"Welcome back, Young Master Naoya."
By the time Naoya Zen'in returned to the main estate, a whole line of attendants was already waiting in the courtyard.
At their head was a composed and beautiful noblewoman in kimono. Kneeling by the entrance, she personally bent down to untie the young master's shoes.
"Would you like to bathe first, or would you prefer dinner?"
The woman serving Naoya Zen'in in person was none other than Maki and Mai's biological mother.
In other words, Ogi Zen'in's wife—Naoya's aunt by family title.
Ever since Maki and Mai had both left the Zen'in household, the only person who could still manage Naoya's daily routine in a way that satisfied him was this old-fashioned ideal of a Yamato Nadeshiko.
But it was equally obvious that this sort of traditional, feudal-style service made the current transmigrator feel awkward all over.
"...Young Master Naoya?"
Naoya pulled off his own shoes, shrugged off his outer robe, handed it to his aunt, and said coolly, "No need to prepare dinner."
"Very well, then—"
"And no bath either. Cancel all my engagements for tonight as well. Don't let anyone disturb me. I'm going into seclusion to train."
Without allowing any protest, Naoya then walked off alone toward the dojo.
That strange behavior instantly left the household servants dumbfounded, and before long they began whispering among themselves in private—
"The young master actually isn't going out tonight???"
"A young master this obsessed with social gatherings is staying home... could it be he offended some major figure?"
"As if! Young Master Naoya is popular in any social setting. He has the kind of looks and presence everyone envies. Even the people who hate him have to admit that!"
"And what does he mean by training? Didn't he just get home? Does that mean he still has to keep practicing at night?"
"Silence!"
Hearing the servants gossip, his aunt's face turned cold and she snapped at them immediately.
"Go prepare a late-night meal for Young Master Naoya at once! And send a few people to warm his bedding. Until the young master has gone to sleep tonight, every single one of you is to keep your eyes open!"
The servants' guesses were not entirely baseless.
Naoya Zen'in really was deeply troubled.
He no longer had extra time to waste outside, squandering his youth on maintaining upper-class social ties.
For a transmigrator already sensing death looming overhead, the only thing that could truly reassure him now was finding every possible way to improve his strength.
Building good relations with the protagonists through investment and sponsorship was only a backup plan.
At present, there were simply too many people in this world who could kill him with ease. Death could come for him at any moment.
Power great enough to stand above everything else—that was the true priority.
The transmigrator raised his gaze to the skills section of the system panel—
Projection Sorcery.
[Divides one second into twenty-four equal parts. Using one's field of vision as the viewing angle, the user imitates actions predesigned within that field. Once the movement is set, it cannot be corrected halfway through. If one attempts motions that excessively violate physical laws or natural trajectories, the user will freeze for one second.]
The original Naoya had never trained in any other jujutsu.
That was not simply because he was arrogant.
In the jujutsu world, merely understanding one's own innate technique and reaching true specialization with it already made one an exceptional sorcerer.
Ordinary people had no system panel. They could not fully understand what their innate technique did, and could only become proficient through countless life-and-death battles.
That was why the Big Three Families were the Big Three Families: because they possessed complete historical traditions and detailed records of their inherited techniques. Their descendants could therefore train with far fewer detours than ordinary sorcerers.
And yet Projection Sorcery occupied an unusually special place, even among the Zen'in clan's hereditary techniques.
Because this was a comparatively new technique within the last century. It was not like the straightforwardly powerful Ten Shadows Technique, nor like the ancient and deeply rooted Blazing Courage. Projection Sorcery was a modern jujutsu art—complex in mechanism, profound in structure, and with an absurdly high ceiling for development.
Even Naoya's father, Naobito Zen'in, only understood Projection Sorcery in a limited, intuitive way rather than fully grasping its principles.
As for the original Naoya, there was no need to say more. His understanding of Projection Sorcery had been even shallower. Otherwise he would not have turned into a punch-spamming maniac.
Projection Sorcery had a terrifying upper limit.
Naoya Zen'in was not just hyping it up.
Because in the original story, after dying and becoming a cursed spirit, Naoya Zen'in had actually reached the level of Domain Expansion.
In Jujutsu Kaisen, sorcerers with domains were so rare they could be counted on one hand. Even Suguru Geto, one of the four special grades, never awakened a personal domain—not even after death.
A Domain Expansion was the summit of sorcery.
Gojo had once said something famous—
The best way to fight a domain was to answer with your own.
Without a domain, you were inherently a step beneath. It was like hitting level six and not putting a point into your ultimate. Without a trump card, how were you supposed to contend with real monsters?
Naoya Zen'in's domain in the original story was called Time Cell Moon Palace, and its effect was absurdly monstrous. It belonged to the same category of extreme control domains as Unlimited Void.
Inside Time Cell Moon Palace, it was as though Projection Sorcery were cast once upon every cell in the body. The enemy was required to make every single cell move in exact correspondence with Naoya's own cells. Any cell whose motion differed from his would be frozen for one second instantly.
Put simply:
Move, and you die.
Of course, if you do not move, you die too.
The original Naoya had only awakened his domain after becoming a cursed spirit. Even if Naoya could not achieve that now, it still meant he possessed the talent to stand among top-tier sorcerers.
If he started training seriously from this moment onward, then perhaps there really was a chance he could step into the realm of domains.
But the transmigrator had clearly underestimated just how difficult Domain Expansion truly was.
Yes, he possessed knowledge, information, and understanding far beyond the current jujutsu world...
But at the end of the day, he was not the original Naoya Zen'in. He did not have the original owner's memories. When it came to the flow of cursed energy, or the actual operation of a technique, he was effectively blind.
As a sorcerer, his fundamentals were almost completely barren.
"...Failed again."
Naoya Zen'in panted harshly.
Almost instantly, he felt the unnatural rigidity spreading through his body.
There was no doubt about what it meant—
his Projection Sorcery had failed again.
He could not keep up with the preset twenty-four motions.
This body possessed tremendous potential. Physically, it was capable of following all kinds of complex movement.
But the one predesigning the action path was the transmigrator's soul.
Within a single second, he had to calculate all twenty-four actions in advance, ensure that none of them violated physics too severely, and then reproduce them in a rational and near-perfect sequence.
Of course, mere success was easy.
Taking twenty-four walking steps in one second was nothing.
But if he wanted to approach the true upper limit of Projection Sorcery, then at the very least he had to reach the point of taking twenty-four running steps instead.
And succeeding for one second was nowhere near enough.
Naoya Zen'in had to succeed ten times in a row, a hundred times in a row, even a thousand times in a row!
Every successful use of Projection Sorcery meant the accumulated acceleration was preserved. The next sequence of twenty-four actions would only become faster.
That meant every success nearly doubled the computational burden placed on the brain.
Simply trying to approach the upper limit of Projection Sorcery was already making Naoya feel stabbing pain inside his head.
His temples throbbed unbearably, and his eyes felt as though they might burst.
His vision turned a hazy blue-green, and even the lights in the dojo flickered like scattered stars.
In a world overflowing with countless afterimages of himself, Naoya Zen'in's mind was desperately trying to keep pace with the speed of his body.
Faster!
It had to be faster!
Faster still!
He absolutely could not allow the speed of his thoughts to fall behind the speed of his flesh.
Because if he lost to his own body like this, wouldn't that mean he was even more worthless than the original owner—the scumbag villain himself?!
Naoya Zen'in continued forcing Projection Sorcery into overdrive, driving cursed energy through his entire body.
"...!!"
Then came agony too fierce to endure.
It felt as though every bone and muscle in his body had been smashed apart with a hammer—or as though all his muscles were tangling together and tearing themselves to pieces. The pain defied language.
Crack!
Crack!
Those sounds were coming from his own body.
Joints twisting. Heart rupturing.
Ribs breaking. Bone fragments stabbing into his lungs.
At least, that was what it felt like in his subconscious.
And yet—
despite being baptized in such overwhelming pain, the transmigrator did not let out a single scream, nor did he bite down on his lip.
Even the original Naoya Zen'in would have given up under this kind of speed.
Because for that frivolous young aristocrat, acceleration so extreme that it harmed his own body would have been meaningless.
In real combat, there would never be time for such a long buildup.
With Projection Sorcery, if the fight was not already over within ten uses at most, then it simply meant his attacks were not breaking through the enemy's defenses. What he ought to improve in that case was his means of outputting cursed energy, not endless acceleration.
Speeding up for the sake of speeding up was meaningless.
And yet Naoya Zen'in let cursed energy surge through his veins, using its flow to impose his own will upon every part of this body.
Not just the heart.
His neck, shoulders, arms, abdomen, thighs, calves...
He wanted every inch of skin, every part of his body, to be engraved completely with the memory of being ruled by him.
Snap—!
With the sound of something inside his head finally breaking, a wave of weakness crashed over him.
He had failed again.
Naoya Zen'in slammed hard to the floor.
His cursed energy was completely exhausted. He could no longer move even a single finger.
Every part of his body ached with the fatigue of training beyond his limits.
He desperately wanted to close his eyes and fall asleep just like this.
But the original Naoya Zen'in was not the kind of person who would collapse in a sweaty heap and sleep on the dojo floor like some slob.
So Naoya forced his eyes open, struggled up from the ground, and left the dojo to bathe.
"Young Master... the lady instructed us to scrub your back..."
"Get out."
Even though he already felt on the verge of blacking out, he still dismissed the maids without a second glance.
He washed himself thoroughly with body soap, soaked in the hot spring bath for quite some time, and only then put on a bathrobe and stepped out.
"Y-Young Master... the lady also instructed us to attend you for the night..."
When Naoya Zen'in returned to his room after bathing and saw the maids trembling under the blankets waiting for him, his vision nearly went black again.
Seriously?
He had just about died in the dojo, and now they were seriously showing up in the middle of the night expecting to help him relax?
"—GET OUT!!!"
Summoning the last scrap of strength left in him, Naoya Zen'in kicked the terrified maids right out of the room.
"Unbelievable..."
The transmigrator collapsed directly onto the bed and let out a long breath.
Only now did he start to understand why the original owner had hated women so much.
Women really did slow down the draw.
Starting tomorrow, maybe he should just have Oda handle the household affairs at the estate instead...
With that thought in mind, Naoya Zen'in finally drifted off into an exhausted, heavy sleep.
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