“Is this all you have to do?”
“Yeah, exactly. Just a little more… go a little deeper.”
“You’re quite greedy, aren’t you? Haven’t you had enough yet?”
“…”
Megumi couldn’t listen to this anymore.
“Can you two please watch how you phrase things?!”
Gojo and Kaito, busy transferring and absorbing cursed energy, both turned to look.
“What’s the big deal?” Kaito asked.
“To think Megumi understood the implication,” Gojo chuckled.
“He really is a closet pervert.”
Megumi’s face darkened.
These two troublemakers had truly found a kindred spirit in each other.
Kaito was currently floating just above Gojo’s palm, suspended safely by Infinity, steadily siphoning the cursed energy Gojo provided.
“That’s enough cursed energy,” Kaito declared.
“Oh? You only need that much?” Gojo asked.
“I told you this summons the most fraudulent state of the target’s life. How powerful could it possibly be? Clearly, it doesn’t require a large amount of cursed energy.”
Just to be safe, Kaito emphasized his earlier point.
“Don’t forget what I said. Once it’s summoned, a subjugation ritual still has to take place. I have zero combat power right now, so there’s no way I can tame it myself. Remember to protect me.”
“Don’t worry,” Gojo flashed an OK sign.
“I’m the strongest, after all.”
He was curious if such a bizarre cursed technique actually existed.
Gojo hoped it did.
It would be highly entertaining, wouldn’t it?
Now it was time to verify it.
Tucked safely in Gojo’s palm, Kaito wasn’t actually that worried about his safety.
Half of Infinity was still Infinity.
But half of the Strongest was just a fraud.
Kaito extended two tentacles—one pointing toward the sky, the other toward the ground.
“Throughout Heaven and Earth, you alone are The Fraudulent One!” Kaito chanted.
“Come forth—Lower Half of Gojo!”
The chanting and hand signs were completely unnecessary…
Kaito was purely doing it for the meme!
Everyone on the scene watched intently.
Even Sukuna was tuning into the live stream from within his Innate Domain, resting his head against his fist with a contemplative look in his eyes.
There weren’t any dramatic special effects.
Gojo’s cursed energy flowed into Kaito’s technique.
It was like watching an animation where something new suddenly appeared in the scene.
Out of thin air, it materialized in the open clearing ahead.
Two long legs stood perfectly straight.
Simple martial arts shoes.
Off-white, baggy martial arts pants.
Just from the waist down, the stance alone radiated a terrifying level of strength!
And from the waist up?
Nothing.
Literally nothing.
It was just the lower half of a bisected body standing tall in the courtyard!
Then, it moved!
Lower Half of Gojo bent its knees and sprang upward like a coiled spring, bringing a devastating axe kick straight down toward Gojo’s head!
“HAHAHAHA, IT’S REAL!” Gojo laughed out loud.
“The flesh, the cursed energy—all the information pouring into my Six Eyes confirms that is absolutely my lower half! Even my soul and technique acknowledge it!”
“Which means…” Gojo kept Kaito in his right hand.
With his left, he did something he rarely ever had to do.
He raised his arm and blocked!
The lower half of Gojo’s falling kick crashed down, passing right through the impenetrable space of Infinity without a single ounce of resistance!
The lower half of Gojo’s calf collided solidly with Gojo’s raised forearm!
“Haha, just as I thought,” Gojo grinned.
When he was sixteen, Gojo had developed his Limitless to run automatically, 24/7.
Using a constant stream of data from his Six Eyes, the technique automatically filtered objects by mass, speed, and shape to determine danger levels, adjusting Infinity’s targets accordingly.
However, Gojo himself would never be registered as a target by his own technique.
“But isn’t this power a little too weak?” Gojo remarked, flicking his arm upward.
The Lower Half of Gojo was thrown backward through the air.
“The cursed energy core is gone. It’s running entirely on whatever residual cursed energy was left in the body. How strong did you expect it to be?” Kaito asked.
“Besides, if you manually switch the target of your technique, you should be able to block it, right?”
“Of course,” Gojo nodded.
“If it were purely an attack made of my cursed energy, it would be tricky. The space of Infinity is maintained by my cursed energy, so it can’t distinguish friend from foe if the source is identical. But possessing flesh changes things.”
“As long as I actively want to, and consciously select the targets of my technique, I can make it so my own left and right hands can never touch. It’s the exact same principle for this ‘lower half of mine’.”
After being launched five or six meters away, Lower Half of Gojo landed on its feet, pushed off the ground, and launched another attack!
A Flying Kick!
This time, the strike was firmly halted by Infinity.
Gojo grabbed his Lower Half by the ankle and tossed it away once more.
It crashed into the dirt about ten meters away.
Oddly enough, after its legs squirmed around and righted themselves, Lower Half of Gojo just stood silently in place.
It didn’t launch another attack.
‘Because it doesn’t have any sensory organs, does it stop attacking once it’s outside a certain radius?’ Kaito pondered.
‘So when it enters that radius, is it sensing cursed energy?
How is it processing that information?
Don’t tell me it really uses Little Gojo to think?!’
The flat, bisected cross-section at the top of the lower half of Gojo’s waist was completely covered with smooth, flesh-colored skin.
There was no blood or exposed organs—it appeared as though it had simply been formed that way.
“WOAH, it’s just like the Chop-Chop Fruit from One Piece!” Yuji, the hot-blooded high schooler, exclaimed in excitement.
This wildly magical night had opened the doors to a brand-new world for him.
It was hard not to imagine himself mastering flashy, shonen-manga-style ultimate moves in the future.
Megumi continued to observe in silence.
‘Is this what Kaito meant by the most fraudulent state in Gojo-sensei’s entire life?’
He had originally assumed he might see an infant Gojo or a frail, elderly Gojo.
Common sense dictated that the moments right after birth or right before a natural death would fit the ‘weakest state’ criteria.
And technically, this was a near-death state.
But within Megumi’s realm of common sense, the concept of Satoru Gojo being cut in half and killed simply did not exist!
Furthermore, Gojo was…
well, technically, Megumi’s benefactor.
Technically.
Megumi glanced over at the other two.
Gojo was still joking around and laughing with Kaito, looking completely unfazed by the severed lower half that literally foreshadowed his gruesome death.
Megumi sighed.
He had mostly bought into Kaito’s story by now.
But with Yuji and Sukuna standing right there, they couldn’t risk leaking critical intel.
He would have to interrogate Kaito about Gojo’s death and this temporal crisis in private later.
“Say,” Kaito started, “if I embed myself into ‘your’ waist, do you think I could pilot the ‘Lower Half of Gojo’ mecha?”
“Interesting. That actually might work?” Gojo stroked his chin.
“But you’d probably need to complete the subjugation ritual by yourself first. Would a multi-person subjugation ritual even register as a success?”
“No, the underlying logic is completely identical to the Ten Shadows Technique,” Kaito replied.
“Well, then…” Kaito hesitated for a split second before deciding to just ask anyway.
“Do you think incarnating through the back door would result in a successful bodily takeover?”
Gojo’s mouth twitched.
‘Good lord, you’ve got fewer limits than my actual Limitless technique.
You’re seriously talking about taking “me” over from the back door right to my face?
What kind of education are kids getting sixty-eight years in the future?’
“…’My’ physical body should be more than capable of withstanding the toxicity of a cursed object’s incarnation,” Gojo answered diplomatically.
“But since that vessel is constructed from your cursed technique, I have no idea if the two would conflict.”
Kaito nodded.
In truth, he had no real desire to incarnate into the Lower Half of Gojo.
He was just satisfying his morbid curiosity.
The vessel was incomplete, and it didn’t even have the Six Eyes.
What was the point of taking it over?
Kaito had another target in mind entirely.
“Anyway, just go ahead and destroy ‘you’ for now, then go test Itadori,” Kaito instructed.
“Though based on my intel, he’s fine. Besides, he’s the one destined to become the ‘Strongest’… right after you.”
“Is that so?” Gojo smiled.
“I’m looking forward to it.”