Frieren: — Chapter 107 - Kenjaku: Watch My Moves
HISS!
The mountain of debris had been smelted to nothing. Gojo Satoru stood exactly where he was, made a show of blowing smoke from his fingertips.
Then he turned his head to look at Sukuna behind him.
"I win. Surprised~"
"............."
He announced his victory with the same lilting cadence as someone who'd just won a game of Mario Kart. Sukuna, standing close beside him, still wore a smile, but offered no retort.
Fair enough.
From that single exchange alone, Sukuna had already confirmed it.
Gojo Satoru's Cursed Technique was superior to his own.
(That was a spatial technique. Beyond self-teleportation, it can also fire concentrated bursts of high-density material energy.)
(Not bad.)
But...
"Surprised?"
"It is surprising, actually — surprising how simple-minded modern sorcerers are."
Sukuna sneered.
As he'd made clear before: facing a strong opponent never made him soften his words. He preferred to bite back.
"I don't know what your beef with Kenjaku is... but if you think that just now finished him off, your brain is so naive it belongs on a flower farm~"
"......."
The upper half of Gojo's face was hidden behind his black blindfold, but the curve at the corner of his mouth had slowly faded.
"Heh~"
(Bluffing?)
He was puzzled.
With the Six Eyes, Gojo was certain: that person had been swallowed by his technique, ground into paste, and vaporized. No one survived that, not unless they had some kind of resurrection ability.
But resurrection wasn't among Kenjaku's known techniques. If it were, there'd be no need for the brain-swap technique in the first place.
So what on earth was this guy talking about...
Hm?
A flicker of wrongness. There and gone.
Could it be...
Gojo ran back through everything he knew.
(The intel Megumi gathered while inside the [Veil] should be reliable. Kenjaku didn't know about Megumi, there was no reason to be guarded against him.)
(Then, did they make their move before all that?)
A memory surfaced.
(When Manami ran out, it was Megumi who met her.)
(And at that point, she said something...)
(Something about... [Binding Vows]...)
Kenjaku had broken a [Binding Vow] before moving against Miguel and the others. At the time, it had been brushed off as "some unknown method to bypass the punishment", but thinking about it now, that was deeply wrong. If Kenjaku could nullify a Binding Vow's punishment outright, they might as well have been able to walk on water.
Unless...
[I don't know what your beef with Kenjaku is... but if you think that just now finished him off, your brain is so naive it belongs on a flower farm~]
...Unless...
From the very beginning...
That woman...
[Was never Kenjaku at all.]
"!"
Gojo's expression shifted.
So that's how it was.
"Tch!"
"Oh, figured it out, have you?"
Sukuna caught the shift in Gojo's face and followed up immediately with mockery.
It felt like a long stretch of thought, but in reality only an instant had passed.
Still taunting, Sukuna launched his attack while Gojo was momentarily distracted.
(His technique appears to have a neutral barrier wrapped around his body, my slashes will be stopped. In that case, )
Cursed Energy surged through his wrist.
[Domain Amplification]
Kenjaku had used it before. There was no reason Sukuna couldn't do the same.
Cut into the inner circle.
Unfortunate.
(Domain Amplification can't be used simultaneously with an Innate Technique, so I can't carve this white-haired brat apart in one go. But as long as I push him back, I can, )
The thought never reached its conclusion.
The one who moved first.
"You talk too much."
Was Gojo Satoru, who by all rights should have been half a beat behind.
His expression had darkened from before. Whatever had just occurred to him, it showed.
SLAP!
Cursed Energy surged at a speed that left the ten-fingered Sukuna outpaced. He deactivated [Limitless] and channeled everything into raw physical enhancement instead. Before Sukuna could react, Gojo seized his right arm, yanked hard, and drove his own body in close.
Sukuna tilted his head back. The meaning was unclear.
But right then,
Gojo Satoru spoke.
"Domain Expansion."
(What?!)
Sukuna watched Gojo Satoru form the domain hand seal.
With one hand.
Only one.
(, He can do it to that extent?!)
Freshly revived, with no frame of reference for the modern era's strongest, Sukuna couldn't help but be astonished. Even at the peak of jujutsu, even in the Heian Era where he had ruled, expanding a domain single-handed was an absolute advantage in battle. It meant you could restrain your opponent with one hand while sealing and expanding on your own.
Even Sukuna.
Whether it was [Simple Domain] or [Domain Expansion]...
Under normal circumstances, both required two hands.
Of course. If this had been the original Sukuna, the Four-Armed Tyrant who commanded four hands, he'd have instinctively sealed with his spare pair without even thinking.
But that was the problem.
Right now, he was nothing but an incarnated body, constrained by an ordinary number of fingers.
The inertia of habit, the gap in information between them, it cost Sukuna half a beat.
[And strength like this...]
[Cannot be touched by anything less than the modern era's strongest.]
"Domain Expansion: Unlimited Void."
His right index finger extended straight. His middle finger hooked lightly over it.
[Indra Seal]
In an instant.
A black shell swallowed the space around them both. In the same moment, Gojo kicked Sukuna away.
[, Within Gojo Satoru's domain, Unlimited Void.]
[Every existence without direct physical contact with Gojo Satoru is flooded with limitless information. The human brain cannot process it. In that instant, it breaks.]
[A living being capable of enduring Unlimited Void...]
".........."
.
Sukuna's pupils went faintly blank. He stood frozen.
[Does not exist.]
2 seconds.
SLAP!
Ryomen Sukuna achieved an impressive score of 2.5 seconds in his bout against the modern era's strongest sorcerer, Gojo Satoru. Why not give it a try yourself?
"Yoshi~"
After feeding Sukuna 2 full seconds of Domain Expansion, Gojo voluntarily closed it down.
He had no interest in turning Sukuna's incarnated body, Yuta's friend, as it happened, into a vegetable. Though 2 seconds was already more than enough to leave most people brain-dead, causing permanent damage.
Oh well. Leave it to Himmel, he'd figure something out.
"Gojo-sensei!"
Gojo caught the now-stupefied Itadori, who had lost all capacity to move, and tossed him to Okkotsu in one smooth motion.
Okkotsu caught him in a rush.
Before he could get a word out,
"Let's go."
As soon as he finished speaking, Gojo grabbed Okkotsu by the collar and was already moving.
"Wh— Ah! Where are we going?!"
"Urgent matter. We've been played. That person wasn't Kenjaku. As for who it actually was, too much to get into now. I'll tell you when we get there."
No trace of his usual unreliable energy. Gojo was sharp and clean, every movement deliberate.
He kept talking as he walked.
"Don't let go of the kid. He comes with us."
"Himmel can most likely handle the incarnated body situation. But before that, I don't know if Sukuna will wake up from the Unlimited Void damage, or whose consciousness will be running when he does. He's dangerous right now. Don't let go of him."
"Ah, yes! But—"
Okkotsu carefully shifted Itadori onto his back. Everything had happened too fast. He was still catching up.
"Where exactly are we going?"
"If I'm right."
Tsk,
Gojo clicked his tongue.
"Kenjaku's target..."
"Is the [Prison]."
........................
........
And several dozen minutes earlier in the timeline...
"Phew, chirp,"
A woman's whistle drifted through the dungeon beneath Jujutsu High.
The tune was unhurried. It filled every crack and corner of the dark.
The camera never moved from behind her.
A lone, stark silhouette stepped slowly down the corridor. Unhurried. Her footsteps struck the bare walls and echoed back, and the quiet darkness around her seemed to stretch and breathe, heavy with approaching dread.
And finally.
"Twisted Nerve."
"You're surprisingly up-to-date."
In the dungeon's deepest cell.
A man bound by countless cursed tools, nearly suspended in midair, smiled through the bars at the woman who had come.
"I refuse to be left behind by the times."
The woman smiled back.
Short black hair, cut to the shoulder. A gentle face. A scar on her forehead.
Kenjaku, appearing simultaneously here and inside the school's [Veil]?
"I've come to collect you."
Kenjaku's eyes curved warm with the smile.
"Geto-kun."