Next Target, 600PS!
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Ever since its founding, the Zen'in clan had passed down its own strict set of rules.
"Those who are not Zen'in are not sorcerers. Those who are not sorcerers are not human."
Those few simple words were enough to illustrate the clan's sheer arrogance.
To be fair, the Zen'in clan's Ten Shadows Technique was top-tier. But as more powerful techniques emerged over time—and considering the Ten Shadows wasn't exactly easy to awaken—it became less of an absolute threat. A user might only appear once every few hundred years. Just like the Gojo clan's Six Eyes, it was a matter of pure luck, not something you could just demand.
Because of this, hardly anyone cared about the "not Zen'in, not a sorcerer" part anymore.
However, the phrase "those who are not sorcerers are not human" gradually spread throughout the Jujutsu world.
After all, once many sorcerers awakened their powers, they naturally developed a superiority complex, treating average humans as lesser beings. Even though Jujutsu regulations strictly forbade sorcerers from attacking regular people on a whim, that bone-deep arrogance wasn't something easily erased.
Because Maki Zen'in possessed low Cursed Energy and hadn't awakened any Innate Technique, she had always been looked down upon and ostracized by her clan since childhood.
But she still grew up in that environment. It wasn't surprising that she might have absorbed some of that toxic mindset.
"Tch! Whatever happens with the Zen'in clan has nothing to do with me!" Maki snapped.
Whenever the topic involved her clan, she instantly lost all desire to chat. She had already gotten Kai's number anyway. Her gaze swept over Haruno Yukinoshita and Soyo Nagasaki.
Without sparing them a second glance, she turned and walked away. Her attitude was practically bordering on blatant dismissal.
"???" Even if Soyo and Haruno were oblivious, they could still read the room.
Maki's look was a blatant display of looking down on them. Why? Just because they weren't Jujutsu Sorcerers? Obviously, having just stumbled into this hidden world, they hadn't grasped the massive chasm separating normal humans from Sorcerers.
"Let's grab food sometime if we get the chance!" Panda called out with a grin, waving at Kai before leaving.
Standing next to him, Toge smiled shyly and gave Kai a polite nod.
"Yawn~" Kai let out a lazy yawn, stretching his stiff muscles.
All things considered, today's haul wasn't half bad.
"It's getting late. We should head back!" Kai said, taking the lead.
Haruno and Soyo didn't hesitate, quickly scurrying after him. After all, even if Kai had already exorcised the Cursed Spirit, nobody in their right mind wanted to hang around an abandoned construction site in the dead of night.
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"Um..." Haruno spoke up once they were safely back in the car.
After hesitating for a moment, she finally voiced the question gnawing at her. "What exactly does 'those who are not sorcerers are not human' mean?"
Clearly, Haruno had pieced some things together.
Soyo blinked in surprise. If Haruno hadn't brought it up, she probably would have forgotten about it.
"Hmm?" Kai raised an eyebrow. Meeting Haruno's intense gaze, he let out a soft laugh. "It means exactly what it sounds like."
"Exactly what it sounds like?"
"Yep." Having watched the anime, Kai obviously knew how the majority of Jujutsu Sorcerers viewed average people. "To most Sorcerers, normal people aren't human. They're just monkeys."
"How could that be?" Haruno couldn't wrap her head around it.
Even if Sorcerers wielded supernatural power, regular humans still made up the vast majority of the world's population.
"Do you know how Cursed Spirits are born?" Kai threw out a question she wasn't expecting.
"Cursed Spirits?" She remembered Kai giving a brief explanation earlier.
He mentioned they were primarily born from human fear and negative emotions. It sounded like a total fairy tale, but having seen a Cursed Spirit with her own eyes, even a fairy tale had to be the truth now.
"Cursed Spirits do come from fear, but specifically, they stem from the fear of humans," Kai explained.
"A Sorcerer's negative emotions just generate more Cursed Energy for them to use. But a normal person's negative emotions leak out and breed Cursed Spirits. The more negativity, the more Cursed Spirits."
"Which means..." Kai paused. "As long as humans exist, Cursed Spirits can never be wiped out. Ever."
Finding someone who didn't harbor a single drop of negativity in their heart was a pipe dream. It was just unrealistic.
"..." Processing that massive lore dump left Haruno reeling for a second.
But as the implications clicked into place, her eyes slowly widened in horror.
"Spot on. It's exactly what you're thinking," Kai said with a smile, reading her reaction perfectly.
"Not every Sorcerer is an untouchable powerhouse. Take Maki and her team, for example. If I hadn't shown up, they might actually be dead right now."
Sorcerers dying in combat against Cursed Spirits wasn't rare. Weak Sorcerers made up the bulk of the Jujutsu world, after all.
"When those Sorcerers die, their friends, family, and lovers mourn them. Some direct their hatred at the Cursed Spirits, but others start hating humans instead."
"They realize that normal people are the ones constantly churning out these monsters, causing all the bloodshed. As a result, the number of Sorcerers harboring deep hostility toward non-sorcerers has only grown over the years."
Suguru Geto was the poster child for this mindset.
He used to treat protecting non-sorcerers as his ironclad moral code. But after a few traumatic incidents, his worldview twisted entirely. He became convinced that the mere existence of humans was the root cause of every tragedy.
Now a rogue curse user, Geto's sole ambition was to eradicate all the "monkeys"—the non-sorcerers. By wiping them out, he aimed to eliminate Cursed Spirits at the source.
"How could they... isn't that just too..." Haruno was stunned that such a radical ideology existed.
"Too much of a stretch?" Kai finished her sentence for her. "Isn't that just how the world works? You come from the wealthy Yukinoshita family. Do you guys honestly treat regular, working-class people as your equals and friends?"
"..." Haruno lost her voice.
Putting up a front right now was pointless. It was the truth. As someone raised in high society, she didn't necessarily discriminate against normal people, but deep down, she couldn't view them as peers. They were just strangers.
"See my point?" Kai shrugged, stating it matter-of-factly.
"Imagine a social class that sits even higher than the richest elites. Makes it easy to grasp, doesn't it?"
"But you don't need to lose sleep over it. The Jujutsu world has its own set of laws. They don't just go around slaughtering average people on a whim."
Of course, that was assuming you didn't cross paths with a truly unhinged curse user.
"..."
'I never wanted to understand it like that.' Haruno shot him a resentful glare.
But she knew this twisted ideology was just the grim reality for most Sorcerers. It had nothing to do with Kai. She couldn't pin the blame on him. Besides, if Kai really viewed non-sorcerers as monkeys, she never would have been able to get this close to him in the first place.
"If Mother found out that even after cementing the Yukinoshita family's legacy in Tokyo, she's still just a monkey in their eyes... I wonder how she'd react."
Suddenly, Haruno felt a pang of regret. If only her mother had been here tonight. She would have paid good money to see the look on her mother's face.
"..." Kai had to admit, Haruno was quite the "dutiful" daughter.
Unlike Haruno, Soyo Nagasaki sat quietly in the back seat. She had been listening to Kai and Haruno's conversation the entire time but hadn't uttered a single peep. She was as quiet as a total outsider.
"Don't you have anything to add?" Noticing Soyo's silence, Haruno couldn't help but ask.
She felt like she was the only one freaking out over this existential crisis while the girl in the back just chilled.
"Add what? The fact that we're viewed as monkeys?" Soyo's tone lacked its usual venom. Instead, she sounded eerily flat. "It doesn't matter."
Soyo Nagasaki was someone terrified of loneliness. Raised in a single-parent household with a mother who constantly worked overtime, Soyo spent most of her life entirely alone.
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