Geto had never looked so cautious, even taking an unconscious half step back as Rainbow Dragon gave an uneasy growl behind him.
He was waiting for Makoto to show signs of weakness after unleashing an attack of that magnitude—or perhaps bracing himself for an equally absurd second strike.
Makoto let out a long breath, forcing down the metallic taste rising in his throat before lifting his head to give the cult leader a brazen, bloodstained grin.
“The trash is cleared out, Geto-sama.
Now, shall we discuss how high you’re planning to stick your ass in the air when you get down on your knees?
Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to get some good pictures of your first public humiliation in ten years and send them to Shoko-nee.” [Elapsed time: 14:35.
Objective: Hold out for another 5 minutes, 25 seconds.] ‘MIGUEL!!
I’m fucking begging you!
Let that white-haired lunatic come back already!
Blue Rage was a one-use special!
If I try it again, I’m going to go off like a firework, and there won’t even be scraps left to bury!!!’ Inside, Makoto was screaming himself hoarse and on the verge of a breakdown, but his expression remained as composed as if victory were already assured.
“It seems I’ve grown a little too dependent on my ‘family.'” Geto’s voice had suddenly become utterly calm, stripped of every emotion until nothing remained but the quiet instinct to kill.
With a casual wave, he dispersed the lingering wisps of cursed spirits around him, then slowly drew a section of a dark red three-section staff from the wide sleeve of his robes.
It was the special-grade cursed tool, Playful Cloud, an unusual weapon that possessed no cursed technique of its own and served purely to amplify physical power.
In Geto’s hands, it made the surrounding air groan as though it could barely bear the weight.
‘Shit, I pushed him too far.’ Makoto’s heart hammered in his chest as he realized that Blue Rage had indeed intimidated Geto, but it had also made something clear to him: if cursed spirits deployed at a distance would simply be wiped out, the only way to finish this was through raw, special-grade hand-to-hand combat, where clever tricks could only get Makoto so far.
Before defecting, this man had been a monster capable of sparring with Satoru Gojo and slaughtering special-grade cursed spirits with his bare hands.
Between his formidable cursed energy reinforcement, combat skills honed through countless brushes with death, and the added power of Playful Cloud, this would be a one-sided massacre for a guy who couldn’t even manage three gym classes a semester.
‘Daddy Gojo, help!
This lunatic with the bun is going to whip me into a spinning top with that fucking staff!’ Makoto screamed desperately inside his head.
‘Miguel!
Has Sensei twisted you into a pretzel in Shinjuku yet?!
Just let him come back already!’ Without warning, Geto vanished with a rush of air, propelled by an explosive burst of speed from a thoroughly conditioned body reinforced with cursed energy.
By the time Makoto’s eyes caught his afterimage, the wind from Playful Cloud had already sliced through a lock of hair hanging over his forehead.
[Thin Ice Breaker: Full Power—Spatial Trajectory Deflection!] He didn’t dare use Star Rage again, while relying on Limitless alone would leave his defense too inflexible; against blows this brutally powerful, once its three seconds ran out, he could only see himself ending up with his internal organs ruptured by the shock waves.
Makoto frantically adjusted the spatial frequencies around him, as though covering his body in countless layers of invisible soap bubbles.
A rapid series of metallic clangs rang out, each one accompanied by a stab of pain through his brain.
The attacks were too fast, every swing carrying crushing weight while remaining as precise as a surgeon’s scalpel.
Playful Cloud struck the distorted paths through space, its otherwise fatal blow dragged just a few centimeters off course so that it skimmed past his shoulder and pulverized the wall behind him.
“Interfering with space like this…” Geto’s admiration was chilling as he spoke without slowing his assault.
“What an interesting way to struggle.” “Your technique is quite sophisticated, but your body simply can’t keep up with your imagination.” He had identified the problem perfectly: Makoto’s brain was running beyond its limits, and his muscles were screaming in protest.
Even when Thin Ice Breaker diverted an attack, the residual shock of Geto’s special-grade cursed energy still traveled through the distorted space, splitting the skin between Makoto’s thumb and forefinger until blood dripped between his fingers.
[Elapsed time: 15:45.
Objective: Hold out for another 4 minutes, 15 seconds.] “You’re trembling, Makoto-kun.” Geto closed in again, whirling Playful Cloud into a lethal web of dark red arcs.
“About four minutes until Satoru gets back, I imagine…
How many more attacks do you think that leaky ‘Infinity’ of yours can stop?” He had figured it out, and knowing Miguel couldn’t hold out much longer, he had abandoned every elaborate move in favor of the simplest, deadliest approach: wearing Makoto down before time ran out.
With his special-grade cursed energy and the skill to control it, he was overpowering Makoto through the very fundamentals of jujutsu combat.
“Just three more minutes…” Makoto clenched his jaw hard enough to crack a back tooth, filling his mouth with the taste of blood.
“If Satoru Gojo doesn’t show up soon, they’re going to have to put ‘Killed in a domestic dispute with Gojo’s ex-husband’ on my gravestone at Jujutsu High!
How the hell am I supposed to rest in peace with that?!” “Your reactions are slowing down, Mizuki-kun.” Geto’s voice was like ice sliding down his spine as a dark red arc descended, bringing such suffocating pressure that even the distorted space gave a brittle crack like breaking glass.
Another heavy blow rang out, and although Makoto barely managed to divert its path, the overwhelming force still traveled through space and snapped the bones in his left hand.
The strain of the calculations sent a piercing burst of noise through his overloaded brain.
“Daddy Gojo!
If you don’t get here, the next meal you’re attending is my funeral reception!
All the Kikufuku you can eat!” ‘He can’t get close again!
Fighting a special grade in hand-to-hand combat is just trading pieces of my brain for a few drops of his sweat!’ Makoto fixed his eyes on Geto’s left foot as it stepped forward again, watching it begin to push off—the signal that the gorilla with the bun was about to attack.
‘I can’t take another one.
I have to shove this clingy ex-husband back to a safe distance, and I’m only going to get one chance!’ [Limitless Technique: Switching from Blue to Red.] [Constructing Composite Technique: Red’s repulsion + Thin Ice Breaker’s spatial fluctuations.] Combining these two powers was less a matter of simple addition than stuffing nuclear fuel into a barrel of explosives.
“You really do like getting up close and personal…” Makoto snapped his head up, his eyes bloodshot as he bared his teeth in a vicious grin.
“Unfortunately, I don’t share your particular taste for getting that intimate with another guy, and seducing minors is illegal—so kindly fuck off!” He didn’t aim at Geto himself, since that would only waste the last of his cursed energy on a direct attack that a special-grade sorcerer could easily dodge.
‘What I’m blowing apart is the space between us!’ Makoto poured every scrap of cursed energy he had into his fingertips, reversing the direction of Thin Ice Breaker’s spatial fluctuations in an instant.
Combined with Red’s absolute repulsion, the technique forced a rapidly expanding bubble of space into existence between them.
A thunderous roar erupted as space itself rejected Geto’s presence.
The tremendous repulsive force peeled up an entire layer of the training ground and slammed into his chest like a slap from an invisible giant hand.
Even Geto couldn’t keep his footing against a point-blank force that struck from every direction and left him nowhere to evade.
“This is…
Red?
No, there’s something else mixed—” His pupils contracted as he was hurled more than a hundred meters backward like a dark red meteor, smashing through three stone towers before embedding himself in the rock face behind the school.
Makoto Mizuki, Grade 2 sorcerer, sank to one knee, dragging in ragged breaths as black patches filled his vision.
‘That’s everything I’ve got…
Was it still not enough?’ That desperate, all-or-nothing Thin Ice: Red had drained almost the last drop of his cursed energy.
[Elapsed time: 18:30.
Objective: Hold out for another 1 minute, 30 seconds.] “It landed…
Even a special grade ought to stay down for a little while after taking spatial repulsion at that range, right?” Instead of a scream, however, a tightly restrained snort came from the dust, accompanied by the grinding of bone.
“…A respectable amount of force.” Geto slowly emerged from the rubble, his once immaculate robes torn and his left arm hanging uselessly at his side.
The depression in his chest suggested at least two broken ribs, and, more fortunately, Playful Cloud was no longer in his hand.
The spatial repulsion had knocked the special-grade cursed tool away into the dense woods several hundred meters distant.
Makoto felt no relief, because the bloodlust in Geto’s narrow eyes was so intense it seemed almost tangible.
He stared at Makoto as though looking at a monster that had subjected him to an unforgivable humiliation.
“If you truly understood the essence of Satoru’s technique, you would have followed that attack with Blue to crush my internal organs, or teleported into my blind spot.” The ground cracked beneath Geto’s feet with every step he took.
“But you didn’t.
You stayed where you were, gasping for breath.
It seems…
that Red was as far as you could go.” ‘Shit, I overplayed my hand.’ A special grade with that much combat experience had seen straight through him: without Gojo’s stamina, cursed energy, and precision to keep chaining attacks together indefinitely, that last strike had been a desperate gamble with everything he had left.
“Since you’ve exhausted all your options…” Geto slammed his palms together, and the cursed energy surging around him grew even more violent than before as he unleashed his full special-grade output without concern for the consequences.
“Maximum: Uzumaki.” He was done testing Makoto, instantly compressing every cursed spirit he had left around him into a black-and-purple sphere of energy before his chest.
The resulting gravitational distortion tore nearby trees out by their roots.
[Time Until Deadline: 19:15 / 20:00.] Makoto stared at the destructive black light about to tear through the air, his trembling fingers making a feeble attempt to curl around empty space.
“Sensei…
If you don’t get here now, I’m actually going to set Jujutsu High’s record for the fastest death.” [Second Limitless Defense—Duration: 3 seconds.
Activated!] [Third Limitless Defense—Duration: 3 seconds.
On standby!] With a deafening roar, the black torrent swallowed him, subjecting him to crushing force that left no angle of escape.
Makoto desperately maintained Thin Ice Breaker, trying to divert the energy to either side of him.
Three seconds passed before his first line of defense collapsed.
“I’M NOT DONE YET!!!” He forced out an animal roar and pushed beyond what his body could sustain, burning through his very life to activate his final defense.
[Final three seconds.] Black energy ground against the barrier less than a centimeter from his nose, while his blood-engorged eyes temporarily lost their sight and the shrieking noise seemed ready to tear his soul apart.
Just as his faltering defense shattered, an azure light descended from above, brighter, more arrogant, and even more outrageously powerful than Uzumaki.
“Suguru, bullying my students is a good way to get yourself forcibly removed from the premises.” A far greater gravitational force erased the darkness in an instant.
A white-haired man wearing a blindfold appeared out of thin air in front of Makoto, and with a casual sweep of his hand, the remaining energy—enough to destroy Jujutsu High—vanished as completely as water cut off at the tap.
Makoto finally lost the strength to remain upright and toppled backward, only for a large hand to catch the back of his head.
“You’ve been even more of a troublemaker than I expected, Makoto-kun.” Gojo looked down at him, a red welt marking the corner of his mouth as though someone had caught him with a whip, yet his smile was cruel and brimming with excitement.
“To think you managed to push Suguru this far all on your own…
You’ve really outdone yourself on this assignment.” [Elapsed time: 20:00.
Time trial complete.] Gojo turned to face Geto, whose expression had changed sharply, and slowly pulled down his blindfold.
“Sorry about the wait, Makoto.
From here on out…
it’s time for a couple of old friends to catch up.”