Southbound

"Running away isn't cowardice. It's an extremely advanced form of tactical loss mitigation."

Mizuki Makoto stood on an exceptionally secluded path behind Jujutsu High, carrying a backpack stuffed with souvenirs, notebooks, and three changes of clothes, giving himself one final mental pep talk beneath the first glimmer of dawn.

I've been planning this for a full forty-eight hours. It's definitely going to work!

Whoever wanted to stay at Tokyo Jujutsu High could stay there! That high-intensity self-torture lifestyle of "ten minutes of training every day, followed by a whole day of passing out and vomiting" had seriously violated his life creed as an "artist." If this kept up, before he could finish the final chapter of Gojo Mai, his brain would turn into tofu pudding beneath Gojo Satoru's fists!

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Taking advantage of the day that his scumbag teacher had taken the twin sisters Suguru Geto left behind—Mimiko and Nanako—to see Principal Yaga about enrollment, he decisively chose to—run away.

Direction: South.

Destination: Kyoto Jujutsu High.

Why run away?

Other than Mizuki Makoto wanting to preserve his still-unexpired life, there were three main reasons.

First, there was that damned, despair-inducing power bottleneck.

In the world of jujutsu sorcerers, strength was basically determined by five factors: cursed energy reserves, cursed energy control, technique precision, barrier techniques, and the physical combat he despised so deeply.

For a transmigrator, aside from physical combat—which could barely be improved through acquired effort, namely getting beaten senseless by Gojo Satoru—the other factors were practically etched into one's DNA at birth.

Especially cursed energy reserves.

Although the technique "Limitless" had a certain special property that allowed it to plunder cursed energy through [cognition], indirectly raising its upper limit, lately, all the material Shoko had given him about "Suguru Geto's resignation history" had been squandered on that deeply heartbreaking adult romance novel for women called Bitter Summer.

As a result, his cursed energy reserves had completely stalled at the awkward level of "Semi-Grade 1."

He was like a fairly capable computer. Its graphics card could run plenty of AAA titles—various technique combinations—but its power supply, his cursed energy, simply could not provide enough wattage. The moment he activated a big move like overclocked Azure Fury, the entire system would instantly crash.

Second was Gojo Satoru's utterly abstract teaching ability.

If normal teaching was the beginner stage of a MOBA game, then Gojo Satoru's teaching was the tutorial in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice—this is attack, this is defense, this is Ashina, I mean Gojo, Genichiro. All right, you've learned it already. Now get out there and smash the fist of the strongest modern jujutsu sorcerer with your skull!

Kusakabe, Jujutsu High's number one slacker teacher, had once commented, "That bastard Gojo Satoru can do anything, but expecting him to teach someone is just dreaming."

Geniuses could never understand ordinary people. In Gojo Satoru's eyes, barrier techniques, cursed energy control, technique precision—weren't those just passive skills that anyone with hands could use and anyone with a brain could instantly max out?

In his opinion, the only thing that required a little "effort" was physical combat.

Mizuki Makoto seriously suspected that the reason that white-haired old man had such a pathological obsession with physical combat was that, back when he had still been a JK, he had been thoroughly brutalized by the original "Heavenly Tyrant," Toji Zenin. The psychological trauma of being pinned down and ground into the dirt by pure violence had apparently been transformed into a beating called "education through love," which he then bestowed upon their group of innocent students.

Of course, he had tried taking shortcuts before.

For example, last week, Mizuki Makoto had suddenly thought that since [Echo Mimicry] could imitate thirty to fifty percent of both [Star's Fury] and [Ushura Bullet], imitating his good brother Inumaki's "Cursed Speech" should be no problem either.

For a chance to end that inhumane training, he had taken advantage of a moment when Gojo Satoru looked completely relaxed, steadied his breath, fixed him with a solemn gaze, and unleashed a roar from the depths of his soul:

—[Get diarrhea—!!!]

At that instant, Gojo Satoru's smile froze.

The strongest modern sorcerer did not, unfortunately, proceed to explosively shit himself all across Tokyo.

As for Mizuki Makoto, the second the word "eat" had barely left his lips, he felt as though a hundred Shinkansen had slammed into his chest and crushed it simultaneously. A sweet, bloody fluid sprayed wildly from his mouth. His entire body became a launched shot put, embedding itself with a shriek through the air directly into the reinforced load-bearing wall of the training ground.

According to Kirara and Maki's recollections afterward, they had spent an entire hour prying at the wall with crowbars before they managed to extract Mizuki Makoto intact from the shattered bricks and rubble.

Meanwhile, the culprit behind the cursed energy backlash had merely held his stomach elegantly and let out a sinister laugh at his "beloved disciple" hanging on the wall. "Mizuki, this kind of 'dimensionality-reducing strike against someone's personality' is certainly creative, but it's still a little too avant-garde for the burden your skinny arms and legs can bear!"

At that moment, Mizuki Makoto understood:

If you succeeded, it was a revolution. If you failed, it was treason!

That was why he got beaten until he could no longer tell north from south every day. Gojo Satoru might even think he was "polishing his body," but Mizuki Makoto suspected that he was simply taking revenge for drawing his doujinshi!

Third, and most importantly—I needed new "material."

Since there was temporarily no more wool to shear from Gojo Satoru's [Limitless], he had to find another Special Grade to leech off.

Looking across the world and excluding Suguru Geto, the shame of the Special Grades who polluted the pool, there were only three Special Grade sources left. Gojo Satoru had already been temporarily sheared bald; information on Okkotsu Yuta was too public, and everyone knew too much about him to fabricate the sort of "high-end rumors" people would wholeheartedly believe.

That left only one choice:

The oldest—scratch that, earliest—Special Grade sorcerer, Jujutsu Society's number one class-skipping queen, the slacker big sis who had run off and vanished for twenty years—Tsukumo Yuki.

Because she spent all year in hiding, people knew almost nothing about her. Under those circumstances, as long as he could obtain even a tiny detail of real material and make her part of the source library for his [Limitless] technique, the power of the rumors he fabricated would increase geometrically! His strength would absolutely make a tenfold—or even ninefold—leap, damn it!

As a transmigrator, Mizuki Makoto possessed a top-secret piece of information: Todo Aoi, the brother from another father and mother he had never met yet who radiated the same "certain perverted aura," was Tsukumo Yuki's final disciple.

If anyone knew that elusive woman best, then in the entire world, it had to be him. (Yuki Tsukumo: Actually, you can't see her face either.)

"Semi-Grade 1... it sounds nice, but in front of that white-haired old man, it's just the difference between one punch and two." (White-haired old man: I lied. It's one punch either way.)

Mizuki Makoto smiled bitterly and tightened his backpack straps.

If I want to break through this bottleneck, Tokyo Jujutsu High can't offer me any more surprises. After all, aside from Gojo Satoru, who only knows how to exorcise people physically, there's Hakari Kinji, who only knows how to exorcise people physically. They have only one teaching style: "If it won't kill you, beat it like you're trying to kill it."

More importantly...

For now, Gojo-sensei's hands could not reach every changing room at Kyoto Jujutsu High—scratch that... every training room.

"Goodbye, Gojo-sensei. Goodbye, Maki's powerful arms."

Mizuki Makoto looked back at the Jujutsu High buildings hidden among the greenery, and a heroic sense of tragic grandeur rose in his heart—

I'm not really "defecting." I just left a leave note beneath my dorm pillow, one with plenty of personal flair:

[Due to long-term training causing a severe depletion of artistic inspiration, I have decided to travel to Kyoto for an indefinite period of "folk culture research." P.S. Gojo-sensei, please do not attempt to teleport over and catch me. Otherwise, the cover of the next issue of Gojo Mai may feature you and Principal Yaga's Cursed Corpse—that is a certain indescribably heavy-flavored domain.]

Ah, given Gojo-sensei's extremely protective nature—and his fear of trouble—he would probably generously grant him a few days off after seeing that threatening leave note, right?

Probably.

Mizuki Makoto pulled his cap lower and squeezed aboard the Shinkansen bound for Kyoto.

Todo Aoi, my "good brother," hurry up and hand over all the unspeakable intelligence about your master!

[Current time: 09:15. Location: Tokaido Shinkansen. Objective: Wreak havoc on Kyoto Jujutsu High before being dragged back.]

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