Chapter 102: Deathmatch on Underground Level Five
Fukutoshin Line, Shibuya Station.
Underground Level Five.
This was the heart of the Shibuya Incident.
The air was rotten with blood, sweat, fear, and cursed energy so dense it seemed to cling to the lungs. Thousands of civilians had been driven onto the narrow platform, packed shoulder to shoulder until there was barely room to breathe.
"Don't push!"
"Help! Someone, please!"
"I can't breathe!"
Cries rose and broke apart in the underground dark.
People shoved forward in panic, then recoiled when they found no escape. Children screamed. Adults cursed. Someone fell and vanished beneath the crush of feet before anyone could even turn around.
And across the tracks, watching all of it with cold indifference, stood three figures.
Jogo.
Hanami.
Choso.
Each of them radiated cursed energy on the level of a Special Grade.
Facing them from the opposite side of the platform was one man.
The strongest jujutsu sorcerer of the modern era.
Satoru Gojo slipped his blindfold into his pocket. His azure eyes reflected the entire hell unfolding before him, the trapped civilians, the trembling rails, the cursed spirits waiting behind human shields.
"This is really irritating."
His voice was light.
Yet somehow, even through the chaos, it reached every cursed spirit clearly.
"You gathered all these people here just to tie my hands?"
Jogo bared his yellowed teeth in a grin.
"Isn't it working, Satoru Gojo?"
The volcano on his head hissed, leaking black smoke into the already suffocating air.
"You can't use Blue here. You can't use Red. And Purple is out of the question. If you fully unleash the Limitless in a place like this, these fragile monkeys around us will be crushed into paste before they even understand what happened."
Hanami's voice followed, not through the air, but directly into the mind.
"In this place, you are no longer a god. You are a man surrounded by hostages."
Gojo tilted his head.
A dangerous light shifted within the Six Eyes.
"Hostages, huh?"
Then he laughed.
It was not loud at first.
But the sound carried through the platform, casual, fearless, almost amused.
"I think you're misunderstanding something."
The smile remained on his face.
His eyes did not smile with it.
"It's true that I don't want unnecessary civilians dying in this cramped little box."
The next instant, he vanished.
By the time Jogo's single eye widened, Gojo was already between him and Hanami.
"But when it comes to weeds, I've never been gentle."
"Don't let him move freely!"
Hanami reacted at once.
It did not attack Gojo directly. Instead, it slammed cursed energy into the ground.
Rumble!
The platform cracked.
Thick roots burst out from beneath the civilians' feet, coiling around ankles and legs like living snakes.
"Aaaah!"
"What is this?"
"Get it off me!"
The crowd erupted again.
People stumbled. Bodies collided. Panic turned the platform into a wave of struggling flesh.
Hanami was not trying to kill them all at once.
It was trying to make them obstacles.
Living restraints.
"In a place this crowded, you still have to worry about these insects."
Jogo raised a hand to the top of his head and pulled out the plug sealing his volcanic vent.
A swarm of purple Ember Insects crawled out, their grotesque human faces twitching with glee.
"Satoru Gojo, can you still act so composed?"
Buzz!
The Ember Insects scattered.
They did not fly toward Gojo.
They shot toward the civilians.
If even one of them exploded in the middle of that packed crowd, the blast would trigger a chain reaction. Hundreds would die in seconds.
"How disgusting."
Gojo's gaze went cold.
Within the vision of the Six Eyes, every root's growth path, every insect's flight trajectory, every civilian's trembling breath was laid bare.
He could not use Blue freely. The suction would drag civilians into the attack range.
He could not use Red. The shockwave alone would rupture organs in this enclosed space.
Purple was not even worth considering.
Which meant...
Gojo disappeared.
This time, it did not look like teleportation.
To the civilians, the white-haired man seemed to split into dozens of afterimages at once.
Snap.
An Ember Insect diving toward a woman's face was caught between two fingers.
Gojo crushed it with a flick of cursed energy before it could detonate.
Bang!
A root about to tighten around a man's throat was kicked apart.
His figure wove through the panicked crowd in bright, impossible angles. A blue-white afterimage flashed left, right, forward, back, so fast the human eye could only register fragments.
One second.
That was all it took.
In that single second, Gojo passed through the crowd dozens of times.
He crushed the Ember Insects before they could explode.
He snapped roots before they could tear flesh.
He lifted several fallen civilians out of the trampling flow and tossed them toward safer gaps in the crowd with irritating precision.
Then he was gone again.
Bang!
Bang!
Two dull impacts rang out almost together.
Jogo and Hanami were sent flying.
Jogo smashed into the platform wall, cracking concrete and sending smoke sputtering from the volcano on his head.
Hanami flew deep into the tunnel, smashing through several support pillars before tumbling to a stop in the rubble.
"So fast..."
Jogo crawled out of the debris, his single eye trembling.
"In this chaos, he protected the humans and counterattacked at the same time?"
A bead of something like sweat slid down the side of his face.
"So this is... the strongest."
"Don't freeze up!"
Choso's voice cut through the smoke.
He formed a hand sign, blood gathering between his palms in a thin, compressed line.
"Blood Manipulation: Convergence."
The blood twisted tighter.
"Piercing Blood."
A beam of blood shot out like a laser, fast enough to punch through armored steel.
It crossed the platform in a straight line toward Gojo's temple.
Then stopped.
Half a meter from Gojo, the attack lost form, splashing apart as if it had struck an invisible ocean.
"Limitless is still active," Choso said through gritted teeth.
His face was tense.
His heart, however, was calm.
He watched Gojo's reaction carefully.
Even in this dense crowd, Gojo was maintaining a minimum automatic defense.
As expected.
"Then use Simple Domain!" Jogo roared.
Dark red cursed energy wrapped around his body like a film.
He lunged forward again, closing the distance with raw speed.
Simple Domain.
It could neutralize cursed techniques within its range.
After countless simulations, this was the only answer they had found against the Limitless.
Hanami emerged from the broken tunnel and followed, its arms twisting into massive wooden spikes, both wrapped in the light of Simple Domain.
"Oh?"
Gojo watched them rush him, still relaxed.
"Simple Domain?"
Jogo's fist tore through the air.
This time, it crossed the invisible distance around Gojo.
For the first time, his hand truly reached the strongest.
Gojo caught it.
Crack.
Jogo's wrist was crushed in his grip.
"You do understand that neutralizing my cursed technique means you can't use yours either, right?"
Gojo's smile sharpened.
"In other words..."
He backhanded Jogo across the face.
The blow sent the one-eyed cursed spirit spinning through the air like a broken top.
"You want to fight me with taijutsu?"
Hanami's wooden spike stabbed toward his back.
Gojo stepped sideways.
The spike missed by a hair.
His fist drove upward into Hanami's abdomen.
Boom!
Hanami's massive body folded around the blow, purple blood spraying from its mouth.
The impact blasted it into the ground hard enough to crater the platform.
"What's wrong?" Gojo asked, standing amid the terrified civilians as if he were waiting in line at a convenience store. "Is that all?"
He rolled his shoulder.
"Come on. You're Special Grades, aren't you? Try a little harder."
This was not a battle.
It was humiliation.
Even shackled by thousands of hostages, even denied his large-scale techniques, even surrounded by three Special Grade cursed spirits, Satoru Gojo still dominated the battlefield.
The gap was not narrow.
It was a canyon.
"Damn it... damn it!"
Jogo clutched his regenerating wrist, his cursed energy flaring with fury and fear.
Was this the difference?
Was this the monster even Ryomen Sukuna had not yet surpassed?
"Choso!" he roared. "What are you doing? Attack with us! Use Simple Domain!"
Choso glanced at Jogo.
Then at Gojo.
Sorry.
I'm not on your side.
I'm just acting.
His face, however, remained cold and murderous.
He stepped forward and charged, only half a beat slower than the other two.
To anyone watching closely, the hesitation was obvious.
Gojo was watching closely.
The Six Eyes flicked toward Choso, and for an instant, amusement crossed his face.
He did not hit him hard.
He merely pushed Choso aside with a light palm strike, sending him flying toward a section of the platform with fewer civilians.
Choso crashed into the ground, rolled twice, then lay there for a moment longer than necessary.
Jogo did not notice.
Hanami had no room to notice.
Gojo's gaze shifted between the two remaining disasters.
"So."
His eyes settled on Hanami.
"I heard your defense is pretty tough."
Hanami's body stiffened.
Gojo vanished again.
This time, he appeared behind the forest curse.
Before Hanami could react, Gojo's hands clamped around the two fragile branches protruding from its head.
Hanami froze.
Those branches were not merely decorations.
They were its weak point.
A terrified mental scream blasted through the platform.
"No!"
"Goodbye, friend of the forest."
Gojo tightened his grip.
The branches cracked.
Hanami's scream turned sharp enough to make ordinary people clutch their ears.
Jogo's single eye widened.
"Hanami!"
Gojo did not look at him.
He pulled.
The sound that followed was wet, brutal, and final.
In Underground Level Five, amid the screams of civilians and the stench of curses, the deathmatch had only just begun.
.....
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