Fire.
In an instant, it swallowed everything.
The crimson Cursed Energy flames spread outward in a fan shape — like an enormous, blazing palm slamming down upon the earth. From the road to the mountain forests pressing in on both sides, everything was swallowed in waves of fire. The asphalt melted into thick, viscous black liquid. The air warped under the heat into shimmering, transparent ripples. Grass, shrubs, the guardrails at the roadside — all of it dissolved into the terrifying wall of heat.
In the most literal sense, it swallowed everything.
The white-haired girl's left hand stayed tucked in her pocket. Her right hand was open, palm facing forward, columns of gold-red fire pouring endlessly from her palm — the flames sustained for a full several seconds.
When she decided it was enough, she slowly withdrew her hand, cut off the fire, and slipped her right hand back into her pocket.
The flames died. Residual sparks drifted through the air. The lingering heat still warped the atmosphere around her.
The white-haired girl looked ahead and raised an eyebrow.
The entire mountain road no longer existed. In its place was a stretch of blackened, scorched earth — the ground burned into cracked, lava-like patterns, a large swath of the mountain forest on both sides sheared completely away, the remaining tree stumps still smoldering with wisps of pale smoke.
Not even a trace of asphalt remained. Only the molten, scalding bedrock below.
And that white-haired, blindfolded man — was gone.
"Is that it? He's dead from that?" the white-haired girl murmured, her crimson pupils narrowing slightly. She let out a short, contemptuous laugh. "So the so-called strongest sorcerer of the modern era — turns out he was just overhyped."
She had expected to need her full strength.
Instead, a single strike had incinerated him to ash — no. Not even ash. There was nothing left at all.
How boring.
"Didn't even need to pull out my true form. That guy — what an absolute letdown."
The white-haired girl looked down at the palm of her right hand.
The lingering warmth of the flames still clung to her fingertips. The flow of Cursed Energy felt smoother than it ever had before. She gently closed her fist, then opened it again, feeling every thread of Cursed Energy as it slid through her channels.
"Still... the feedback on my attacks really has gotten easier," she murmured to herself. "That blue-haired one's help actually was useful."
Jogo was a pragmatist, and a consequentialist.
She didn't care what she looked like. She didn't care whether humans could see her. She didn't care whether she was male or female, tall or short. The only thing she cared about was one thing — firepower.
Or rather: getting stronger.
So when Mahiko had remodeled her body into the form of a young human woman, Jogo hadn't objected.
She knew the blue-haired cursed spirit had likely sculpted this appearance out of some kind of perverse aesthetic whim — but it didn't matter.
As long as it genuinely enhanced her capabilities, it didn't matter if Mahiko reshaped her into something completely unrecognizable.
Besides — cursed spirits, as a category of existence, had no gender to begin with.
What Mahiko had done was simply take a genderless, neutral cursed spirit and mold it into the shape of a human woman.
So Jogo felt nothing about it whatsoever.
The white-haired girl stretched where she stood. She rolled her wrists, kicked out her legs, then twisted her waist left and right.
Her body had become more slender — that much was obvious.
But at the same time, her muscular strength hadn't decreased much at all. In fact, her body felt lighter. Her movements were more nimble than before.
Previously, when Cursed Energy flowed through her body, there had always been minor blockages — like grains of sand occasionally jamming a pipe. Now, those blockages were gone entirely. Cursed Energy moved through her channels without obstruction, as though every passage had been thoroughly cleared.
Like having her tendons stretched and her very core washed clean.
That was roughly the sensation.
Then her hand found the necklace around her neck.
It was an ordinary-looking silver chain, with a pocket-watch-style pendant at the end — the kind of cheap accessory you could pick up from a street vendor stall.
But this was something Mahiko had given her.
Mahiko had said at the time: if you can't beat Satoru Gojo, this necklace will ultimately save your life.
Jogo lifted the pendant and flipped it over to examine the back.
"Save my life, hm..."
She repeated the words under her breath, her tone carrying a trace of dismissiveness.
There wasn't even a flicker of Cursed Energy from it. She couldn't see what it was supposed to do.
Something like this was really quite meaningless. This so-called Satoru Gojo, this so-called strongest sorcerer of the modern era — in the end, wasn't he just some overhyped nobody? He hadn't even survived a single one of her strikes. What would she ever need this thing for —
"Hm?" A voice suddenly drifted in from behind her — leisurely and unhurried, tinged with laughter. "Why are you looking at a necklace in the middle of a battle? Is that something important to you?"
Jogo's body went rigid.
Then she spun around violently.
The man who should have been buried in her flames was standing right behind her — less than three meters away — hands in his pockets, grinning at her without a care in the world.
Without a single mark from the fire anywhere on him.
He didn't even have a wrinkle in his clothes.
The white-haired girl's pupils contracted violently. She launched herself backward like a coiled spring, blinking back a dozen meters to open the distance between them.
"That's impossible?!"
Impossible.
Absolutely impossible.
The firepower of that strike had been enough to reduce everything to ash. She had leveled the entire road and both mountainsides — and yet this man had not a single mark on him?
How had he walked away without a scratch?
"Tch."
The white-haired girl clenched her teeth. No time to overthink. She raised her right hand again —
BOOM——!!
A column of fire even thicker than before blasted from her palm. The gold-red light painted the entire night sky.
At the same time, from behind her surged a swarm of insect-type cursed spirits — fist-sized creatures pouring out in masses, converging on Satoru Gojo from every direction.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM——!!
The instant the swarm reached Gojo, they detonated in rapid succession — multiple explosions stacking on the same point over and over. Firelight tore through the night. The earth shook. The shockwave sent the remaining stumps and debris flying in every direction. The entire ground surface was blasted into a massive crater.
BOOM BOOM BOOM——
The barrage went on for over ten seconds.
Jogo stopped. Teeth clenched. Eyes locked on the center of the smoke-filled crater.
The smoke slowly cleared.
The white-haired man stood exactly where he had been — hands on his hips, completely uninjured. Not even a speck of dust on him.
"...!" Jogo's teeth ground together with an audible creak.
How?!
She had attacked with everything she had. She had carved a massive crater out of the mountainside. And he was still completely unharmed??
What kind of monster was this person?
Facing the white-haired girl's expression of pure shock, Satoru Gojo simply yawned.
"Attacking me like that isn't going to work," he said, his tone completely casual. "Don't you have intel on me? Have you never heard of my technique?"
"What?"
Gojo smiled — then extended his right hand toward Jogo, fist closed.
"Here, try bumping fists with me," he said. "What do you say? Want to try?"
The white-haired girl furrowed her brow, watching that fist with sharp wariness.
What was this supposed to mean?
A fist bump?
In the middle of a fight?
...Was it a trap?
She hesitated for a few seconds.
But in the end, she set her headphones on the ground and walked forward. She needed to understand what was strange about this man.
She raised her right fist and reached it toward Gojo's —
And then.
Her fist stopped.
Not because she stopped it herself — but because no matter how far forward she pushed, she couldn't reach it.
???
There was nothing solid blocking her. She hadn't touched any barrier or any wall. Her fist kept moving forward, kept advancing — but the closer it got to Gojo's fist, the slower it moved. Slower. And slower. And slower...
As though the space between their two fists was being stretched out into infinity.
Only the tiniest distance remained between them — and yet that tiny distance, no matter what she did, she could not cross.
"This is my technique — the Limitless Technique," Gojo said, smiling lightly. "When I use it defensively, I can deploy an infinite space around myself. The distance between you and me is infinite — so no matter how long you try, no matter how powerful your attack, you cannot cross an infinite distance to reach me."
Jogo's pupils trembled with shock.
"However —"
Tap.
Gojo's fist lightly touched hers.
"If I want to touch you — that's easy whenever I like."
The white-haired girl's eyes went wide.
And then, in the next instant, Gojo moved.
Fast as lightning — a straight punch driven directly into Jogo's abdomen. Jogo's reaction time really had improved since the remodeling; she managed to bring her arms up in front of her in time, taking the blow with her crossed forearms rather than bare flesh.
But she still went flying, her body launched backward a dozen meters.
"!!"
Jogo gritted her teeth. Both arms screamed with pain — as though a high-speed truck had hit her head-on.
She tumbled twice in the air, hadn't even had time to stabilize —
And Gojo was already there.
"Watch out — I'm about to start fighting back a little."
A kick to her side.
BANG! ——
The sound wasn't that of a physical strike at all — it was more like the air itself had spontaneously exploded.
Overwhelming force, instant and absolute.
The white-haired girl's body was kicked straight into the mountain forest floor. Earth and rubble erupted outward as she carved a trench several meters long into the ground.
She gritted her teeth, swallowed back the blood rising to her throat, and wrenched herself upright.
He was fast.
Even her eyes struggled to keep up with his speed.
She forced herself out of the dirt and looked up —
Gojo was already there again.
Another punch.
This time Jogo didn't even manage to raise a guard. She took the full strike, the impact sending her crashing through two trees before she hit the ground.
One punch, another punch, yet another punch... Gojo batted her around through the sky like a ping-pong ball.
A completely one-sided pursuit.
A completely one-sided demolition.
She could do nothing but endure, nothing but take hits, nothing but get knocked around in every direction.
And what was worse — Jogo had begun to detect something in his movements.
A hint of amusement. He was toying with her.
Damn it!!
BOOM——
And finally — one last punch.
Jogo's body was driven into the mountainside.
Rock shattered, debris flew, her back buried deep in the cliff face — she was pinned there like a nail hammered into a wall.
She spat blood.
Gojo landed at the foot of the mountain and dusted his palms together.
"Didn't you say you had a true form?" he called up, smiling as he looked at the white-haired girl embedded in the rock face. "If you don't bring it out soon, you're going to die."
The smoke settled.
The white-haired girl staggered out of the shattered cliff face, her footing unsteady.
Blood at the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away.
Her hoodie was covered in dust and stone fragments, punched through in several places.
The girl started laughing.
Her red eyes held no trace of fear.
"I'll admit it." The white-haired girl fixed her gaze on the man before her, voice rough, her grin vicious and fierce. "You really are strong. You really are... not someone who can be killed easily."
His speed was exceptional. His attack power formidable. And he possessed that absurdly, impossibly bizarre method of defense.
More importantly — he looked like he hadn't even started trying yet.
But by the same token — she hadn't used her full power either.
Her firepower could go even higher.
Her true killing technique hadn't been revealed. There was no such thing as a perfect defense in this world — could this man's Infinity really withstand her maximum output?
The white-haired girl found herself genuinely wanting to find out.
"Then come on!"
She bit down on her resolve and raised her left hand.
On her left hand — wrapped around her pale wrist — was a thin chain, and from its end hung a small pendant: a gold-red gemstone glimmering faintly in the darkness, radiating a dim, ominous glow.
Terrifying Cursed Energy was building within it.
Gojo felt it. He paused, and the smile on his face faded very slightly.
"That's some kind of... Binding Vow?"
...
"A Binding Vow? What you added to Jogo was a Binding Vow?"
The cursed spirits' base. Sunlight, sand, the sound of ocean waves.
Kenjaku heard Mahiko's words, turned to look at her, and his expression carried a rare flicker of genuine surprise.
"What kind of Binding Vow did you add?"
A Binding Vow was a commonly used technique in the world of jujutsu.
Put plainly: it was a form of equivalent exchange. A jujutsu sorcerer sacrifices one aspect of their own power as the price, in exchange for a massive enhancement in another.
For example — permanently weakening a specific technique from this point forward, in exchange for that technique hitting several times harder the very first time it's used.
For example — binding oneself to never use weapons for the rest of one's life, in exchange for acquiring a single, extraordinarily powerful finishing move.
That was roughly the concept. Sacrifice a portion, strengthen another. The greater the cost, the greater the return.
"Yes — I added a Binding Vow to Jogo's technique as well," Mahiko said, sitting cross-legged on the beach chair, both hands gesturing as she explained. "And I didn't just do it on my own — I negotiated with her first and got her agreement before adding it."
"Specifically, what does it involve?"
"You know how I adjusted her body — her Cursed Energy circulation meridians, her Cursed Energy channels, all that kind of stuff — and found that her Cursed Energy output had increased by quite a lot..." Mahiko gestured along as she narrated. "No — I should say, increased by a great deal."
She paused, shifted her position. "But the problem is, if she maintained that kind of high-output, overloaded state around the clock, twenty-four hours a day, her body might not be able to bear it. So I added a Binding Vow for her."
Mahiko held up a single finger.
"In exchange for a reduction in her normal baseline state — a transformation form capable of dramatically boosting her Cursed Energy output."
Kenjaku raised an eyebrow slightly. "A transformation form... don't tell me you mean —"
Something occurred to him. He paused.
"I recall you taught her a specific incantation to recite?"
Mahiko grinned — absolutely, brilliantly.
"Mm-hm. That incantation is the trigger for the transformation."
...
BOOM——!!
In the forest, fire blazed toward the sky.
Satoru Gojo looked at the white-haired girl in front of him, momentarily caught off guard.
The Cursed Energy surrounding her entire body was surging violently upward. The red gemstone on her left wrist was blazing with blinding radiance — burning so intensely it seemed on the verge of melting the chain itself. Scalding pressure expanded outward from the center of her body in all directions. The scorched earth beneath her feet was thrown up by the shockwave, fragments of rubble floating suspended in the air around her.
The white-haired girl raised her left hand. The crimson light of the red gemstone painted her face, and her scarlet pupils blazed like burning suns.
Then she opened her mouth.
She spoke the words Mahiko had taught her.
She didn't know what they meant — the blue-haired cursed spirit had only told her: say them, and it works. This is the key to the Binding Vow.
As for what they specifically meant, Jogo didn't care and didn't bother to ask. For a pure pragmatist who cared only about results, the content of the incantation was entirely irrelevant — what mattered was the effect it produced.
So she recited it without a moment's hesitation.
"Magical Girl Jogo..."
The red gemstone in the pendant blazed with radiance.
"— Transform!"
____
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