A striking red-clouded black robe. A deathly pale face.
"White Zetsu?!"
In the split second before death, the students were awakened by an unexpected act of salvation.
Everyone looked up in astonishment.
White Zetsu (in Kokichi Muta's body) walked slowly toward the group, hands behind his back and a slight, smug smile on his lips. He stood ramrod straight, exuding the air of a grandmaster.
"Hey. Long time no see."
Nanami hastily retreated to the safety of the ink puddle, his body tattered. Maki clutched her Naginata, and Nobara was drenched in cold sweat. Megumi, at his absolute limit, stared in disbelief at what had appeared behind them.
Standing on the sea, almost piercing through the sky, was a colossal, dark brown trunk. It was a bizarre, giant tree—a reflection of the Divine Tree—devoid of greenery or flowers. Instead, it was draped in countless giant human-shaped cocoons wrapped in layers of white silk. The pale ribbons hanging from the branches exuded an atmosphere of absolute death.
"Was it you... who established this territory?" Maki asked incredulously.
Zetsu nodded slightly, his tone utterly calm. "Expanding a Domain... isn't that something anyone can do?"
"Zetsu-senpai!"
There was no time for reminiscing. Dagon, floating in the air, let out a roar of warning and fury.
"What's the panic, Little Red?"
Zetsu faced the students, waving a hand over his shoulder toward Dagon.
"Sheng Hua (Bloom)."
BOOM—!
Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of white silk ribbons whistled through the air!
Dagon's overwhelming swarm of shark and piranha Shikigami were firmly trapped within a giant net woven from the pale satin hanging from the tree.
The ribbons wrapped the fish into oval cocoons and compressed them instantly. Purple blood sprayed, dyeing half the sea a bewitching color, before the ribbons rapidly pulled the cocoons into the tree's canopy.
Without turning his head, Zetsu uttered two more words: "Dead Bone."
The struggling fish inside the cocoons grew still. Their life force was drained into the tree, and the blood-stained ribbons returned to a pristine, snow-white state. The enormous spheres shrank, becoming identical to the thousands of other inverted cocoons.
"Life and death," Zetsu whispered. "One is the start, the other is the finish."
With just those four "light and airy" words, the "Death Swarm" that Nanami and the others couldn't solve was utterly annihilated.
Nobara stared blankly at Zetsu. She inexplicably recalled the stories he told back at the detention center.
This was the first time she had seen him act with such god-like authority.
Zetsu fully enjoyed their awe-struck gazes. The upward curve of his lips was harder to suppress than the kick of an AK-47.
...
Dagon hovered in mid-air, his eyes filled with murderous intent.
This Cursed Spirit was a follower of Zenin Mirai—the murderer of Hanami!
It's just a strange ancient tree; the outer shell hasn't even been fully constructed yet!
Dagon mistook Zetsu's Domain for an unfinished one, like Megumi's. He still maintained his confidence in winning. As a Curse born from the fear of the ocean, his Cursed Energy was vast.
"Cursed Technique Release: Death Swarm—Endless Procession!"
BOOM!!!
It was like a nuclear bomb detonating on the seabed.
Hundreds of meters of water splashed into the sky. Within a radius of a hundred meters, an infinite number of sea monsters emerged. Great white sharks magnified a hundred times and dragon-shaped serpents with serrated teeth came in a wave that blotted out the sun.
Facing the strongest attack from Dagon, which drained the Curse's entire reserve, Zetsu did not underestimate it.
He held his hands horizontally in front of his chest, forming a specific hand seal.
"Domain Expansion: Thousand Burials of White Spirits!"
Previously, Zetsu hadn't used a hand seal just to show off; he had been constructing the Domain purely through raw Cursed Energy output. This had caused Dagon to misjudge him.
Now, the ribbons hanging from the tree stirred with intent and rose up with a deafening whoosh!
'Our Cursed Energies are truly incompatible,' Zetsu thought.
The Divine Tree he summoned wasn't the actual entity from the Kamui dimension, but a powerful projection fueled by the Gedo Mazo.
Five hundred years.
Zetsu felt the upper limit of the Cursed Energy in his mind. He burned away five centuries of stored energy in an instant, leaving 4,500 years in reserve.
BOOM!!!
The branches of the ancient tree swayed, and the number of ribbons surged into the millions!
The pale white shroud became a phantom avalanche—a vast expanse of white that collided with Dagon's vibrant, colorful wave of sea monsters.
It was a magnificent scene that divided heaven and earth.
Nobara, Maki, and Megumi stared at the breathtaking view, their ears covered as the sound of the collision roared like a hurricane.
The sea level fluctuated wildly, and the beach of Dagon's Domain began to shake and break apart.
Dagon's "Horizon" was crumbling. In its place, the dark brown earth of Zetsu's "Thousand Burials"—a landscape crisscrossed with ravines and riddled with potholes—surfaced.
In this open field of death, Dagon's sea was being swallowed.
...
CRACK. CRACK. CRASH.
The colliding Domains shattered. The four Sorcerers and the one Spirit returned to the ruins of Shibuya.
It had been an overwhelming battle. The difference in Cursed Energy was simply too vast.
In the final second before the Domain broke, Dagon—the Special Grade Curse—had been wrapped tightly in white cloth and hung upside down from the trunk of the ancient tree.
Nanami Kento's expression was incredibly complex.
The survivors did not feel fortunate; instead, they fell into an eerie silence.
Zetsu was their former companion. Moments ago, he was their savior.
But he was also the mastermind behind the sealing of Gojo Satoru.
Nanami and the others already knew the truth from the messages sent by Yuji and Mei Mei.
Now that Dagon was eliminated, what would Zetsu do next?
The Zenin clan had been branded as criminals. A warrant had been issued for Mirai's arrest.
The White Zetsu before them was no longer the weakling they knew at Jujutsu High. The initiative now lay entirely with him.
Zetsu stood with his back to the crowd, his heart racing.
He was smugly waiting for the gasps of praise and the "Senpai, you're amazing!" compliments.
After a long, painful silence...
Zetsu, who hadn't yet considered whether he should act like a villain or a friend, became secretly anxious.
Finally, he turned his head helplessly.
"Thirteenth Sister... niece..."
"Master Zetsu... wasn't he handsome?"
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