Subaru didn't even notice he was moving. He was mid-sprint, lunging for Regulus with a throat-tearing roar.
"Subaru, wait!"
Wilhelm's voice cracked with desperation as he stretched out, his fingertips catching only empty air.
Regulus didn't move, nor did he flinch. He just stood there with that faint, bored smirk as Subaru's curse-infused fist swung with enough force to break stone.
The blow landed true, yet it did absolutely nothing to move the Archbishop.
Yet, Subaru didn't stop. He let out a primal yell, releasing a furious barrage of strikes. Knuckles, elbows, palms—every blow hissed through the air, only to fall against the emptiness surrounding the Archbishop.
"Honestly, it's exhausting..."
Regulus sighed, glancing at his fingernails.
"If I weren't such a remarkably patient soul, I would have ended you both the moment you stepped into my sight. But look at you——swinging your fists like a mad dog. Do you have no respect for my personal space? My right to be left unharmed? It's an intrusion on my entire existence."
"Shut your mouth!" Subaru shouted, his vision tunneling into a scarlet haze of wrath. "Just shut up and die!"
Regulus's eyes glinted with a chilly, keen enjoyment.
"You truly believe that shouting and flailing will change the natural order of things? How utterly self-centered. To think your 'will' counts more than my right to tranquility... it's absolutely disgusting."
Regulus lifted a hand, his fingers poised like a conductor prepared to start a symphony.
Subaru's instincts shouted at him to move, his muscles stiffening up in expectation of a hit. Suddenly, the air itself seemed to move. An invisible pressure smashed into Subaru's chest, sending him back several meters until his heels bit into the soil.
"You are nothing but noise, a fleeting disturbance in a world that owes me everything. You cannot touch what refuses to be touched."
Wilhelm moved in front of Subaru, his blade poised at Regulus's throat, albeit the old man's eyes were hard with a rare touch of sweat.
"Subaru, get back! This is not a man we can fight!"
"No——!"
Subaru heaved himself upright, his hands crackling with a jagged, unstable purple glow.
"This bastard killed Gojo-sensei! I don't care what he is——I'll break through it. I'll break him!"
He lunged forward again, his movements urgent and savage. Every stroke was an eruption of raw, cursed force, a frantic attempt to locate a single fracture in the Archbishop's perfection.
Regulus let out a brief, hollow laugh that resonated unpleasantly through the trees.
"By all means, keep trying..." Regulus scoffed. "Exhaust yourself. Break your bones against me. Eventually, even a fool like you has to know that your finest amounts to absolutely nothing."
—————————————
The wife, came forward, her hand quivering as she clutched the dagger. Her eyes were vacant, locked on the sobbing, orange-haired girl at her feet.
"...I'm sorry," the woman muttered, her voice weak. "We can't stand against that man. He's absolute. He's invincible. To resist him is to invite a death worse than this."
Petra's muted moans filled the sluggish air——until a harsh, abrupt sound disturbed the silence.
"Ahhh... I've done it! I've done it! I've really, really done it!!"
Every head snapped toward the source. Disbelief swept across the features of the women who had just watched a guy get shredded into a bloodied husk. He should have been a corpse. He should have been meal for the crows.
But there he was.
Satoru Gojo stood tall, his garments ripped and bathed in crimson, but his physique pristine. He was beaming with the wild, frenetic intensity of a guy who had just looked into the eye of God and didn't blink.
"Reverse Cursed Technique... so this is the core of Jujutsu!" He screamed.
He threw his arms wide, a frenzied laugh bursting from his throat——
"Gyahaha... ahahahahaha! HAH! HAHAHAHAA!!"
The wife froze, her dagger wavering. Before she could even draw a breath, Gojo was there. The crusted blood on his pale face made him look like a spiteful ghost returning from the transition.
His hand crashed upon her shoulder and the laughing vanished abruptly, replaced by a hard, predatory intensity.
"You're one of Regulus's 'wives,' aren't you?" Gojo's voice was low, quivering with a scary intensity. "You know how he does it. You know his trick."
The woman shuddered, her knees weakening beneath the sheer pressure of his presence. Gojo's eyes had turned into pearlescent holes of utter dread.
"Tell me," he leaned in, his darkness taking her whole. "Or I'll kill every last one of you."
It was a bluff, of course. Even in this condition of ecstasy, Satoru Gojo wasn't a monster. But in that moment, looking into those eyes that saw everything and felt nothing, the woman couldn't tell the difference.
———————————————
Wilhelm watched in a tense, heavy quiet, his knuckles white against the hilt of his sword. His indignation mirrored Subaru's—a cold, biting outrage at the news of Gojo's death—but decades of carnage had taught the Sword Demon one thing: control.
He could sense it; any offense against this Sin Archbishop was today irrelevant.
Subaru's breath came in jagged, frantic gasps. His jaws were locked shut as every frenzied stroke struck nothing but empty air.
"Damn you, damn you, damn you!" He spat, his muscles screaming as he pounded into the nothingness.
"It's like trying to teach a Witchbeast etiquette. You simply lack the potential to learn."
Regulus's scornful voice ripped through the air. He reached out slowly——a casual movement, yet it was one that gave Subaru the familiar sensation of death.
Subaru's eyes expanded. His cursed energy blazed, a searing, jagged purple light as he thrust himself backward to create space.
Then——
The earth where he had stood a nanosecond previously was immediately eviscerated. A precise circular gouge was obliterated by Regulus's sweep, the ensuing shockwave racing toward Subaru like a tangible wall.
I'm going to die... but it's better this way… in the following loop, I'll save Gojo——
Before the destruction could devour him, something grabbed Subaru. An invisible force drew him out of the line of the blast. In a blink, the surroundings blurred and he was gone. The woodland groaned as the wind blasted through the vacuum where Subaru had recently been.
"What...?"
Subaru's voice was a faint murmur, drowned in the settling dust.
His eyes sprang wide, heart beating against his ribs. The wind howled in his ears, spinning leaves and grit around him like the breath of a storm. He hardly had time to grasp the weightlessness before a set of firm, unyielding arms caught him.
"Got you..."
It was Gojo. His voice was lower, rougher, but infused with that unmistakable, cocky edge.
His white hair was a jumble, and his eyes—usually so calm—were flashing with a frantic, electric brightness.
"You... How... how are you alive...!!?"
Regulus's voice cracked. The mask of arrogant detachment eventually cracked. His lips quiver, his perfect serenity dissolving into a mix of real shock and soaring wrath.
"How dare you?! By what right do you stand there?!"
Gojo tilted his head back. His lips broke into a wide, jagged grin.
"Keh... gyahahaha——AHA!!"
He erupted into laughter. It wasn't the sophisticated, playful chuckle of the Strongest Sorcerer. It was unfiltered, unhinged, even.
"S-Sensei...?"
Subaru's voice was cautious. There was something profoundly odd about the man holding him.
Gojo moved slightly, just enough for Subaru to see the crusted crimson staining his pale skin, his brilliant blue eyes peeping through the darkness of his hair.
"Oh... let me tell you, then!"
His voice fell, trembling with a terrible, suppressed force.
"I had... an EPIPHANY!"
He raised his palm and clinched it into a fist, a light, clear glimmer of electricity swirling around his knuckles.
"Reverse Cursed Technique, baby! Took every ounce of focus I had left, but... I DID IT!"
He leaned forward, his grin growing even wider.
"Turns out, DYING is a great way to learn a new trick!!"
Regulus scoffed, his face twisting with genuine disgust. "You've gone nuts. Your brush with death has reduced you to talking nonsense. You should've stayed dead. I——"
Too slow.
Gojo disappeared.
There was no sound of footsteps, simply the rhythmic smack of displaced air, like heavy rain hitting the pavement. The world dissolved into a mess of hues.
In a single heartbeat, Gojo had closed the gap, his arrival anticipated by a wall of pressure that made the very earth groan.
His fist blazed with a mighty surge of cursed energy.
A torrent of dust and pulverized stone burst skyward. The impact was seismic, a shockwave that flattened the surrounding treeline in a perfect, expanding ring. Regulus was sent tumbling, his heels digging a trench into the terrain as if he'd been struck by a falling star.
And still, he ascended. Slowly. Dusting off his white lapel, his outfit remained stubbornly pristine.
"You bastard! Your very existence is a violation of my rights! You dare breach my sanctity—my personal space—with those dirty, aggressive fists of yours?!"
Gojo just tilted his head, that manic, wide-eyed grin etched onto his face.
Regulus relocated. No warning, no wind-up. Just blinding, lethal action.
Gojo's pupils shrank.
He's fast...
Faster than anyone he'd encountered in this world, save perhaps a certain red-haired saint.
Regulus flipped his wrist, and the air itself changed into a blade. The dust from their encounter immediately froze in place, forming a vertical line of perfect stillness. It wasn't a real object——it was a wave of erasure.
Gojo blurred backward, slipping between layers of reality. To Subaru, it looked like a flickering afterimage. Trees broke like glass as Gojo dodged and spun, zigzagging through the forest like a living rocket.
Then, his heel drove into the soil, sending fractures shooting outward.
He suddenly hurled himself into the air as his instincts yelled.
The woodland beneath him abruptly explosed. A clear, gaping expanse of nothingness was left in the aftermath of Regulus's authority. From the skies, Gojo glanced down, and the world went blue.
Gravity obeyed his instruction. Blue pushed at his frame, turning him into a human missile that fell right toward the Archbishop.
Gojo's fist collided with the space Regulus occupied.
A ripple of negated force tried to stop him——it was like punching the skin of the world itself.
But momentum met immovable will, and the ground imploded.
Chunks of debris meters broad were blasted into the sky as the surrounding forest rose, gravity inverting for a fraction of a second.
Gojo rode the turmoil. He utilised the floating debris as stepping stones, each launch sounding like a clap of thunder.
The women said he's invincible...
Gojo thought, his mind rushing quicker than his body.
And it's related to them... but they wouldn't give me the information, maybe out of guilt, or something else.
Mid-air, Gojo stilled himself in an instant before he leveled his fingers like a pistol, aiming at the crater below.
A red glow, aggressive and unpleasant, burned into life.
"——Reversal: Red!"
The tremendous pushing force slammed the earth beneath and reality bent under the pressure, the ground sinking even farther as trees and soil were crushed into a gravitational abyss.
Gojo landed in the hush that followed.
He breathed and looked back at Subaru, who was standing there with his mouth hanging wide, and Wilhelm, whose blade was literally limp in his hand.
Gojo gave them a nonchalant thumbs-up.
"You guys should probably get out of here——"
A series of detonations exploded to the side. Perfect round holes were dug into the dirt as Regulus emerged like a devil, his face unblemished, his eyes seething with a level of wrath that bordered on insanity.
He lunged——straight toward Subaru.
Heh, what a rotten bastard!
Gojo clasped his hands together.
Space collapsed and reassembled. Using the pure control of his Blue, Gojo teleported, seizing Subaru mid-air and dragging him out of the path of impending death.
But Regulus really managed to slow himself down in a haphazard fashion before pivoting to strike.
Gojo raised his arms in a cross-guard. The hit didn't feel like a punch; it felt like he himself no longer existed. There was no sensation of force, merely displacement.
Gojo flew at insane speed that ignored friction.
The mountain rising in the distance, suddenly materialised before him.
He drilled into the solid rock, stone shredding around him, ribs shattering with a dull internal thud. He emerged on the other side into a buried, hollowed-out cavern, skidding on the earth in a cloud of smoke.
"…Tch."
He wiped a dab of blood off his lip. Then, he started to laugh. It started as a low giggle and escalated into something loud, unrestrained, and terrifyingly alive.
"Gyahahaha… is that all you've got?!"
He cracked his neck. The broken bones snapped back into place with a terrible pop, the cuts on his arms sewing shut as the skin knit itself whole again.