[And so, amid an atmosphere tinged with shock and the subtle feeling of having survived a catastrophe, you formally reached an agreement with Kokichi Muta, far away in Kyoto.]
[You promised that once this Goodwill Event, whose outcome was already beyond doubt, had completely concluded, you would accompany the Kyoto Jujutsu High staff to Kyoto and personally conduct a thorough examination and "treatment" of his body, which had suffered so terribly under his heavenly restriction.]
[In truth, during that brief moment when you touched Mechamaru's remains, you had already quietly activated "Phantom Parade," unraveling the paths of his cursed energy and the structure of his cursed technique, analyzing them thoroughly inside and out.]
[Judging from the information ultimately fed back into your mind, you could indeed rule out with absolute certainty the possibility that this resulted from a mutation or specialization of "Puppet Manipulation" itself.]
[His ability to control it across half of Japan depended entirely on forcibly pouring in that enormous volume of cursed energy. It had nothing to do with whether the technique itself had mutated.]
[And like a falling domino, Kokichi Muta's heavenly restriction knocked loose another unresolved piece of the puzzle in your palace of thought: the question of Maki Zenin's heavenly restriction.]
[Maki and Toji Fushiguro, the "Sorcerer Killer" who had once been renowned throughout the underworld, both possessed "reverse" heavenly restrictions.]
[Their situations were the exact opposite of Kokichi Muta's "sacrificing the body for cursed energy." Fate had forcibly stripped them of their cursed energy, exacting that painful price in exchange for extraordinary physical capabilities far beyond the norm.]
[Yet even though both possessed reverse heavenly restrictions, the difference in the enhancements Maki and Toji displayed in physical strength, sensory acuity, and even their intuition for danger remained staggering.]
[Compared with Toji, the current