Was there really… no solution?
"...Right. If they really did use Spirit Descent to drag down the Ten Shadows Technique User, then we'd have no choice but to face Mahoraga..."
In fact, Mahiru and Satoru Gojo had discussed this very problem a few days earlier.
And back then, the solution Mahiru had arrived at was—
"Satoru Gojo, you're the only one who can take Mahoraga down."
There was no other way besides that.
"The worst-case scenario is Sukuna learning the Ten Shadows and subduing Mahoraga... but that's unlikely. Because the Angel's Technique would wipe out Spirit Descent."
Back then, Mahiru had stroked her chin as she analyzed, "If it's uncontrollable, Sukuna won't be able to cooperate with Mahoraga. Without Sukuna's protection, your attacks can easily destroy it."
But what if they couldn't?
Then they'd have to admit that catastrophe was upon them.
"There's one idea—having Fushiguro summon Mahoraga first. With one Mahoraga already in existence, summoning a second would cost a hundred times, or even a thousand times, the price."
But it was useless.
If Fushiguro could withstand a beating from Mahoraga, she'd have subdued it long ago.
"Or else, we dig up the Zenin estate's graves once more and use those Spirit Descent materials ahead of time."
But that was useless too.
When they later went to dig, people found the graves already picked completely clean.
Mahoraga was a nuclear bomb—one that could only be handed to Satoru Gojo to deal with. Everyone else could at most carry out some routine supporting countermeasures, like prioritizing the kill upon spotting a Ten Shadows Technique User, or, when facing the likes of Mahiru, prioritizing capturing Kenjaku...
Compared to Sukuna, Mahoraga wasn't originally the biggest problem.
But no one could ever have imagined the battle would develop to its present extent.
Satoru Gojo and Sukuna had grappled to their limits, and Kenjaku, in a dying counterattack, had actually dragged the entire city's population into the range of the Exorcism Ritual.
The white magic circles in the sky clustered together into an altar, and the bizarre yet holy white Divergent Sila Divine General broke free from its cocoon.
A majestic, overwhelming pressure blanketed the whole city.
"That's..." Itadori stood on the ground, gazing up, sweat breaking out across his back.
"So it really is..." Fushiguro saw it too from far away, standing on a deserted street, her eyes trembling.
At this moment, Fushiguro was roughly four or five kilometers from the main battlefield.
A few hundred meters behind her was a shelter where ordinary civilians had gathered. She was standing guard here, protecting these people.
And precisely because she was so far away, the spot where Mahoraga appeared was, to her, no more than a speck at the edge of the sky. She watched from afar as those magic circles gradually dissipated, leaving only a white, tiny figure hanging alone high in the air.
So far away, so small...
Yet as Fushiguro gazed at it, she only felt her legs go weak in waves.
That... was Mahoraga?
The very Mahoraga that even she herself had never once had the chance to summon?
From that distance, it was as if she and that white object had locked eyes for an instant.
The next second, an utter chill surged abruptly up her spine, and a thick premonition of death nearly suffocated her.
She desperately mobilized her Cursed Energy, forming hand signs at lightning speed, and screamed hoarsely, "Darting Hare——!!"
Countless rabbits burst forth at her call, trying to erect a defense before her.
But Fushiguro was too weak.
How could that meager defense of hers block the world-shattering blow that was about to come?
In the distant sky, that horizontally suspended white object vanished in a flash, and right on its heels came a hurricane that suddenly whipped up between the buildings of the city. A white meteor came hurtling straight down at breakneck speed, its target none other than Fushiguro and the countless residents in the building behind her.
Before Fushiguro could even summon more than a few rabbits, that white meteor had already come crashing down before her with a roar.
BOOM!!——
Immense force poured out; flames bloomed.
The shockwave stirred up by the Cursed Energy and the explosion sent the girl flying entirely off her feet. She slammed hard onto the ground, tumbling several times over, feeling as if all her internal organs were in agony.
She struggled to prop herself up, only to discover that someone else was, in fact, still shielding the space before her.
A head of long red hair fluttered in the air currents that had yet to settle.
Jogo, in magical-girl form, stood blocking the way before her, flames wreathing her entire body, poised in the most vigilant of combat stances.
"You..." Fushiguro's lips quivered.
It had been Jogo who saved her just now, and who had also saved those ordinary residents not far off.
Mahoraga's trajectory had clearly been aimed straight at the shelter. It was Jogo who had turned into a crimson meteor, caught up to Mahoraga in midair, and forcibly halted it, thereby sparing this shelter from a catastrophic annihilation.
But in doing so, Jogo had also paid a grievous price.
Fushiguro's gaze moved downward, and her pupils contracted.
She realized that Jogo's left arm, along with her entire left shoulder, had vanished, and blood was gushing out from that ghastly stump.
Jogo, blocking the way in front of Fushiguro, gritted her teeth, glaring fixedly at that white humanoid Shikigami slowly rising from the crater not far off, her expression uncertain and alarmed.
"Your body..." Fushiguro began.
"Shut up!" Jogo shouted sharply, her expression still strained to the utmost. "And then run, now!"
This Mahoraga's power far exceeded her imagination.
From her birth until now, this was the first time Jogo had ever felt such a near-certain-death pressure from any being other than Satoru Gojo.
Mahoraga was slowly rising from the rubble. In that attack just now, in order to halt Mahoraga, Jogo had had no choice but to hold nothing back, pouring every last bit of her Cursed Energy and Technique into slamming it. Yet now Mahoraga was standing up...
In such a short span of time, every single burn on Mahoraga's body had already fully healed itself.
She, on the other hand... her arm and shoulder had been utterly extinguished in an instant by something, and now the searing pain was sweeping over her in waves along her nerves.
The girl's face was pale.
Her gaze fell upon the arm-blade bound to Mahoraga's right arm.
That weapon, named the Sword of Extermination, harbored a "Positive Energy" utterly different from ordinary Cursed Energy—this Positive Energy was the natural bane of Cursed Spirits.
Whether it was her or Mahiru, the moment either was touched by even a trace of Positive Energy, they would be utterly extinguished in the blink of an eye.
Just like Jogo now.
Mahoraga hadn't even counterattacked just now; Jogo had merely approached that sword herself and been wounded like this—if Mahoraga truly launched an attack against her with the Sword of Extermination, she would be reduced to ashes within a single breath.
Damn it.
Jogo was beginning to regret her decision to come and save people.
A natural predator as powerful as Mahoraga was simply not something Jogo could handle... She'd come to help fight Kenjaku only to help Mahiru; whether ordinary people lived or died had nothing to do with her at all...
But perhaps because she'd saved so many people in earthquake disaster zones, she'd rushed to the rescue just now on pure reflex.
How utterly stupid...
A drop of sweat slid down Jogo's cheek.
Not far off, Mahoraga had already straightened up, revealing a savage, unrestrained grin. It raised high that right hand bound with the Sword of Extermination, and a massive volume of Positive Energy and Cursed Energy began to surge across its body.
It was about to strike again.
Its aim was still Fushiguro and Jogo, along with the shelter behind them that housed a thousand—nearly ten thousand—people.
Jogo gripped her magic wand tight, flames rising, her breathing ragged to the extreme.
Mahoraga's core Technique was "Adaptation"—it could adapt to an opponent's attacks, defenses, and even to their very existence. If Jogo wanted to kill it, she would have to strike it dead in one blow with her Ultimate Form before it fully adapted to her Technique.
But her Ultimate Form had an enormous wind-up.
She simply could not block Mahoraga's next strike.
She could dodge it... —but the moment she dodged, the shelter behind her would be blasted into ashes.
Damn it...! Was there really no way out?!
Jogo's heart was anxious to the utmost, and she even felt the despair of having nowhere left to turn.
And high above, Sukuna was likewise mocking Satoru Gojo: "Now then, you should be out of options, shouldn't you!"
To any Jujutsu Sorcerer other than Satoru Gojo, Mahoraga was an existence akin to a dimensional-reduction strike.
It was, without a doubt, a natural calamity.
"Of course, you could choose to sacrifice everyone and watch them die," Sukuna said with a smile. "After all, it's only a single city's worth of people."
Yes—once Mahoraga finished slaughtering a city's population, it would stop... Satoru Gojo, what will you do?
Sukuna suddenly grew immensely interested in what choice the man before him would make. He found the struggling look on the man's face genuinely amusing.
You'll definitely choose to take out Mahoraga, to save your students, right?
Because people like you are just that foolish. If you truly could harden your heart against those around you, then Kenjaku would never have gotten hold of Suguru Geto's corpse, and things would never have had the chance to develop to this point at all.
Sukuna and Satoru Gojo locked eyes.
Countless waverings and hesitations did indeed flicker through Satoru Gojo's eyes.
The Black Hole and the Singularity drew closer to each other, and the time left for him to make his decision grew ever shorter.
But to Sukuna's astonishment, Satoru Gojo's gaze actually turned resolute once more.
Satoru Gojo actually smiled.
——BOOM!
The gravity of that black mass behind Sukuna abruptly surged.
Sukuna's eyes went wide with shock. "You... you actually chose..."
Satoru Gojo's choice at this moment was already self-evident!
But... why would this guy choose this way?!
Satoru Gojo always acted flamboyantly, without concealment. Kenjaku had long since secretly worked up a personality profile of Satoru Gojo—although this guy had grown cold-natured after maturing, and had seen the fickleness of the world, no matter what, he could absolutely never watch his own students die before his very eyes.
So long as he was Satoru Gojo, he would not make that choice.
So, by all rights, faced with the choice before him, Satoru Gojo would, at this moment, one hundred percent give up on taking out Sukuna and instead fight for a sliver of a chance for his students to live.
But why... why...
Why didn't you choose that way!
Do you actually want to watch all of Tokyo's citizens, along with all your students and colleagues, be killed together?!
Sukuna gnashed his teeth, unable to comprehend it!
And as the Black Hole's gravity expanded, the hand with which Satoru Gojo gripped Sukuna's arm clenched even harder.
Brilliant light shone within the man's sapphire-like Six Eyes.
He spoke, and was even smiling, as though mocking the absurdity of Sukuna and Kenjaku's plan.
"You two really did make thorough preparations for me—but the premise of this whole thing is wrong!" the white-haired man said with a broad grin. "So this time, it's you who's lost!"
The Mahoraga beside the shelter was just about to unleash a new strike when it seemed to abruptly sense something, and whipped its body around, lifting its head to look up.
Seeing that smile of Satoru Gojo's clearly, an ominous premonition rose in Sukuna's heart, and he abruptly gritted his teeth and began frantically repairing his Technique Burnout.
Did Satoru Gojo have some means of reversing the situation?
He didn't, actually.
He and Sukuna had fought to this point, each having driven a sword into the other's heart... At this juncture, all they could do was wound each other in mutual destruction.
For Satoru Gojo to take out Mahoraga on top of this was utterly impossible.
But.
His saying that [this moment is not a hopeless dead end] was also true.
He still remembered, a few days earlier, when he had raised with Mahiru the scenario in which "he would be unable to act to destroy Mahoraga," the girl's answer had been—
"Uh... uhh... Let me tell you upfront, that Mahoraga thing—I absolutely, completely don't want to fight it, and I couldn't win anyway. That damned Sword of Extermination of its—one touch and I'm done for. If it really came to a fight, I'd definitely turn tail and run..."
"Huh? ...What are you talking about? What do you mean, answer you seriously? Haven't I already given you my answer? —[If I really had to fight Mahoraga, I'm basically a dead end]. It's not like you don't know how monstrous that Mahoraga thing is..." "Sigh..."
"Still, if that kind of situation really does happen... then you'd best just focus on your fight with Sukuna..."
"[Mahoraga—leave it to me]."
On the ground, Mahoraga twisted around and raised its head.
And behind it, in the sky above it, the blue-haired girl clenched her teeth and gave a hard yank with both hands through the empty air. That Black Hole Singularity, within which Yuki Tsukumo slumbered, was actually dragged and pulled by Mahiru, plunging down from the heavens to slam ferociously onto the crown of Mahoraga's head.
Mahoraga let out a roar, its Cursed Energy violently resisting the Black Hole; the ground beneath its feet instantly collapsed, and the buildings all around trembled.
And in the midst of this, Mahoraga's Cursed Energy—laced with Positive Energy—overflowed from the Black Hole and, like a raging torrent, scoured fiercely over the blue-haired girl, instantly extinguishing half of her body.
Pain, danger, her body's alarms madly flooded the girl's mind—yet she did not slacken in the slightest. Instead, she kept running her Anti-Gravity Technique, pressing that Black Hole Singularity, bit by bit, tighter and tighter down onto Mahoraga.
"Gojo!!" Mahiru shouted at the top of her voice. "Just go!!——"
Hearing the girl's cry, the smile on Satoru Gojo's face instead grew relaxed.
The Cursed Energy across his body magnified to its utmost one final time.
The Black Hole's gravity likewise grew to its utmost.
The next moment, the Prison Realm that had locked onto Satoru Gojo also finished its loading completely, activating fully; the gate of the barrier swung open with a roar and swallowed him whole.
At the same time, Sukuna, who had only just learned to repair Technique Burnout, hurriedly blasted a tiny sliver of holy light toward the Black Hole behind him—but that Black Hole had long since crept up behind him, swallowing his body together with that streak of Jacob's Ladder light.
"Damn it!" Sukuna gnashed his teeth. "Satoru Gojo, you bastard! You blue-haired Cursed Spirit, you bastard!!——"
Jacob's Ladder's light struck against the Black Hole's imaginary mass, loosening for a single instant that all-crushing gravity. But the storm of time stirred up by the immense gravity had long since bound Sukuna fast, leaving him no way to escape.
In the final moment before being pulled into the Black Hole Singularity, Sukuna saw Satoru Gojo being completely sealed by the Prison Realm.
In the instant that gate of space finally closed, he read in Satoru Gojo's eyes... relief, guilt, and... a kind of firm conviction.
"Hm?"
A few days earlier, on the rooftop.
Hearing the girl's answer, Satoru Gojo stroked his chin. "Leave it to you? Didn't you say that fighting Mahoraga would [definitely get you killed]?"
"Yeah, ninety-nine percent odds, I'd say... If I fight Mahoraga, I [will definitely die]." The blue-haired girl let out a soft sigh, sitting at the edge of the rooftop, chin propped in her hand, gazing at the sunset in the distance.
Swinging her legs a little.
——"But still... if Mahoraga fights me, [it might not survive either]."
I'm sorry. Mahiru...
Watching Sukuna be swallowed by the Black Hole, Satoru Gojo slowly closed his eyes just as that gate of space of the Prison Realm drew shut.
This time, I bungled things a bit.
All hope is now placed upon you.
I hope we can meet again...
BOOM!!——
The ground caved in; Cursed Energy raged.
Mahiru dropped to the ground, her face pale, gasping in great heaving breaths.
Mahoraga...
Tch——
The girl gritted her teeth. "All of you, from here on out, follow my orders!"
She had said it.
[She would die, ninety-nine percent].
But [Mahoraga might not survive].
Perhaps these two "deductions" were somewhat subjective, somewhat irresponsible—but there was a third "deduction," one that Mahiru had not told Satoru Gojo, yet one that Satoru Gojo absolutely understood as well, and that deduction was absolutely never wrong.
"[I will not let a single one of you die]." Mahiru wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, glaring at the Mahoraga slowly rising amid the smoke and dust, her gaze blazing like a torch. "——[Absolutely not]."
____
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