The barrier was no longer a vessel capable of containing the battlefield.
The veil covering the ceiling was half-torn, allowing the jagged summer light to spill inward. The right outer wall had been nearly ripped away, letting the deep greenery of the forest cast shadows deep into the structure.
The floor had buckled and surged so many times it could no longer be called flat ground. It was ruined.
Severed pillar fragments, shattered masonry, torn-out barrier anchors, dust, and stone powder were scattered everywhere.
One more heavy impact, and it wouldn't just be the barrier—the entire location would collapse.
In the center of it all, Gojo Satoru was catching his breath.
A long, jagged laceration ran down his left upper arm.
A clean cut stretched from his flank to just below his chest.
Lacking Reverse Cursed Technique, the current Gojo could not yet undo those wounds. The bleeding hadn't stopped, and every time he inhaled, a searing pain surged through his ribs. Sweat tracked down his forehead and temples. It wasn't just the summer heat.
It was cold sweat.
Evidence of a threat his body understood before his mind did.
Even so, Gojo was smiling. The corners of his mouth were pulled up, but the grin wasn't light like it used to be.
It wasn't the smirk of the Gojo Satoru who played around and tested others; it was the smile of a man who had seen his own limits with terrifying clarity.
Across from him, Yuji was watching.
Standing amidst the summer light, dust, the smell of blood, and the crumbled structures, that man was far too quiet.
His breathing wasn't ragged, and his gaze didn't waver.
While Gojo was learning the fear of Limitless being bypassed, accumulating wounds, and desperately calculating his next move, it felt as though Yuji alone was looking down at this battlefield from a different plane of existence.
Calling him 'strong' wasn't enough.
An Absolute Being.
The words crossed Gojo's mind. He hated the thought. At the same time, he found it intoxicating.
"This is seriously the worst."
Gojo muttered through blood-stained lips.
Yuji asked back.
"What is?"
"Everything!"
Gojo let out a short laugh, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"The way you drive people into a corner, the way your expression doesn't even twitch when you cut through Limitless, and the fact that you still have energy to spare while I'm here dripping blood everywhere."
Yuji looked at him for a moment before speaking.
"You still want to keep going with a face like that?"
"Why else do you think I came this far?"
The answer came too fast. It wasn't bravado.
If he had any intention of backing down now, he wouldn't have come here in the first place.
Geto watched the two from outside the barrier with his arms crossed.
Satoru was serious. At this moment, even knowing his life was in danger, he was trying to ascend higher.
The problem was that his opponent was the wrong person entirely.
Geto's gaze fell back on Yuji.
Blood Manipulation. And Dismantle.
He couldn't ignore it any longer.
The same technique as the King of Curses, the strongest sorcerer in history—Ryomen Sukuna.
The thought took firm root in his mind.
But what was even more horrifying was that the Yuji before his eyes didn't just seem equal to those records—he seemed to have already surpassed them.
Riko stared into the barrier, unable to say a word.
Satoru was covered in wounds, and Yuji's face was far too calm. That discrepancy made her heart tighten painfully.
The person who, just moments ago, had patted her head and told her to go with them to see the beautiful world now felt so far away.
Kuroi stood silently near Riko's shoulder. She knew that no matter what words she said now, they would be useless.
Inside the barrier.
Gojo slowly raised both hands. In that instant, the texture of his Cursed Energy shifted.
Yuji noticed immediately.
He could feel a power swelling violently—the polar opposite of Blue's cold, sharp attraction.
A push. The inversion of a pull.
It was a direction of pressure that expanded and tore space apart instead of collapsing it. However, it was not yet perfect.
The control of Cursed Energy was crude, and the connection was unstable.
He was touching the positive polarity, but he hadn't fully grasped it.
He didn't know the concept of Reverse Cursed Technique through theory, nor had he codified it as his own.
It was merely the result of his desperate refusal to die, his craving to reach higher, and the nonsensical, innate talent of the human known as Gojo Satoru biting off a piece of the truth in a single instant.
The prototype of Red.
Gojo couldn't consciously explain it. But his instincts knew.
He knew that right now, pulling alone wasn't enough.
To defeat that monster—to win against that existence... he had to devise more and more means.
He had to push.
Everything, head-on.
Gojo curled his lips upward.
"Alright."
His right hand moved forward.
A crimson light converged into a single point, then exploded outward in the next second.
"...Go."
A power without a complete name—yet clearly standing on the opposite side of Blue.
The crimson flash pushed through the entire barrier field.
Fff-shaaaaa!
"Cursed Technique Reversal: Red."
BOOM—!!
The air inside the barrier was shoveled aside en masse. It wasn't just a shockwave.
It was a catastrophe of repulsive force where space itself expanded for a heartbeat, frantically pushing everything within it away. The stone pillars embedded in the ground soared into the air, and the debris from the collapsed walls was swept toward the forest. The ground in the center gave way and flipped, and the remaining upper layers of the barrier shuddered and cracked violently.
Riko's eyes widened.
"That...!"
Kuroi gasped. Geto narrowed his eyes.
'Reversal... no, not quite yet.'
It wasn't the completed form of Cursed Technique Reversal. But he had clearly touched the path.
Driven to the brink of death, Satoru had instinctively torn off the concept of Reversal.
However, in the very next moment, everyone's expressions froze simultaneously.
Yuji hadn't moved.
Not a single step.
There was no sign of him trying to evade.
And what was even more nonsensical—his hands were still shoved in his pockets.
Gojo's eyes wavered slightly.
'No way.'
Yuji didn't take his hands out.
He didn't use blood to deflect the trajectory, he didn't twist his body to let the force flow past him, and there wasn't even a motion to prepare something.
With his hands still in his pockets, he simply traced a single black line with his eyes.
A slash.
It was so thin and so silent that rather than saying it flew, it was more accurate to say it simply existed there already.
In the next instant, Red was split down the middle.
The explosion of repulsive force—a fated power Satoru had forcibly wrenched out—was cut in two with hollow, orderly precision.
KRA-BOOOOOM!!
The split pressure of the repulsive force exploded to the left and right. The remaining outer walls collapsed simultaneously, and the trees at the forest's edge were shaken to their roots. The fissures spreading across the floor widened further, and the remaining upper barrier layer was torn wide open.
Yet, the center directly in front—the spot where Yuji stood—was unnervingly calm.
Both hands in his pockets. Having sliced through Red.
Silence bloomed.
The first one to speak was Geto.
"...What?!"
The voice was almost subconscious.
What Satoru had just unleashed wasn't just a 'strong technique.'
It was the manifestation of repulsion, something a genius who had barely touched the concept of Reversal had squeezed out amidst death and desperation. Even if it wasn't the perfect version, the direction of the power was unmistakable.
And he handled it like that? Without even taking his hands out, using nothing but a slash?
Geto's insides went cold.
'Just as I thought.'
Ryomen Sukuna.
That name surfaced again. But at the same time, an even more ominous conclusion solidified.
The Yuji in front of him could not be explained by that name alone. If anything, he was closer to something that surpassed even that name.
Riko looked between Yuji and Gojo, unable even to breathe.
The power Satoru had squeezed out while ready to die had been cleaved in two before this man.
Yuji's face hadn't changed at all.
The difference was cruel.
Gojo let out a low laugh after a long while.
"Ha."
He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of a bloody hand.
"At this point, it wouldn't even be weird for my pride to be totally shattered."
Yuji answered indifferently.
"Are you starting to understand now?"
"Understand what?"
"Where exactly you stand."
The words were so accurate they were infuriating. Gojo grinned, baring bloody teeth.
"Aren't we full of ourselves!"
He raised both hands again.
The blue attraction of Cursed Technique Lapse and the incomplete repulsion of Reversal he had just barely bitten off. The two forces twisted simultaneously within the barrier. The floor was lifted and hollowed in various places, and pillar debris rose into the air once more. Summer light poured through the gaps in the torn barrier, only to be distorted by the warped pressure.
The training barrier was truly standing at its final limit.
Gojo spoke.
"I still want to reach it."
With those words, his body surged forward.
He first pushed space away with the incomplete Red, then immediately pulled with Blue. He wrapped Limitless in an extremely thin layer just outside his skin, adjusting only the fine distance for attack, evasion, and the moment of impact.
His martial arts pierced right through the gap. This movement was much more refined than before.
'He grew even in that split second.'
Yuji sincerely thought it was an amazing talent.
So this was the 'strongest' talent granted by the heavens.
However, Yuji was an existence that had gone beyond that strongest talent and transcended the very end of the strongest.
Thus, Gojo could not reach him yet. The strength Yuji possessed, which defied imagination, was a realm of detachment that no one could measure.
He took one step forward.
Crrrk.
The floor cracked again with that single step. The central ground sank, and the edges of the collapsed walls fell away further. Almost nothing remained of the upper barrier layer. The outside sky opened up completely, and the leaves of the forest trembled under the pressure of the battle.
The entire structure couldn't keep up with the increase in his output.
Gojo felt it immediately.
'The output is rising again.'
It had been dangerous enough until now. But from here on, it was on another level.
Yuji very slowly raised his index finger.
He didn't say a word. That was more terrifying.
Gojo immediately stacked the layers of Limitless as finely as possible once more. Blue and Red were still active, and his Six Eyes were calculating every possible path. He had to block. He had to evade. He had to endure.
Yet, before all those judgments, strangely, his intuition kicked in.
This time was different.
The Dismantle Yuji had unleashed until now, no matter how nonsensical, were ultimately closer to a blade held back to avoid killing him.
But not now.
The slash before his eyes now was, for the first time, backed by full power.
In the next moment, there was no sound.
It wasn't the roar of Blue, the burst of Red, or the vibration of a collapsing structure.
There was only the result.
Limitless was cut.
With a hollow, effortless ease.
There was no sense of 'enduring,' 'canceling out,' or 'pushing through.' The very layers of distance protecting his body were severed as if they had never existed.
Gojo tried to dodge.
But before the thought could reach his body, it was already over.
At first, he thought nothing had happened.
His body felt light. His center went hollow. Then, in one corner of his vision, he saw his own left arm flying through the air.
Slightly later, his right leg followed.
Like lumps of meat.
A beat later, blood erupted like a fountain.
"...!"
Gojo couldn't even make a sound. The pain followed after.
It was horrific.
The cut surfaces burned as if seared by fire. Blood soaked the floor madly, and his breath hitched instantly. Limitless, Blue, Red, and even the Six Eyes—none could save his body in the face of this hemorrhage and loss.
He was going to die.
That word approached with clear substance for the first time.
Ah, really.
Is it.
Over here.
In that moment, strangely, memories flashed by.
Words he had heard so naturally since childhood.
The Six Eyes.
Limitless.
The Genius.
The Masterpiece of the Gojo Clan.
The Strongest.
It was always like that. He was born at the top.
No one could stand beside him, and no one could ever fill his field of vision.
So the world was often trivial, often boring, and often light.
In that boredom, Suguru was about the only one he could walk with.
Even so, the highest point was always occupied by him alone.
He believed that was natural.
That being 'The Strongest' meant exactly that.
To shoulder it alone, endure it alone, and stand alone.
But now, it was different.
The man in front of him was ahead of him.
Itadori Yuji.
A human looking down at the battle from somewhere higher, deeper, and more complete than himself.
For the first time—really, for the very first time—Gojo Satoru saw an existence standing ahead of him.
So he knew.
Ah.
I still want to climb up.
I don't want to just protect the name of 'The Strongest.'
I don't want to confirm who is below me.
I just... want to reach that height.
No.
Just reaching it isn't enough.
I want to surpass it.
That back standing there.
That face that acts as if it has already seen the end.
That Absolute Being.
I want to catch up.
I want to exceed him.
I want to be the one who is higher.
I can't die here.
I can't let it end in a place like this.
I've only just seen it.
I've only just, finally, begun to look up at a real ceiling.
As if I'd let it end here—!!
"——!!"
That yearning burned frantically in the depths of his heart.
It wasn't a power directed only outward.
It was like a flame consuming his entire body from the inside.
In that instant, the texture of the Cursed Energy flowing through his body changed completely.
Negative Cursed Energy flipped.
The flow that had been scattering outward for destruction curled inward for restoration. The coordinates of torn blood vessels, severed bones, and ripped flesh became instantly, vividly clear.
Ah, so this was it.
'This was it.'
Reverse Cursed Technique.
Simultaneous with that understanding, Gojo's body erupted in light.
In the center of the barrier covered in blood and dust, a blinding brilliance spread from within him. Instead of blood, light first bloomed from the severed surfaces of his shoulder and leg.
Positive energy connected vessels, realigned bones, and wove together muscle and flesh once more.
As if reigniting himself at the threshold of death.
Riko stopped breathing. Kuroi's eyes went wide. Geto watched the scene in silence.
Satoru's body was coming back to life like light itself.
The severed arm was woven back, the leg was joined, and the wounds closed before their eyes.
Gojo Satoru slowly opened his eyes within the radiance.
And then, he smiled.
With a blood-spattered face, he slowly clenched his newly restored hand.
"Ha."
A breath and a laugh escaped together.
"This feels good."
He lifted his head and looked straight at Yuji.
With blue eyes far clearer and far deeper than before.
And for the first time, he spoke.
"Thanks, Yuji."
Silence.
Riko blinked. Geto likewise shifted his gaze ever so slightly.
It wasn't 'Itadori.'
It wasn't the distance of calling him by his surname, nor was it caution or curiosity toward a suspicious Special Grade.
It was an address from one human looking at that distant height to the one who had staked his life to push him further up.
Yuji paused for a brief moment upon hearing those words.
Then, he gave a short reply.
"I see it worked."
Gojo smiled.
"I guess so."
The corners of Yuji's mouth relaxed just a fraction.
"You've finally managed to reach."
Gojo laughed once more with his bloodied face.
Summer light cast long shadows over the collapsed barrier.
The cicadas were still crying, and the forest outside still trembled its leaves from the impact the two had made.
In the midst of it all, Gojo Satoru stood in a place clearly different from before.
Beyond the end of death.
At last.