When Gorillas Think, Liars Laugh

"Already cracked? Looks like even a Special-Grade Curse User's mental fortitude is like that washed-out kasaya of yours—unable to withstand the slightest kneading."

Mizuki Makoto stood where he was. His legs were trembling as though he were fluffing cotton, yet his face wore an extremely contemptuous sneer, with even a trace of pity.

Suguru Geto said nothing.

The air around him had turned viscous from his extreme rage. His disgust for "monkeys," his furious indignation at having his grand cause insulted—all of it gathered into that destructive light in his palm.

"Maximum Technique—Uzumaki."

He murmured it in a voice as cold as one that had fallen into an ice cellar. Thousands of cursed spirits were forcibly compressed and twisted in an instant, becoming a blackish-purple torrent of energy capable of piercing straight through the entire Jujutsu High school building. This was the wrath of a Special-Grade Sorcerer, violence capable of reshaping the terrain.

It was coming.

Life and death would be decided in this instant.

I watched that roaring shockwave and frantically calibrated that one-percent "bootleg Limitless" in my head.

What rumors had Suguru Geto heard?

That I was "a shoddy Gojo Satoru imitator who could only mimic the surface."

If I dodged, he would immediately realize I was just a flea with agility maxed out, then drown me in a sea of cursed spirits.

If I took it head-on but got hurt, he would mock me for overestimating myself.

But what if I didn't move at all and let this Special-Grade Sorcerer's ultimate move vanish into "Infinity"?

What if I went even further?

"—Limitless, deploy."

[First Limitless defense activated. Duration: 3 seconds.]

[Technique linkage activated—Ushura Bullet: omnidirectional reflection framework!]

Boom—!!!

A deafening roar echoed through Jujutsu High. The blackish-purple energy torrent slammed viciously into an invisible barrier.

Normally, with the current strength of his Ushura Bullet, he would have been pulverized by this torrent in an instant. But at this moment, using the absolute three-second period of invulnerability created by Limitless, the originally thin spatial displacement was amplified infinitely!

Before Suguru Geto's horrified eyes, the Uzumaki that could erase everything strangely froze less than five centimeters from Mizuki Makoto's nose.

In that instant of stagnation, my brain, already overloaded and beginning to ache faintly, issued its final command—Ushura Bullet, omnidirectional vector correction!

Time: 0.1 seconds.

Less than five centimeters in front of me, the energy torrent formed a massive, continuously collapsing blackish-purple sphere of light.

Time: 0.2 seconds.

Ushura Bullet's spatial displacement was no longer merely diverting an attack. Before that absolute three-second defensive shield, it constructed a perfect mirror-like "reflective plane."

Time: 3.1 seconds.

Within that untouchable distance, the Uzumaki that had originally roared toward me struck the plane, and all its forward momentum, all its destructive cursed energy, was forcibly twisted one hundred and eighty degrees.

It was as if a god's hand had grabbed it and hurled it viciously back along its original path.

Boom—!!!

Before Suguru Geto even had time to show a hint of a mocking smile, the Uzumaki he had released—enough to pierce through all of Jujutsu High—roared back in retaliation at an even more terrifying speed and with even greater ferocity.

Smack.

The blackish-purple energy torrent struck Suguru Geto's stiff face precisely and without reservation.

A massive explosion thundered out. The ground of the training field shook as dust and ripples of energy instantly swallowed the Special-Grade Curse User's figure.

The three seconds ended. Black cursed energy scattered.

Mizuki Makoto stood in place completely unscathed. Not even his hair was out of order, and he even elegantly brushed at dust that did not exist on his clothes.

"That's it? That's it? No way, this counts as the 'strongest,' a 'Special Grade' from the same era as Gojo-sensei!? How exactly were you called the 'strongest duo' back then? Don't tell me you were in charge of going quack-quack from the sidelines while Gojo-sensei handled the slaughter, making you the Quack-Quack Slaughter Combo?"

Tilting his head, he looked at the dust and smoke slowly dispersing, his tone dripping with mockery. "Mr. Geto, your Maximum Technique seems even softer and more powerless than Gojo-sensei's boobs. It actually got casually bounced back into your perfect face by a bootleg like me."

The smoke slowly dispersed.

Mizuki Makoto stood there completely unscathed, even leisurely pushing up his monocle. Opposite him, half the sleeve of Suguru Geto's imposing five-striped kasaya had been blown apart. The carefully styled lock of hair over his forehead was also somewhat disheveled. For the first time, a crack called "hesitation" appeared in his narrow eyes.

"No way? No way?"

Mizuki Makoto looked at him, deliberately covering his mouth as he let out an infuriatingly exaggerated cry.

"Mr. Geto, weren't you one of the 'strongest' with sensei for several years? Why do you look like you've never seen this move before?"

He tilted his head, his eyes full of the pitying look of I really don't know what to do with you, while his tone was frivolous to the extreme.

"Ah, sorry, sorry, I forgot. This move is called Technique Reversal: Mirror. It's a new Limitless derivative that sensei only recently developed—after all, he's always improving. As for an old man like you, living ten years in the past, unable to understand even basic mathematics and biology, of course you wouldn't understand such high-dimensional spatial manipulation."

This was a lie, but in Suguru Geto's eyes at this moment, it was absolute truth!

And those words hit harder than the reflected Uzumaki just now.

Mizuki Makoto could even clearly see the fingers hanging at Suguru Geto's side tremble violently.

"Satoru... a newly developed move?" he murmured, his voice hoarse as if it contained bloodied sand.

For a madman obsessed with the past, obsessed with the time when they were the "strongest duo," the most painful thing was not defeat. It was realizing that the figure he had chased for ten years had silently taken another great step forward somewhere beyond his sight, while he could only stand helpless before a "bootleg."

[Current time: 01:15. Objective: Hold out for another 18 minutes and 45 seconds.]

"Are you angry, old man?"

Mizuki Makoto took another step forward. A faint red hollow-shell effect flickered at his fingertips. "Actually, I get it. After all, an 'ape abandoned by the era' really has nothing else to do besides roar amid the ruins of the old era. Want me to draw this part a little more handsomely in the manga later? How about calling it The New Era Has No Ship for Me?"

"Shut up."

(This is getting good. This bastard is finally using his brain.)

Watching Suguru Geto's unpredictable expression, his gaze so deep it seemed ready to dismantle me into Gundam scraps, the dark little man in my heart was already wildly dancing in a wheelchair.

What did I, Mizuki Makoto, fear most? Someone who completely ignored fair play, charged straight in with that ridiculously heavy three-section staff, swung it six times in one second, and used overwhelming physical strength and cursed energy to bully me without reason—playing Tokyo Running Man with me. Once the three seconds of Limitless were over, I would need an auto-reply just to leave my last words.

But now, Suguru Geto had stopped. The killing intent in his eyes had been replaced by something deeper: wariness.

He was analyzing the enemy's expenditure, deducing blind spots in the technique, trying to find even the slightest flaw in my grand feat of "reflecting Uzumaki."

—Yes, exactly. Geto, you need to think. Keep thinking.

—And once you start thinking, I'll laugh.

Because in this deception game where life was the wager, once you began analyzing a swindler with flawed basic intelligence, you had already lost everything from the starting line.

Please, keep thinking, Cult Leader.

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