The Eight Million Gods of Takamagahara

A dense aura of curses filled the entire plain. Chiyo Shin gazed into the distance, but could see no end to it.

He launched himself into the air with recoil and flew for a long time without spotting a town. There were cursed spirits everywhere, nothing else. He casually dispatched a few flying through the air.

Chiyo Shin spotted that stone pillar again. "Back here again?"

Chiyo Shin landed on the pillar, raised his foot, and stomped hard. The entire pillar shook. When he lifted his foot, a footprint remained.

Taking to the air once more, Chiyo Shin flew another circuit around the plain and saw the pillar again. He landed on it. The footprint he had stamped into it was still there.

A barrier technique. Chiyo Shin understood immediately.

"That makes this easy." Two arms grew beneath Chiyo Shin's armpits, and another two sprouted from his back.

White light appeared between his rear arms and expanded rapidly, stopping once it reached the size of a person.

The arms beneath his armpits extended forward. Irregularly twisting spheres appeared at the fingertips of both hands.

"Ultimate Blast: Yukan!"

"Ultimate Blast: Level Ten!"

The two spheres flew into the distance, one fast and one slow.

Chiyo Shin waited on the stone pillar for a long time, but heard nothing. Puzzled, he scratched his head.

He had just turned around, thinking he might fire another pair in this direction, when he saw the Level Ten and Yukan he had just released approaching him, one fast and one slow.

"Fuck!"

Chiyo Shin swore and quickly flew into the air.

Having missed their target, Level Ten and Yukan drifted off into the distance again.

This wouldn't work. Chiyo Shin swiftly dove to the ground, grabbed a few cursed spirits, and threw them at his two attacks.

Blinding white light illuminated the plain.

The moment those cursed spirits were destroyed, Chiyo Shin keenly sensed that the barrier technique trapping him seemed to have weakened.

To test it, Chiyo Shin landed and exorcised another swath of cursed spirits.

It really had weakened.

Don't tell me I have to kill all these cursed spirits to get out!

Chiyo Shin looked at the endless sea of cursed spirits. "This is going to keep me busy."

"Shin!"

Only five minutes had passed between Chiyo Shin's arrival and his disappearance.

In that instant, Chiyo Shin vanished before Satoru Gojo's eyes.

The oppressive sense of impending death disappeared. Mahito stopped fleeing, and the four Mahitos gathered together.

One intact Mahito said breezily, "Thanks, Geto~"

"We need to hurry. That place can only hold Chiyo Shin for half an hour at most." Kenjaku also emerged from the shadow on the ground.

"That's enough." Mahito looked at Satoru Gojo. In a crowded place, Satoru Gojo was easier to deal with than Chiyo Shin.

Another mass of people fell through the gap in the floor above.

Listening to the crowd's screams, Satoru Gojo felt both anxious and furious.

"Multiple Souls: Polymorphic Soul Isomer." Seizing the opportunity, Mahito created another Polymorphic Soul Isomer.

The Polymorphic Soul Isomer rushed at Satoru Gojo the moment it landed.

Mahito knew these efforts were futile against Satoru Gojo's Limitless, but they were all meant to create an opening for Suguru Geto.

The Polymorphic Soul Isomer had barely reached Satoru Gojo's side when, before it could throw its heavy punch, Satoru Gojo shattered its head with a single blow.

Satoru Gojo knew just as well that this wasn't the time to worry about the crowd's safety. Dealing with the three enemies before him was the right move.

But doubts lingered in Satoru Gojo's mind. The best friend he had killed with his own hands last year had appeared before him again.

And according to the Six Eyes, neither the cursed energy nor the cursed technique of the person before him could possibly be fake. Yet his soul rejected it absolutely.

"Who the hell are you!?"

Satoru Gojo strode toward Kenjaku.

"Satoru, have you forgotten me already?" With Chiyo Shin no longer threatening him, Kenjaku's face had regained its smile.

"Shut up! You're definitely not him." Satoru Gojo teleported closer and punched at Kenjaku.

"I really don't understand how you figured it out." Kenjaku enveloped his hand in Domain Amplification and blocked Satoru Gojo's fist.

Domain Amplification clashed fiercely with Limitless. Satoru Gojo gritted his teeth as he stared at that familiar face. An enemy was toying with his best friend's body.

"Geto, how long are you going to let someone else control you!?" Satoru Gojo shouted.

Kenjaku's left hand instantly shot up and clamped tightly around his own throat.

Geto was still alive?

The sudden move stunned Kenjaku. Once he recovered, he burst out laughing. "Mahito, didn't you say the soul came before the body?

"But from the look of things now, the body is the soul, and the soul is the body."

Mahito only dared reply from a distance. "Our views don't have to agree, do they? Your cursed technique and mine exist in completely different worlds, don't they?"

"A perfect answer. So a cursed technique is a world?" Kenjaku agreed with what he heard.

Satoru Gojo couldn't be bothered to listen to their blather. He swiftly pulled back his fist, turned, and kicked Kenjaku aside.

Finish him off while Geto is still conscious.

Kenjaku used his right hand to pry away the left hand gripping his throat, then used the momentum to dart over to the Prison Realm. "Prison Realm, close."

The Prison Realm folded back into a cube. Kenjaku picked it up and tucked it into his robes. "Round two."

The plain's barrier

Chiyo Shin began circling the pillar, slaughtering as he went. Most of the cursed spirits he encountered couldn't withstand even one of his attacks.

But countless cursed spirits kept coming, one after another. Chiyo Shin fought his way from front to back, from left to right, killing for ages.

Chiyo Shin couldn't even tell that their numbers had decreased.

Whenever he looked back at a space he had just cleared, cursed spirits had filled it again.

The slaughter was driving Chiyo Shin mad. It was sheer torture. He wiped out a whole swath every second, yet there was still no end to them. "Why are there so many cursed spirits? Where did they catch all of these!?"

His patience worn away, Chiyo Shin decided to bombard them with his domain.

"Domain Expansion: Lin You Zhen Dang Ping!"

He acted the moment he decided. Cursed technique burnout simply wasn't an issue.

He had two cursed techniques he could alternate between, along with Golden Repair to restore him.

He began carpet-bombing the area.

Every domain expansion killed a vast swath of cursed spirits. After this continued for a while, they stopped appearing as quickly as before.

Chiyo Shin dealt with the scattered few that appeared, while choosing only places packed with cursed spirits to unleash his domain.

Lost in the slaughter, Chiyo Shin suddenly stopped. He sensed that the barrier technique imprisoning him was about to collapse.

He swiftly took to the air and headed for the stone pillar. Just before he landed, Chiyo Shin saw a familiar scene.

Kenjaku had fully unleashed Cursed Spirit Manipulation, releasing more than a dozen cursed spirits. Working with Mahito and exploiting the terrain, he forced Satoru Gojo back step by step.

A multitude of cursed spirits and all sorts of abilities intertwined in coordinated attacks. Having to avoid the crowd left Satoru Gojo struggling to respond.

Unable to unleash his cursed technique's abilities, Satoru Gojo felt an unprecedented sense of frustration welling up inside him.

"This feels great!" Mahito grabbed several more people from the crowd, molded them into three Polymorphic Soul Isomers, and hurled them at Satoru Gojo.

Chiyo Shin finally returned to the station. As soon as he arrived, he heard Mahito's grating voice. "Does it?"

"Of course." No, that voice!

Kenjaku's and Mahito's faces soured. They had barely begun looking around when they saw Chiyo Shin, who had vanished from the platform earlier, appear again.

"It's only been a little over ten minutes!" Kenjaku's eyes widened.