Take a Guess

They soon arrived at a flat clearing beside a mountain at Tokyo Jujutsu High, where Tan Man made a point of speaking to Masamichi Yaga.

"Yaga, please stand a little farther away. I'm worried you might get caught in this."

After a moment's thought, Masamichi Yaga decided to heed Tan Man's advice and move farther away.

He had originally intended to stay as close as possible so he could intervene if necessary, but after giving it serious thought, he could not guarantee that he had the strength to stop a fight between the prodigies of the Zenin Clan and the Gojo Clan.

No one called out the start of the fight. Satoru Gojo, standing opposite Tan Man, instantly burst forward at astonishing speed, much as Tan Man had attacked him without warning nine years earlier.

Satoru Gojo had settled on his strategy from the outset: close the distance and fight Tan Man at close quarters.

He had reflected on their duel nine years earlier and concluded that things had gone wrong because he had been too careless. By allowing Tan Man to finish chanting his incantation, he had left himself open.

Based on that theory, as long as he gave Tan Man no chance to complete an incantation now, Tan Man would pose no threat to him.

And to a certain extent, Satoru Gojo's reasoning was sound.

It was just that, nine years earlier, Tan Man's limited proficiency with his cursed technique had forced him to use that method to enhance its performance.

How could Tan Man himself not know just how large an opening a full incantation left?

Facing the charging Satoru Gojo, Tan Man calmly and swiftly drew a long, thin length of Black Rope from his belt.

Satoru Gojo saw every movement, but with Limitless fully activated, why would he care what weapon Tan Man used? Even if that rope was a special grade cursed tool, what difference would it make?

Then Tan Man flicked the rope, and it struck Satoru Gojo squarely across the face with a sharp crack.

The black rope lashed his face, leaving a red mark and bringing his mind to a complete halt.

"What is this...?"

Satoru Gojo had never imagined that this thing could disrupt and penetrate the defenses of Limitless.

This was precisely why Tan Man had made a special trip to Africa. In Miguel's home country, he had obtained the rope that could hold its own against Satoru Gojo in the original story-a rope that took the country's jujutsu sorcerers decades to weave.

But Tan Man had not obtained all of it. Something so precious was not something its owners would readily agree to part with.

Rather than adopt Toji's approach of killing everyone and taking it by force, Tan Man had bribed ordinary government officials and invested in construction in Miguel's hometown. By working several angles, he had finally acquired a portion of the rope.

In short, Tan Man had used the vast sums he and Toji had earned to buy this precious cursed tool through sheer financial persuasion.

If not for the fact that the rope was consumed with use, it would unquestionably qualify as a special grade cursed tool.

Looking at the wear on the end of the rope from its contact with Limitless, Tan Man could not help feeling a pang of regret and abandoned the idea of using it further.

Using something so precious in a nonlethal sparring match was simply too extravagant.

It was not that Tan Man lacked the money to buy more. Over those nine years, his underworld dealings, investments, and companies had all brought him enormous wealth.

It was simply that, even at full production, the rope makers in Africa could not keep pace with consumption at this rate. Money alone could not buy more.

Tan Man had no intention of explaining anything to Satoru Gojo. Taking advantage of his distraction, he turned his arm to reel the rope back in and chanted in a low voice.

"Eight Hot Hells: Scorching Great Hell."

As his chant ended, a black sun appeared in the sky and obscured the real one. The light over the clearing immediately changed, as though an eclipse were taking place.

Though Satoru Gojo did not raise his head, he stared at the black sun with the same shock as Masamichi Yaga.

"This is..." Masamichi Yaga could sense an indescribable distortion emanating from that black sun.

The next second, black "raindrops" began falling rapidly. The instant they touched the earth, rocks, vegetation, or Limitless, they erupted like high-explosive grenades in terrifying explosions of black flame.

The terrifying heat at the center of each black raindrop's explosion was enough to instantly carbonize everything within a sphere twenty centimeters in radius, engulfing it in raging black flames.

Within just a few breaths, the entire clearing was riddled with craters as though it had been bombed, and terrifying black flames rose from the ground.

Even Masamichi Yaga, who stood well away from the two fighters, felt the pressure of that scorching heat. He could not help raising an arm to shield himself from the heat waves.

Awe. That alone perfectly captured Masamichi Yaga's feelings at that moment.

Only a few seconds into the fight, Tan Man had already unleashed a move of such terrifying power.

Although Limitless kept Satoru Gojo unharmed, he could feel the surrounding air being rapidly consumed by the burning black flames.

Worried that Tan Man intended to repeat his tactic from nine years earlier and suffocate him with the flames again, he immediately rose into the air.

At that same moment, however, the terrifying black flames surged like a towering wave, roaring toward Satoru Gojo.

"What?" Satoru Gojo was startled by the sudden change.

Wherever the enormous wave of black flame passed, it instantly burned away the oxygen in the air.

As Satoru Gojo dodged the black flames, he naturally thought of the most direct solution: take out Tan Man, the caster.

The technique he had unleashed was closer to a summoning technique like the Ten Shadows Technique, so Tan Man was the key.

When Satoru Gojo looked toward Tan Man from the air, those Golden Eyes locked onto him as well.

With the 360-Degree Vision granted by his Six Eyes, Satoru Gojo might well have been the only person in this world who could never evade Evil Eye, no matter what he did.

As Tan Man activated Evil Eye's One-Minute Illusion, Satoru Gojo instantly lost his ability to perceive the space around him correctly.

His misguided movements sent him plummeting from high in the air to the ground in an instant.

But Satoru Gojo had not gained nothing. Unlike nine years earlier, he now realized that Tan Man's eyes were what had affected him.

Just as Satoru Gojo was about to get up, Tan Man was already standing before him, aiming the Glock Toji had given him at the back of his head.

Looking down at Satoru Gojo, Tan Man said provocatively, "Take a guess. Can my bullets get through your Limitless?"