Walking through Jujutsu High this time, Soujun felt a realness to it. No longer was it just disjointed memories, scenes and fragments pieced together into a story.
This was a world that truly existed.
It gave him a strange dull sensation, as if time and space were tangled, two-dimensional and three-dimensional layers colliding.
So many things felt both familiar and false, leaving him vaguely unsettled.
In the end, it didn't matter which side he was on, or how many dimensions there were. He didn't feel attached to this world, nor to the one before.
The world is too big.
And maybe there are too many worlds.
Thinking about it only added pointless worries.
He let go of the noise in his head.
His soul grew lighter, as though dust had been brushed away.
Finally, full integration.
Back in his room, Soujun powered up the computer.
At almost the same moment, a message came in from Mishima Utako with a link.
He clicked it, logged in with his starter credentials, followed the familiar steps, and reached the main page.
It looked like a forum, with all kinds of boards.
A task board for commissions, a trade board, an information board, even a friends list and team-up system.
Sorcerers chatted freely there, starting threads that drew in debate before inevitably veering off track.
Soujun skimmed through.
A recruitment post caught his eye:
"Grade 1 curse-clearing mission, missing two members. Recruiting a strong and beautiful sister type. Guys are fine too. No ugly freaks allowed!"
Replies stacked up instantly.
"What's your rank, to be dissing ugly freaks?"
"You're the ugly freak."
"Didn't you say two missing? Why recruiting just one?"
"There's a straight-shooter here."
"Means a Grade 1 is missing a Grade 2."
"Answer the question, what's your rank? Dissing ugly freaks?"
"…."
Then pages of "Boss, please carry me."
Chaos.
Watching the nonsense unfold, Soujun felt memories surge.
This was it. The familiar internet atmosphere.
Modern sorcerers were no different from modern netizens.
Among the trash posts, there were serious ones: curse intel,式神 trades, buy-and-sell requests. Those seemed normal.
Space-type curses always drew high prices, sparking vicious brawls online.
Storage space was a dream for everyone. Soujun wanted it too.
Jujutsu High neither banned nor endorsed these deals. As long as rules weren't broken, bounty sorcerers had tremendous freedom.
Soujun recalled Mishima's warning: when registering, use a codename separate from your real name.
At first he was puzzled, but now it was obvious. Who would use their real name as a handle? That was just asking to get exposed.
He began the registration.
For the name, he first considered something simple, like "Handsome Lad." Or bold, like "Number One." Or ridiculous, like "War God" or "Muscle King."
But once he realized the system tied into real ID and bank accounts, he abandoned the idea. Unless he avoided the online mission system altogether, which made no sense.
After several retries due to duplicates, he succeeded.
Codename: Sect Master. Lv. 1.
Looking at the fresh new account, Soujun felt a strange sense of achievement.
Level would rise with completed missions, total trades, and activity, following a fixed algorithm.
That done, he sent Mishima a friend request.
Her codename, sent with the link earlier, was "Little Delinquent Girl."
Heh.
Mishima Utako now felt awkward.
After graduating, she'd become an aide. Back then, young and naïve, she'd picked an embarrassingly childish codename. Later she couldn't change it. It was tied to her ID.
Unless she paid for it.
Weighing shame against money, she chose the latter. As long as she didn't feel embarrassed, then the embarrassment belonged to others.
Few people knew both her real identity and codename anyway. Years of practice had toughened her skin.
Still, she was pleased with this new partner. First impressions had been good. After brief interaction, she found him easy to work with—polite, even-tempered, not domineering. A pleasant man to be around.
Only… his eyes. Something strange there.
She had noticed the faint peculiarity—double pupils.
That was Soujun's second modification.
After completing the eagle-eye experiment and stabilizing it, he had begun his next project: modeling on the compound eyes of a fly.
A fly's compound eyes are made of more than four thousand ommatidia, each capable of independent imaging. Arranged in a honeycomb, they gave nearly 350-degree vision.
Flies could see ultraviolet light, react to rapid motion, and their eye structure offered much to copy.
Modern tech had already mimicked this, creating "fly-eye lenses" with hundreds of small lenses, each capturing its own image. This led to aerial cameras that could snap thousands of high-res photos in one shot.
Other applications included anti-reflective coatings for solar cells, improving absorption, and bionic 3D camera systems with multi-angle vision.
Soujun's fly-eye mimicry worked the same way.
Normally, the iris is colored, with a black pupil at the center.
Now his iris carried two pupils, one large and one small. In truth, it wasn't two pupils, but two eyes nested together. The smaller embedded in the larger, their irises overlapping, giving the illusion of a double pupil.
With these, a single glance gave him dual imaging across 180 degrees. He could pick up subtle movements, react faster, track speed more precisely.
And this was just the beginning. With the rule of arrangement established, he could add more—three pupils, ten, a hundred.
The number of eyes would only keep growing.
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