Chapter 104: Transfigured Human Train
"A gift?"
Satoru Gojo's eyes turned glacial as he watched the things pouring out of the train.
They had once been human.
Elderly people. Children. Office workers. Students.
Now, they were nothing more than Mahito's toys.
Some had heads stretched thin like overfilled balloons. Some crawled on limbs bent in the wrong direction. Others were far worse, several people fused into one pulsing mound of flesh, too many hands dragging too many feet across the platform.
On every twisted face, the despair of their final moments remained.
"He… help me…"
A Transfigured Human with half its face pulled out of shape crawled forward like a spider. Its torn mouth formed a broken plea as it lunged toward a survivor.
That last shred of humanity begged for salvation.
Its body, however, opened its jaws and bit through the survivor's neck.
Splurt!
Blood sprayed across the tiles.
Screams erupted. People shoved against one another in blind terror. The wet sounds of tearing flesh and snapping bone echoed through the underground platform.
In a single breath, Underground Level Five became a living hell.
"How is it, Satoru Gojo?"
Mahito stood atop the train, dancing in place with childish excitement, like an artist showing off his masterpiece.
"I prepared all of them just for you!"
His stitched smile widened.
"Aren't you the strongest? Aren't you the protector of the weak?"
He spread his arms.
"Come on, then! Kill them!"
"If you don't, the real humans will all die!"
It was a dead end.
A trap designed not only to restrict Gojo's movements, but to crush his heart.
If he acted, he would have to personally kill the Transfigured Humans, knowing full well that they had once been innocent people.
If he hesitated, the survivors would be slaughtered in front of him.
Either choice was cruel.
Either choice was poison.
For any Jujutsu Sorcerer who carried even a shred of conscience, this was torture.
Gojo said nothing.
He simply watched.
The Six Eyes processed everything with unbearable clarity. The twisted flesh. The failing souls. The faint, dying sparks of awareness trapped inside bodies that no longer obeyed them.
Deep within each Transfigured Human was the same silent prayer.
Let me die.
"In that case…"
Gojo slowly raised his hand.
Blue light gathered at the tip of his finger.
"I'll set you free."
Boom!
A beam of condensed cursed energy pierced through the skull of the spider-like Transfigured Human.
There was no hesitation.
No sentimentality.
Only cold, absolute mercy.
"Oh! Oh! He killed one!"
Mahito clapped and cheered like a clown at a circus.
"The strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer killed someone!"
He leaned forward, eyes gleaming.
"But there are more than a thousand of them here."
"Can you kill them all in time?"
His smile grew uglier.
"And more importantly…"
Mahito tilted his head.
"Do you dare use your Domain?"
"If you expand Unlimited Void here, every ordinary person on this platform will have their brain fried, won't they?"
He laughed softly.
"No Domain. No large-scale techniques. Thousands of survivors to protect. Me and Jogo attacking you from the side."
Mahito's voice dropped into a mocking whisper.
"Satoru Gojo, how long can you keep this up?"
As if answering him, Jogo finally recovered from the terror Hanami's death had left behind.
He saw it now.
Gojo was restricted.
As long as there were hostages, he could not unleash large-scale cursed techniques.
As long as the Transfigured Humans kept attacking, he had to divide his attention to protect the living and exorcise the doomed.
This was their chance.
Hanami's death had been terrifying.
But if they could seal Satoru Gojo here, that sacrifice would still mean something.
"Although Hanami is gone…"
Jogo's volcano head erupted again, spewing scorching vapor into the stale air.
"As long as we seal you, it will all be worth it!"
Several Ember Insects shot out, their human faces shrieking as they blended into the wave of Transfigured Humans and rushed toward Gojo.
"So annoying."
Gojo vanished.
A fraction of a second later, he appeared in the densest part of the crowd.
His hands moved with frightening precision, each finger strike landing like the note of a flawless piano performance. Every movement released a tiny burst of cursed energy, piercing straight through the core of a Transfigured Human.
Puff! Puff! Puff!
One after another, the distorted bodies collapsed into mud before they could even scream.
Fast.
Too fast.
Even without Blue, Red, or Purple, even relying only on taijutsu and microscopic cursed energy control, Satoru Gojo still stood at a height that made resistance feel meaningless.
Ten seconds.
In only ten seconds, over three hundred Transfigured Humans fell around him.
"Is this guy a machine?"
For the first time, Mahito's smile stiffened.
He had thought the sight of these former humans would shake Gojo.
He had thought killing them would slow him down, even if only slightly.
But Gojo did not hesitate.
He moved like a perfectly honed executioner, ending lives that had already been ruined while saving those still capable of being saved. Between kills, he even found time to kick survivors out of danger, drag a collapsing man away from a bite, and crush Ember Insects before they could detonate.
"Don't just stand there!"
Jogo roared, panic creeping into his voice.
"Attack him together!"
He charged in again, coordinating with Mahito's strikes in an attempt to disrupt Gojo's rhythm.
It did not work.
No matter how they attacked, Gojo slipped through the gaps at the last possible instant. When dodging was unnecessary, he neutralized the blow with the bare minimum of movement, then retaliated without breaking stride.
Smack!
Jogo was sent flying again, his body smashing across the platform and bouncing once against the tracks.
"Damn it!"
He staggered upright, his single eye shaking with fury and disbelief.
"Damn it all!"
Why?
Why was the gap still this wide?
They had restricted his cursed techniques.
They had used hostages.
They had buried him under a swarm of Transfigured Humans.
They had prepared everything.
So why could they still not win?
"Because you're weak."
Gojo's voice cut across the platform.
There was a faint edge of breathlessness in it, but the disdain remained.
"Special Grades. Transfigured Humans. Numbers."
He stepped over a corpse without looking down.
"In the face of absolute power…"
His eyes swept over them.
"They're all the same."
By now, more than half the Transfigured Humans on the platform had been eliminated.
Bodies lay everywhere.
Blood flowed between the tiles like narrow rivers.
Gojo stood in the center of that mountain of corpses and sea of blood, his black Jujutsu High uniform still spotless.
But his gaze had deepened.
It was the look of someone who had made a decision.
"It seems that if I don't show you true despair…"
He slowly removed the glove from his right hand.
"You won't stop."
A slender, pale hand was revealed.
At that instant, Gojo's brain began to calculate at terrifying speed.
How many survivors remained?
Two thousand? Three thousand?
How many Transfigured Humans were still active?
Five hundred? Six hundred?
Without a Domain, clearing all of them would take too long. Five minutes, perhaps more. In that time, the survivors would be torn apart.
But if he expanded Unlimited Void normally, ordinary people would not be able to withstand the flood of information. Their minds would break. They would become empty shells.
A dead end?
No.
Madness flickered in Gojo Satoru's eyes.
He only had to compress the duration.
Compress it to the absolute limit.
A length of time ordinary humans could survive.
For example…
0.2 seconds.
It was an insane gamble.
The stakes were every life on that platform.
And his pride as the strongest.
"Is he insane?!"
Mahito's face changed.
"He's expanding his Domain here?!"
"What about the ordinary people?!"
Jogo also recoiled in terror.
If Gojo truly unleashed Unlimited Void without restraint, they would be finished.
"Let's gamble!"
Mahito gnashed his teeth.
"He wouldn't dare!"
His voice rose, almost shrill.
"He definitely wouldn't dare!"
"He's Satoru Gojo! He's supposed to protect people!"
Mahito's eyes widened, clinging to the last thread of logic he could use against that monster.
"He would never sacrifice thousands of ordinary humans just to kill us!"
The moment he said that, Gojo smiled.
It was wild.
Sharp.
Almost beautiful.
"Domain Expansion…"
.....
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