Distance.
Felt's meaning couldn't have been clearer. If Reinhard moved to stop Gojo, the two of them were done.
"As a knight, I'd expect you to keep your word."
Reinhard let out a rueful laugh. She was right. When Gojo had pressed him earlier, he'd said it plainly: so long as Felt's orders didn't cross the line of justice or violate the principles of knighthood, he would obey.
Right now, Gojo hadn't done anything. Hadn't endangered a single life. There was no justification to intervene.
"Yes, Lady Felt. As you command."
Julius watched the exchange, brow furrowed, clearly weighing his options. Then Gojo's lazy voice drifted across the hall.
"Look after the people you've sworn yourselves to. Unless you'd rather I end this whole competition today."
That settled it.
Whatever hesitation Julius had been nursing evaporated on the spot. Knight before all else, his duty was to protect Anastasia. Everything else came second.
As for whether Gojo could actually follow through on that threat... Julius didn't doubt it for a moment. Even at full strength, replicating the kind of destruction Gojo had unleashed above the Royal Capital would've pushed him to his limits. An attack of that magnitude, if Anastasia caught even the edge of the shockwave, she wouldn't survive it. She had no combat ability whatsoever.
"Princess, I don't think you need my protection, but I'm also not in the mood to get punched." Al scratched at his helmet and muttered to Priscilla under his breath.
"Hmph."
Priscilla offered nothing more than a soft scoff. Her fan hovered just below her eyes, half-concealing a smile that didn't bother hiding its amusement. Her gaze locked onto Gojo and stayed there. A man who ignored every rule, whose strength defied measurement... far more entertaining than any of the candidates playing by the book.
Several knights had already broken formation and closed in around Gojo, ready to seize him.
He didn't spare them a glance. Stood there, perfectly still, letting them form their little circle as though they were furniture being rearranged. From start to finish, his eyes never left Rickert's face.
"If you apologize while you cry, I might go a little easier on you."
"Knights! Seize him now!"
Rickert's voice pitched high and sharp under the weight of that stare.
The knights surged forward. And then a clear, girlish voice cut through the hall.
"Betty despises this man, but you lot? Betty likes even less."
Beatrice stood at Gojo's side, expression flat and cold. She raised one hand and swept it through empty air.
In an instant, countless points of deep violet light flickered to life around them. Between one blink and the next, the sparks solidified into crystalline spikes the color of amethyst, ringing the knights on all sides.
"My, my."
"What a troublesome situation."
"I'm not even sure whether I should tell you that Beatrice is a Great Spirit of the Yin Attribute."
Roswaal stood off to the side, watching Beatrice with an amused smile, his voice dripping with theatrical relish.
"Roswaal, nobody asked you to talk!" Subaru snapped, glaring at the man who seemed to treat every crisis like dinner theater.
But the words Great Spirit landed like a stone dropped into still water. The already tense atmosphere turned suffocating. The temperature in the room seemed to plummet.
The block of officials, who had already edged back a considerable distance, broke apart entirely. More than a few scrambled sideways, desperate to put as much space between themselves and Beatrice as possible.
Great Spirit.
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the world understood what that meant. Every Great Spirit, without exaggeration, wielded the power to reshape a nation. To reshape the world itself. They represented the absolute pinnacle of their attribute, the supreme wielder of that element's force. In raw power, even Roswaal, who bore the title of the kingdom's strongest mage, fell short. His technique and finesse might surpass a Great Spirit's, but in sheer magnitude, the gap remained.
A single Great Spirit, left unchecked by an equally powerful opponent, could slaughter every soul in the Royal Capital. Hundreds of thousands of people. And it wouldn't even be difficult.
Steel rang throughout the hall. Where moments ago only a handful of knights had stepped forward, now the entire order drew their weapons, eyes locked on Beatrice in a wall of blades and tension.
She looked thoroughly unimpressed. Her gaze drifted to Gojo.
"Say, does this count as spreading fear?"
Her Cursed Energy had been growing steadily, though the pace was slow. She hadn't yet crossed the threshold into a Special Grade Cursed Spirit.
"Obviously it counts. And if word about today gets out, or better yet, if you just blow up the entire palace, the effect would be even better."
Even now, Gojo had the leisure to chat. He spoke with that easy grin still in place, his attention sliding back to Rickert.
"Punishing the weak without killing them... what a hassle."
"But I'll make the effort today. After what you people said, I'm not exactly in a generous mood."
Rickert's face twisted with a terror he couldn't begin to process. When the fear swelled past the point of endurance, he spun on his heel and bolted.
Maybe running was the only comfort left to him.
But the voice behind him reached out like an invisible hand and dragged him down.
"Domain Expansion."
"Unlimited Void."
White light flashed across Rickert's vision and vanished.
Then the world shattered.
The space before him dissolved into an endless sea of stars, or perhaps the roiling chaos of a universe still being born. Terror was still frozen on his face, every muscle still trembling, but his legs had locked in place. He couldn't move. Couldn't so much as twitch.
Inside his skull, information poured in like a flood with no end. His consciousness was a raft on an ocean of data, seconds from capsizing, seconds from being torn apart.
"This is the interior of Infinity."
"That probably doesn't mean much to you. All you need to know is that this is my domain."
"Put simply: perception, communication, every biological function in your body is now being forced to continue without limit. You can feel everything. You can process everything. But you can't do a single thing about any of it."
Gojo watched Rickert with the casual air of someone explaining the weather.
"I'm not a cruel man. I won't kill you. But trapping your consciousness in this state... that's worse than death, wouldn't you say?"
"Relax, though."
"I'll only hold it for 0.4 seconds. Let me do the math... if I'm right, you should stay like this for about a month."
"Enjoy your gift."
Inside the domain, Rickert's pupils contracted violently, shaking in their sockets. If he could have spoken, he would have begged. He would have groveled. Regret consumed him. Why hadn't he taken the chance Gojo had given him?
He couldn't bear to imagine enduring this state for an entire month. The thought alone was enough to break him.
From the perspective of everyone watching in the hall, it was over in less than a heartbeat.
Gojo made a strange hand sign. A flicker of eerie light crossed their vision, and both men vanished, then reappeared in the same spot. So fast that most of the officials, ordinary people with no combat training, didn't even register that the two had disappeared at all.
Only Reinhard and the others on the raised platform, along with a handful of the sharper knights, caught it.
When they reappeared, Rickert stood perfectly still. A statue. If not for the faint rise and fall of his chest, he might have been mistaken for a corpse.
Gojo regarded the frozen man with a thin smile, then stepped forward and grabbed him by the collar. He dragged him like luggage toward the raised platform.
Each footstep rang through the silent hall.
Crisp. Unhurried. Deafening in the quiet.
He climbed the steps one at a time, hauling Rickert behind him.
"Mr. Gojo."
Julius stepped into his path, frowning. "Whether for Lady Felt's sake or your own, I'd advise you not to take this any further."
Gojo just smiled at him and said nothing.
"Stop."
"Put that man down."
Marcos Gildark planted himself squarely in Gojo's way.
Gojo glanced at him, still silent, and kept walking toward the bald elder beyond.
"I said stop!"
As the reorganized Knight Commander, Marcos's strength was beyond question. Setting Reinhard aside, he was considered the most powerful individual in all of Lugunica after Roswaal.
"Stop me if you can."
Gojo watched him charge and spoke with that same mild smile.
Before the words had fully left his lips, Marcos closed the distance and lunged, reaching for Gojo with both hands.
Neither Felt nor Beatrice so much as blinked. They'd seen this before, more than once. People crashing headlong into that impossibility of Gojo's and coming away with nothing.
And once again, that was exactly what happened.
Marcos's hands met empty air. No matter how he pushed, how he strained, an invisible wall held firm between them. He couldn't close the gap by so much as a hair's width.
"Stop wasting your energy."
"The distance between you and me is infinite."
Gojo spoke without slowing, drawing closer to the bald elder with every step.
Marcos said nothing. A low growl escaped his throat, and then his already imposing frame erupted with an earthy amber glow. The light wasn't blinding, but it carried a weight that pressed against the senses. Stone crawled across his armor, layering thick slabs of grey rock over the steel until the man towered at nearly three meters tall, roughly the same height as Old Man Rom standing at full height. A giant by any measure.
In that colossal form, Marcos attacked again without hesitation.
A fist the size of a washbasin hammered down toward Gojo. The wind screamed in its wake. Just from the way Gojo's hair whipped and fluttered in the draft, anyone watching could feel the raw force behind that blow.
It didn't matter.
The fist struck the same invisible barrier and stopped dead. Marcos swung again. And again. Over and over, each punch landing on nothing, each one failing to slow Gojo by even a fraction.
His fists couldn't reach. The force went nowhere, absorbed into a wall that didn't exist.
Every person in that hall watched it happen.
Watched the Knight Commander throw everything he had, blow after blow, and accomplish nothing. Couldn't even slow the man's stride.
Unnatural. Absurd. Overwhelming.
The knights of the Royal Guard collectively revised their understanding of Satoru Gojo. They trained under Marcos. No one knew his strength better than they did. And yet their commander couldn't so much as graze the man's sleeve.
"Absurd" didn't begin to cover it.
Through all of Marcos's efforts, Gojo reached the bald elder at last.
He tossed Rickert onto the table in front of the old man like a sack of grain, then planted one foot on the table's edge and leaned forward, looming over him.
"Hey."
"Old man."
"I think now would be a good time to take back everything you said to Felt and Emilia. And apologize. What do you think?"
The elder stared at Rickert lying before him, still breathing but vacant, a living statue incapable of anything. The muscles in his face trembled with fury.
"Do you have any idea what you're doing? You're provoking the Council of Wise Men. You're provoking Lugunica itself..."
"Same everywhere, isn't it? Old men always love living in their own little worlds."
Gojo shook his head, reached out, and gave the man's bald scalp a few light pats. The sound rang out, almost comically crisp.
"In that case, why don't you join him? Take some time to reflect."
Unlimited Void bloomed open once more, swallowing the elder whole.