The jungle was a wall of sound—the incessant chirping of insects, the rustle of unseen things in the undergrowth, the distant cry of exotic birds. But to Ryouta's amplified senses, it was a cacophony that only served to highlight the terrifying, unnatural silence moving through it. The void he was tracking was Toji Fushiguro, a man so utterly devoid of cursed energy that he moved through the world like a bug in its code, a patch of pure nothingness.
Ryouta moved parallel to the road, a ghost in his own right. His Veil of Unbeing was pushed to its absolute limit, convincing the very reality around him that he was not worth noticing. The leaves he brushed past barely rustled, the ground he stepped on barely registered the impact. He was a whisper, a phantom, his silver-gold eyes the only part of him that felt truly real, and they were locked onto the approaching void.
He could perceive the hole in the world's energy field growing larger, closer. The Sorcerer Killer was moving with an inhuman, predatory grace, his pace casual but impossibly fast. He was not rushing. He was a patient hunter, utterly confident in his own superiority. Ryouta felt a cold dread mixed with a surge of adrenaline. He was about to come face-to-face with a legend, a monster from the story he thought he knew.
His target is Riko, Ryouta's mind raced, every thought a cold, hard calculation. He'll try to bypass Satoru and Geto to take her out first. My job isn't to beat him. I can't. Not yet. My job is to be an obstacle. A distraction. An unexpected error in his plan.
He found a vantage point, a low-hanging branch of a banyan tree that overlooked a curve in the road, and waited. He calmed his breathing, forced his pounding heart to slow. He wove his Primordial Flow Weaving into a state of absolute, icy calm. He couldn't afford fear. Fear was a distraction, and against a man like Toji, a single moment of distraction was a death sentence.
The void rounded the corner. And for the first time, Ryouta saw him.
Toji Fushiguro didn't walk like a sorcerer. He moved with the lazy, fluid grace of a wildcat. He was tall, powerfully built, a scar splitting his lip. He wore a simple dark shirt and pants, and slung over his shoulder was a long, writhing cursed spirit that served as his armory. He exuded an aura of supreme, casual confidence. It wasn't the loud arrogance of Satoru; it was the quiet, terrifying certainty of a man who knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was the most dangerous thing in any room he entered.
Toji paused, his head tilting slightly. Even with the Veil of Unbeing, Toji's senses, honed by his Heavenly Restriction to a superhuman degree, had picked up on… something. Not a presence, but an anomaly. A patch of jungle that was too quiet, too still. His eyes, sharp and intelligent, scanned the trees, lingering for a fraction of a second on the spot where Ryouta was hidden.
Ryouta held his breath, his entire being focused on maintaining the concept of his own irrelevance. Toji's gaze passed over him, and he let out a mental breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. The Veil had worked. Toji had sensed an anomaly, but he couldn't pinpoint it. He dismissed it as an oddity of the island's energy and continued on his path towards the beach.
Ryouta knew he had only seconds. He had to intervene before Toji reached the open area where his friends were exposed. He couldn't use a direct attack; that would pinpoint his location. He needed something subtle, something to disrupt and delay.
He focused on the ground in front of Toji. He didn't use a technique. He used a whisper of his Primordial Genesis. He didn't create an earthquake or a barrier. He simply imposed a new, temporary law on a ten-foot stretch of the road. The Law: The coefficient of friction in this space is zero.
Toji, taking his next confident stride, suddenly found his foot on a patch of ground that had become as slick as oiled glass. His superhuman balance was the only thing that kept him from crashing to the ground. He slid, his body twisting in an impossibly agile recovery, but his momentum was broken. He stopped, his eyes narrowing, his casual demeanor vanishing in an instant, replaced by a cold, sharp alertness.
He scanned the area again. No cursed energy. No technique activation. Just a patch of road that had, for a split second, decided to stop obeying the laws of physics.
While Toji was distracted, Ryouta acted again. He used his Primordial Echo Location to perceive the faint, ghostly trail of his own friends' passage from the jet to the beach. He focused on a point halfway between them and Toji, and he unleashed another primordial whisper. This time, he activated his amplified Blue, Primordial Convergence. He didn't create a vortex. He targeted a concept. The Law: In this space, the echoes of the past converge.
The air shimmered. The ghostly afterimages of Satoru, Geto, Shoko, and Riko, which were normally invisible, suddenly solidified, coalescing into a shimmering, life-like illusion of the four of them walking towards the beach. It was a perfect, silent mirage, a recording of a moment that had already happened.
Toji's eyes snapped to the illusion. It had no cursed energy, no life force, but it looked real. His hunter's instinct told him it was a trap, a diversion. He was being played with. A slow, cruel smile spread across his face. This was more interesting than he'd expected.
He ignored the illusion and, with a burst of speed that was a blur even to Ryouta's enhanced senses, he launched himself directly towards the beach.
On the beach, the laughter had died. Satoru, his Limitless buzzing around him, had felt the subtle warp in reality from Ryouta's micro-interventions. "Something's wrong," he said, his voice sharp.
Geto had felt it too. "Ryouta..."
At that moment, a figure exploded from the tree line. It was Toji. He moved with a speed that defied belief, crossing the fifty yards of sand in the blink of an eye. He wasn't aiming for Riko. He was aiming for the biggest threat.
He was aiming for Satoru.
In his hand was a long, thin blade, the Inverted Spear of Heaven, a Special Grade cursed tool capable of nullifying any technique it touched.
"Satoru!" Geto yelled, already summoning a swarm of curses to intercept.
But they were too slow. Toji was a force of nature, a blur of controlled violence. He sidestepped Geto's curses as if they were standing still. He reached Satoru, and with a speed that the Six Eyes could barely track, he thrust the Inverted Spear forward.
Time seemed to slow. Satoru saw the blade coming. His Infinity was active, the space around him infinitely dense. Nothing should have been able to touch him. But the blade of the Inverted Spear didn't slow. It passed through his Infinity as if it were nothing more than mist.
Satoru's eyes widened in shock and disbelief. This was impossible. This broke the fundamental rules of his power.
The blade was an inch from his throat.
And then, it stopped.
Not because Toji stopped it. But because the blade itself, a tool of absolute nullification, had met a concept even more absolute.
Ryouta, appearing seemingly from nowhere, stood beside his brother. He hadn't erected a barrier. He hadn't used a technique. He had his hand wrapped around the blade of the Inverted Spear of Heaven. Where his skin touched the cursed tool, a faint, golden light was shimmering. He was using his Primordial Flow Weaving, not to attack, but to impose his own authority. He was overwriting the tool's law of "nullification" with his own law: "In my grasp, you are nothing but metal."
Toji's eyes, for the first time, showed a flicker of genuine shock. His unstoppable weapon had been stopped. Not by force, not by a counter-technique, but by a quiet, absolute denial from a boy who shouldn't have been able to even perceive him.
"Who the hell are you?" Toji asked, his voice a low, dangerous growl.
"Get Riko out of here. Now," Ryouta said, his voice cold and calm, not looking at his brother, his entire focus on the man in front of him.
Satoru, shaken from his shock, didn't argue. He grabbed Geto. "Protect her!"
Geto, his own face a mask of disbelief, summoned his most powerful curse, Rainbow Dragon, and wrapped it around Riko and Shoko, pulling them back towards the cover of the jungle.
Now it was just the three of them on the beach. Satoru, Ryouta, and Toji.
"My turn," Satoru snarled, a wave of incandescent blue energy, his most powerful Blue yet, erupting from his hand towards Toji.
Toji just smiled. He let go of the Inverted Spear, leaving it in Ryouta's grasp, and in the same fluid motion, drew another weapon from his inventory curse—the Soul Split Katana. With a movement so fast it was almost invisible, he sliced Satoru's Blue in half, the two halves of the attack flying harmlessly past him and exploding into the ocean behind.
"You're fast," Toji complimented, his tone mocking. "But you're sloppy. You telegraph everything."
He blurred, and suddenly he was behind Satoru, the Soul Split Katana aimed at his back. But before the blade could land, a section of the sand beneath Toji's feet erupted upwards, not as an attack, but as if the ground itself had decided to reject him. It was Ryouta, using a subtle pulse of Primordial Convergence to manipulate the environment, throwing Toji's footing off by a fraction of an inch.
It was enough. Satoru spun, firing a point-blank Red. The blast of repulsive force hit Toji square in the chest. A direct hit. But Toji, his body hardened by his Heavenly Restriction, merely slid back a few feet in the sand, a grunt of annoyance escaping his lips. He was completely unharmed.
Satoru's face was a picture of disbelief. His most powerful attacks, the techniques that could level buildings, were being treated as minor annoyances.
"This is impossible," he breathed.
"No," Toji said, his cruel smile returning. "This is what a real fight looks like, little prodigy."
Ryouta watched, his mind a supercomputer of calculations. He's too strong. Too fast. His physical prowess is beyond anything Satoru has ever faced. And his cursed tools counter our techniques perfectly. We can't win a direct fight. Not yet.
He looked at Satoru, who was panting, his arrogance finally stripped away, replaced by a dawning, terrifying realization of his own mortality. He saw the fear in his brother's eyes.
I have to end this. Not by winning. But by escaping.
He dropped the Inverted Spear and clapped his hands together. He focused his will, his cursed energy, his very soul. He was about to break his most important rule. He was about to reveal a power that would change everything.
He began to manifest his Domain. Not the full, universe-creating "Primordial Genesis," but a sliver of its power. He didn't expand it as a barrier. He condensed it.
The air around the three of them grew thick, heavy, charged with an authority that dwarfed even Satoru's Limitless. The colors of the world seemed to desaturate, the sound of the ocean faded into a dull roar.
Toji stopped, his hunter's instincts screaming at him. This was wrong. This wasn't a cursed technique. This felt like the world itself was holding its breath.
Ryouta looked at Toji, his silver-gold eyes glowing with a cold, primordial light. And he spoke a single word, a word that was not a command, but a statement of absolute law.
"Kneel."
It wasn't a suggestion. It wasn't a telepathic push. It was a localized rewriting of reality. In the small bubble of influence he had created, the concept of "standing in his presence" had been temporarily erased.
Toji Fushiguro, the man who had never bowed to anyone, the monster who defied the jujutsu world, suddenly felt an irresistible, impossible force press down on him. His superhuman muscles strained, his bones creaked, but his body betrayed him. His knees buckled, and with a snarl of furious disbelief, he was forced onto one knee in the sand.
The effort cost Ryouta dearly. Blood trickled from his nose, and the world swam before his eyes. He had revealed far, far too much.
He grabbed Satoru's arm. "Run," he choked out, his voice strained.
Satoru, stunned into silence by the impossible sight of the monster kneeling before his brother, didn't hesitate. He wrapped an arm around Ryouta, activated Blue, and pulled them away, back towards the jungle, towards Geto and the others, leaving Toji Fushiguro alone on the beach, kneeling in the sand, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated fury and, for the first time in a very long time, a flicker of something that looked almost like fear.
He had won the first exchange. But he had also just painted a target on his back, and he knew, with chilling certainty, that the Sorcerer Killer would not rest until he had erased the quiet boy who had dared to make him kneel.