Deep within Jujutsu Headquarters, in a dimly lit Japanese-style room heavy with tension, several old men sat behind imposing screens. Their silhouettes blurred in the faint candlelight, as though they had been waiting for a long time.
They had not fled.
Before a sorcerer with the Six Eyes, any attempt to escape would have been futile and laughable, merely squandering the last scraps of dignity they had left.
Perhaps sitting upright to face judgment was the last measure of decency they could preserve for their era.
The old man at their head wore a black talismanic eyepatch over his left eye. His head was bald and smooth, his face as withered as dried bark.
When the young men marching on the capital entered the room, the old man with the eyepatch reached out and slowly drew aside the screen that symbolized their isolation.
He spoke first, his voice as dry as stones scraping together:
"I knew you would come. Am I supposed to offer some fitting words of praise now?
...Honestly, the victor takes all. I have nothing to say."
"How many talented young sorcerers did you kill by using mission assignments and commission allocations to have others do your dirty work? How many people who should have survived?"
Suguru Geto stepped forward and demanded sharply.
Beside him, an old man wearing a black scarf snorted. His hair was swept into an exaggerated pompadour, its tips nearly reaching his gaunt chin.
"Who are you standing up for?"
He grinned, revealing sparse, yellowed teeth.
"Boy, do you remember... how many rice balls you've eaten in your life?"
"Why did you do it?" Satoru Gojo asked. There was little emotion in his voice, as though he were merely conducting a routine check.
"Profit, amusement..." the old man with the pompadour answered unhurriedly.
His cloudy eyes rolled in their sunken sockets, his gaze scraping over them like a rusty blade, while his skeletal fingers tapped lightly against his knee.
"And the thrill, that blend of fear and excitement... when we snuffed out geniuses who might surpass us and threaten our positions."
"Y-you! What nonsense are you spouting?"
Another old man, long-nosed and balding, dressed in a traditional kimono, suddenly shrieked in agitation, pointing a trembling finger at the man with the pompadour.
"That isn't what you said before! We were maintaining the stability of Jujutsu Society! We were acting for the bigger picture!"
"Oh? In a hurry to distance yourself now?" The old man with the eyepatch glanced at him, his eye full of mockery. "The young have already marched on the capital, and you still think you can survive... You're beyond saving."
He turned back toward Satoru Gojo and the others, his mouth twisting into an ugly, savage curve:
"Boy from the Gojo Clan, that look on your face... Don't tell me you pity us?
Sorcerers are such unfortunate creatures.
Born into this world burdened with curses, never masters of their own fate. What kind of monster they eventually become depends entirely on their individual fortunes."
He paused, as though gathering the last of his strength to spit out every drop of venom he had stored up.
"If I had to say anything... it would be that your cowardice astounds me!
I thought you had seen through all this long ago...
Since you chose to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear until today, all that supposed anger and hatred you've built up toward us-
Is this really all it amounts to? How... disappointing!"
"So there really is no reasoning with you. You mistook my mercy, my reluctance to kill needlessly, for cowardice..."
Satoru Gojo sighed softly, as though finally letting go of his last unrealistic hope.
"Mr. Dio was right.
'Everything invented before I was born is perfectly natural;
Everything invented between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five is destined to change the world;
Everything invented after I turn thirty-five is against humanity.'
...That's what you are. Outdated, stubborn, and rotten to the core."
"Boy, I understand everything you're saying."
The old man with the eyepatch closed his remaining eye.
"If I were fifty years younger, perhaps hearing it would leave a weight in my chest. Perhaps I would want to do something.
But now, I feel nothing.
Humans cannot empathize with their past selves.
One day, you'll understand. Killing cannot solve anything.
Wherever there are people, there are power struggles. And that world... isn't about fighting and killing. It's about relationships and knowing how to navigate them."
"My lords! Don't listen to their nonsense!"
The long-nosed old man threw himself to the floor, tears and snot streaming down his face.
"I... I may have often opposed others, but that was merely a matter of where we stood!
I have always understood human feeling and moral duty!
So... please, can we reconcile? We can talk!"
"You still haven't recognized the problem? Politics shelters filth and corruption-but does the fact that it always has make it right?"
Dio's voice was quiet, yet it cut through all the noise.
"Begging won't help. You will still die. Without your deaths, those who come after you won't learn their lesson.
What change in this world has ever been achieved without bloodshed and sacrifice?"
"Wonderful..." The long-nosed old man slumped, as though every ounce of strength had drained from him in an instant. "Now we're definitely dead."
"What are you choking up for? Stop crying! Spineless fool!"
The old man with the pompadour snapped, only for his own eyes to redden.
"All those people who knelt before you back then, sobbing and begging for their lives-did you listen to reason with them?
"Ah... No need to trouble you gentlemen. I shall end my life myself," the old man with the eyepatch said.
His colleagues' terrified pleas and sobs continued without pause, grating on his nerves.
He slowly drew a short sword intended for the finishing stroke of ritual suicide from beneath his robes. Calmly baring his chest, he pressed its cold tip into his abdomen, cut slowly across, then flicked his wrist and sliced cleanly upward.
Immediately afterward, he coated the blade in cursed energy and swiftly severed his own neck, completing the entire procedure alone.
"Great-uncle...!" Noritoshi Kamo cried involuntarily. However much they had disliked each other in the past, he was still a relative with whom he had shared a history.
During the brief silence that followed the bloody spectacle, Kento Nanami pulled a thick ledger with a pen attached from a nearby bookshelf and quickly flipped through it. His expression abruptly darkened.
He raised the ledger, his voice trembling slightly with anger:
"Look at this! Such enormous sums passed through your hands!
Couldn't you have given the students and teachers at Jujutsu High a little more in allowances?
Couldn't you have improved the compensation for professional sorcerers risking their lives on the front lines?!"
"Money... Money, money, money..." The long-nosed old man's eyes darted evasively. "Talking about money... sounds so vulgar. That's why we talk about the Greater Good, morality, and devotion..."
"Pah!"
Suguru Geto stepped forward and kicked over the ornate screen in front of the old man.
"Plenty of people want to enjoy every luxury the world has to offer. Far too few know when to stop and share with others!
That is your greatest greed-your refusal to share even the smallest fraction of the profits with the people actually doing the work!"
"Money is an ugly word, liable to earn the scorn of noble gentlemen."
Dio spoke slowly.
"But I've always felt that people's opinions differ not only between yesterday and today, but often between before a meal and after it.
Anyone who admits food must be bought with money, yet considers speaking of money contemptible-press on his stomach, and you'll likely find fish and meat still waiting to be digested.
Let him go hungry for a day before listening to his opinions, lest he insult our intelligence."
He looked down at the ashen-faced old men:
"We are different.
We will openly tell every sorcerer what level they must reach to receive what compensation.
And the most tangible, most important component of that compensation is money.
We say it openly, and gladly."
"'The subterranean fire courses and surges beneath the earth; once the lava erupts, it will burn away every weed and tree, leaving nothing to rot.'"
Satoru Gojo recited softly, not a trace of uncertainty remaining in his eyes.
"Heh, you old fossils. It's time you went into the ground!
This world belongs to the new generation!
So let the necessary bloodshed and sacrifice begin with you!"
Before you continue