You Won't Find a Price Like This Anywhere in the Universe!

After asking his question, Kano took another sip of the free black tea, then smiled and stared straight at the tall, long-haired man before him.

"Simple." Bayer had no intention of wasting time either and got straight to the point. "In a moment, I'll get my defenses ready, and you'll attack me with everything you've got. I need to see whether you really have some skill or you're just a useless fraud."

"If you've really got what it takes, I'll immediately set you up with a cushy job that pays big!"

Shoichi Kano also sensed something a little off, so he asked, "But, Mr. Bayer, I killed your subordinate. Don't you have any desire to avenge him?"

Bayer laughed so hard his whole body shook. "Kid, in our line of work, you need to understand that the winner takes all. If he died, that was his fate!"

"Of course, that goes for you too." Bayer's smile grew increasingly brazen, as though he found it great fun to frighten an underage sorcerer with remarks like that and watch the tiny changes in his expression.

He stood up and stretched, then made a small gesture. A maid in a maid uniform stepped forward and removed his military jacket.

The tall man loosened up his limbs and began introducing his technique. "My cursed technique is called 'Metal Manipulation.' It lets me control metal remotely, changing its shape according to my will or making it attack people on its own."

"My only defeat was when that Six Eyes brat from the Gojo Clan beat me and captured me alive."

A strange, savage grin appeared on his face. "But... I escaped. What doesn't kill me only makes me stronger!"

Of course, Shoichi Kano didn't think the guy was just showing off. Under the rules of the Jujutsu Kaisen world, revealing information about your cursed technique was itself a binding vow that granted a certain degree of enhancement.

After that thoroughly melodramatic declaration, Bayer willed the teaspoons and table knives in the room, along with the metal accessories worn by the men and women around him, to fly before him. They instantly took on the consistency of liquid metal, as though melted by intense heat, then gathered into a floating metal shield in front of him.

"Come on, kid! Hit me with everything you've got! Let me see just how strong you are!"

Shoichi Kano thought it over briefly and decided this metal "turtle shell" would be troublesome. Even setting aside the strength of the metal itself, an outer layer of cursed energy coated it, significantly dispersing impacts. It was essentially a double safeguard.

Simply coating his fist in cursed energy and punching probably wouldn't work.

Bayer had expected Kano to charge in and throw a punch like some reckless rookie. He hadn't expected the young man to stop and think instead of attacking immediately.

Still, he remained confident in his defenses. The metal shell he'd constructed had even withstood Satoru Gojo's fist imbued with Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue!

Sure, Gojo had shattered it with one punch, but it had at least held up for a moment...

A mass of cursed energy threads emerged over Kano's right arm. He guided them to intertwine and coil together, forming a rather unusually shaped long glove.

He clenched his fist, feeling how snugly the "glove" fit. To bore through the metal shell, he'd deliberately shaped the threads over his fist into something like a tunnel-boring machine's cutterhead. The threads formed multiple rings fitted with blades, arranged concentrically and rotating in a set pattern to maximize the threads' cutting properties.

Honestly, though, this was his first attempt at such a complex cursed technique construct. If Bayer hadn't been in no hurry, he wouldn't have had time to weave it so painstakingly.

Once he'd finished fine-tuning the "glove," Shoichi Kano stepped forward, swung his right arm in a wide arc, and drove his fist forward, sending sparks flying from the metal shield!

Clang! Rrrip! Kano's idea had worked. As his emitted cursed energy canceled out the cursed energy Bayer had applied to the metal shield, the "tunnel-boring cutterhead" he'd formed from cursed energy threads took effect. The rotating blade rings easily chewed into the metal shell, then forcibly tore it apart, punching straight through the defense Bayer had painstakingly constructed!

Even after breaking through the metal shield, the punch lost none of its momentum and slammed hard into Bayer's abdomen.

"Pfft!" Bayer had utterly misjudged the attack and effectively took Shoichi Kano's full-power strike head-on. His body instantly doubled over like a shrimp, and he spat out a mouthful of blood-streaked saliva.

Then the tall man flew backward, smashed through the table where they'd been drinking tea and talking, and embedded himself in the wall along with several broken table legs.

The Q Organization members present instinctively retreated several steps, a measure of awe entering their gazes as they looked at Kano.

After all... Mr. Bayer was known as the "Q Organization's strongest combatant." That was how he'd become the boss of this faction.

Yet this young man had shattered their boss's defenses with a single punch and left him embedded in the wall...

Several maids struggled to help Mr. Bayer out. He now looked considerably worse for wear, and the mocking expression he'd worn while showing off in front of Shoichi Kano was gone. He simply regarded him with a slightly grave look.

"So, Mr. Bayer," Shoichi Kano shook his hand, and the glove he'd woven on the spot unraveled into cursed energy threads that dissipated in the air, "does that mean I passed?"

Bayer leaned against the wall and dry-heaved for quite a while before recovering, then waved a hand. "Of course... of course..."

The Slit-Mouthed Woman also felt that Shoichi Kano had made her look very good. Putting on an air of mystery, she summoned her scissors and snipped at the air a few times. "Would you like me to give you a demonstration too?"

Bayer shuddered. "No, no, no... no demonstration needed! None at all! Let's get straight to business!"

Sure enough, the job Bayer then discussed with Kano and his companion was the "assassinate the Star Plasma Vessel" mission he'd picked up on the dark web. He also mentioned that the Time Vessel Association was involved.

"Those cultist lunatics believe," Bayer said, staring at the wreckage of the table with a pained expression before someone promptly brought over a new one, a size smaller than the original, "that Tengen, who governs the jujutsu barriers throughout Japan, is an inviolable, great deity. They can't accept an ordinary human girl assimilating with their god, so naturally, they want to kill her."

Not long after Bayer finished speaking, one of his subordinates brought him a laptop. He deftly connected the cables and displayed the mission information on its screen as a PowerPoint presentation.

"Then what about you? Why are you taking this job?" Shoichi Kano was curious. He remembered that the original story hadn't gone into detail about the Q Organization's motives for getting involved in the Star Plasma Vessel Incident. Now that he'd met someone directly involved, he naturally wanted to ask.

Bayer bared his teeth in a grin, apparently trying to look menacing. But his abdomen still hurt from Kano's heavy blow, leaving the smile looking rather strained. "Because the boss behind this paid us. A whole lot of money."

"Do you know who that boss is?"

Bayer shook his head. "They used a voice changer over the phone, and the number was spoofed too."

"As for payment, they arrange a location with us over the phone, and our people go there and find the cash in yen that they've hidden."

"Do you know who the Time Vessel Association is hiring?"

Bayer switched to another slide. Its photo showed a powerfully built, rugged man. He had medium-length black hair, its ends hanging naturally, and slightly narrowed eyes. His gaze carried a deliberately restrained ferocity, like a blade kept sheathed. His most distinctive feature was a vertical scar at the left corner of his mouth. Although it had partially healed, the flesh there was still visibly different in color from the surrounding skin, like his own unique mark.

"The man the Time Vessel Association hired is the Sorcerer Killer, the Heavenly Restriction Tyrant, Toji Fushiguro." Bayer's voice took on a measure of gravity as he spoke.

The Slit-Mouthed Woman cracked a very ill-timed joke. "I don't think that photo has room for so many people."

"Miss Cursed Spirit," Bayer said sternly, "you don't understand how frightening this man is. He was born with a 'heavenly restriction.' In exchange for having zero cursed energy, he gained terrifying physical abilities."

The Slit-Mouthed Woman shrugged. "According to you, he doesn't have any cursed energy at all. Doesn't that mean that without a suitable cursed tool, he couldn't even exorcise a fly head?"

Bayer chose not to pursue that topic. "You don't understand. If you fought him, you'd get it."

"In any case," Bayer steered the conversation back on track, "the Q Organization and the Time Vessel Association share the same objective. So I hope you two can work closely with Mr. Toji Fushiguro when the time comes. If possible, try to take the lead on the mission. That way, when we ask that 'boss' for our reward, we can demand a little more."

The problem was that Shoichi Kano wasn't interested in empty promises right now. He'd only come along because he'd heard the Q Organization could pay.

So he stated his demand outright, adding that he'd prefer to receive an advance on the mission payment first. After all, you couldn't make something out of nothing. Without money, he couldn't get to work.

"Then I'll give you a hundred thousand yen up front." Bayer immediately began taking out his wallet.

Bayer slapped ten thin ten-thousand-yen notes onto the table between them.

Shoichi Kano looked at him like he was an idiot.

So Bayer added a little more. "Two hundred thousand!"

Kano remained unmoved.

"Three hundred thousand!"

"Four hundred thousand!"

Bayer kept slapping banknotes onto the table.

"Three and a half million yen!" The ten-thousand-yen notes had formed a small pile on the table. Bayer pointed at them and shouted, "You won't find a price like this anywhere online-no, anywhere in the universe!"

"The mission hasn't even started, and I'm giving you three and a half million yen!"

For some reason, this blustering way of shouting out prices reminded Kano of a livestream salesman surnamed Xie from a later era.

The funniest part was that once Bayer finished speaking, his yes-men even chimed in.

"Mr. Bayer's right!"

"Nothing but the truth!"