Preparing to Elbow the Plotline

Creak... squeak~

Watching the late-night bus pull to a stop, Kenjaku raised a hand and patted Kana Shizumi on the shoulder, speaking in a rather sentimental tone.

"Do your best. I still have high expectations for you."

"Father, I'll do my best."

Since he had barely any luggage to begin with, Kana Shizumi tightened the backpack on his back and was about to board.

Then, as though recalling something, he pointed at Hanami beside him.

What about it?

Meeting Kana Shizumi's gaze, Kenjaku smiled faintly and spoke with utter calm.

"Ordinary people can't see Cursed Spirits, so there's no need to buy a ticket."

As for how it would travel.

Hanami obediently curled itself into a ball and tucked itself into a corner of the lower luggage compartment.

"..."

For a villain, this thing was absurdly well-behaved.

Forcibly suppressing the urge to complain, Kana Shizumi rubbed his temple and finally gave a slightly awkward smile.

"Then I'm off..."

"Mm. Remember to report the results once the mission is complete."

As the bus gradually drove away, Jogo, who had maintained an indifferent appearance the entire time, turned halfway around.

His single eye swept over Kenjaku's back, his tone tinged with confusion and incomprehension.

"You don't like this 'son' of yours very much?"

The man in the kasaya raised an eyebrow slightly. Even as he glanced aside, the smile on his face did not fade in the slightest.

"No, I rather like him... Why do you ask?"

"Then why are you sending him to his death?"

Jogo added flatly.

"This mission could have been completed by Hanami alone. You insisted on stuffing him into it. There's no meaning to that."

Mahito stood nearby with his hands on his hips, grinning as he chimed in.

"Yeah. Recovering Sukuna's Fingers is pretty troublesome, right? I heard that high-concentration Cursed Objects easily attract the attention of low-level Cursed Spirits. Once they swallow one, their cursed energy surges, and they become incredibly strong."

Well~

"Not as strong as us, of course."

Recovering Sukuna's Fingers.

As everyone knew, the difficulty of that job depended entirely on the person doing it... Going by the Juvenile Detention Center arc from the original story, the Cursed Spirit that absorbed a finger beat Itadori until he cried his eyes out.

Against some Grade 3 Sorcerer, it would probably be like a dump truck running over a rotten orange.

It would crush him without even slowing down...

Kenjaku merely smiled as he gazed into the distance, his voice devoid of any emotional fluctuation.

"To be precise, any Cursed Spirit containing Sukuna's Fingers is at least Special Grade. Hanami can definitely handle it. Form of Purity will probably struggle, but..."

Following the rules step by step was the lowest form of thinking.

"If you want to nurture someone and make them grow quickly, you have to give them the maximum amount of pressure at all times. Let me make this clear: I have never considered gradual progress to be a superior educational philosophy."

If Kana Shizumi heard that, he would probably roll his eyes.

Still, Kenjaku really did practice what he preached.

After all, she had treated her beloved eldest son, Itadori, exactly the same way...

She applied pressure however she could. Over those few months in the main story, she and Sukuna, two thousand-year-old monsters, had driven that sunny, cheerful boy to a breakdown several times.

Now that was what it meant to love deeply and criticize harshly. Tactical lean-back.

Mahito stuck out his tongue and muttered, "What a sadist."

After realizing that their thought processes were completely on different wavelengths, Jogo seemed to give up on trying to communicate.

He merely spoke in a reflective tone, casually as though making conversation.

"How far do you think he can grow?"

"I don't know. He's a prototype, after all. I'm hoping to see some more wildly imaginative ideas from him... Frankly, no parent wants their child to amount to nothing, right?"

Kenjaku shrugged. Although he looked utterly unconcerned, his tone shifted at the end.

"But regardless, I sincerely look forward to his progress."

After all...

"The overly stable, unchanging Jujutsu Society is simply far too boring."

As the late-night bus gradually traveled farther away, Kana Shizumi finally felt as if he could catch his breath.

From the moment he had arrived in this world until now, only a little over an hour had passed... Compared with the outrageous growth records of other transmigrators after landing, Kana Shizumi felt like he had grievances he could not voice.

But fortunately, he had escaped.

Although he still did not know what the mission was... When the cart reached the mountain, there would be a road. A living man could not be held in by a bladder forever, could he?

And he could take this opportunity to carefully consider his next course of action.

There were remarkably few passengers on the late-night bus. With no interruptions, Kana Shizumi quickly settled into a focused state.

Sitting in his seat and pressing a hand to his temple, he roughly pieced together the timeline of the plot.

First, the Four Calamities.

Jogo and Hanami were both quite old, at least several hundred years old, so they could not serve as references.

The octopus-ball guy and Mahito were relatively young, but they should still have existed for several years by now.

That timeline was still too broad, so he needed to narrow the range further.

Kenjaku had already successfully taken over a body, which meant...

"Has the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons already happened?"

That was a very important point in time.

Kana Shizumi began counting on his fingers.

"The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons ended on Christmas Eve. Then there shouldn't be much time left before Itadori eats a finger and enrolls at Jujutsu High."

At most, half a year.

Considering that Itadori enrolled at Jujutsu High in June, Kana Shizumi took out his phone and gave it a quick glance.

Holy shit... It was already February?!

There were only four months left before the official plot began. The schedule could not have been tighter.

But fortunately, four months was enough time to sort things out and make preparations... The plot of Jujutsu Kaisen itself was extremely compact. He only needed to make his moves at certain key points.

And judging by the system's activation conditions, if he wanted to earn points and grow stronger, he mainly needed to alter the main plotline.

He would build himself up properly before the plot began, then elbow the plotline hard when the time came and power up like crazy!

As everyone knew, a sorcerer's growth was never linear—it required 1% inspiration, supported by 99% talent, plus unparalleled imagination...

Then you could learn a half-finished Domain. Wait, what?

Back to the point.

Kana Shizumi gathered his wandering thoughts and reassessed his status panel.

Three free attribute points.

It was not difficult to see that he needed to manually choose how to allocate his upgrades...

And based on his current panel, Kana Shizumi needed to choose among four branches: "Total Cursed Energy," "Efficiency," "Output," and "Physical Combat."

So the question was.

Which one should Kana Shizumi invest in first?