitied for their naivety.
Every single figure in history who successfully altered society either climbed to the summit on a mountain of corpses, or was ruthlessly purged in the aftermath. There were zero exceptions. But those were just humans.
Right now, the one promising a better world wasn't a human.
It was a God.
Kinji Hakari burst into hysterical laughter. "Mahito! That speech scores absolute top marks in my book! I swear to god, I will follow you straight into hell!"
"Don't talk nonsense," Mahito chuckled. "I'm heading up to Heaven to kick God's ass. You can keep hell to yourself. First things first, you need to quit gambling!"
Hakari was laughing so hard he doubled over. "Then let's see if this utopia you're building is actually worth quitting gambling for!"
Tengen let out a quiet, yielding sigh. "What do you need me to do?"
"Construct a planetary-scale master barrier," Mahito said, his face hardening. "And leave enough expansion slots for future growth. Because when humanity inevitably reaches the other planets in the solar system—the Moon, Mars, and the infinite sea of stars beyond—that barrier needs to extend to those planets as well."
Mahito stood up and spread his arms wide, as if trying to embrace the entire planet.
"I will embed the Immortality Technique into every single planet. Do you remember the theory behind the birth of Cursed Spirits? The more advanced the civilization, the denser the population, the exponentially stronger the Cursed Spirits born from them! Right now, the Earth has 8 billion people. But in the future, I need ten billion, a hundred billion, a trillion humans! Imagine the sheer, terrifying magnitude of the Curses born from a trillion souls! And if those Curses are at my absolute disposal, the entities from the alternate worlds will be nothing to fear!"
This was Mahito's genuine ambition.
Among all manga realities, the Jujutsu Kaisen universe was one of the very few with infinite scaling potential. It wasn't like Naruto, where power required literal *Deus Ex Machina* alien bloodlines, or One Piece, where elite lineages dictated destiny. It certainly wasn't like Bleach, where everything originated from the Soul King.
The Jujutsu Kaisen world had a clearly defined, infinite ceiling: the Japanese Barrier and the population density! Why did intelligent Cursed Spirits spawn? Because of hyper-concentrated, massive volumes of Cursed Energy! How many people lived in Japan in 2018? Only 127 million! The global population that same year was 7.57 billion! Japan's population wasn't even 10% of the world's total.
And yet, from that tiny fraction, Mahito was born.
Mahito didn't have a systemic cheat code. Every single one of his 'hacks' came entirely from his own innate capabilities. In other words, if the original timeline's Mahito possessed this Mahito's strategic mind and operational logic, he could have easily reached this exact same pinnacle.
The original Mahito had simply been totally screwed over by Kenjaku and permanently locked down by Yuji Itadori.
What kind of apocalyptic monstrosities would spawn from a global population of 8 billion?
And when humanity took to the stars, what kind of cosmic horrors would a population of a trillion birth? The Jujutsu Kaisen universe was infinitely vaster than the original story's narrow scope. Mahito believed this implicitly.
"Are you not terrified of losing control of them?" Yuki Tsukumo couldn't help but ask.
Mahito pointed a thumb proudly at his own chest, flashing a wildly arrogant grin. "Who the hell do you think I am?"
"That's exactly what Satoru Gojo thought when he first read your intel profile," Yuki sneered.
"I am different."
"How so?"
"I have Cursed Spirit Manipulation," Mahito said with a cheerful chuckle. "The operational definition of Cursed Spirit Manipulation is incredibly ambiguous. As long as an entity is 'similar' to a Cursed Spirit, it falls under its jurisdiction. Even the current Tengen counts as being 'similar' to a Cursed Spirit. If a Curse disobeys me in the future, I'll just absorb it. Absorption doesn't count as complete death; even the Immortality Technique can't resist the mechanic of Cursed Spirit Manipulation."
"If that fails, don't I have your suicidal Black Hole, Star Rage? Worst case scenario, I'll grab the bastard with spatial displacement, teleport to the far edges of the universe, and pop a Black Hole to wipe it out of existence."
"If *those* two methods fail, I have a third. I'll trap it in my Domain Expansion, Dharmadhatu Transmigration: Nirvana Realm, and fundamentally rewrite its soul with Idle Transfiguration."
"And finally, once I ascend to godhood, I am absolutely certain I will be able to control the directional flow of the river of souls. I'll just banish the bastard into an alternate universe! 'I might not be able to kill you, but you think I can't deport you?!'"
A quadruple-layered failsafe: The mechanical subjugation of Cursed Spirit Manipulation, the physics-breaking obliteration of a Black Hole, the spiritual rewrite of Idle Transfiguration, and finally, multiversal banishment.
*Are you scared yet?!*
Yuki Tsukumo stared blankly at him, completely numb.
Tengen let out a long breath. "As you wish, Lord of Cursed Spirits. From this moment forth, I shall serve you."
"Tengen?!" Yuki cried out in shock.
"Yuki Tsukumo. Can you truly not see that Satoru Gojo's defeat is an absolute certainty?" Tengen said calmly. "It's not merely a gap in raw power. In fact, even now, I believe the gap in strength between Gojo and Mahito hasn't reached a dimensional disparity. Mahito might be stronger, but Gojo is far from having zero chance of winning."
"But the weight they carry is fundamentally different. Their *capacities* as rulers are leagues apart. You are a pinnacle Sorcerer; you should know perfectly well that when the gap in power is negligible, it is the depth of one's resolve that decides the victor."
Tengen lowered her eyes, her voice solemn. "And Satoru Gojo's resolve... falls agonizingly short of Mahito's."
Yuki fell silent.
"One last thing, Tengen," Mahito suddenly asked. "Do you happen to have any of Ryomen Sukuna's fingers?"
Tengen furrowed her brow. "Why do you need Sukuna's fingers? He should be a massive headache for you as well, shouldn't he?"
"He is indeed a headache," Mahito nodded in agreement, suddenly smiling. "But a Sukuna resurrected from merely *one* finger... isn't a headache at all."
Tengen froze.