Time passed quietly in an atmosphere of suppressed tension, where a surface of calm masked surging undercurrents.
More than six months had passed since the Star Plasma Vessel incident that nearly overturned the entire jujutsu world.
After his awakening, Satoru Gojo's strength displayed a crushing lead that bordered on despair-inducing.
He no longer needed to wear those heavy black sunglasses all the time.
They were replaced by a pair of light, circular sunglasses; in fact, most of the time, he didn't even need glasses at all.
This was because his Six Eyes and Limitless technique had achieved perfect automation.
"Look, Shoko."
On the track field at Jujutsu High, Satoru Gojo pointed arrogantly at a pencil in front of him.
In his brilliant Eyes of the Blue Sky, an incomparable confidence shimmered.
"I can now precisely filter any target that poses a threat."
"Not just cursed energy, but subtle physical kinetic energy, speed, mass, and even toxins floating in the air—everything is under my control."
Satoru Gojo threw the pencil forcefully toward his own eye.
But less than a centimeter from his pupil, it came to a bizarre halt in mid-air.
It was as if it had struck an indestructible, yet completely transparent, absolute wall of sighs.
"And that's not all."
Satoru Gojo smirked and suddenly flicked a finger toward a large tree dozens of meters away.
"Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue."
Hum!
Without any wind-up or even the need to chant an incantation.
That thick tree was instantly twisted and shredded by a terrifying gravitational force, turning into sawdust that danced in the air.
"See? My manipulation of cursed energy is now refined down to the atomic level!"
"Tch, what a boring trick."
Shoko Ieiri lazily exhaled a puff of smoke.
However, beneath the dark circles of her eyes, a profound sense of shock was hidden.
As a top-tier medical sorcerer, she understood better than anyone what Satoru Gojo's current state meant.
His brain was constantly at the limit of its processing capacity to run his technique, yet he was using Reverse Cursed Technique to heal himself without interruption.
He had completely transcended the limits of a sorcerer.
He was no longer just an ordinary sorcerer, but an absolute god walking among mortals.
Suguru Geto, who had been standing silently nearby, watched Satoru Gojo's casual display of breaking human limits. The light in his own eyes dimmed ever so slightly.
A chasm.
A massive gap in strength that discouraged even the thought of catching up lay starkly between the two of them.
Yet, behind that invincible and dazzling halo, an indescribable sense of loneliness began to spread wildly within Satoru Gojo.
Because he had become too strong—so strong that the higher-ups at the General Headquarters felt a deep sense of dread.
Consequently, those Rotten Oranges began assigning him all the most difficult, dangerous, and tedious solo missions.
The once inseparable 'strongest duo' was thus broken up, whether intentionally or not.
Satoru Gojo began carrying out missions alone.
Alone to desolate mountain villages.
Alone to dark, abandoned buildings.
Alone to the quiet morgues of hospitals.
He had mastered long-range Limitless, Reverse Cursed Technique, and spatial teleportation.
Although his back remained upright and arrogant.
Beneath that vast, boundless sky, that white figure seemed so small, so solitary.
"I am the strongest."
One evening, Satoru Gojo sat on the roof of Jujutsu High, watching the blood-red sunset on the horizon, whispering softly.
"Suguru, what do you think?"
He habitually asked the person beside him, only to grasp at empty air.
The once harmonious 'We are the strongest' had quietly become 'I am the strongest.'
This shift from plural to singular created an unspeakable void in the depths of his heart.
Only Yoru was keen enough to perceive all of this.
But Yoru knew even better that, compared to Satoru Gojo's loneliness at the peak.
Suguru Geto's condition was the true time bomb waiting to go off!
Deliberately separated by the higher-ups, Suguru Geto also began to toil alone through various heavy and filthy exorcism missions.
Once, in a remote mountain village.
Suguru Geto had just finished a fierce battle, barely managing to exorcise a Grade 2 cursed spirit that had occupied the village, even at the cost of injury.
He panted heavily, exhausted, covered in mud and the foul blood of the cursed spirit.
However, when he walked out of the cave and toward the villagers he had saved.
What awaited him was not gratitude or thanks.
Instead, it was the greedy, evasive, and even malicious faces of those villagers.
"Why are you just getting here now?! What are you people who take our money even doing?!"
A village head with a fleshy face shouted right in Suguru Geto's face.
"Several of my pigs were eaten by that monster! Who's going to compensate me for this loss?!"
"Exactly! I bet this monster was brought here by unlucky people like you!"
Another villager chimed in, their eyes filled with disdain and disgust.
"Get out of here! Don't spread your bad luck to us!"
Suguru Geto stood frozen in place.
He looked at those faces distorted by greed and selfishness, while the vicious curses echoed in his ears.
In an instant.
His mind uncontrollably flashed back to the underground hall of the Tombs of the Star Corridor months ago, where the Star Religious Group members cheered and applauded frantically for Riko's death.
That piercing applause perfectly overlapped with the curses of these villagers.
Suguru Geto stood in the sunset at the village entrance.
The setting sun was like blood, stretching his shadow long behind him, making him look incredibly desolate and miserable.
He slowly lowered his head, looking at his own hands, which were covered in scars and filth from saving people.
An unprecedented chill rushed from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head.
"I... what exactly..."
Suguru Geto's voice was frighteningly hoarse, as if squeezed from the depths of his soul.
"...am I protecting these things for?"
The righteous logic of protecting the weak that he had steadfastly held onto.
At this moment, it was deeply shaken, and a fatal crack quickly split open!
The collapse of faith often happens in a single moment.
Once the seed called doubt was planted, it would take root and sprout wildly in the soil of his heart, which had become extremely suppressed from constantly swallowing cursed spirits.
The night wind blew, bringing a hint of chill.
Suguru Geto stood alone, the abyss that would lead to his complete fall into darkness and eventual destruction in the original story now opening its bloody maw, staring coldly at him from the shadows.
To whom could he confess all these psychological changes?
Was it to Satoru Gojo, who was already standing above the clouds and had become a stranger?
Or to Yoru, whose strength was unfathomable and who seemed to see through everything?
Suguru Geto didn't know.
He only felt that his world was falling, piece by piece, into a boundless darkness.
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