The Gap Between Grade Ones

Miwa Seigen did not even have time to raise his head before that pale-blue sphere of energy—compressed from pure, high-density negative cursed energy, tearing visible wrinkles into the fabric of space along its path, the Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue—had already swept across the sky with the momentum of falling heavens!

"Boom—!!!"

Without the slightest chance of reaction or defense, the massive pale-blue sphere of light slammed dead-center into the skull of the four-meter-long Ironhide Centipede at a speed that surpassed the limits of a mortal retina's capture.

There were no screams, no struggle.

The living armor, its hardness comparable to a cursed tool, was instantly twisted into the most primitive molecular state, evaporating into thin air the moment it touched the absolute gravitational collapse of Blue, along with its inner flesh and body segments.

The violent shockwave violently carved a terrifying giant crater nearly ten meters in diameter into the bluestone ground, its edges as smooth as a mirror.

Amidst the billowing smoke and dust, a foot clad in a dark, high-collared uniform stepped casually onto the edge of the crater, crushing gravel beneath it.

A gentle breeze swept past, revealing the boy's shock of dazzling white hair glowing with an arrogant luster under the moonlight, along with those tinted sunglasses hanging loosely on the bridge of his nose that utterly failed to mask the hint of mockery deep within his eyes.

Satoru Gojo's pale-blue Six Eyes instantly locked onto a dense patch of shadow on the ground not far away, from which emanated the steady cursed-energy fluctuations of Ieiri Shoko and Lu Ping.

Confirming the fact that both of them were still alive, Satoru Gojo let out an involuntary breath of relief. "Good job, Lu Ping. You actually managed to hold out until we arrived. Thanks for the hard work."

Then, he tilted his head slightly to look at Miwa Seigen, who had been flipped onto the ground by the blast wave and looked utterly wretched, the corners of his mouth curving into an extremely malicious arc:

"My, my~ Mister Sewer Rat over here, may I ask... who hired you lot, exactly?"

The smoke and thunderous din dissipated. At the edge of the ten-meter-wide crater, the pale-blue afterglow crackled like electric arcs.

Miwa Seigen was truly an experienced, veteran grade-one curse user who had steeped himself in the black market for years.

Just moments ago, the instant that terrifying ball of energy named "Blue" fell, every hair on his body had stood on end. His intuition of impending doom left him without a shred of hesitation; he instantly abandoned his heavily injured comrade, taking the initiative to urge his mounted centipede shikigami, Centipede, into a head-on collision and a fierce self-detonation.

"Boom!!"

Centipede's hard carapace, comparable to a grade-two cursed tool, exploded completely alongside its remaining massive cursed energy at the exact same instant.

The extremely concentrated centripetal gravitational collapse and the unreserved, violent outward blast fiercely intersected and counter-shocked in mid-air.

The two nearly destructive forces intertwined and slaughtered each other, miraculously tearing a brief vacuum-equilibrium zone right at the violent epicenter.

It was precisely this one-in-ten-millionth-of-a-second lag that left Miwa Seigen with a sliver of hope for a narrow escape.

He rolled out of the blast wave in a wretched state, half his body burned and dripping with fresh blood, yet he had escaped with his life.

"Cough, cough... Ptui!" He spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with internal organ fragments, staring in sheer terror at the white-haired boy on the edge of the giant crater.

In truth, he had not survived purely due to his seasoned shrewdness, but rather because Satoru Gojo had intentionally held back.

Faced with an assault of this caliber, Satoru Gojo preferred to capture a live prisoner, allowing him to follow the vine to the melon and wipe out both the mastermind behind the scenes and the internal moles within the higher-ups of the jujutsu world in one fell swoop.

Yet Miwa Seigen's mind was completely occupied by terror at this moment, rendering him entirely oblivious to that layer of intent.

"Old man, you've got quite the tough hide." Satoru Gojo tucked one hand into his pocket, looking down at him from over his sunglasses with a detached air, his tone as casual as if he were out for a stroll. "Hey, your technique looks somewhat interesting. Don't you plan on coming clean about it?"

Under extreme panic, in order to forcibly boost his remaining cursed-energy output through the binding vow of "revealing one's technique," Miwa Seigen spilled everything without a single shred of hesitation:

"My technique is Shikigami Imbuement! It allows me to forcibly imbue the abilities and core of a shikigami into specific real-world animals, twisting and mutating them into shikigami under my sole control! The deeper the bond I forge and the longer a living creature is nurtured, the higher its strength becomes after transformation! As for the upper limit of manifestations I can maintain at the same time... it's three!"

Even as he roared frantically on the outside, his inner abacus was clicking away wildly; his sole objective was to escape!

The greatest blessing among misfortunes was that before Centipede met Blue head-on, the cautious him had already canceled the summonses of the jellyfish Sea Moon and the subterranean scorpion Hooktail, preserving those two trump cards.

At that moment, as the binding vow of revealing his technique was fulfilled, his depleted cursed energy surged back madly. Miwa Seigen's hands swiftly formed a twisted lotus mudra as he roared ferociously: "Get the hell out of my way!!"

"Whoosh!"

In an instant, the translucent, light-blue jellyfish Sea Moon materialized out of thin air once more.

Bolstered by the binding vow, its massive umbrella-like cap pulsed wildly, spewing out an overwhelming, deep-blue toxic mist the moment it appeared. It thoroughly blanketed the surrounding dozens of meters of the street, dimming even the moonlight until it was eroded away.

Simultaneously, the pitch-black subterranean scorpion Hooktail broke through the earth right from beneath his feet.

Miwa Seigen pressed his advantage, his entire person instantly embraced tightly by the giant scorpion's thick walking legs. Then, leaving a blurred afterimage, he frantically burrowed and fled deep into the ground!

At the center of the toxic mist, Satoru Gojo frowned slightly.

At this stage, his mastery over the Limitless Technique was still far from reaching the point of doing as he pleased. His current Limitless could selectively isolate matter based on mass, speed, and cursed-energy intensity, but he still could not achieve the fine-grained precision of "automatic toxic-gas filtration" at the molecular level.

The pungent odor caused a mild stinging sensation in his internal senses.

Fortunately, relying on that cheating pair of Six Eyes, Satoru Gojo possessed technique-correction precision bordering on the divine.

He stood still within the toxic mist, his brain running wildly like a supercomputer as he adjusted the spatial-barrier frequency of the Limitless.

This process detained him for a mere five measly seconds.

Yet Miwa Seigen, feeling the sluggish motion above him from deep underground, felt a wave of wild ecstasy surge through his heart: It worked! So what if he was the Child of God? Ultimately, he was just a kid who had never left the greenhouse! I'm about to escape—

However, before his gloating could even bloom across his face, the hard rock layer and soil directly above his head abruptly let out a terrifying, overburdened shriek.

"Crack!!"

A pair of giant dragon claws covered in greenish-blue, hardened scales—massive and resembling a heavy-duty crane—tore straight through the entire surface layer with unreasonable, terrifying monstrous strength. With the ease of reaching into a pocket, they grabbed the escaping scorpion shikigami from deep within the earth and yanked it straight out!

Soil splattered everywhere, and moonlight spilled once more across his face.

Miwa Seigen looked up in horror to see, suspended in the night sky, a massive, winding Eastern dragon-like cursed spirit stretching dozens of meters long and exuding a suffocating pressure—none other than the cursed spirit with the strongest defense below the special grade, hailed as the peak of grade ones: Rainbow Dragon!

And standing atop that lofty dragon head was a boy wearing a black Jujutsu High uniform, sporting strange bangs and narrow, squinted eyes, looking down at him with an indifferent expression and both hands shoved in his pockets.

Jujutsu High second-year, Cursed Spirit Manipulation user—Suguru Geto.

"Senior, playing drill-rat in someone else's territory late at night is a bit too impolite, wouldn't you say?"

Suguru Geto's voice was calm, yet it carried an undeniable weight.