On his very first day after transmigrating, Naoya Zen'in had already caught the scent of an early death.
Not good.
Very, very not good.
Although he had already stepped in and altered the course of events so that Suguru Geto's corpse would be handed over to Kyoto for disposal, that was bound to trigger a whole series of butterfly effects.
Kenjaku would never give up on Cursed Spirit Manipulation. One way or another, he would try to steal the body back.
And Gojo Satoru would never tolerate his friend's corpse being desecrated. He, too, would absolutely try to reclaim it.
Which meant that the greatest villain and the strongest hero in Jujutsu Kaisen both currently had extremely serious corpse-fetish tendencies, and neither of them looked curable anytime soon.
If those two lunatics found out that Naoya Zen'in's plan was to send Suguru Geto off in a nice, cheerful cremation, their favorability toward him would shoot straight through the roof.
Couldn't everyone just sit down peacefully and have a cup of afternoon tea?
Did it really have to become a fight to the death?
Naoya Zen'in felt that he needed to seriously review the situation.
Who was trying their best?
Who was committing crimes?
Whose playstyle was anti-team?
Whose drafting lacked basic human warmth?
Admittedly, his own performance today had not been flawless either. His method of playing Naoya Zen'in still was not refined enough; every now and then he would suddenly blurt out some outrageous nonsense and step squarely on another landmine.
But even if he played the role perfectly, would that let him escape his fated death?
Not a chance.
Because Naoya Zen'in, in the original story, was simply that kind of character.
When other villains got beaten by the protagonists, they usually got some tragic flashback to whitewash them a little. Maybe they had their own hardships. Maybe they had an eighty-year-old mother above and a three-year-old child below. Maybe their family had been kidnapped. Maybe they had been forced onto the wrong road despite being kind at heart. Or maybe they had robbed, murdered, and set fires, suffered betrayal three times over, and were somehow still called a good kid in the end.
But Naoya Zen'in was too proud.
Too proud to leave even a sliver of room for redemption.
Do not talk to me about morality or compassion. Do not talk to me about world peace. And definitely do not talk to me about reforming after straying from the path.
Put nicely, he carried a kind of so what if I'm the devil? energy.
Put bluntly, he was a pure antisocial personality.
Pure evil.
A pure villain.
So when he finally died, the audience popped champagne. Not a single person had the angle to sympathize with that piece of human trash.
To put it plainly, if Naoya Zen'in walked out to buy a pack of cigarettes right now, he would probably run into at least ten people on the way who wanted him dead.
So much for even villains having their own savior...
Naoya let out a long sigh inwardly.
From this villain's perspective, Jujutsu Kaisen was basically a trash game with no designed clear route. He existed purely as an experience pack for the protagonists.
From the moment Naoya Zen'in appeared in the original story, he got beaten over and over again. According to incomplete statistics, he served as a stepping stone for at least thirteen different characters. Yet even after getting used as a springboard that many times, not one of them ever truly beat the arrogance out of him. He was the kind of man who could go into the crematorium and still leave behind a functioning mouth.
And yet it was exactly that spirit—that my head may fall, my blood may spill, but my hair must never be messed up style of posing—that won Naoya Zen'in quite a lot of popularity.
After all, from first appearance to final death, the man did not even manage to kill a single person. At that point, he was basically a walking joke.
But for the transmigrator, that was hardly good news.
It meant that the moment he relaxed his vigilance, he could genuinely die a meaningless death.
The fate of a villain was inevitable death.
No matter what he did, he would struggle in vain against the erosion of destiny, only to end up as a roadside stray kicked to death.
If he had a proper cheat system, maybe he could at least shout something like "Deep Blue, add points!"
But all reality had given him was the character panel he was born with.
Think calmly.
If he wanted to turn the tide, there were only two options now.
The first was to kill Maki Zen'in ahead of time.
In the original story, after Mai Zen'in's death, Maki fully awakened as a Heavenly Tyrant, and in a fit of fury wiped out the entire Zen'in clan. Naoya Zen'in himself got blown away on the spot by that ultra-violent cousin of his with a single punch.
So if Naoya Zen'in wanted to survive, the absolute prerequisite was simple:
He could not allow Maki Zen'in to awaken as the Heavenly Tyrant.
If he killed Maki first, all those future problems would disappear.
Given his current authority and status, arranging for the death of a bottom-ranked student in Tokyo would be absurdly easy.
But very quickly, the transmigrator rejected that idea.
After all, this was I got reincarnated as Naoya Zen'in, not Naoya Zen'in lived a second life.
That was the kind of evil scheme only the original villain himself would come up with.
It was too extreme.
Yes, his current situation was bleak. Countless eyes lurked in the dark around him, always watching, always waiting to sink their teeth into this genius sorcerer's throat and nail him to the pillar of shame in history.
But even so, Naoya Zen'in was unwilling to let himself truly rot into a monster.
Not because he considered himself morally lofty.
Because if he killed Maki Zen'in now, then what the hell was supposed to happen one year later in the all-out Shinjuku battle?
The awakened Heavenly Tyrant Maki Zen'in was a crucial combatant against Sukuna in the final battle. Even if Naoya managed to survive by changing the plotline, the next version of the story would only become:
There was not even time to mourn Kusakabe, the strongest grade-one sorcerer, before the next person to arrive on the battlefield was—the strongest grade-one sorcerer of the Big Three Families, Naoya Zen'in!
Which meant that only the second option remained.
A choice the original Naoya Zen'in would never, ever have made.
"Oda. Bring me the list of this year's new Jujutsu High students."
At Naoya's cold command, the servant Oda—who had been standing blankly to one side—jumped in fright.
Though he had no idea why his master had suddenly taken an interest in the student roster, Oda still hurried out at once, then rushed back and respectfully presented a register with both hands.
Sitting in a chair in his room, Naoya Zen'in began browsing through it with practiced elegance.
Calling it a freshman list was not quite accurate.
This register was more like a stack of résumés.
Portrait photos, family background, innate attributes and ability assessments...
After reading through it, only three words came to mind—
Holy hell, this is basically doxxing.
At Jujutsu High, more than ninety percent of the students came from aristocratic or wealthy families. They could easily afford the enormous tuition.
But even so, the day they officially enrolled and became sorcerers, overwhelming financial pressure would come crashing down on them.
Sorcerers needed money.
A lot of money.
In the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, sorcerers were basically the equivalent of mages, and everyone knew how ruinously expensive mages were.
Training grounds, cultivation costs, materials, development expenses—every one of them demanded astronomical investment, and there was always a very good chance the money would simply vanish into nothing.
Exhausting and poor.
That was the current reality for first-year Jujutsu High students.
So, in order to help these young sorcerers finish their studies, Jujutsu High had developed a sponsorship system known as angel investing.
Put simply:
it was stock speculation.
Where there were people, there was a pecking order.
And that was even more true for an elite academy like Jujutsu High, where the Big Three Families were deeply involved.
Every new student entered the angel investment market each year, and by the end of the term, their grades and overall ability would determine whether that stock rose or fell.
If a new student caught the eye of an important figure—especially someone from the Big Three Families—then their future in the jujutsu world would be smooth sailing.
Very quickly, Naoya Zen'in found the name he had been looking for:
[Newly Registered Sorcerer]
Maki Zen'in
Affiliation: Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School
Grade: Grade 4 Sorcerer
Sex: Female
Origin: Zen'in Clan
Innate Technique: None
Sponsorship Funds: None
Investment Analysis: Absolute dead-last among first-year students. Possesses almost no cursed energy and cannot even see curses. Her most outstanding qualification as a sorcerer is hand-to-hand combat. If her future goal is to become a PE teacher, then she may well become the first student in Jujutsu High history to be expelled for being too good at martial arts.
In the photograph, the girl wore her green hair in a high ponytail, and the outdated purple glasses made her naturally pretty features look unusually severe.
She looked like a cold, fierce, untouchable beauty, the sort of person who radiated danger and made others instinctively keep their distance. Even Naoya Zen'in, with his deeply ingrained male chauvinism, could not help feeling a trace of fear.
This was the future she-demon of violence.
Anyone who did not know better might have thought Toji Zen'in had been reincarnated.
"What's the maximum sponsorship amount?"
At Naoya's casual question, Oda—though still confused why the young master of the Zen'in clan was so fixated on his own cousin—answered honestly, "It should be one hundred million yen."
One hundred million yen.
Even for nobility, that was not a trivial sum.
But for Kyoto's pampered young master Naoya Zen'in, it was little more than loose change.
Still, if he publicly sponsored Maki with a hundred million yen, would that not create some kind of accident?
Naoya's hand paused just before signing.
An investment of one hundred million yen was already shocking enough on its own. If it was openly made in Naoya Zen'in's name, then Maki Zen'in would inevitably attract attention from everyone else in the school.
The story would begin to deviate from the route he knew, and right now that foreknowledge was his greatest trump card. Until he had complete confidence, he really ought to preserve the original plotline as much as possible.
Every decision he made now was effectively a race against death itself. He had to think even more carefully...
Then Naoya kept reading down the roster, and suddenly frowned.
[Newly Registered Sorcerer]
Mai Zen'in
Affiliation: Kyoto Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School
Grade: Grade 4 Sorcerer
Sex: Female
Origin: Zen'in Clan
Innate Technique: Construction Technique
Sponsorship Funds: None
Investment Analysis: The matter created through Construction Technique does not disappear when the technique ends. Though she was born with weak cursed energy, this girl will certainly achieve something notable in the field of cursed tools in the future. Unfortunately, due to certain unavoidable factors, investors are advised to think carefully before entering.
"How is it that Mai didn't receive any sponsorship either?"
Naoya pointed at the list.
If Maki Zen'in had failed to secure sponsorship because she had virtually no cursed energy and was, for all practical purposes, a naturally gifted athlete rather than a sorcerer—
then Mai Zen'in, who possessed the Construction Technique and was also Ogi Zen'in's daughter, receiving no sponsorship at all was genuinely bizarre.
"Uh..."
Oda's expression turned complicated. He clearly wanted to say something, yet fear kept him hesitating.
"Oda. You know I dislike people wasting my time."
"That's because..."
Oda lowered his voice as much as possible.
"Lord Ogi... well... said he wanted to temper his two daughters' independence..."
That explanation was already extremely polite.
The more accurate version was that Ogi Zen'in had directly ordered the jujutsu world to cut off all forms of assistance to Maki and Mai, hoping the two unfilial daughters who had shamed him would learn their lesson, come crawling back home, work themselves to death for the Zen'in clan, and eventually get married off to produce a better next generation.
And so the two young ladies of one of the Big Three Families had ended up living no better than commoners.
Still, from Naoya's perspective, that was actually a good thing.
That certain blue-haired twin-tailed girl had turned from moonlight-white ideal to pressure-crazed menace largely because she had had no money.
And right now, money was the one thing Naoya Zen'in did not lack.
If a problem could be solved by spending money to raise affection, was it even really a problem?
"...If I sponsor Maki and Mai, do you think they'd accept my money?"
At that utterly fatal question, Oda's body jolted violently, and then he stammered, "Th-that... well... although Young Master Naoya is a special grade-one sorcerer and the greatly admired future head of the Zen'in clan... how should I put it... your two cousins are currently... in a somewhat rebellious stage..."
Was he joking?
Asking those twin sisters to accept sponsorship from Naoya Zen'in?
That was basically asking them to grit their teeth and lie down for humiliation.
Young Master, you really do forget things easily.
When you were younger, the way you used to step on Maki and Mai's heads and bully them just because you were older—those of us servants who saw it all wanted to punch you ourselves...
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