Chapter 138: Jujutsu Kaisen
The problem of the Prisma Illya world. Or rather, what was the reason the world Sakatsuki Miyu resided in faced a crisis of destruction ahead of schedule?
It was because Pandora's Box, which was supposed to be opened during the Age of Gods, remained closed due to a series of accidents. Furthermore, the blessings and curses of the gods stored within Pandora's Box slowly evolved over the passage of time. Eventually, an entirely new world was even born inside it...
Of course, normally, this wouldn't have been an issue. While Emiya Shirou was quite dismissive of the Counter Force in his own world, the Counter Force was generally responsible when it came to the protection of humanity and the continuation of the Earth—aside from its habit of overworking its employees until their skin turned as dark as colonial-era slaves, and its obsession with Kiritsugu Emiya's theory of saving the many by sacrificing the few (which extended into a special "affection" for members of the Emiya family).
In fact, the series of actions by the Counter Force that looked like "killing the donkey once the grind is done" were essentially measures to prevent any overly powerful individual from appearing on Earth and endangering humanity. Therefore, the Counter Force had long ago prepared a contingency for the fact that Pandora's Box hadn't opened on time: making it so that it could never be opened.
This way, no matter what changes occurred inside the box, the Earth outside would remain unaffected. However, the fact that the box could not be opened meant that Pandora, whose death was also locked inside the box, could not welcome true death. Consequently, throughout her long exile by humans who feared her as an undying monster, Pandora eventually encountered a magus named Darius Ainsworth.
Pandora's Box thus fell into Darius's hands. In the process of Darius researching how to open the box out of pity for Pandora's plight, his Displacement Magecraft underwent a complete metamorphosis. Just as the power of Emiya Shirou's Projection Magecraft originated from his Reality Marble, Darius—who had invaded the interior of Pandora's Box and was supported by the entire world inside it—pushed Displacement Magecraft to its absolute limit.
Displacing Heroic Spirits, displacing death, displacing space... and, displacing the world! That's right; the reason for the humanity-ending crisis in Prisma Illya was precisely because Darius was displacing the new world from inside Pandora's Box piece by piece. This was why new elements never before seen on Earth appeared, and why these elements were filled with malice toward terrestrial life, aiming for the extinction of all biological organisms.
Having understood this background, the problem of the Prisma Illya world became very obvious: it wasn't something that could be solved simply by defeating Darius or stopping the Ainsworth family. If one didn't deal with Pandora's Box and the new world incubated within it, it wouldn't matter if Emiya Shirou defeated Angelica and the others when they eventually
arrived, or even if he followed up by taking down the Ainsworth family and the mastermind Darius. None of that would truly save that world.
Of course, one could simply ignore the survival of that world and just snatch back the Greater Grail. But Sakatsuki Miyu would likely never accept such an outcome. After all, being unable to leave others to their fate was an old Emiya family tradition. In that case, could Emiya Shirou completely solve the problem of Pandora's Box? He could, and he couldn't.
"Could" meant that, just as Shirou used the ability of [Pseudo-Atum] to gradually take control of the Greater Grail through victory in the Holy Grail War, he could easily master Pandora's Box if he could gamble with it, relying on the Stand abilities of [Pseudo-Atum] and [Pseudo-Osiris]. He could even displace those new elements already on Earth back to where they came from.
"Couldn't" meant that the Holy Grail War constructed by the Ainsworths was fundamentally different from the one by the Einzberns. Their war was meant to maximize Sakatsuki Miyu's wish-granting ability, not to fight over Pandora's Box. Emiya Shirou, who could project [Pseudo-Atum], would find it difficult to seize control of Pandora's Box from the sidelines or engage it in a gamble as he did in the Fuyuki Holy Grail War.
—'In other words, the simplest way to save Miyu's world is for me to use the system's help to cross into a game world that possesses an ability to force others into a gamble!
And it would be best if this ability in that game world took the form of a 'weapon' so I could copy and project it.
After all, I still don't know if I can project special abilities tied to bloodlines...'
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Cold, shaking.
When Emiya Shirou's consciousness returned, he had already successfully crossed into a new game world under the system's function. And just like his first crossing to the world of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure—where he landed right in the detention center where Jotaro Kujo was staying—Shirou had now crossed into the vicinity of this world's protagonist.
With a single glance, he saw a high school boy with a red spiky head almost identical to his own (though the hair color leaned more toward pink). The boy was using a running start to leap from the road in front of the school gate directly onto the school building. While still mid-air, he performed a flying kick, violently smashing open a window of the building.
Shirou instinctively projected [Pseudo-Magician's Red]. Through the life-detecting flames, he observed the area and truly felt "something" that he couldn't see. He instantly realized what kind of game world he had crossed into this time.
"[Jujutsu Kaisen]. I didn't expect it to be this world." Shirou turned his gaze toward where the high schooler had jumped, trying to see something within. After attempting for a while, he eventually gave up and thought:
"Cursed Spirits, Cursed Energy, Cursed Techniques... Just as magi cannot see Stands, can I, who am not a Jujutsu Sorcerer, not see the existence of Curses?"
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