~ 💎 WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 60→1ch | 100→2ch | 200→5ch ⏰ Resets Monday!
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The sea breeze swept across the beach, carrying off the last warmth of the campfire’s embers and, in passing, the still-damp tear stains on Riko’s cheeks.
The fireworks had burned out.
The night sky was deep as ink.
Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru were locked in a childish Cursed Energy tug-of-war over the last burnt squid tentacle.
The white-haired boy condensed a micro-gravitational field at his fingertips to drag the food toward him.
The bun-haired boy commanded a fly-head Cursed Spirit to intercept it midair.
They were throwing themselves into it with extraordinary dedication.
Waves crashed against the reef, threading through the hum of clashing Cursed Energy.
From the distant coastline came the rising sound of an engine cutting through water.
A speedboat with a mottled paint job punched through the whitecaps and ground onto the shallows.
Two figures leaped down, feet splashing through the spray.
The one in front was a boy with a black bowl cut and a white T-shirt.
He pumped his arms furiously into the sea wind.
“Gojo-senpai!
Geto-senpai!
We’re from the high school — sent as reinforcements!”
The one lagging behind had brownish-blond hair and wore vintage goggles on the bridge of his nose.
His immaculate high-school uniform snapped in the wind.
He glanced down at his wristwatch first, then lifted his eyes to survey the wreckage scattered across the sand.
His tone carried the flat weariness of someone strictly on the clock.
“Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer, Nanami Kento.
This is my peer, Grade 2 Jujutsu Sorcerer, Haibara Yu.”
“Sent by Master Yaga to carry out the mopping-up of Time Vessel Association remnants.”
“Sending first-years, huh.”
Gojo Satoru flicked his fingers, knocked aside the fly-head with a pulse of Cursed Energy, and the squid tentacle sailed straight into his mouth along its gravitational arc.
He chewed and complained at the same time, words muffled.
“Way too slow.
We already finished the barbecue.”
“I’m very sorry!
We ran into a little trouble on the way!”
Haibara Yu pressed his hands against his trouser seams and bowed ninety degrees, voice loud and earnest.
“We caused trouble for our senpais!”
Nanami Kento pushed at the edge of his goggles.
His mind was still replaying the farce at the port.
The so-called trouble: Haibara had insisted on giving mouth-to-mouth to a seasick boatman, been treated as a pervert, and hauled off to the security office.
They’d wasted a full 20 minutes wrestling the situation out.
That was his peer.
An idiot so warm-hearted he was completely blind to context.
Nanami swept his gaze across the campsite.
His eyes settled on a man wearing nothing but floral-print swim trunks.
The man’s limbs were packed with explosive muscle, skin stretched taut and gleaming.
The crease between Nanami’s brows deepened slowly.
Not a single shred of Cursed Energy fluctuation on this man.
Yet that beast-like pressure made even drawing breath feel like a minor effort.
The black-haired kid in front — clear eyes, sunny grin, was an absolute top-tier prospect.
The kind who could hoist a two-hundred-jin log and grind out ten thousand squats.
As for the guy in the suit.
Toji’s gaze slammed directly into the eyes behind Nanami Kento’s lenses.
Done.
This kid’s life had gone completely off the rails.
He knew that look.
He knew it too well.
Every last trace of passion for work, ground to nothing.
Going to the office like serving time.
Life as one endless overtime shift, every minute a countdown to clocking out, soaked through with hollow despair.
No hunger for anything hot-blooded.
Only the deep numbness of someone who had been wrung out by life, over and over, until nothing remained.
No.
Absolutely not.
How could the future of this world be handed to a man who wouldn’t even crack a smile running a five-a.m.
marathon!
“You!
Blond four-eyes!”
Toji raised his arm and pointed straight at Nanami Kento.
He drew breath from his dantian and let out a thunderous roar.
“Your youth — it’s already dried up and rotting!”
Nanami Kento furrowed his brow and stood frozen, stunned.
Haibara Yu scratched the back of his head, glancing left and right.
“HAHAHAHAHA!”
Gojo Satoru clutched his stomach and dropped onto the sand, howling.
“Labor is sacred!
Work is a burning festival of your very life!”
Toji strode over the campfire pit and closed in on Nanami.
His tall, broad frame blocked out the moonlight, swallowing the junior entirely in shadow.
“How can you bring a face meant for a cremation ceremony to your work!”
“Where is your sweat!
Where is your passion!
Where is your battle cry!”
Nanami Kento’s face went dark.
He retreated half a step and raised the back of his hand to wipe the spittle off his cheek.
He desperately wanted to announce, loudly and on the record, that labor was pure excrement.
Years of ingrained decorum forced those words back down his throat.
He settled for repeating them in his mind a dozen times over.
Geto Suguru’s relaxed spine snapped straight.
“They’re here.”
The reconnaissance Cursed Spirits roaming the perimeter had sent back a danger signal.
In the shadows of the coconut grove at the beach’s edge, dozens of figures wrapped in black headscarves were using the darkness as cover, moving fast, closing the net. This chapter was taken from novelping . com without permission.
The Cursed Energy rolling off them was murkier than the Time Vessel Association fanatics from before.
Their footwork interlocked in overlapping cover patterns.
Their advance had the practiced ease of veteran killers.
“Yo.
Finally crawled out of the gutter.”
Gojo Satoru stood, rolled his neck.
His vertebrae cracked cleanly.
A fighting spirit lit up in his azure eyes.
“Perfect.
Post-meal exercise.”
He started gathering Cursed Energy, already setting up the attack, and then an overwhelming shadow fell over him.
“All of you, stay put!”
Toji shot a glare at the restless white-haired boy.
His thick palm pressed down hard, stopping a few millimeters short of the other’s shoulder, blocked by the Limitless barrier.
“This is the juniors’ brutal trial!
A glorious chapter in the long scroll of their lives, and it must be written in blood!”
“You two stay out of it.
Sit down and rest.”
“Oi, oi, oi.
Who gave you the right to order me around, you Cursed-Energy-less muscle gorilla!”
Gojo Satoru started to protest.
He didn’t get another word out.
The green-clad man had already bent his knees and jumped.
Toji cleared several meters in a single bound and landed clean, settling cross-legged on top of a reef at the shoreline.
He folded his hands over his knees and took on the air of a transcendent master overseeing a disciple’s trial.
“Nanami kid!
Haibara kid!”
He looked down at the beach from above, his voice crashing over the waves.
“The enemy is right in front of you!”
“Don’t you dare retreat!
Use the bodies you’ve tempered and tear these small-fry apart!
Show them what the hot-blooded soul of a Jujutsu High man looks like!”
With every word, the vein at Nanami Kento’s temple pulsed harder.
This man had definitely escaped from a maximum-security mental institution.
From the tree line ahead, assassins burst out.
Short blades caught the moonlight as they closed in.
Nanami Kento crushed the urge to start swearing.
He kept telling himself, in the calmest voice he could manage: this was just mandatory overtime.
Finish it fast, sever the nuisances, go home and lie flat.
He yanked his tie loose and undid the top button of his shirt.
His hand reached behind his back and drew out a heavy cleaver, its handle wrapped in layers of old, fraying bandages.
“Haibara.
Take the three flanking left.”
“Leave it to me!”
➤ Next: Hot-Blooded Guidance from the Blue Beast
Jujutsu Kaisen