Chapter 22: Confrontation
So, what was the best way to root out a hidden giant like the Star Religious Group.
Satoru came up with an incredibly straightforward method.
Kill them.
He interrogated Igarashi Naoto to pry out every single clue regarding the Star Religious Group, as well as the identities of all the members Igarashi knew about.
By doing this, Satoru could hunt them down one by one. With him uprooting these people left and right, he refused to believe the masterminds behind the Star Religious Group could keep sitting tight while he systematically wiped out their members.
As long as the high-ranking members of the Star Religious Group couldn't stay put, they would naturally seek out a more powerful individual to deal with him.
And among the higher-ups of the Star Religious Group, aside from that new Leader who sounded incredibly formidable, there shouldn't be anyone stronger than him.
So in the end, the new Leader of the Star Religious Group would definitely be forced to step up. When that time came, he could have a proper fight against them to settle once and for all who was the strongest of this era.
Thinking up to this point, Satoru couldn't help but praise himself. He really was a brilliant genius.
Time to get right to it.
Satoru acted immediately, crushing members of the Star Religious Group one after another, and eventually tracked down the chairman of the Peace Council.
The reason he left the chairman of the Peace Council for the final act was simply because he didn't care for low-life Yakuza types like this at all.
So before making his move, he deliberately used his phone to toy with this petty Yakuza boss first.
However, what caught Satoru by surprise was that out of this entire bunch, the chairman of the Peace Council actually turned out to be the strongest.
He was a genuine Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerer, an individual who would be considered an expert even within the Jujutsu world.
But compared to Gojo Satoru, the gap between them was still far too vast.
Satoru thrashed him effortlessly without breaking a sweat, reducing the entire Peace Council headquarters to a chaotic mess.
There was no telling how many people had been dragged into the crossfire, and the financial losses were staggering.
"Gojo Satoru, you won't die a peaceful death! The Leader will definitely avenge me! You're going to die a miserable death, far more miserable than mine!"
The chairman of the Peace Council stared at the ruined state of his headquarters, his eyes bloodshot. He had never encountered anyone so absurdly powerful and completely unreasonable.
The guy had shown up and immediately delivered two brutal strikes, nearly killing him on the spot.
He had tried his absolute best to launch a counterattack, only to realize that his techniques looked like mere child's play in front of his opponent, completely useless.
Until finally, his neck ended up firmly gripped in the other man's hand.
Even so, the chairman of the Peace Council refused to drop to his knees and beg for mercy. Instead, he began hurling loud insults, going so far as to curse Satoru directly.
He wasn't some rookie who had just started out in this underworld; he knew full well that begging would never earn an enemy's sympathy, and besides, he had no desire to plead for his life anyway.
"You really are a stubborn one, aren't you."
Satoru tightened his grip on the man's neck and said, "If you tell me the whereabouts of the new Leader of the Star Religious Group right now, I can spare your life and just beat you half to death. This transaction is highly in your favor, wouldn't you agree."
The chairman of the Peace Council let out a cold laugh, glaring at Satoru with a face twisted in pure hatred, his voice dripping with utter contempt.
"You're going to die, you will definitely die."
"The Leader will absolutely kill you to avenge every single one of us."
Satoru wore a helpless expression, "That's exactly why I'm asking you for your Leader's location. If I take the initiative to go to them, wouldn't that save your Leader a whole lot of trouble."
The chairman of the Peace Council just kept laughing coldly, refusing to say a word.
Leave alone the fact that he didn't know the new Leader's location, even if he did, there was no way he would ever reveal it to Gojo Satoru.
What if Satoru threw combat etiquette out the window and brought a whole squad along to ambush the Leader. Wouldn't that make him a traitor to the Star Religious Group.
He wasn't an idiot; there was no way he would do something that foolish.
Only a complete fool would buy into an enemy's empty promises.
"Oh?"
Just as Satoru was starting to get a bit of a headache over how to make this guy talk, his gaze suddenly caught something in the sky a little over a hundred meters away. A mysterious woman was hovering in the air, quietly observing him.
"Is that person over there also a member of your Star Religious Group?" Satoru twisted the chairman of the Peace Council's head slightly, questioning his captive.
Hearing those words, the chairman's eyes lit up. Could it be that the Leader had already caught wind of Gojo Satoru's actions and dispatched an expert to rescue him.
The mere thought brought an uncontrollable smirk to his face, "You're finished, Gojo Satoru."
Seeing the mixture of shock and joy on his opponent's face, Satoru couldn't help but click his tongue, "So she really is one of yours. Well, that makes things much easier."
He slammed the chairman of the Peace Council violently into the dirt, the immense impact instantly shattering the ground and creating a massive crater.
The chairman didn't make a sound, losing consciousness immediately.
People always said young folks had great bodies since they fell asleep the moment they hit the mattress, but looking at this, middle-aged physiques weren't half bad either.
With the obstruction taken care of, Satoru looked up, locking his gaze onto the mysterious woman in the distance.
Meanwhile, on the other side.
Medea had only just arrived at the Peace Council. Spotting the white-haired man wearing a blindfold from over a hundred meters away, she instantly realized that he had locked onto her presence.
His strength seemed quite decent.
Medea found herself growing interested. She could perceive that the white-haired man with the blindfold was a Jujutsu Sorcerer, and an exceptionally powerful one at that.
Because of this, Medea wanted to test the waters to see who exactly this white-haired, blindfolded man was and just how capable he might be.
More importantly, she wanted to know why he was attacking the chairman of the Peace Council.
Whoosh!
Without waiting for Medea to make the first move, Gojo Satoru shot toward her with incredible speed, tearing through the air like an arrow released from a bow, closing the distance between them in the blink of an eye.
Sensing the incoming danger, Medea didn't panic. Her small lips parted slightly, and layers of Magic Circles manifested behind her, expanding until they practically filled the sky.
In the next instant, a dense barrage of Magic Bullets—each packed with enough destructive force to shatter solid steel—completely crowded the air, launching from the Magic Circles and blanketing the sky.
They rained down toward Gojo Satoru, cutting off all potential escape routes and leaving him absolutely no room to dodge.
Satoru raised an eyebrow in amusement, "Interesting."
He could see it clearly; this technique didn't seem to be Jujutsu at all, but rather Western magic.
But as the strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer, Satoru didn't panic in the slightest, mostly because panicking at a time like this wouldn't achieve anything anyway.
He raised his right hand, Cursed Technique Reversal... Red!
In an instant, an invisible, violent repulsive force erupted outward, completely deflecting the dense storm of Magic Bullets and blasting a hollow pathway straight through the barrage.
The endpoint of that pathway led directly to Medea.
"Gotcha." Satoru lunged forward, throwing out a straight punch. He had no reservations about hitting women; as long as someone was classified as an enemy, gender made no difference to him. Men could get hit, and women could get hit just the same.
Yet, facing Satoru's incoming charge, Medea didn't show a hint of fear. Instead, she let out a soft chuckle.
"To be precise, I'm the one who's got you."
She raised a slender finger, casually intercepting the punch Satoru had thrown. Amidst his shocked gaze, she delivered a swift kick straight to Satoru's chest, sending him crashing right back down to the earth. With a heavy thud, he slammed into the ground, forming a deep crater.
Cough, cough, cough... inside the large crater, Satoru coughed violently, spitting out a mouthful of blood.
He could distinctly feel that several ribs in his chest had been broken by her kick, with a few sections even suffering comminuted fractures.
If this had been anyone else, they would definitely be dead by now, but Satoru didn't view it as a major issue, seeing as he still possessed the Reverse Cursed Technique.
The so-called Reverse Cursed Technique was a specific method of manipulating Cursed Energy, multiplying negative Cursed Energy by itself to generate positive energy, thereby achieving a powerful healing effect.
As he channeled the Reverse Cursed Technique, Satoru's injuries began to mend at a pace visible to the naked eye, and his deathly pale face quickly regained its healthy color.
Crawling back up from the crater, Satoru patted the dust off his clothes and spoke in a casual tone, "I let my guard down, I let my guard down. Who would have thought a woman like you, looking so gentle and elegant, would actually possess such terrifying physical combat skills."
"This really goes to show... you can't judge a book by its cover."
Hearing those words, an unnatural flicker passed through Medea's eyes.
To tell the truth, before she started following Kazuma Yumesaki, Medea genuinely lacked strong physical combat abilities; one could even say she knew absolutely nothing about close-quarters fighting.
The old Medea hadn't seen anything wrong with that either. After all, she was a noble Mage, so why should she ever engage in crude, close-range brawls like a savage warrior.
It felt beneath her dignity.
But when exactly did that mindset begin to change.
It seemed to have started after she watched the Fate anime, witnessing the alternate storyline where she was ambushed at close range by Tohsaka Rin. A grand Heroic Spirit had actually been overwhelmed in a physical brawl by a human Master, left completely powerless to fight back throughout the entire exchange.
At that exact moment, Medea had come to a sharp realization. She might not choose to rely on physical combat normally, but she absolutely could not afford to be defenseless in it.
Because when push came to shove, having those skills could genuinely save one's life.
Therefore, from that day onward, Medea had intentionally and unintentionally trained her physical capabilities. Furthermore, after obtaining a highly optimized physical incarnation and being injected with the Superhuman Serum, her biology had undergone a massive upgrade.
Her durability and strength had skyrocketed, allowing her to easily execute high-difficulty physical techniques that were once impossible, steadily raising her close-quarters combat level.
Trying out her skills here today had clearly yielded fantastic results.
Medea didn't take Satoru's praise to heart. The Magic Circles behind her grew even more packed, layering over one another until they practically dominated the sky, poised to unleash a fatal strike upon Gojo Satoru at any second.
"Hold on a second, hold on a second."
Satoru immediately raised both hands, signaling that he had no intention of continuing the fight.
It wasn't that he feared he couldn't defeat her, but rather, he had just realized that he had made a complete misunderstanding. This woman didn't seem to be a member of the Star Religious Group at all.
Based on his information, members of the Star Religious Group were fundamentally Jujutsu Sorcerers, whereas the technique she had unleashed just now wasn't Jujutsu, but genuine magic, meaning...
"I previously assumed you were a member of the Star Religious Group, which was why I attacked. You aren't actually with them, are you."
Medea looked down at the white-haired, blindfolded man from her high vantage point, "I am not. Who are you?"
"I'm Gojo Satoru. Might I have the honor of knowing this beautiful lady's name."
"Medea."
"Medea? That's not exactly a pleasant name, is it," Satoru muttered under his breath.
The moment those words left his mouth, a beam of light flashed past, grazing Satoru's cheek and drilling a thumb-sized hole of unfathomable depth into the ground right behind him.
"The next time you fail to watch your mouth, keep a close eye on your head," Medea warned coldly.
Satoru raised a hand, touching the cheek where the light had grazed him. A small trickle of blood smeared across his right hand.
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