[In the fraction of a second after those words left your lips...]
[Extreme Overload Control roared to life inside you. The limiters binding your legs shattered, and monstrous physical force compressed into every muscle fiber like a loaded spring.]
[Simultaneously, in less than a thousandth of a second, your brain switched Phantom Night Parade's replicated technique from Ten Shadows Technique to the pinnacle of speed: Projection Sorcery.]
[By the time the group registered the shockwave of Cursed Energy erupting from your body and realized you were attacking, it was already over.]
[BOOM!]
[The only sound any of them heard was the detonation beneath your feet as overloaded force cratered the carpet and the marble subfloor in a single, catastrophic blast.]
[Then your silhouette simply ceased to exist in their field of vision. Under the combined thrust of twenty-four-frames-per-second spatial division and a body pushed past every human threshold, your speed had eclipsed the limits of their neural response.]
[No flourishes. No wasted words.]
[What followed was instantaneous. Kokun, Bayer, the schoolgirl, Ebina... the world before their eyes lurched into a violent, uncontrollable spin at almost the same moment.]
[In the final instant before consciousness plunged into black, the last image each of them saw was their own body, still standing in place, headless, a geyser of blood erupting from the stump of the neck. And behind them, a dark afterimage, already slowing, calmly sheathing its blade.]
[Thud. Thud. Thud...]
[Heads and bodies hit the carpet in near-unison, dull impacts muffled by the plush fiber.]
[You didn't bother looking back at the wreckage.
A flick of the wrist sent blood droplets scattering from the blade's edge.]
[Even as you turned, Phantom Night Parade was already feeding. Like a glutton at a feast, it swept through the freshly dead, parsing and extracting the Innate Techniques each of them had been so proud of.]
[A torrent of data flooded your mind.]
[Kokun's Directional Explosive Boundary was familiar territory, harvested in previous simulations. Nothing new there.]
[From Bayer, you pulled Blade Manipulation.]
[A hyper-offensive technique. It compressed the user's Cursed Energy to extreme density, injected it into specific melee weapons, and then granted fluid, lethal telekinetic control over those blades across a wide radius. Ranged sword puppetry at its most dangerous.]
[From Niji Ebina, that hideous excuse for a human being, you extracted Spirit Rearing Chain.]
[Its core mechanic was forced linkage. Through materialized chains of Cursed Energy or direct physical contact, the user could bind subjugated low-grade mutated Cursed Spirits to their own body, driving them as external organs or living weapons.]
[In your estimation, it was a knockoff of Geto's Cursed Spirit Manipulation.]
[But the technique that made something cold sink through your chest came from the "schoolgirl."]
[Séance Technique.]
[According to the parsed feedback, it allowed the caster to serve as a vessel for spiritual descent. By consuming even the smallest fragment of a dead person's remains, a strand of hair, a sliver of fingernail, the technique could overwrite the vessel's body with the deceased's physical data. Even their soul.]
[Your gaze dropped to the headless female corpse on the floor, and your eyes darkened.]
[With the technique's dissolution, the body had already begun to wither. Skin shriveled and folded. Youth drained away like water through a cracked basin, leaving behind the shrunken, wrinkled husk of a decrepit old woman. Every trace of the young girl's vitality had vanished.]
[You stood motionless. The corridor's blood-thick air stung your nostrils, and for a long moment, silence was the only thing you offered.]
[The cruel truth was self-evident. This aged Curse User, in order to infiltrate the hotel and chase the astronomical bounty that Toji Fushiguro had posted, had murdered an innocent girl, a real student of Renchoku Girls' Junior High, harvested her remains, and used them to fuel the flawless disguise.]
[Every one of these people deserved to die. That wasn't in question. But the assassination storm you'd orchestrated, had reached backward through the chain of consequences and claimed someone who should have been living an ordinary adolescence.]
[You drew a deep breath and closed your eyes. No excuses offered. No rationalizations constructed. You simply carved the weight of that guilt into the quiet ledger you kept in the deepest part of yourself.]
[A few seconds passed. Your eyes opened, and every trace of turmoil was gone. Absolute calm had resettled like frost on glass.]
[Inside your mind, the active technique switched back to Ten Shadows. Shadows rippled outward from beneath your feet, swallowing the Inverted Spear of Heaven and Asakirimaru without a sound.]
[You stepped over the blood and the bodies, crossed the hall, and stopped before the sealed door of the luxury suite.]
[Knock. Knock. Knock.]
[Three measured, perfectly even raps against Riko Amanai's door.]
[Dead silence answered for several seconds. Then came the hurried shuffle of footsteps on the other side, followed by a girl's voice, sharp and clear, doing its best impression of composure but unable to fully mask the wariness and distrust underneath.]
[She called out from behind the door, her phrasing carrying an old-fashioned, almost theatrical haughtiness.]
["Whoever you are, leave at once! Do not think you can harm me! I am the Star Plasma Vessel! Jujutsu High's escorts will be here any moment, and you villains will not succeed!"]
[Beneath the bluster, a faint tremor ran through her words. You lowered your gaze outside the door, and when you raised it again, every shard of cold and killing intent had evaporated as though it had never existed.]
[The corner of your mouth curved upward. Life is Like a Play engaged on instinct, and the voice that emerged was warm, gentle, the kind of easy reassurance an older brother might offer a frightened child.]
["You've got it wrong. There's nothing to be afraid of. I've been sent by Master Tengen, dispatched from Tokyo Jujutsu High specifically to protect you, Miss Amanai. As for the people outside who wanted to hurt you..."]
[Your gaze drifted sideways, passing over the carpet of carnage without so much as a hitch in your tone, still soft enough to soothe a toddler to sleep.]
["...I've already taken care of every last one of them. You're safe now. You can open the door."]
[You reached into the inner pocket of your Jujutsu High uniform and pulled out your student ID. After crouching a little, you angled the stiff card toward the gap under the door and pushed. It scraped across the carpet and slid into the room.]
[On the other side, Riko Amanai stood in the foyer like a startled kitten trying very hard to look dangerous. All raised hackles, puffed-up pride, and eyes too wide for the act to be convincing.
Her gaze snapped to the card as it came to a stop against her shoe.]
[She frowned, bent down with the caution of someone defusing a bomb, and picked it up. She turned it over, checked the front, checked the back, then squinted at the crest and printed text.]
[The longer she looked, the deeper her pout became.]
["What kind of nonsense is this? 'Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical College Student ID'...?" She let out a scoff. "Ha! Fake. Obviously fake. Scammers these days can't even put effort into it. I've never heard of this no-name school in my life. You're trying to trick me into opening the door with some knockoff badge!"]
[The more she talked, the more convinced she became. Fear mixed with anger, and once she had talked herself into believing the person outside was absolutely some villain with bad intentions, she threw the ID back onto the floor like trash.]
[That still was not enough.]
[She lifted her foot and stomped on your photo twice. Hard. Then she ground the card into the carpet with her heel, as if that alone could prove the Star Plasma Vessel would not be bullied.]
[Misato Kuroi watched all of this in silence.]
[After a tired little sigh, she stepped forward, gently moved the still-fuming Riko aside, and knelt to pick up the card.]
[She brushed dust from its surface with her fingertip. Her eyes moved over the anti-counterfeit marks, the school crest, and the embossed steel seal with careful attention.
By the time she finished, her expression had turned heavy.
The ID was real.]
[As the attendant assigned by the jujutsu world's higher-ups to take care of Riko Amanai's daily life, Kuroi was not some random civilian with no idea what was going on. She knew the basics. She knew the important names. And she knew exactly what Jujutsu High meant.
This was the regular army showing up at the door.
Still, caution was practically carved into her bones. She did not touch the handle yet.]
["Please step back a little."]
[She said it quietly to Riko. Then she took a breath, moved toward the heavy security door on silent feet, and rose onto her toes to look through the peephole.]
[She needed to confirm that the self-proclaimed rescuer outside matched the stern-looking face on the student ID.]
[Her vision focused through the tiny warped lens.]
[And then.]
["Ah...!?"]
[Her pupils shrank to pinpoints. Terror ripped through her so hard that a scream burst out before she could stop it.]
[Half a second later, the part of her mind that still worked screamed back.]
[Do not provoke whatever is on the other side of this door.]
[Kuroi clamped both hands over her mouth, crushing the rest of the scream in her throat. Her face went paper-white. Her legs trembled badly enough that she had to brace herself against the door.]
[Through the lens, she had seen something she would probably remember until the day she died.]
[The boy from the photo was there. Exactly the same face. Exactly the same uniform.]
[But behind him, the luxury corridor with its soft red carpet had become a slaughterhouse.]
[Headless corpses lay in spreading pools of blood. Severed limbs were tangled near heads that had rolled up against the baseboards. Blood covered nearly every surface, wet and dark and too much for the human eye to process all at once. And the boy was smiling.]
[A warm, perfect, friendly smile, aimed at the room number on the door.]
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