"..."
Suzuki stared at Gojo in complete disbelief.
What was this? Was this Gojo's way of proving he was above everyone else? Just because the "Strongest Sorcerer in the World" had completely lost a debate using logic, he immediately decided to settle the dispute with his fists?
Was this guy seriously just an overgrown, overpowered toddler?
Yes. Yes, he was.
But it wasn't just a simple tantrum. Gojo was aggressively flexing his power because, deep down, he knew Suzuki's logic was flawless.
Gojo's grand master plan was to raise a generation of kind, strong students to eventually replace the corrupt Elders. But could that method truly erase the rot in Jujutsu society? No. Even Gojo had to admit that human nature was deeply flawed. When his students grew old and passed their political power down to their descendants, decades of unchecked authority would inevitably breed corruption. The second or third generation would simply morph right back into the very Elders Gojo hated.
Furthermore, Gojo's plan entirely failed to address the core, messed-up reality of their world. He was still perfectly fine supporting a system that forced teenagers to risk their lives fighting terrifying, bloodthirsty monsters for minimum wage. Gojo had grown up isolated in an elite Jujutsu family, so to him, fighting Cursed Spirits was just a normal part of growing up.
No, it's not normal at all, Suzuki thought. It's completely insane.
Because he possessed a modern, civilian perspective, Suzuki saw exactly how brutal the system was. Gojo, despite all his god-like power, was too deeply embedded in the martial traditions to actually fix anything. He was barely any different from the Elders he despised. Unlike Suzuki, who used financial leverage and legal contracts to control his enemies, Gojo only ever had one solution to a problem: to kill it. Gojo's default negotiation tactic with the Elders had always been a thinly veiled threat to murder all of them.
When you really looked at the two of them, who was actually the villain? Was it Gojo, who constantly threatened to physically slaughter his political rivals? Or was it Suzuki, who simply threatened to take his own family's money to a foreign bank and expose the Elders' tax fraud? In the modern world, threatening to murder someone was the ultimate act of cruelty. Threatening to bankrupt someone was just aggressive business.
Yet, Gojo wasn't stupid. He might be acting like a meathead right now, but his instincts were incredibly sharp. He could see that Suzuki was utterly ruthless and perfectly willing to ignore collateral damage to achieve his ambitions.
To understand why Suzuki's threat was so terrifying to the strongest man alive, one had to look at how the hidden Jujutsu society actually functioned behind the scenes. It was a massive shadow economy where the Big Three Families acted as central banks. Running a secret, nationwide war against monsters was astronomically expensive. The Elders constantly burned through vast amounts of flowing cash to pay massive bribes to the Japanese government, the police, and the media to cover up civilian deaths and city-wide property damage. They also had to cover the payroll for thousands of non-combat spotters, cleanup crews, and mercenary sorcerers who only fought for a paycheck, all while funding the incredibly expensive materials required to maintain the invisible barriers that hid sorcery from normal humans.
Because the Zenin Clan possessed the world's largest collection of Special Grade Cursed Tools—which acted as the gold standard for the Jujutsu economy—alongside massive tracts of barrier-protected land, Suzuki effectively held one-third of the entire society's GDP in the palm of his hand.
If the Elders refused to obey him, Suzuki wouldn't throw a temper tantrum like Gojo. He would simply pull the plug on their bank accounts. Using his AI, he could instantly transfer the Zenin Clan's massive cash reserves into untraceable offshore shell companies while quietly auctioning off their priceless Cursed Tools to non-sorcerer billionaires on the dark web. The artifacts would vanish, the cash would disappear, and the Zenin Estate's value would drop to absolute zero.
The devastating ripple effects would destroy the country within a week. Without funding, the mercenary sorcerers would immediately strike, letting Cursed Spirits run wild. Stripped of their hush money, the normal Japanese government would stop looking the other way and actively turn against the Jujutsu Headquarters to arrest them. Worst of all, the sudden influx of real magical artifacts into the global black market would permanently shatter the secrecy the Elders had violently protected for a millennium.
Suzuki's strategy was pure, unadulterated genius. Fighting him didn't mean a physical battle; it meant the Elders would be committing immediate economic suicide.
But this was exactly why Gojo felt a horrifying chill run down his spine. If Suzuki's plan actually went through, the Jujutsu Society would collapse, the country would be ravaged by Cursed Spirits, and tens of thousands of innocent civilians would be slaughtered in the crossfire.
Did Suzuki not realize that?
No. Suzuki absolutely realized it, and he still made the threat anyway. He was perfectly willing to risk tens of thousands of lives just to secure his own absolute authority.
Gojo knew he had to step up. He had to show his physical dominance right here, right now. If he didn't put the fear of god into this kid, absolutely no one on earth would be able to stop Suzuki if he truly decided to become a supervillain.
Yet, as Gojo stretched his arms, preparing to unleash his terrifying power, Suzuki just stared back at him with dead, bored eyes.
In Suzuki's mind, Gojo was as naive and stupid as ever. Outside of throwing a punch, the "Strongest Sorcerer in the World" had absolutely no real solutions.
He was completely useless.
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Suzuki vs Gojo is tomorrow!