He had saved the world.
That didn’t make him invincible , and he’d never thought it did.
When it came to raw strength, every member of his old party outclassed him in some regard.
None more completely than Eisen, the Dwarven Warrior, who had embodied the word “strong” in its truest form.
[Cursed Technique: Astral Cross] [Left Position , Strider] The words surfaced in his mind.
The effect activated.
A phantom drifted into place at Himmel’s side.
The Hero’s aura changed , sharply, immediately.
Crack…
CRACK—— His arms trembled.
The tip of the blade swayed.
At that same moment, [Cursed Technique: Red], saturated with repulsive force, snapped out from Gojo Satoru’s fingertips.
Both of them chose to show their hand at the exact same instant.
The scarlet orb of light stretched and pulled taut, blazing into a column, thick at the base and narrowing to a point, that shot straight at Himmel’s face.
The Hero was already swinging.
Sword angled back.
Body leaning forward.
One long lunge step.
The blade carved an arc through the air.
At the endpoint of that curve, it met Gojo Satoru’s technique head-on.
In that instant , Light bent under its own mass.
The edges of objects fractured into double images.
Then the collision’s shockwave detonated outward in every direction at once.
BOOM , !
.
!
.
The earth heaved like a wave.
Cracks exploded outward from the impact point and ran.
They hit trees.
The trees snapped.
They hit rocks.
The rocks shattered.
The gale tore Gojo Satoru’s hair straight up.
Infinity would stop anything “harmful” , but Gojo liked the wind.
Wind below a certain threshold wasn’t repelled.
Right now, he was grinning behind the blindfold.
(He actually blocked Red head-on?
You’re kidding me.) The moment Red first awakened had been the greatest high of Gojo Satoru’s life.
By mastering Reverse Cursed Technique, he’d simultaneously unlocked Cursed Technique Reversal , grasped the very core of Cursed Energy, and ascended to claim the title of [Strongest] for real.
Since then, he’d pushed it further.
The Red he’d just fired was stronger than the day he awoke it.
Flattening a forest?
Trivial.
And it had been blocked.
No , split.
His Six Eyes had tracked every detail.
The swing.
The force.
Himmel driving forward through the repulsion, through everything, and cutting the technique’s convergence apart with raw will and steel.
Even more outrageous than that guy.
Simply not human.
Gojo Satoru was buzzing.
He hadn’t run into something like this in a long time.
(So, what comes next ,) Whoosh , [Inside Gojo Satoru’s mind, thought was moving at speeds no normal brain could reach.] [A mind capable of atomic-level Cursed Energy manipulation.
Reflexes and processing that existed in a category of their own.] [But.] [There was a blind spot.] The wind screamed.
Still processing, Gojo felt it , something wrong.
His pupils blew wide.
His gaze snapped upward.
And there , Himmel had already crossed the distance.
He was standing right in front of him.
His shadow fell over Gojo’s body.
(Too fast!!!) [Reality isn’t a manga.
There’s no rule requiring both fighters to step back, exchange lines, and agree to attack on the count of three.] [In combat, every fraction of every second is contested.] [The deeper misconception: every single strike in a real fight is assembled from fragments.
Reaction.
Thought.
Judgment.
Action.
In that order, each one feeding into the next.] [The Six Eyes could accelerate Gojo Satoru’s reaction and his thinking.
What it could not do was make his judgments for him.] [And against that .] [Experience.
And the instinct that comes from a lifetime of battle.] [Hero.
Himmel’s rhythm….] [Surpassed Gojo Satoru.] HUM , .
The moment Himmel arrived, Gojo had no time to do anything at all.
The man hadn’t paused for even a heartbeat after blocking Red.
He’d carved through the smoke and dust and closed the gap in an instant, and now his body was already settling into the opening motion of an attack.
For Himmel, none of it was calculated.
It was instinct.
And it was in this same moment that he understood what his technique actually did.
By summoning the silver cross, four positions were unlocked.
He could choose any one of them and activate [Cursed Technique Effect One].
[Left Position] The land of the left.
It connected the soul of the [Warrior] to Himmel.
Direct effect: [Strength increased by one rank, granted one ‘+’ / Endurance increased by one rank, granted two ‘+’ / Agility parameter granted one ‘+’] Which meant Himmel’s current stats read as follows , Attributes: Strength: A++ Endurance: A++ Agility: A++ Magic: E Luck: EX Terrifying.
Blank-slate parameters, maxed straight out to levels that were nearly impossible to quantify.
The secondary effect , [Grants the Warrior Eisen’s martial arts and Noble Phantasm.] Both hands closed around the hilt.
Body coiling like a drawn bow.
Blade raised high.
One long exhale , “Flash Heaven Strike!!!
—” The blade came down.
The arc it cut blazed with blinding white light, tracking the path downward , All the way to the ground.
BOOM .!!!
A pillar of light, from earth to heaven.
As it expanded, it bulldozed the air in front of it, compressing a shell of ultra-dense pressure at its leading edge.
The pressure spiked.
It blasted outward in every direction.
It was like someone had detonated a tactical nuclear weapon in an open field.
The entire grounds of Jujutsu High shuddered.
The body felt it as a magnitude-six earthquake.
If the Japanese weren’t so extraordinarily good at building earthquake-resistant structures, not a single person on campus would have stayed on their feet.
As it was, every living person within the school walls woke up.
Actually, most of them had already woken up earlier, while the two were exchanging blows on the move.
Witnessing the full effect of Flash Heaven Strike, minds went blank.
Throats worked on instinct, swallowing.
Jujutsu High.
Fourth floor.
Third-year classroom.
Yaga Masamichi stood at the window, gazing out at the distance.
Then he closed his eyes, folded his hands over his chest.
THUD!
The back of his head hit the floor.
He was out before he finished falling , the deep, boneless sleep of an infant.
Jujutsu High.
Dormitory wing.
Shoko, who had finally scraped together a few minutes of rest, was propping her face in one hand and watching through the window, lips pursed.
A new monster, then.
Beside her, the Hasaba sisters had just woken up and were plastered against the glass, watching with rapt attention.
When the pillar of light from Flash Heaven Strike blazed into existence, they seemed to feel it through their connection to their Servant , and they knew.
They bounced on their tiptoes, eyes shining.
“Cool!
Himmel’s so cool!” ………….
…….
In the center of the now-stilled battlefield, the two fighters were less than five meters apart.
Himmel and Gojo Satoru stood face to face at that distance.
Between them, a colorful, insect-like creature held the gap , a cursed spirit, planted deliberately.
“Stop.
It.
Now.” Geto Suguru stood between them, expression not particularly friendly.
He’d just dragged himself out of bed only to be slammed awake by a shockwave that forced him to intervene like this.
He was the only person at this school with both the standing and the ability to put a halt to it.
Though if these two ever got truly serious, even Geto would end up with nothing but a headache.
Fortunately, it hadn’t reached that point.
“Why did you choose to strike beside me?” Gojo Satoru straightened up, glanced sideways at his own flank, and asked the question.
The ground beneath his feet was still mostly intact, but it had carbonized and turned soft.
And right beside his feet, a narrow fissure stretched for over a kilometer in either direction.
Its depth , unclear.
The crack glowed the color of molten rock all the way down.
If it weren’t for Infinity, I couldn’t have taken that either, Gojo thought privately.
“Isn’t that what a technique test is for?” Himmel sheathed his sword, easy and natural, a quiet satisfaction on his face.
He was genuinely delighted by what he’d discovered.
Using the Hero’s sword to execute Flash Heaven Strike , he’d never imagined that was possible.
By his own power alone, he could never have managed it.
The Heroic Spirit parameters the Goddess had granted him were absurdly useful.
Eisen.
The two of us really are incredible.
“Tch.” Gojo Satoru remembered the stated purpose of all this.
He could hardly say his hands had been itching and he’d wanted someone to hit.
But still , yes.
The test’s objective had been to confirm Himmel’s controllability.
Flash Heaven Strike could level mountains.
But even so , (It doesn’t matter.) Infinity’s stopping force had very little to do with how much destruction an attack could cause.
What mattered was compatibility.
Wrong compatibility, and even a blow capable of pulverizing a mountain range probably couldn’t kill through Gojo Satoru’s technique.
Having confirmed that Himmel was, at bottom, a pure stats-and-power fighter, the man fell neatly within the category of “controllable.” Gojo Satoru scratched the back of his head.
“You pass.”
The story is already written.