In the Grey Mist Space, everyone else looked at Night City Levi as if they had seen a ghost.
Marvelverse Levi muttered, “You’re truly a beast…
performing a craniotomy directly without any anesthesia…”
Wizarding Levi clutched his head in agony.
“What the hell were you thinking?
After sharing the memory, I nearly died from the pain!
This hurts way more than my full-body burns!”
That’s right—the third part of the experiment was to perform a craniotomy directly while occupying someone else’s body, without using any anesthesia.
According to the confirmation from the last time they returned to the Grey Mist Space, the cursed energy circuits had failed to be etched onto the brain in the second part of the experiment.
This led Night City Levi to initiate a procedure that was theoretically risk-free but extremely torturous: surgery without anesthesia.
Night City Levi took a deep breath, forcing his attention away from the endless agony in his memories.
“Every surgery carries a risk of failure, after all—especially brain surgery.”
“Especially brain surgery.”
“No matter how many bodies I occupy using the Sheep Talisman for surgery, as long as it’s not my own body, I’ll never have an accident.”
“So, rather than taking the risk of having a ripperdoc perform a craniotomy on my actual body, it’s better to try shaping the soul in the most direct way possible when there’s no cost for failure.”
Jujutsu Levi also grimaced, clutching his head.
The Dog Talisman could block fatal injury, but it couldn’t block painful memories!
This was far more painful than being scraped ten million times per second by Sukuna’s weakest Dismantle!
As the person who actually did it, Night City Levi was in even more of a daze.
“This bit of pain…
although it really is painful…
compared to the time we will have in the future, it will only be an insignificant interlude.”
As he spoke, he shakily reached out and began to scan Jujutsu Levi’s brain.
As soon as the scan started, Night City Levi’s eyes lit up.
“It worked!”
“It worked?” The other two Levis immediately threw the pain in their memories to the back of their minds and looked over in surprise.
“That’s right, Jujutsu Levi’s brain has indeed acquired the cursed energy circuits I etched onto my own soul!”
For such a high price to yield success, Night City Levi’s effort in gritting his teeth until they nearly shattered wasn’t in vain.
“Look on the bright side.
Theoretically speaking, in the Cyberpunk universe, there’s no such thing as the soul equaling the body.”
Marvelverse Levi took a deep breath and helped massage Wizarding Levi’s head.
“My intuition tells me that if we had performed surgery on the main body under anesthesia, there’s a high probability we wouldn’t have been able to etch the cursed energy circuits onto the soul.”
“In other worlds, the soul should still be our self-perception and reflection; at the same time, there’s a saying that pain shapes the soul.”
“With this kind of operation—performing a craniotomy without anesthesia—I wouldn’t be surprised no matter what was carved into the soul.”
For the other Levis, it was ultimately just phantom pain.
After Marvelverse Levi massaged his head for a while, Wizarding Levi finally stopped feeling the ache.
Consequently, the other three Levis all focused their gaze on Jujutsu Levi.
“Brother, everyone’s startup depends on you,” Marvelverse Levi said seriously.
Jujutsu Levi nodded earnestly.
“Don’t worry.”
“By helping myself, I’m the one who ultimately benefits.”
Jujutsu Levi opened his eyes and saw bubbles slowly floating upward toward the light patches on the water’s surface.
He wasn’t sure if it was just an illusion, but Levi felt that…
while immersed in the water, the distance between him and this world had shortened.
Was he about to awaken cursed energy?
Levi tossed aside the two heads he was holding, clenched his fists, and tried to control cursed energy.
Unfortunately, he felt nothing.
Levi frowned.
When Kenjaku initiated the Culling Game, he had modified human brains on a massive scale.
But in the end, those who actually awakened cursed energy or even cursed techniques were still less than one in ten.
Could it be that even though his Cyber-self paid such a heavy price, he was still an “ordinary person” who possessed cursed energy circuits but couldn’t awaken cursed energy?
Levi couldn’t accept that.
After all, Jujutsu Levi could empathize with the pain Night City Levi had experienced.
In a sense, he had experienced it himself, and he had paid the price.
Levi began to swim toward the surface.
When he emerged from the water, the battle between the two Sukunas was still ongoing not far away.
It wasn’t that they had been fighting for a long time, but rather that while Levi was underwater just now, he had repeatedly fallen asleep and woken up in a short period to refresh the number of times he entered the Grey Mist.
This was a trick the other Levis couldn’t learn.
Only he, with the Dog Talisman keeping his body in the most comfortable state at all times, could ignore any environment and fall sound asleep.
Just then, the sharp-eyed Levi suddenly spotted another familiar figure.
It was a man running with a look of pure relief.
His blonde hair was tied in a crooked ponytail as he fled from the area where the two Sukunas were fighting, heading right in this direction.
“Haruta Shigemo?”
Levi had a bit of an impression of him.
The King of Shit-Stirrers in Shibuya.
His record included killing over a dozen “Windows”—Jujutsu High auxiliary members who had low cursed energy but could see Cursed Spirits.
Wounding Nobara Kugisaki.
Forcing Megumi Fushiguro to use the Ten Shadows Technique to summon Mahoraga.
However, Haruta Shigemo’s own strength was not great; one could even say he was quite weak.
He could be beaten to a near-death state by a single punch from an unarmed Kento Nanami.
But the reason he could cause so much trouble despite being so weak was entirely due to his cursed technique.
[Miraculous Storage].
Every tiny bit of luck he encountered in his daily life would be stored and then used at critical moments.
This allowed Haruta Shigemo to luckily hit an enemy’s vitals during battle or rely on luck to escape danger when struck.
In the entire history of the jujutsu world, he was the only instance of someone being targeted for a double suicide by a Ten Shadows user and yet not dying at the hands of Mahoraga.
Even the previous user of the Six Eyes plus Limitless had died alongside a Ten Shadows user via the summoning of Mahoraga.
Yet Haruta Shigemo, a minor character who couldn’t even beat a Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer, had managed to survive because some thousand-year-old monster appeared out of nowhere to help kill Mahoraga.
The sheer value of this luck was incredibly high.
However, since luck was stored, it would naturally run out eventually.
For example, in the original story, he ran out of luck and accidentally blundered into Sukuna’s domain, where he was killed by the automated attacks.
And at this very moment…
Levi noticed that the tattoos on Haruta Shigemo’s face had all faded away.
Clearly, although it was unknown what he had been through, he had completely exhausted his luck.
Was that why Haruta had run into Levi?
Levi smiled.
In that case…
it was his own luck.
Haruta Shigemo was frantically fleeing for his life when he suddenly heard a deafening explosion from the nearby water.
Following the explosion, a fine spray fell from above.
Immediately after, a figure descended from the air, crashing down directly in front of Haruta Shigemo!
Haruta Shigemo was scared out of his wits and fell onto his backside.
“Who…
who are you?”
Levi brushed back his soaking wet hair and smiled at Haruta Shigemo.
“Hello, my name is Levi.”
“I need a small favor, and I’ll need your luck to help me out…”