Settlement

In the end, the old hand was still the sharper one.

The reason Miwa Seigen had chosen to have his scorpion shikigami, "Hooktail," cling tightly to his physical body after burrowing underground was to guard against Satoru Gojo's nearly unsolvable long-range spatial bombardment.

As long as a shikigami stood between him and danger, he could cling to life a little longer.

Now that the scorpion shikigami had been seized by Rainbow Dragon and dragged into the air, trapped in a desperate situation surrounded by two monsters, a ruthless glint of a cornered beast flashed through the veteran curse user's eyes.

He gritted his teeth, steeled himself, and directly severed his contract with the assassination-type shikigami he had spent years painstakingly raising!

"Blow up, damn it—aaah!!"

With a roar that was practically self-mutilation, Hooktail's body, tightly gripped by the dragon's claws, instantly swelled. The massive resentment and cursed energy accumulated within it were completely ignited at that moment.

"BOOM!!"

Another terrifying explosion, nearly at the threshold of Special Grade, erupted in midair.

The raging fire illuminated the night sky as brightly as day, while the violent shockwave tore through the area as tangible waves of air.

Miwa Seigen was gambling—gambling that Suguru Geto would pull back to protect himself.

His judgment was accurate. Faced with the sudden point-blank self-destruction, Suguru Geto frowned slightly and had no choice but to command Rainbow Dragon to coil its massive body around him in layers, forming an impregnable shield of scales. For the moment, he had no free hand to pursue.

Within the rolling black smoke, Rainbow Dragon's incomparably tough hide merely took on a scorched layer from the blast. Not a single scale had fallen off.

Standing atop the dragon's head, Suguru Geto was completely unharmed. He could only watch Miwa Seigen fly into the distance like a kite with a severed string, propelled by the explosion's recoil, and sigh helplessly. "What a decisive way to sacrifice a tail to save himself."

On the street below, Satoru Gojo had also finished fine-tuning Limitless.

He let out a breath and clicked his tongue in irritation. "Poison gas is such a pain. Once we get back, I definitely need to develop an automatic toxic-substance screening and filtering function. Adjusting it manually every day is just stupid."

Looking at the still-dense blue poisonous fog around him, Satoru Gojo raised his index and middle fingers together and casually pointed toward the sky.

Technique Lapse—[Blue].

A tiny blue singularity abruptly formed above his fingertips.

In an instant, a terrifying miniature storm formed in the narrow alley, generating an overwhelming force of suction.

In the blink of an eye, the dark-blue toxic Fog Curtain filling the sky was forcibly gathered by that absolute attraction and compressed into a sphere. Then, like a waterfall flowing in reverse, it was sent straight hundreds of meters into the air and completely annihilated.

"Whoosh!"

The jellyfish shikigami, "Sea Moon," hidden within the mist obeyed its master's death order. The moment Satoru Gojo broke free, it swung its twelve tentacles and launched a suicidal charge, intending to self-destruct and buy time.

However, Satoru Gojo did not even spare it a glance.

"Boom!"

The jellyfish shikigami slammed into the "infinite distance" created by Limitless, unleashing fierce poisonous flames and thunderous blasts. Yet that violent energy could not so much as stir a single silver hair on Satoru Gojo's head before vanishing against the absolute spatial barrier.

"...Monsters. Those Jujutsu High students are all fucking monsters!!"

On an old rooftop in the distance, Miwa Seigen clutched his continuously bleeding chest. He had personally witnessed the two desperate counterattacks he had been so proud of—attacks launched at the cost of his shikigami's lives—being casually blocked by those two second-year Jujutsu High brats as if they were swatting flies.

His plan was utterly shattered at that moment.

He was also a Grade 1 Sorcerer renowned throughout the black market. Which of the missions he normally took on did not involve mountains of corpses and seas of blood?

But why... why was it that, despite them all being Grade 1, there was a chasm between him and these sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boys that seemed impossible to cross?!

That enormous gap in strength left him unable to muster even the slightest will to resist.

He would rather face the Zenin Clan's terrifying elite unit, Hei, pursuing him across a thousand miles, or face the Pan Star Religious Group's interrogation, than confront on the battlefield these two members of a "strongest duo" destined to overturn their era!

Miwa Seigen's face was pale as paper. From the agonizing pain in his body and the backlash against his mind, black, tainted blood constantly spilled from the corners of his mouth.

His hand trembling, he pulled a small refined-steel bottle reinforced with a special technique from the most concealed inner pocket of his clothes, then burst into laughter.

"I never said I only had three shikigami!"

Inside lay a strange insect whose entire body glimmered with a metallic emerald-green sheen.

It was the trump-card shikigami he had spent a full ten years nurturing day and night with his own cursed energy and blood, regarding it as the greatest work of his life—a unique tiger beetle known as the Son of Wind.

This shikigami's usual ability was to transport people through short-range spatial flashes.

That extraordinary survival ability was his true trump card and the foundation that had kept him alive all these years.

But before Satoru Gojo, who possessed the Six Eyes, and Suguru Geto, who controlled the Rainbow Dragon cursed spirit, spatial flashes of merely a few or a few dozen meters were no different from standing still.

If he wanted to survive, there was only one move left.

Miwa Seigen's heart bled. The pain was like having half his life's wealth gouged out. He stared fixedly at the spirit insect in the bottle, determination and madness flashing through his eyes, before abruptly tightening his five fingers and crushing it alive!

Just like when he had forced those three shikigami to self-destruct earlier, he would use the Son of Wind's life as the price—to establish a death-defying Binding Vow!

Bzzzz!!

As the tiger beetle turned into emerald-green dust that scattered through the air, an indescribable spatial fluctuation violently erupted across the narrow rooftop.

Ultra-long-distance cross-space teleportation!

Strands of emerald-green gale winds wrapped around Miwa Seigen's dying body like chains, layer upon layer. At that moment, space began to visibly twist and stretch.

"Not good, that guy's getting away!" Suguru Geto was the first to notice something wrong in the distance. He immediately commanded Rainbow Dragon to dive down like a streak of lightning.

The intricate trajectory of the spatial technique was reflected in Satoru Gojo's eyes as well. He raised his right index finger once more, and an icy blue radiance began to gather.

However, the Binding Vow had already taken effect.

"Jujutsu High brats... remember this..."

After leaving behind that threat, Miwa Seigen's entire body, enveloped by the emerald storm, twisted and stretched in an instant as though swallowed by a black hole. Then, with a crisp sound of space shattering... he disappeared completely.

Elsewhere, the murky shadows began to tremble violently. Two flushed figures emerged one after another from within: Lu Ping and Ieiri Shoko, who had nearly reached their limits from holding their breath in the Shadow Space.

Satoru Gojo's eyes lit up. He quickly walked over, voluntarily dispelled the Limitless Technique surrounding him, and lightly patted their shoulders.

"I'm so glad you're both alright."