Although the subway station itself was now completely empty, a large number of civilians were gathered above it. Faced with the choice between cursed techniques and close-quarters combat, Gojo Satoru decisively chose the latter.
At the same time, Gojo was confident that even without relying on techniques, his raw strength alone was enough to defeat any opponent.
Don't be fooled by the fact that it was "just" punches and kicks—underestimating them would lead to a disastrous outcome.
However, in the face of Gojo's attack, Makima activated her cursed energy. Then, to Gojo's shock, she completely ignored the obstruction of Limitless, reached out, and seized his wrist. The cursed energy condensed in her hand made contact with Gojo's body at that very moment.
In an instant, all of Gojo's offensive power vanished. A crushing sense of weakness engulfed his entire body, and immediately afterward, Makima lifted her leg slightly and kicked him straight away.
The cursed energy system worked like this: it appeared to be a mage-style framework, yet once integrated into it, even someone like Makima—who originally lacked close-combat prowess—would naturally acquire formidable hand-to-hand skills.
Jujutsu Kaisen, indeed living up to its name.
"You went straight through my Infinity and hit my real body… and that sensation where I couldn't exert any strength at all. Can you tell me how you did it?"
Having escaped the influence of Makima's cursed energy and regained his strength, Gojo stood up from the ground. Though his eyes were filled with gravity, his expression remained relaxed as he asked.
"Doing that isn't difficult. You just need to rely on a technique."
Makima did not hesitate to answer.
"My technique is called Domination. It allows me to dominate other beings. You can think of it as something similar to the cursed spirit manipulation once used by the curse user Suguru Geto—but his technique could only control cursed spirits. Mine goes far beyond that. Cursed spirits, humans, or any other form of life—all fall within the scope of my domination."
"As for what you experienced just now, that was the power known as Restraint. It was Restraint that caused your technique and cursed energy to vanish in an instant, plunging you into a weakened state."
Hearing this, Gojo nodded.
"I see. A technique that dominates others, and from it, an extension—Restraint. By using Restraint, you temporarily nullified my technique and cursed energy, leaving me unable to resist for that brief moment."
Makima merely smiled and said nothing.
This was the first time she had applied binding techniques in actual combat. By publicly disclosing information about her abilities, both her power of Domination and the authority of Restraint had received a certain degree of enhancement. At the same time, she had played a subtle trick during the disclosure.
She had indeed revealed the abilities of Domination and Restraint, but through the order of her explanation and a degree of deliberate misdirection, Gojo had clearly come to believe that Restraint was merely a subordinate ability derived from Domination.
With that mistaken understanding, even though Gojo would remain wary of Restraint in the coming fight, he would inevitably devote more attention to Domination—thereby creating more openings for Restraint, which was in fact Makima's true primary combat authority.
Though, given the gap in their strength, such tactics weren't particularly necessary to begin with.
Whoosh—whoosh—whoosh!
Several golden chains shot out from behind Makima, instantly piercing into the ground ahead.
Gojo immediately retreated, narrowly avoiding the attack.
Now that he understood Makima's abilities, Gojo clearly had no intention of engaging her in close combat again. If she seized another opportunity, the outcome next time would not be as simple as being kicked away.
"Cursed Technique Reversal: Red!"
Dark crimson cursed energy gathered in his hand, then blasted forward toward Makima.
This time, Gojo deliberately adjusted the trajectory so that the power of Red would propagate downward as much as possible, minimizing the risk of affecting the civilians above.
Even if it did affect them, he would still have launched the attack regardless. The situation was too dire for him to continue protecting others without restraint. Though he would still try his best to avoid harming civilians, Gojo had no intention of compromising too much.
Ultimately, only by winning could he guarantee the safety of the people above the subway station.
Yet this strike, infused with an enormous amount of cursed energy, was neutralized before it even reached Makima. A golden barrier of cursed energy unfolded in front of her, dissolving the attack without causing so much as a ripple.
Restraint again?
Gojo didn't pause. Several streams of blue cursed energy condensed within the narrow space.
Using the suction of Blue, Gojo moved at extreme speed, dodging the golden chains Makima released while simultaneously attempting to disrupt her movements from a distance with Blue's gravitational pull.
But just like Red earlier, even after the suction force fully activated, Blue's power vanished the moment it touched the golden barrier surrounding Makima's body, unable to move anything at all.
Even when Gojo poured in more cursed energy, causing Blue to grind the ground and walls like a millstone—shattering concrete and steel and hurling debris toward Makima—every fragment lost all inertia the instant it touched the golden barrier, dropping straight to the floor.
"That's one domineering technique… It's practically an absolute defense."
Facing that near-impenetrable golden barrier, Gojo bared his teeth slightly, then raised his hand into a stance.
Since neither Blue nor Red could meaningfully affect Makima, he had only one remaining option.
Hollow Purple was obviously out of the question. If he used that here, at least half the civilians trapped within the barrier would die.
In that case, there was only one choice left.
Domain Expansion.
Fortunately, the subway station was now completely empty. It was unexpected that Makima—despite being a curse—had preemptively erected barriers to clear out all non-combatants, preventing their battle from affecting civilians. But that, in turn, created the perfect conditions for Gojo to deploy his Domain.
"Domain Expansion: Unlimited Void!"
Pitch-black emptiness, like a cosmic singularity, enveloped the two of them. Within the interweaving of light and darkness, vast amounts of meaningless information flooded toward Makima, attempting to force everything inside the Domain—except Gojo himself—into a state of mental paralysis.
Yet Makima seemed prepared. She calmly raised her hands and formed a seal.
In the next instant, a golden world replaced everything, swallowing the surroundings whole.
"Domain Expansion: Restraint Barrier."
That familiar sense of weakness swept over Gojo's body once more. The Domain he had just deployed was suppressed in an instant. The speed was so extreme that the backlash of technique burnout didn't even have time to occur before his Domain, his physical strength, and his cursed energy were all erased under Makima's Domain.
Fortunately, Makima's Domain expansion was incredibly brief—less than a second before she dismissed it herself.
Even when compressed to the extreme using Domain techniques, the Restraint Barrier still had a diameter of five hundred meters, including vertical space.
Even a special-grade sorcerer like Kenjaku would lose consciousness within seconds inside it—let alone ordinary people. To avoid killing all the civilians above in a single activation, Makima suppressed the Domain's output to the lowest possible level and replicated Gojo's own maneuver from the original story—
A 0.2-second Domain Expansion.
However, this led to another problem.
At minimum output, with the Restraint Barrier active for only 0.2 seconds, it seemed insufficient to instantly strip Gojo of all combat capability. And when the Domain vanished, the golden cursed-energy barrier that had been surrounding Makima also disappeared along with it.
Seeing this, Gojo—his strength restored—naturally didn't miss the opportunity.
Blue's suction activated at maximum output. In an instant, Gojo closed the distance to Makima. In his hand, dark crimson cursed energy had already condensed into a fully primed Red.
Facing Gojo's attack, golden cursed energy gathered in Makima's hand, forming a sword. But Gojo didn't care in the slightest.
At this distance, even if Makima wanted to block, she clearly wouldn't make it in time. His attack would strike first and defeat her.
So this battle—
Was his victory.
Under Gojo's confident gaze, Makima behaved exactly as he expected. She didn't have time to draw her sword. She only moved her lips slightly, as if saying something.
But at a moment like this, what meaning could words possibly have?
That single trace of doubt was all that had time to flash through Gojo's mind.
…
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