*(Image)* Alright, Rui had to admit he had guessed completely wrong.
Lord Sukumi did not actually possess a body with four arms and two faces.
She wore a pure white kimono, its long sleeves and hem pooling all the way down to the ground.
It was a thoroughly traditional outfit, to the point where if you only looked at her attire, you might accidentally mistake her for a classic Yamato Nadeshiko type of character…
Except that exact “Yamato Nadeshiko” was currently perched right at the apex of a mountain of corpses, looking down upon Rui and Satomi Gojo from a grand height.
Her light pink, ear-length hair fluttered despite the absolute lack of wind, her face twisted into a deeply sinister, mocking grin.
“Hoh…?
Modern sorcerers, is it?
What’s the matter, did you come to proactively offer your bodies up for my personal amusement?” Visually speaking, she still carried a powerful Ryomen Sukuna vibe—the only problem was, why did her proportions feel so fundamentally wrong?
Rui squinted, observing her intently for a brief moment before arriving at an earth-shattering conclusion: Lord Sukumi, the absolute strongest sorcerer in history, stood at a grand height of roughly…
Well, to save her some face, let’s just pretend she was 140cm tall.
Whose lost child was this?
You had to realize that Ms.
Gojo standing right next to him possessed a bare height of 178cm, and if she wore high heels, she’d be practically identical in height to Rui himself.
If she were to stand face-to-face with Sukumi, then even if Sukumi craned her neck all the way back, her line of sight would be entirely blocked by a massive treasure chest looming directly in front of her like an impassable heavenly chasm.
“…Irritating eyes.
Die.” Wow, how did she lose her temper that quickly?
Rui suddenly felt a freezing chill lock onto the space between his eyebrows.
Sensing imminent doom through sheer instinct, he instantly activated Idle Transfiguration, violently twisting his entire physical form into a pretzel-like shape to dodge the oncoming slash…
But even before he could finish contorting, the slash was brought to a dead halt mid-air.
Satomi Gojo stood firmly right in front of him, raising a single finger.
“Oh my, the legendary Queen of Curses doesn’t even possess this tiny shred of grace?
Or are you perhaps terrified of a two-on-one fight?
Don’t worry~ I’ll keep things perfectly fair.
How about I fight you using a mere one-twentieth of my total cursed energy reserves?” The very next microsecond, the ground beneath them detonated as both silhouettes vanished from their spots simultaneously.
——Now, this raised a fascinating logical question: exactly what level of combat power did a single-finger Sukuna actually possess?
In the original manga, a one-finger Sukuna had only ever fought two opponents in his entire life: one was a Grade 2 Cursed Spirit, and the other was the honored “Fraud” mentor himself…
Therefore, we could confidently state that his power level fluctuated dynamically somewhere between Megumi Fushiguro and Satoru Gojo.
In other words, his strength could fit comfortably into the exact tier of any character in this entire manga who was capable of stepping onto a battlefield to throw hands.
But watching the chaotic clash unfolding right before his eyes, Rui managed to gauge a fairly solid understanding of Sukumi’s limits.
In terms of raw speed alone, she was absolutely not inferior to a top-tier Grade 1 Sorcerer.
Combined with her hyper-efficient Reverse Cursed Technique and an open-barrier domain, even high-spec contenders like Suguru Geto or a base-form Hajime Kashimo would probably get diced into premium mincemeat by her.
If he could just hibernate and let himself cook for another couple of months, scaling his hand-to-hand combat to the tier he achieved in his previous simulations, he could probably utilize Idle Transfiguration to jump into the fray and bust out a few moves.
But right now, it was best to sit it out; if he couldn’t even manage to land a physical touch on her, discussing what his technique could do was entirely meaningless.
…Hmm?
A sudden stroke of pure genius flashed through Rui’s mind.
Sure, he couldn’t physically touch Sukumi, but he could absolutely touch the floor!
An Innate Domain was literally a conceptual space generated entirely by the soul—wasn’t that the ultimate playground custom-made for Idle Transfiguration to aggressively overhaul?
Right on cue, over on the main battlefield, Satomi Gojo and Sukumi simultaneously ground to a halt, as if sharing a single mind.
“Domain Expansion: Unlimited Void!” “Domain Expansion: Malevolent Shrine…
Wait, what the absolute fuck?!” People always joked that Cursed Speech could interrupt a domain, or that sticking pins into a voodoo doll could interrupt a domain…
But what about an absolute terrain-kill interrupting a domain?
In a single, fractions-of-a-second flash, the sea of blood beneath Sukumi’s feet…
which, technically speaking, was actually just a paper-thin puddle of blood coating a solid floor…
violently churned under the targeted influence of Idle Transfiguration.
With a sickening, snapping crunch, it instantly transformed into a deep, brownish-yellow, hundred-foot-deep ocean of raw sewage.
Before Sukumi could even register what was happening, her tiny silhouette pitched forward head-first, plummeting directly into the abyss below.
“…?” At the exact same time, Satomi Gojo, who was floating safely above the surface of the pool, cast an utterly indescribable gaze over toward him.
*(Image)* Why…
are you looking at me with those eyes?
Just kidding.
In reality, Rui’s heart was a lake of perfect tranquility.
What did mere insults and dirty looks matter to him?
People with shallow hearts constantly flitted between burning rage due to curses and hollow joy due to praise, but those were nothing more than the arbitrary opinions of complete outsiders.
A person who spent their entire existence living purely for the opinions of outsiders was destined to be pathetic!
He was specifically out here playing the Limitless Technique game!
“Be proud, Sukumi.
You’re strong.” Rui didn’t forget to forge a small patch of solid ground beneath his own feet to preserve his dignity; it wouldn’t be any fun if he accidentally fell into his own creation, after all.
On the other side of the pond, Sukumi broke through the surface with a wet splash, gasping for air.
Staring at her own body, which was now thoroughly coated in a bizarre, yellowish-brown substance, her entire frame began to violently shudder with pure rage: “What…
IS THIS?!” “No clue.
After all, I’ve never actually fallen into one myself.” “————————YOU ABSOLUTE BRAT!!” The utterly enraged Lord Sukumi was just about to lunge forward when she watched Satomi Gojo flash step directly behind Rui.
Grabbing him firmly by the collar with a sharp *shuck*, she forcibly logged him out of the Innate Domain, leaving Sukumi entirely alone to gaze blankly at the vast, disgusting ocean.
One second passed, then two, then three.
“…Motherfucker…
That brat’s technique changes are actually permanent…” After a long moment of bitter hesitation, she finally trekked over to the solitary patch of solid ground left behind, sat down…
and continued to stare blankly into the endless, brown horizon.
*Haha, Kenjaku.
Could you maybe hurry up with the master plan already?
It’s not even about being desperate to find an incarnation vessel anymore; she just genuinely wants to help out.
She’s been staying in this Innate Domain for so long that she can handle pretty much anything, so why would a little sewage break her?* *Haha.* …
The moment they materialized back outside the Innate Domain, Ms.
Gojo was still sporting that exact same, unreadable look.
Rui swallowed hard in dead silence, internally wondering if he had pushed the joke just a tiny bit too far.
Maybe his teacher had been deeply looking forward to this legendary clash.
After all, she was the type of person who, even after death, would throw out lines like “I’m genuinely sorry I couldn’t make Lord Sukumi give it her all.” She was an absolute pinnacle of strength, and the profound isolation born from that pinnacle…
*the one who will teach you about love is…* The two of them stood there, locked in a tense staring contest for a solid while.
Ultimately, it was Satomi Gojo who failed to maintain her strictly neutral face.
She let out a sudden, loud burst of laughter, doubling over as she covered her face, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably: “H-How do you even come up with this stuff, Rui…?
If I were Sukumi, the absolute first thing I’d do the second I broke out into reality would be to hunt you down and murder you…” Alright, it looked like she wasn’t actually mad.
Though, considering the canon plotline set to trigger next year, that scenario wasn’t exactly an impossibility.
It was entirely the fault of those online forum users who spent every waking hour theory-crafting these completely unhinged, limitless psychological warfare tactics.
Rui had just subconsciously applied one on the fly.
Man, that Jujutsu Kaisen forum really was a breeding ground for pure evil.
That aside, pulling up his system interface, Rui—sure enough—spotted that “Ryomen Sukumi (The Fallen One)” had been officially added to his list of simulated targets.
His total simulation count had also ticked up by one, bringing his current available tickets to 2…
The only problem was, looking closely at his current roster of simulated targets, what kind of chaotic lineup was this?
Yuna Okotsu: This one had already been explicitly flagged as “Conquered,” rendering her simulation option completely greyed out and unselectable; Satomi Gojo: He harbored a strong feeling that unless he could physically overpower her in combat, a successful romantic conquest route was utterly out of the question for the rest of his natural life; Chosie: Unless Kenjaku suddenly popped out of the shadows to announce that Rui was also a random child she gave birth to out of sheer boredom, allowing him to navigate a forbidden sibling route, he couldn’t fathom a single logical path to conquering her; Megumi Fushiguro: *Please input text here;* Lord Sukumi: Yeah, about her…
There was really no need to waste a precious simulation ticket on that nightmare.
Possessing a massive cheat code but having absolutely nowhere to deploy it—who could possibly tolerate that?
Rui reasoned that he needed to proactively launch an offensive to discover entirely new simulated targets.
According to the established patterns, any eligible simulated target had to be a character who commanded a substantial amount of panel time in the original source material…
Glancing back down at the Sukumi finger resting right beside his hand, a specific name naturally materialized in his mind.