Chapter 44

Yuki Tsukumo froze in shock because the third result displayed on the lottery screen was a One Woman One!

One Woman One, One Woman One, riichi, One Woman One!—Jackpot!

In an instant, immense Cursed Energy rose from Kinji Hakari's body. Yuki Tsukumo's golden hair flew like a banner as she stared at Kinji Hakari in disbelief. His body was visibly beginning to recover at a rapid pace. Excessive Cursed Energy had caused negatives to cancel into a positive, automatically triggering the Reverse Cursed Technique. From this moment onward, it would continuously activate on its own.

Music drifted in from afar—the theme song of Private Pure Love Train.

Kinji Hakari slowly rose to his feet. He tore off his ruined shirt and casually tossed it into the air. Bare-chested, he had just had half his body blown apart, his heart crushed to pieces, yet not a single wound remained on his body. His muscles were sharply defined, as though sculpted.

From now until the theme song of Private Pure Love Train ended, Kinji Hakari possessed Infinite Cursed Energy. Four minutes and eleven seconds of immortality!

This man had seized power with luck!

Kinji Hakari rolled his neck, producing a series of crisp crackling sounds. He looked at the dumbfounded Yuki Tsukumo and extended one hand, like a gentleman inviting a lady to dance in a ballroom.

"Come on, Lady Tsukumo."

He bared his teeth in a smile like a demon's. "Round two is starting!"

Suddenly, an enormous roar sounded behind Yuki Tsukumo. She instinctively turned around and saw a giant dragon stretching its body. The dragon she had knocked flat with a single blow was also beginning to blaze with Cursed Energy. Infinite Cursed Energy! As it stretched, its body began growing again. Its original thirty-meter body expanded at an astonishing speed.

Thirty-five meters, forty meters, fifty meters!

The dragon lowered its head and looked down at Yuki Tsukumo, like a giant monster from a tokusatsu film looking down upon an antlike human. Yuki Tsukumo saw its front claws extend, forming a hand sign.

This dragon was making hand signs in Kinji Hakari's place, allowing him to use Domain Expansion without making hand signs himself—no, that was not it. Yuki Tsukumo recalled the information Mei Mei had mentioned about Immortality. Cursed Spirits called this dragon a Companion Spirit. It was an external organ.

This dragon was Kinji Hakari!

So this was the power of combining Immortality with Infinite Cursed Energy? In the original endless nesting cycle of Infinite Cursed Energy, he had to incorporate the Domain Expansion hand sign every time. Thus, as long as that movement was interrupted at the critical moment, the infinite cycle could be broken. Kinji Hakari's immortal body still had openings and weaknesses.

So long as it was not seamless, so long as there were openings and weaknesses, then even if Kinji Hakari possessed Infinite Cursed Energy, he could not be rated Special Grade. He lacked the flawlessness of a Special Grade.

Yet the appearance of the dragon made up for that weakness. More than that, because the dragon was Kinji Hakari himself, even if both the technique in Kinji Hakari's brain and the Shell Energy core in his abdomen were destroyed, he could use the dragon to heal himself instead—

—just as the dragon could heal itself through him even after being knocked down!

At this moment, Kinji Hakari finally shed the title of uncrowned Special Grade. He had truly stepped into Special Grade, becoming a one-man decisive weapon capable of conquering a nation alone, a genuine Special Grade Sorcerer.

Yuki Tsukumo licked her lips and repeated what she had said at the start of the battle. "Kid... come at me!"

An At-a-Loss Spy

Panda shouted with all his might, "Retreat—dodge—!" Boom!

Panda grabbed Toge Inumaki and Nobara Kugisaki, Maki Zenin carried Yuji Itadori by the collar, and Megumi Fushiguro reacted quickly enough to seize Miyoku beside him. They immediately fled the area. The next instant, an explosion erupted, and a massive shockwave slammed toward them like a storm.

"I thought I'd entered a war zone!" Nobara Kugisaki shouted from Panda's arms. "Bonito flakes!" Toge Inumaki said.

Even while fleeing for his life, Panda did not forget to explain. "Toge means it's not quite a war zone yet, since artillery shells haven't hit us in the head."

The moment he finished speaking, the massive impact struck Panda in the back. Panda flew into the air like a rag caught in a storm, while the two people in his arms flailed wildly and screamed unconsciously as they floated.

"We got hit directly by an artillery shell, damn it!" Nobara Kugisaki roared. "Salmon roe!" Toge Inumaki shouted too.

Panda spun through the air, but still faithfully translated, "Toge means we're even more dangerous than being in a war zone right now!" "You don't need to translate that one!" Nobara Kugisaki cried in despair.

Megumi Fushiguro glanced at the three in the air, then decisively threw Miyoku in his hand away. "Maki-senpai!"

Maki Zenin tacitly tossed aside Yuji Itadori, whom she had been carrying by the collar. Yuji let out a strange cry while airborne, but his exceptional physical abilities came into play. He stabilized himself in midair and, after spinning twice, landed steadily.

"Help, help, help!" Tears streamed from the corners of Miyoku's eyes, and she could barely speak clearly.

Maki Zenin leaped up sharply with both arms spread wide. Miyoku crashed into her embrace, causing an obvious ripple across Maki Zenin's chest as Miyoku's face sank into it. Maki Zenin caught Miyoku securely, landed lightly, and held her in a princess carry.

Miyoku stared blankly. "Zenin... Zenin-senpai."

Maki Zenin wore plain glasses, and beneath the direct sunlight they looked blurred, as though they were glowing. She lowered her head to look at Miyoku and said calmly, "Call me Maki. I don't like people calling me Zenin."

Miyoku's face instantly turned red.

Megumi Fushiguro formed hand signs with both hands and shouted, "!" Technique release, Ten Shadows Technique!

The shadow beneath Megumi Fushiguro's feet surged like ocean waves. A huge creature emerged from his shadow—a medium-sized shikigami resembling Nue with a human face. It gave a cold cry and flew from the shadows into the sky.

Toge Inumaki pulled down the collar covering half his face while airborne. Distinct Cursed Speech markings lined both sides of his mouth. He opened it and spoke. "Stop!"

Technique release, Cursed Speech!

A clear surge of Shell Energy spread outward from Toge Inumaki's mouth, covering the three people in the air in an instant. They abruptly froze in midair, as though trapped inside transparent amber.

Seizing the chance, it held one in its mouth and grabbed one in each claw before slowly flying down.

Nobara Kugisaki did not dare move at all. Her mouth trembled as she said, "Where's Gojo-sensei? Isn't he going to do something? If we hadn't moved quickly enough, I think the shockwaves alone would've put us in the ICU... no, maybe we wouldn't even have gotten the chance to reach the ICU. We would've been buried alive!"

All the students fled outward, only stopping to catch their breath after reaching the forest. Yet even there, they could still feel the ground tremble every so often, like aftershocks following an earthquake. It was hard to believe this was power humans could unleash against one another. If someone claimed they had been bombarded, the students would have believed it.

Maki Zenin set down the blushing Miyoku, removed her plain glasses, and turned back. A massive creature hung in the air—it was the dragon. Maki Zenin had strong spatial calculation abilities and could roughly calculate the creature's size just by looking at it.

Maki Zenin's eyes could not normally see Cursed Spirits. The plain glasses she usually wore were a cursed tool that allowed her to see Cursed Spirits.

When she had first seen Kinji Hakari's dragon, she thought it was a shikigami. But during Kinji Hakari's battle with Yuki Tsukumo, she keenly sensed that something was wrong. Now, even after removing her plain glasses, she could still see the dragon with her naked eyes. That meant it was not merely a shikigami.

What was it?

She murmured, "A roughly fifty-meter-long behemoth is flying through the air... Heh. So this is what Special Grade is."

Panda sighed. "I never thought we wouldn't even be qualified to watch the battle." "Salmon." Toge Inumaki sighed.

Panda hurriedly translated, "Toge means, 'Yeah.'"

Nobara Kugisaki complained, "We can understand that one without a translation." Yuji Itadori suddenly said, "Ah, that's our goal!"

Everyone turned to look at Yuji Itadori. There was not the slightest hint of discouragement in his eyes. On the contrary, he was brimming with confidence and yearning. He firmly believed that he could reach that level someday, without the slightest doubt.

He clenched both fists and slammed them together, creating a dull thud.

He laughed brightly. "What an honor! To witness a battle between Special Grades from so close by.

"To be honest, after enrolling, I was confused for a while. Everyone knew I was admitted because my death sentence had been suspended due to being Ryomen Sukuna's vessel. But now, I'm genuinely interested in this Jujutsu Society! Isn't this fascinating?"

Nobara Kugisaki could not hold back anymore. "What part of this is fascinating? Can you imagine being like them, making the ground quake with a single kick and smashing a plaza to pieces with one casual punch?"

Yuji Itadori asked in confusion, "Why not?" Nobara Kugisaki froze. "You're serious?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Yuji Itadori frowned as though he completely failed to understand why Nobara Kugisaki would think that way. "There are already two examples right in front of us, so why can't I become the third? I admit it might be difficult. But as long as I work hard!"

Could hard work really take someone that far? Nobara Kugisaki had no strength left to complain.

Maki Zenin suddenly said, "Yuji is right. There's no need to put pressure on ourselves. What we just saw was a battle at the very peak of this world. There's no need to force ourselves to keep up with them right now.

"Though this might sound a little cheesy... aren't all of us people Gojo-sensei certified as having limitless potential? As long as we take things step by step, sooner or later we'll catch up to them and become who we are meant to be."

It was not about believing in themselves, but believing in the frivolous man who had gathered them together—believing in Satoru Gojo. Those words seemed to give everyone strength, sweeping away the previous mood.

Nobara Kugisaki smiled as well. "Ah, right. Sorry, everyone. Just now, I—"

Megumi Fushiguro said calmly from the side, "Before he even became a sorcerer, Yuji could run fifty meters in three seconds. And that was when he was just casually running, without even sweating. His PE teacher chased after him, saying that with those results alone, he could surpass the current Disney world-record sprint holder.

"After these days of Cursed Energy training, his physical abilities have improved even further. We haven't tested him properly, but running one hundred meters in around two seconds probably would not be difficult."

"...So the musclehead was already a musclehead before enrolling. No wonder he's so confident!" Nobara Kugisaki lost confidence again. It was not because she lacked ambition. Anyone who watched those two fight would struggle to believe they could achieve the same thing. She even felt that if those two were dropped into a real war zone, they could beat both sides into submission with their bare hands without getting a speck of dirt on themselves. Nobara Kugisaki's intuition was correct. In the original story, the United States sent special forces against Kenjaku as a test, only for Kenjaku to wipe them out effortlessly. It was then that Kenjaku said that if he wanted, he could conquer the United States by himself.

Miyoku finally came back to her senses. She secretly glanced at Maki Zenin, and seeing the atmosphere warm again, took the chance to ask, "Who do you think will win between Hakari-senpai and Lady Tsukumo?"

Before Kinji Hakari arrived, Satoru Gojo had proudly introduced this upperclassman, saying that if Kinji Hakari was in good condition, it was possible for him to defeat one or two Special Grades. After returning from his training outside, he could only have become stronger. Perhaps he had already truly stepped into the realm of Special Grade.

Well, Satoru Gojo had said Kinji Hakari took leave from school to train outside. He had not mentioned that Kinji Hakari was wanted.

The students did not know much about Yuki Tsukumo, but she was still a veteran Special Grade Sorcerer, and her seniority even surpassed Satoru Gojo's. Neither her experience nor her strength could be doubted. When they had arranged the fight, Kinji Hakari had been the challenger, which showed that even he felt pressure when facing Yuki Tsukumo.

Taking everything into account, Panda gave the answer most students had in mind. "Lady Tsukumo, probably... Hakari-senpai is strong, but age matters. In terms of experience, Lady Tsukumo should be stronger too."

"No, Hakari won." Someone suddenly spoke.

Everyone turned. At some point, Satoru Gojo had appeared beside them with a smile. He raised one hand in greeting. "Yo, you little ones did well. You managed to run somewhere safe without needing my protection. That proves my teaching is pretty good."

Maki Zenin put her plain glasses back on and looked at Satoru Gojo. "Gojo-sensei, are you saying Hakari-senpai won? I know he has an immortal body, but it cannot last forever, right? If Lady Tsukumo catches that instant, she should be able to kill him in one strike."

That was also the method Hajime Kashimo had used against Kinji Hakari in the original story, and he had nearly truly killed him. It required impeccable timing, because the timing of Kinji Hakari reopening his Domain and the duration of his immortal body fit together perfectly. So long as the critical instant could not be seized, Kinji Hakari could endlessly renew his immortality.

Yuki Tsukumo was a senior figure in Jujutsu Society. There was no way she would fail to grasp that moment. Judging from their apparent strength, Yuki Tsukumo had a higher chance of winning.

Satoru Gojo crossed his hands behind his head and sighed. "Hakari showed everything he had without holding back, but that woman Tsukumo isn't honest at all. She didn't use her full strength."

Toge Inumaki said in shock, "Bonito flakes?"

Panda hurriedly translated, "Toge means, how is that possible?"

"The Yuki Tsukumo I know has a one-of-a-kind cursed tool shikigami. Her combat style is not limited to simply using hand-to-hand combat. She cleverly uses her cursed tool shikigami while supplementing it with Barrier Technique."

Satoru Gojo said regretfully, "But aside from the most basic abilities of a sorcerer, did you see her use anything else? Even her technique was not fully displayed... She truly treated this battle as a test. She never genuinely showed herself."

"That... doesn't seem very fair," Yuji Itadori said softly. "Hakari-senpai showed everything he had."

"That's the adult world." Satoru Gojo said indifferently, "Tsukumo's mission was not to fight Hakari with everything she had. It was to probe out some information about the King of Curses... and she really did probe it out. She must already fully understand the true nature of that dragon."

The dragon was Kinji Hakari's Companion Spirit. Mei Mei had already reported this to Jujutsu Headquarters, even explaining its operating principles. Yet even so, the way this external Cursed Energy filtering organ actually worked remained unknown to Jujutsu Society.

But now, its workings were obvious at a glance.

Just as Mahito had told Mei Mei back then: this dragon was Kinji Hakari!

Every time Kinji Hakari used Domain Expansion, his physical capabilities increased. That was because Infinite Cursed Energy gave him an almost endlessly rising upper limit. So long as his body could withstand it, his Cursed Energy output was limitless. Yet no matter what, the fact that he was human could not be changed.

Mei Mei had once said that for sorcerers, both Cursed Energy and the body had limits. This conclusion was both invalid and valid for Kinji Hakari.

It was invalid because Infinite Cursed Energy gave Kinji Hakari the possibility of infinite growth. The conclusion that the human body had limits naturally did not apply to him. But it was valid because—

Kinji Hakari was still in his growth period. He was not even twenty yet, so he was still growing stronger, growing stronger in a way that showed no end. Yet someday, he would still grow old. The Cursed Energy filling his body would suffer reduced output because of his aging body. Age would indeed take away his strength.

But the appearance of the Companion Spirit dragon completely changed his future. The Companion Spirit could grant Kinji Hakari immortality!

The dragon itself did not possess the ability to grow larger. Just as Mahito had said, it was an external organ for circulating atmospheric Cursed Energy, no different from human limbs. Yet just as skin possessed a certain capacity to stretch, the dragon also possessed a certain capacity to expand.

For an ordinary sorcerer, even Satoru Gojo, a Companion Spirit would truly be nothing more than a small pet. Even if it could stretch, at most it would grow from the size of a kitten to that of an adult cat. It could never become enormous like the dragon. But Kinji Hakari was different. He possessed Infinite Cursed Energy, and there was no limit to his growth ceiling!

To repeat once more, the Companion Spirit was Kinji Hakari's external organ. It was Kinji Hakari himself.

That was the truth behind the dragon's ability to grow infinitely larger. Kinji Hakari's Cursed Energy was endlessly raising its ceiling and could grow without end. Infinite Cursed Energy gave him infinite possibilities. Thus, even though the dragon could originally only stretch to a limited extent like skin, it could become infinitely larger and infinitely heavier.

The dragon's breath was actually just an ordinary sorcerer's Cursed Energy impact, but when it erupted from the dragon's mouth, it became a genuine Cursed Energy cannon!

Even more terrifyingly, as time passed, Kinji Hakari—unrestricted by aging—would only grow stronger and stronger, without limit! The dragon's maximum length and maximum weight would also continue expanding, becoming increasingly terrifying.

Its potential could even reach that of a true cosmic beast! Just as Satoru Gojo had muttered during the battle: Kinji Hakari had truly become stronger.

Strong enough to proudly call himself Special Grade!

The King of Curses had truly given Kinji Hakari everything. If the King of Curses was not human... no, even if the King of Curses was not human but a Cursed Spirit, a destroyer of world order destined to start a racial war, its magnanimity was indeed worthy of Kinji Hakari's loyalty.

It was simply too generous, and trusted Kinji Hakari too deeply. If a lord trusted his retainer, why would the retainer not die for his lord?

Only at this moment did Satoru Gojo completely abandon the idea of turning Kinji Hakari against them.

Kinji Hakari had indeed fully unleashed his potential and combat strength. He had absolutely no intention of hiding anything from Yuki Tsukumo. He was genuinely firing on all cylinders.

As Special Grades of the same rank, one side went all out and even surpassed himself, while the other put on an act and stopped at a superficial exchange. Who would win and who would lose was obvious.

"Lord of Curses," Maki Zenin said quietly.

Everyone was thinking about this Cursed Spirit that had suddenly appeared. Miyoku's thoughts were the most chaotic of all, since she was the spy Mahito had placed here... Though this spy had not sent out a single piece of information, and she even suspected Mahito had forgotten her. She did not know that she had already been transformed into Mahito's incarnation. Everything she thought, saw, and heard had long since been completely grasped by Mahito. If Mahito wished, she did not need to deliberately pass along any information at all. Mahito could directly peer into her mind and obtain it.

She had thought Mahito's faction had already formed, and that she had long been forgotten.

Yuji Itadori suddenly asked, "I remember Hakari-senpai saying that if Mahito can't deal with Gojo-sensei, then Ryomen Sukuna will be revived from inside my body?"

Now everyone knew that the Lord of Curses was named Mahito.

In other words, if even the Lord of Curses could not handle Satoru Gojo, then the allied forces of Cursed Spirits and sorcerers seeking to overthrow Jujutsu Society would revive Ryomen Sukuna, the strongest sorcerer in history from a thousand years ago, without hesitation.

And Yuji Itadori was the chosen vessel for his revival.

A dangerous thought arose in Yuji Itadori's heart: If I died now, as Jujutsu Headquarters wishes...

Satoru Gojo could tell at a glance what Yuji Itadori was thinking. He slapped Yuji Itadori on the back, making Yuji cry out in pain... Satoru Gojo's slap was truly heavy!

"What are you worrying about? You can just listen to news about the Lord of Curses. You don't need to face it at all. That's my responsibility."

Satoru Gojo looked around at all the students, wearing his usual frivolous smile. He said:

"As for you all—"