Three Times Faster with Red Horns

Satoru Gojo raised a hand and slowly removed his black blindfold. Beneath the daylight refracted through the clouds, his Six Eyes shone with inhuman splendor.

As though the act of "removing his blindfold" was itself a cue to "get serious," his usual nonchalance vanished, replaced by a calm, focused gravity.

"Arrogant?" Satoru Gojo repeated the word. "A lot of people have called me that. I honestly don't know how to argue with you right now."

"Satoru Gojo, let me confirm this one more time." Dio's tone remained utterly flat. "Even with the blood of over a hundred non-sorcerers on Suguru Geto's hands, you would still welcome him back. Is that right?"

"...Yes. I found out about that village afterward.

"The people he killed were people I would have killed too-and if I'd been the one to do it, I probably wouldn't have felt any guilt.

"The only truly irreversible mistake Geto made wasn't killing them. It was not coming back, not trying to talk to anyone, and choosing to defect instead."

Satoru Gojo's voice grew low, yet remained exceptionally clear.

"Because I was left behind back then, I have to catch up to him, no matter what.

"Now, I can tell you this with absolute certainty: he is still my best friend-and that's in the present tense."

Even with the blood of over a hundred non-sorcerers on Suguru Geto's hands, deep down, Satoru Gojo still hoped his best friend would return to his side.

He was willing to shoulder all the blame and criticism, even to break the rules and defy convention for it.

Perhaps what Satoru Gojo truly hated had never been "his best friend's betrayal of Jujutsu Society's ideals," but rather "his best friend's decision to defect without ever revealing a fraction of his feelings to him, leaving him standing there alone."

If it were Geto...

If Geto looked at him with those eyes he had once trusted so completely, and laid out the reasons and logic behind that bloodstained path, one by one...

Perhaps Satoru Gojo really would cast everything aside and take that path alongside his best friend, "cleansing" the world together.

After all, he had become "the strongest," maintaining Jujutsu Society's fragile balance and the superficial peace of the world.

At its core, his motivation had never had anything to do with a mission to "perpetuate jujutsu," nor had it stemmed from the compassion to "protect someone."

He had done it solely to satisfy himself.

"The strongest" ought to do whatever he pleased. The world ought to become interesting at his will!

His power made him utterly free, allowing him to act with abandon and live as he pleased!

"Wonderful!"

Dio's lips curved into a perfectly measured smile. Then he raised a hand in an elegant gesture, like a classical magician showing his audience an "empty top hat."

He declared, "My part ends here. As for the remaining chain of cause and effect, and the final answer... let Suguru Geto speak for himself."

Over the past two months, Dio had immersed himself wholeheartedly in an in-depth study and systematic analysis of "concept bestowal."

Through extensive practice and repeated theoretical testing, he had gradually stripped away the bizarre spectacle on the surface of this cursed technique and reached several fundamental rules governing its deeper workings.

First was the law of compatibility. There was an implicit degree of compatibility between a concept and the object bearing it.

For example, bestowing the concept of "sharpness" upon a steel sword was far easier and more efficient than bestowing that same concept upon a strip of sponge.

A stone tablet could bear "solidity" more stably and durably than a flower petal.

The more a pairing aligned with the natural properties of matter, the less cursed energy it took to maintain the technique, and the stronger and more enduring its effects became.

Second was the principle of stacking and conflict. Multiple concepts could be layered onto the same target, but those concepts were not isolated; they interacted in complex ways.

Compatible, complementary concepts-such as "toughness" layered with "elasticity"-could catalyze each other, producing an effect greater than the sum of its parts.

Conflicting or mutually exclusive concepts, however, weakened each other's effects and could even destabilize the technique's structure, ultimately causing it to collapse.

Last, and most strategically valuable, was the legend bonus.

When the bestowed concept possessed a strong cultural legend or widely recognized symbolic meaning, the cursed energy cost of activating the technique dropped significantly.

In essence, this drew upon one of the sources of curses-the power of humanity's collective unconscious.

For example, granting an ordinary weapon the abstract and enormously costly concept of "striking later but landing first" consumed twice as much cursed energy as directly naming it the legendary weapon "Backlight Sword" and bestowing the corresponding imagery-based concepts upon it.

Yet the effects they ultimately achieved were almost identical.

That was why Dio was now wearing a single-horned helmet identical to the one worn by the legendary character "Red Comet."

Dark red, streamlined armor fitted snugly around the contours of his head. A horn as sharp as a knight's lance rose straight upward, reflecting a cold metallic gleam in the autumn sunlight.

It was not an isolated accessory.

Dio wore a sharply tailored, structured red-and-black military coat, paired with black fitted trousers and matching tall boots with tactical straps.

Bright red components, resembling both a cape and shoulder armor, extended elegantly from his back, shifting gently with his slightest movements.

The outfit blended perfectly with the single-horned helmet. Standing there, he looked both like a humanoid weapon from a futuristic science-fiction battlefield and an ace pilot who had stepped straight out of a hot-blooded mecha manga into reality.

This allowed him to directly bestow upon himself the concept set "three times faster with red horns," which carried immense recognition and symbolic significance within anime and manga culture.

At the same time, the associated impressions his outfit evoked-"mecha," "precision," "high speed," and "destructive power"-provided powerful implicit cognitive anchors, allowing him to bestow related concepts upon himself more easily and at a lower cursed energy cost.

With cursed energy reinforcement active, Dio could already increase his running speed to Mach 1.7. Now, with those concepts bestowed upon him-

BOOM!!!

The air was violently torn apart. A thunderous sonic-boom cloud stretched behind him into a straight corridor of vacuum.

The shock waves generated at five times the speed of sound were enough to let him briefly run through the air!

Dio instantly became a streak of crimson light, crossed the entire campus in a flash, and slammed down like a meteor onto the circular clearing outside the school gates!

"Wait..." Satoru Gojo still wanted to say something.

All that remained where Dio had stood was an expanding ring of milky-white shock waves.

The instant Dio landed, he precisely controlled and reduced the force of impact, but the residual force still exploded outward in a visible ring of air.

The sorcerers and students on Jujutsu High's side who had yet to reach the threshold of Grade 1 immediately felt a powerful gust press against their backs. Their clothes snapped in the wind, and many instinctively turned around or raised their hands to shield themselves.