[Silence. The question, soaked in paradox and despair, nailed Gojo to the spot. Even the strength to argue back had been pulled from him like a thread from unraveling cloth.]
["What are you trying to say?"]
[Geto turned away. He gave the strongest nothing but his retreating back.]
["If I could have been you... this absurd dream might not sound so far-fetched, would it?"]
["I've decided how I'm going to live. All that's left is to give it everything I have."]
[One step forward. The line called morality fell behind him for good.]
["If you want to kill me, kill me. Whatever you choose... it has meaning."]
[Gojo's right hand shot up. Cursed Energy screamed to his fingertips, coalescing into the technique that could erase Geto and half the block in the same breath. Hollow Purple, charged and ready.]
[One release. One twitch of his fingers, and the friend who had become the worst kind of Curse User would cease to exist.]
[His hand shook violently. Through the gaps between his fingers, he watched that silhouette grow smaller.]
[In the end, he bit down until his jaw ached, clenched his fist so tight the knuckles went white, and swallowed that world-ending power whole.]
[The witching hour. Sunset painted Jujutsu High's red brick the color of old blood.]
[Gojo sat alone on the long stone steps, hands laced together and pressed to his forehead, his entire form swallowed by deep shadow.]
[Yaga walked over and looked at a boy who seemed to have lost every scrap of his bravado overnight. His voice came out quiet.]
["Why didn't you go after him?"]
[No movement. Gojo's voice was raw gravel.]
["...You sure you want to know?"]
[The look on his face hit Yaga like a fist to the chest. He let out a breath and changed course.]
["...Forget it. I'm sorry I asked."]
[A breeze swept the empty training grounds.]
["Sensei. I'm strong, right?"]
[The question came out of nowhere.]
[Yaga blinked, then gave a straight answer.]
["Yes. And insufferably full of yourself."]
[Once, that line would have drawn a brash, triumphant laugh. Now, even with the confirmation handed to him, not a flicker of satisfaction crossed Gojo's face.]
[He raised his head slowly. Those eyes that could read every flow of Cursed Energy in existence were, for once, filled with nothing but fog. The words were half to himself, half a challenge flung at fate with no force left behind it.]
["But... being strong on my own isn't nearly enough."]
["The only people I can save... are the ones already willing to be saved."]
[At the far edge of his vision, silhouetted against the bleeding red of the horizon, he thought he saw two figures.]
[One walked toward the abyss without looking back. The other, broken and bleeding, still chose to shoulder the sins of everyone around him, stubbornly carving a path through the mire with bare, bloodied hands.]
[Neither of you was among "those people" he could reach. And Satoru Gojo, the strongest, finally understood what true loneliness meant.]
---
[Through countless reviews after the fact, through oceans of fragmented literature, through carefully oblique questions posed to Yaga and Gojo, you finally pieced together a rough picture of what "Maximum" truly was.]
[A domain unto itself.]
[It was what happened when a sorcerer pushed a single Cursed Technique to its absolute limit, honed and compressed and wrung dry until something at the far end cracked open. An end point. An ultimate.]
[Not a simple accumulation of Cursed Energy. Closer to a metamorphosis born from some profound resonance between a sorcerer's soul and the technique etched into it.]
[What made Maximum so extraordinary was how savagely unfair it was.]
[Gojo, who possessed the Six Eyes, who could manipulate Cursed Energy down to the atomic level, had never achieved it.]
[Yaga, who had spent decades refining Puppet Manipulation to its pinnacle, had been turned away at the same gate.]
[At first, you suspected the barrier might be one of compatibility between technique and user. Rigorous analysis killed that theory.]
[Because at their foundational logic, Cursed Spirit Manipulation and Puppet Manipulation were remarkably similar.]
[If Geto could compress countless Cursed Spirits into a vortex of pure Cursed Energy, then Yaga using puppets as vessels, aggregating them into a high-density Cursed Energy attack, should be theoretically viable.]
[Maximum didn't discriminate by technique. It discriminated by person.]
[You wanted to try.]
[If Phantom Night Parade could brute-force replicate a Cursed Technique itself, could you bypass that merciless threshold and forcibly copy Maximum: Uzumaki along with it?]
[Deep in the woods at night, you captured two low-grade fly heads and began.]
[The moment Cursed Spirit Manipulation's dark circuitry forced itself through your body, you shut your eyes and dove into the depths of your consciousness, grasping for the memory of that day. The suffocating, atmospheric pressure in the air when Geto had unleashed Uzumaki.]
[Faint. Almost imagined. But in the instant those two fly heads compressed and twisted against each other, you felt it. A spark. Tiny, fragile, unmistakable. The spark of Maximum.]
[Proof of concept. Given enough time to refine the resonance, you could master it through practice alone.]
[The attempt lasted less than five minutes before your hands went slack, letting the turbid Cursed Energy dissipate through your body.]
[You stopped.]
[Not because your talent fell short. Because the cost was too absurd, too hopeless to bear.]
[To practice, to even maintain that threadbare connection to Uzumaki, you would need to run Cursed Spirit Manipulation through Phantom Night Parade continuously, for hours, for days. Otherwise every Cursed Spirit you'd collected would vanish the moment you switched techniques.]
[The implication was staggering. You would have to sacrifice Phantom Night Parade's versatility. Abandon the path that belonged to you and you alone.]
[You would have to turn yourself into a second Suguru Geto. Swallow those Cursed Spirits every day, choking down the taste of vomit and sewage, walking step for step the same road that had led him to ruin.]
[And the part that hollowed you out most was this: cold, rational analysis told you that even if you committed to it, even if you retched until there was nothing left, you would never surpass Geto in the domain where he was most gifted, most perfectly suited. Not ever.]
["...Hah."]
[In the dim room, you gave in. Your hands covered your face, and what escaped was a sigh so heavy it seemed to carry years of exhaustion compressed into a single breath.]
[You'd believed that the experience stacked across multiple simulated lifetimes, combined with Phantom Night Parade's near-limitless potential, had earned you a seat alongside the gods standing at the summit.]
[But the moment you brushed against the absolute territory of Maximum, the truth cut deeper and more cruelly than before. Between you, the mortal clawing upward through sheer will, and those true geniuses blessed by heaven itself, a chasm still yawned wide enough to swallow the sky.]
[A mortal chasing gods. It was too hard. It had always been too hard.]
[In that moment, you felt like Icarus from the Greek myth. Wings of feather and wax, hurtling toward the sun with all the arrogance in the world.]
[Flying too close. Wax melting. Then the fall, and the shattered body at the bottom.]
[In the old fable, the story served as a warning against hubris and unchecked ambition, a lesson about knowing your limits and staying within the boundaries the world had drawn for you.]
[But that was the anesthetic ordinary people used to numb themselves. And you had arrogance baked into your bones.]
[Wings melted, abyss ahead, it didn't matter. You would tear down this man-eating, soul-crushing jujutsu world that had driven Suguru to madness.]
[Your own reckoning with this damned world. Compromise? Surrender? Those words had never existed in your vocabulary.]
[But you couldn't hide the madness of cornering yourself like this. Not from the people at Jujutsu High.]
[During this stretch, you kept Cursed Spirit Manipulation running without pause.]
[Long enough that the cold, bloody stench of Cursed Spirits had seeped into your skin like a stain that wouldn't wash out.]
[Yaga watched you on more than one occasion, brow furrowed, words forming and dying on his tongue. Shoko, when she passed you in the hallway, didn't bother with a greeting. She ground her cigarette into the wall hard enough to leave a mark, fury written in every line of her body. Her way of telling you what she thought of your self-destruction.]
[Everyone knew. Even though weeks had passed, even though on the surface you'd returned to your usual composure, running missions with mechanical precision.]
[They believed that somewhere deep inside, you were still trapped on that night. That you had never let go of Geto's departure.]
[That you were using his technique to punish yourself. That this was self-flagellation dressed as training, a desperate attempt to keep the ghost of the man who'd betrayed everything tethered to you in the form of Cursed Energy, forever at your side.]
[BANG.]
[A deafening crash ripped through the suffocating silence of your room.]
[Your door, old wood and creaking hinges, was kicked open with a violence that had no interest in negotiation. The hinges shrieked. The door slammed into the wall hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling.]
["Yo! Hayase! What're you spacing out for? Let's go!"]
[Gojo's voice barged in right behind the door. He ignored the oppressive atmosphere in the room completely, crossing the floor in long, careless strides until he stood over you.]
[Without a word of explanation, he grabbed the back of your collar and hauled you out of your chair like a bristling, unwilling cat being dragged from its hiding spot.]
["Hey! Satoru! What's wrong with you!"]
[The collar dug into your throat. You coughed, fighting on instinct.]
["I got back from a mission five minutes ago, I haven't even caught my breath! The report isn't finished..."]
["Who gives a damn about reports? Boring garbage like that, toss it to an Assistant Manager."]
[His tone carried the absolute, inarguable tyranny that only the strongest could get away with.]
[Your resistance meant nothing. His grip didn't loosen a fraction.]
["Quit whining and come with me. We're picking up a very important inheritance."]
["Inheritance?"]
[The word left your lips, confused.]
["Yeah, inheritance. You're the one who told me to bring you along when the time came. Stop overthinking it. We're going."]
---
Guys... I'll upload the rest of the bonus chapters by tomorrow :)