Akutagawa Shang rushed up to Maki, his eyes shining as he looked at her expectantly, shouting over and over, "Hurry up and hit me!!!"
Watching Akutagawa Shang act like a lunatic, Maki finally snapped out of it and kicked forward again, sending him sprawling to the ground once more.
This time, however, Akutagawa Shang wore a smile he simply could not suppress.
"What's wrong with you?"
Akutagawa lay on the ground, but the anticipation in his eyes had not faded in the slightest. Instead, it grew even stronger.
"It's not enough. Keep going, don't stop!" Akutagawa Shang crawled to Maki's feet, grabbed her calf, and begged her to keep beating him. The scene looked utterly bizarre...
"Y-you... let go of me right now." Seeing Akutagawa clutching her leg, Maki flushed bright red and kept kicking him, trying to make him release the hands gripping her calf.
When kicking failed to shake off Akutagawa Shang, who had locked himself around her calf, Maki decisively snatched up the long staff that had fallen nearby and swung it down at him.
The third strike swept in from above, stirring up a gust of wind. Its effect was immediate: Akutagawa Shang went flying, taking one of Maki's shoes with him.
Maki did not stop. Seemingly infuriated by his grabbing her leg, she began lashing Akutagawa Shang with the staff again and again.
"Almost... keep going... hit me."
"Get lost!!!" Hearing Akutagawa Shang's words, which sounded impressive despite making no sense to her, Maki looked embarrassed and furious. Yes, even the straightforward Maki felt embarrassed by such an outrageous request.
Staff in hand, Maki kept lashing Akutagawa Shang.
The fourth strike.
The fifth strike.
The sixth strike.
The staff's blows kept landing on Akutagawa Shang, bringing waves of pain, but he could no longer spare any attention for that. He focused all his energy on sensing that faint ripple inside him. As Maki continued striking him, that ripple of fluctuation kept expanding, and Akutagawa Shang's sense of it grew clearer and clearer.
Finally, when the tenth strike landed, Akutagawa Shang successfully sensed Cursed Energy. An unusual power surged from within him, slowly flowing throughout his entire body, into every limb and bone.
A burst of Cursed Energy erupted from Akutagawa Shang, blasting away Maki, who still had her foot on his head as she kept attacking him.
"I've got it! It's coming out!" Akutagawa Shang shouted excitedly.
"What's coming out?" Maki steadied herself.
"You've got it?" Panda poked his head out from the side.
"Yeah, he's got it... huh?" Satoru Gojo stopped halfway through his laugh. He had clearly sensed that momentary fluctuation of Cursed Energy, but afterward, all of it seemed to burrow back inside Akutagawa. Even scanning him with the Six Eyes, he could not detect a trace.
Akutagawa Shang stood up, sensing the Cursed Energy flowing inside him. For some reason, after it emerged, he could feel its flow with exceptional clarity and wield it with extraordinary ease.
He gave it a try, gathering Cursed Energy in his legs and jumping upward with a powerful leap.
The sound of air tearing past reached his ears. Propelled by that tremendous explosive force, Akutagawa shot off the ground into the sky, his altitude still climbing.
"Woohoo!!! Takeoff!" He looked down over Jujutsu High and felt the air high above. At that moment, he felt utterly exhilarated. This was something he could never have done before crossing over. Although several days had passed since he arrived, it had all continued to feel unreal, but the Cursed Energy flowing inside him finally made his crossing over feel real.
"I'm so damn high right now-"
But it did not last. Once he reached the peak of his ascent, the climb that had relied on upward lift became a straight plunge. Under the acceleration of Earth's gravity, he kept falling faster and faster.
"Holy shit Σ(°ロ°)."
Fortunately, just before his face hit the ground and he fell into Mother Earth's embrace, Satoru Gojo teleported over and rescued him.
Satoru Gojo held Akutagawa in his arms. Akutagawa still seemed caught up in that fall.
Satoru Gojo snapped his fingers, bringing Akutagawa back to his senses.
Seemingly realizing that Satoru Gojo was still holding him, Akutagawa felt a little awkward too. He shifted and landed back on the ground.
"How does Cursed Energy feel?"
"Not bad." Akutagawa caught his breath.
"There's something strange. In theory, you've already used Cursed Energy, but I can't see any on you now. From start to finish, you only gave off a fluctuation of Cursed Energy for that one instant. The rest of the time, it was as though something was blocking it?"
Satoru Gojo removed the white bandages covering his eyes. Those vivid blue eyes, like an extension of the sky's color, glittered in the sunlight.
The Six Eyes-a mark of the chosen that might appear only once every few centuries in the Gojo Clan's bloodline-were also the clan's greatest hereditary cheat. In any given era, there could be one and only one bearer of the Six Eyes in the entire world. They could provide their bearer with a full 360-degree field of vision without blind spots. Even with a covering over his eyes, he could clearly "see" his surroundings as though through "high-resolution thermal imaging," and could even see buildings through faint residual traces of Cursed Energy. He could also directly "see" the flow of Cursed Energy and instantly analyze its type, trajectory, and source. Most broken of all, they allowed atomic-level precision in manipulating Cursed Energy, reducing the energy consumed when activating a Cursed Technique to infinitely close to zero.
Satoru Gojo taking off his bandages meant his Six Eyes were now fully active, yet even then, he could not see the slightest fluctuation of Cursed Energy from the protagonist.
"Could it be because I crossed over here again?" Akutagawa Shang asked uncertainly.
"Probably. For now, that's the only explanation that makes sense."
"A body from another world developed some, uh... Cursed Energy it originally shouldn't have had when it arrived here, for certain reasons involving this world. But because your otherworldly body conceals it, individuals from this world normally can't observe the Cursed Energy inside you. Unless you release Cursed Energy in an attack, like you did just now, they might not be able to see even a little of it."
"So is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
"Well, in most situations, it should count as a good thing. Most Jujutsu Sorcerers rely on Cursed Energy to sense enemies, and to them, you're practically invisible. Whether you're taking the initiative to assassinate someone or running away, it's a pretty useful ability. I fought someone whose Cursed Energy I couldn't sense back in the day. If I hadn't gotten lucky and learned Reverse Cursed Technique, he probably would've killed me ten years ago." As Satoru Gojo spoke, he brushed his hair aside, revealing a long-healed scar-the very one left by Toji Fushiguro's blade back then.
"What? Even the strongest, Gojo-sensei, could be pushed that far?"
Panda and the other two were shocked. In their understanding, while Satoru Gojo's awful personality was common knowledge throughout the Jujutsu world, his strength was equally beyond question. Satoru Gojo stood at the pinnacle of Jujutsu Sorcerers, the strongest of the modern age, and by an overwhelming margin at that. Hearing that the strongest had nearly been killed shook their view of the world.
"Of course. To get into the details, that man had something of a connection to Maki too. He had the same Heavenly Restriction as her. He was an absurdly powerful man." Gojo's tone turned serious for once.
Maki's expression shifted, and her fingers tightened around the staff, but she said nothing.
"There are exceptions, though. Some extremist Curse Users absolutely despise non-sorcerers, even considering people without Cursed Energy monkeys. In your current state, with no detectable Cursed Energy at all, if you run into them, you might get attacked."
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Akutagawa Shang looked exasperated.
"How about sticking a note on yourself that says, 'I have Cursed Energy, you just can't see it,' Akutagawa? Maybe the Curse Users will see it and let you go." Satoru Gojo, who had just been serious for once, had now returned to his unreliable self.
"How about you just let Maki keep hitting me? Maybe she'll beat the Cursed Energy out of me."
Before you continue