I stayed in the hallway for a long time.
Not because I didn't know where to go. But because I did.
Toji being here meant Tengen had hired him. And Tengen hiring him meant that whatever Gojo and Geto were planning had reached him before they could carry it out. And that meant...
I stopped thinking. Because thinking was leading me into a maze I didn't need right now.
I got up and walked.
When I returned, the school was different.
Not in its shape , but in its air. Something had shifted in the way silence sat over the place. The students I'd seen an hour ago were no longer in the courtyard. The open doors had been shut. As if the school itself had sensed what was coming and decided to hold its breath.
Then I heard the first one.
An explosion from the back of the main building.
I ran.
The scene I found was nothing like any moment I had imagined.
Gojo was moving at a speed that didn't suit a human body ,or maybe that's just what it looks like when you fight a monster like this. Blood on his shoulder... on his arm... on the ground behind him.
And Toji ... smiling!
That was the terrifying thing about the scene. Gojo was giving everything he had, and Toji was moving like he was enjoying himself. Like this wasn't a fight to him ,but a performance. A demonstration of his power to the entire jujutsu world.
I looked for Geto.
I couldn't find him.
A message appeared:
— Sudden Development —
The Observer skill has evolved to Level Two.
You can now enter the consciousness of a character .once per day.
I looked at the message, then at the battle in front of me.
I didn't hesitate.
Geto.
The darkness came instantly.
Not the darkness of night ,but the darkness of a place where light simply never arrives. A weight on the chest unlike anything I'd felt before. Every breath came in slowly and left even slower, as if the air itself was resisting.
Was he buried under rubble?
I felt the blood ...warm and heavy ...and a body trying to stay conscious through a will I couldn't place. And deep within that consciousness, something else: stubbornness. Silent and immovable. Like death had knocked on the door and Geto had simply decided not to answer.
And deep within that stubbornness .the consciousness began to fade.
I pulled out.
I took a deep breath and returned to my own body.
My hands were trembling.
Geto was on the edge of death. Gojo was slowly losing. And I was standing here, watching.
This was the price the system never told me about , not the risk of being hurt, but the agony of seeing and knowing and understanding and staying still because the rules said so.
Gojo released the Red.
Everything he had. All at once. The back building disappeared. Part of the wall disappeared. The air itself shook in a way that made you feel the explosion in your chest before you heard it.
And Toji ...
Jumped. Simply. And landed on the other side as if the Red had been nothing but a strong wind.
Monster! That was the only word.
He threw the chain toward Gojo. Gojo dodged, once, twice, three times. All six eyes fully locked in, calculating every movement, anticipating every path. For a moment I thought he might find a way.
Then Toji threw the chain again.
But the chain wasn't the real attack.
The spear came from behind.
One sound. One movement. And it was over.
The spear with the power to pierce cursed techniques . even Infinity itself!
I watched Gojo fall slowly ,not like a defeated man, but like something heavy that had finally let go of what it had been carrying. His eyes still open, staring at a point above him that I couldn't see.
Then Toji looked.
Toward me.
The same look as before. But this time there was something else in it ,curiosity. The kind of curiosity a hunter feels when he finds the tracks of an animal he doesn't recognize.
Well... that was entertaining.
He rested the spear on his shoulder and turned his gaze fully toward me !not like someone turning around, but like someone who had always known where I was and was simply choosing when to acknowledge it.
But why do you keep watching me, you little insect?
He looked through me. Not at me ,through me, as if he was seeing the wall behind me and I was just a transparent obstacle in the way.
And he threw the spear.
Every cursed technique before this had been unable to hurt me.
Yet ...
The spear pierced my body.
How was this possible?
— Warning! —
Run — Warning! — Run!
I couldn't think. On pure instinct I activated the Teleport skill and returned to the village.
A barrier. An invisible wall pressing in from every direction.
It seemed the technique extended even to barriers from places I had visited before, even ones long since dissolved.
I couldn't breathe. The spear was still embedded in my body , it hadn't disappeared with the teleport. I reached out and touched it.
And the scene began to collapse.
It was like a computer crash ...like a file the system rejected but kept trying to process and couldn't. The longer I kept touching the spear, the more it crumbled. Dissolved. And my wound began to disappear along with it.
Until the spear vanished completely ... and the wound with it ... moments later.
A message appeared:
— New Skill Unlocked —
Causality Reversal
Prevents all external influences from affecting you . permanently and absolutely.
No level. Ultimate Skill.
I sat down slowly on the ground.
Did this mean natural forces wouldn't affect me either? I didn't know the skill's limits. I figured the system had probably issued it to handle the anomaly that just occurred ,a reaction, not a plan.
But what even was that?
Did Toji have the ability to sense people from the fifth dimension itself?
When I thought about it , he was someone who had transcended the laws of this world from the start. No limits bound him the way they bound everyone else. If anyone could pierce the layer of existence I stood on, it was him.
That probably explained why he had been able to sense me before.
And it meant I was no longer invisible in any absolute sense.
I stayed sitting in the silence of the village.
And for the first time since I had arrived in this world .
I felt something looking back!