Space didn't just tear.
To anyone who's never experienced the Cursed Technique: Blue firsthand, teleportation probably looks like videogame magic-a flash of light, a sharp pop, and suddenly you're somewhere else. In reality, it was something far more mundane.
And about a thousand times more nauseating.
"Blue" creates negative distance. It literally grabs the piece of reality where you're standing and the piece of reality where you want to be, then slams them together with a force that spits in the face of every known law of physics. For a fraction of a second, the entire world around us turned into abstract sludge. Sound vanished, replaced by a shrill, absolute vacuum that nearly burst my eardrums. Colors stretched into long neon streaks, like a photograph taken with absurd exposure, and gravity simply stopped existing.
Then, with a deafening wet smack—as if some giant invisible fist had punched the surface of water -reality spat us back out.
My boots hit wet, cracked asphalt with a dull thud.
We materialized in a dark, unlit alley.
The contrast, after the penthouse's sterile silence and the ramen shop's warm, mouthwatering comfort, hit like a slap across the face.
The smell of nighttime Tokyo slammed into me at once—thick enough to touch. It was a thermonuclear cocktail with too many layers to count: the sharp tang of ozone after recent rain, the heavy damp rot of decaying wooden pallets stacked against the wall, the sweet scent of burnt sugar and overused fryer oil drifting in from the main street, and the acrid bite of exhaust fumes. Barely twenty meters from the sheltering darkness of our alley, beyond its mouth, Harajuku howled in neon madness and a hundred overlapping voices. The crowd buzzed like a kicked-open hive, awash in thousands of blazing signs.
Marin let out a strangled squeak.
Her knees buckled, and she sagged back against the rough, damp brick wall. Slowly, she slid down until she was crouched low, one hand pressed to her pale face.
"Oh God... I'm going to throw myself inside out," she groaned, dragging filthy alley air into her lungs in ragged, whistling gulps. "Gojo-kun... that trick of yours... it's like riding a roller coaster, except the coaster is made out of a washing machine on spin cycle, and you're being shoved through a cocktail straw at the same time!"
I stretched lazily, listening to my spine click back into place with a pleasant series of pops.
My oversized bomber jacket hadn't even wrinkled.
After the clash with the Bureau, the little show of force in front of Toman, and the constant upkeep of Infinity, my mana was boiling under my skin like overheated steam in a sealed boiler, hungry for movement, hungry for release. The spatial jump had only made it worse.
Unlike Marin, who was busy trying not to turn green and die, Ai Hoshino looked like someone had just injected pure, concentrated adrenaline straight into her heart.
Japan's greatest idol stood in a half-crouch, both fists clenched so tightly her knuckles had gone white. Her chest rose and fell heavily beneath her thick jacket. She pushed back her hood, and behind those thick-lensed disguise glasses, her trademark starry eyes shone brighter than any neon sign on the street.
"That... was... amazing!" Ai breathed.
A wide, utterly genuine, completely wild smile bloomed across her face—a smile her fans had never seen. It was the smile of someone who had just looked into the abyss and laughed in its face.
"The way we disappeared! That dragon-tattoo guy's face! He didn't even have time to blink! Satoru-kun, you're incredible! That was a million times better than bungee jumping! Can we do it again?"
I smirked and adjusted the black bucket hat that had slipped sideways on my head.
What an absurd girl.
Most people in her place would've been praying to every god in existence by now, or sobbing in sheer terror like Takemichi. But idols were a special breed. They lived under constant pressure, under the gaze of thousands, and their minds got tempered into something closer to titanium than flesh. For Ai, running from criminal kingpins by violating the laws of physics hadn't felt like a life-threatening emergency.
It had been the greatest thrill ride of her life.
A gulp of freedom.
"One more jump and your friend's going to redecorate these lovely bricks with her recent dinner," I said with a snort, nodding toward Marin, who answered with a weak, offended noise. "Besides, you shouldn't overdo breaking space. It blows the fuse box."
Marin finally found the strength to lift her head.
Her eyes widened as Ai's words actually sank into her brain, which was clearly still lagging somewhere between dimensions.
"The face... of the dragon guy..."
The last traces of color fled her cheeks. She shot to her feet so fast she forgot to be nauseous and grabbed my sleeve with both hands.
"Gojo-kun! D-Do you even understand what you just did?! Do you have any idea whose head you patted like he was some fluffy little Pomeranian?!"
"Someone with very dirty hair and a desperate need for better shampoo?" I suggested philosophically, shoving my hands into my pockets.
"That was Mikey the Invincible! And Draken!" Marin hissed, waving her hands while trying very hard not to yell loud enough for the whole district to hear.
Her panic was absolutely genuine.
"The leaders of the Tokyo Manji Gang! They're the most dangerous, most unhinged gang in Tokyo! They've got entire districts terrified! People cross the street just from seeing their uniforms! And you... you ruffled his hair! The entire criminal underworld is going to come looking for us now! They'll find us even if we hide underground!"
I looked down at her.
In her eyes was the raw, honest fear of an ordinary, decent person facing organized crime.
I understood it.
But from my vantage point, the fear was still funny.
"Marin, calm down." I gently but firmly peeled her fingers off my sleeve. "To you, they might be kings of the streets. To me, they're just some extremely aggressive schoolkids on mopeds. Ants who decided they were gods just because they learned how to click their mandibles loudly."
I shrugged.
"Let them look. If Mikey decides to come after me, I'll be happy to send him back to kindergarten so he can finish learning basic manners."
Ai laughed softly, musically, covering her mouth with one hand.
"You know, Satoru-kun," she said, her eyes glinting behind her glasses, "when I debuted, Director Saito said I had an incredible talent for gathering fans around me. But your talent for collecting deadly enemies breaks every record. The Public Safety Bureau, the Hunter Association, and now even the yakuza. Are you planning to declare war on all of Japan?"
"Only if they insist, Starlight."
I winked at her with the one eye not hidden behind my blindfold. The alley's lighting was poor enough that I could get away with it.
"I'm an exceptionally peaceful man."
My grandiose speech was interrupted by a sound completely unworthy of the Strongest.
A loud, cavernous, rolling growl.
My stomach let out a noise like a whale dying of starvation. The echo even seemed to bounce off the alley walls.
The adrenaline was wearing off.
The mana I'd been burning to keep an S-rank body in shape and bend space to my will was now demanding something crude, simple, and deeply human.
Calories.
Immediately.
As if in solidarity, Marin's stomach let out its own weak whine, and Ai shyly pressed both hands to her waist.
We'd never gotten to eat at the ramen place.
We'd left behind three perfect, steaming, unbelievably delicious bowls of pork ramen that I had, incidentally, paid for with a precious system coupon. Just remembering that rich broth made saliva gather in my mouth.
"I'm hungry," I declared, dismissing all thoughts of gangs and government agencies. "Not just hungry. I'm starving. Absolutely feral. I want something outrageously unhealthy, sweet, greasy, and loaded with carbs."
I looked toward the mouth of the alley.
"And I want it right now."
"There's..." Ai swallowed, staring toward Harajuku's blazing lights with unbearable longing. "There's a really good stand on the main street, literally two minutes from here. They sell crepes. Japanese crepes with whipped cream, fresh strawberries, chocolate syrup, and scoops of ice cream..."
Her voice turned almost mournful.
"I haven't eaten one in three years. Diets and all that... But right now, I'd kill for one."
She took half a step toward the alley entrance, then stopped herself just as quickly.
Her shoulders slumped. Her back curved inward.
The brutal reality of show business—and our current situation—crashed back down on us like a concrete slab.
Step out there? Into that crowd?
I activated the Six Eyes at full power, letting the visual flood stream through me.
The world beyond the alley mouth transformed into an overloaded information highway. I saw thousands of people. Saw the tiny, dim sparks of mana flickering inside them. Saw smartphones in their hands, cameras pointed in every direction. Saw police patrols whose radios buzzed with cheap magical static.
I was a walking, six-foot-three headline.
A white-haired man in a blindfold whose face was currently being broadcast nonstop on every major news channel in the country as a "national threat" and the "White Anomaly." The Bureau's best hounds were already hunting me. And Ai...
Ai was the face of a generation.
Even in that stupid baggy jacket and those fake glasses, her aura gave her away. I could see her mana—star-bright, hypnotic, shimmering like a constellation. Her grace, her posture, the way she carried her head—every inch of her was too recognizable. All it would take was one sharp-eyed stranger, one voice shouting her name, one finger pointing at me, and we'd get torn apart faster than a school of starving piranhas could strip a carcass.
No amount of Infinity would save us from a mob of crazed fans and reporters willing to crawl right up under a force field.
"We need disguises," Marin said, finally steadying herself. The instincts of a cosplayer had fully overpowered the nausea. "Wigs? Colored contacts? Makeup? I've got a whole suitcase of professional-grade cosmetics back at the studio—"
"We don't have time to go to your studio, Marin," I cut in, still scanning the street. "And I'm not putting on some cheap synthetic wig that makes your scalp itch, or caking my face in foundation. We need something better."
Then I tensed.
The Six Eyes caught a group of people approaching.
They weren't moving with the flow of the crowd. They were walking right along the edge of the sidewalk, close to the building wall, heading straight for our alley.
"Back," I said quietly. "Into the shadows."
The girls obeyed instantly, pressing themselves into the deepest black between the trash bins and the brick wall. I stepped in front of them, blocking them with my body.
The footsteps grew louder.
Four teenagers. Loud. Loose. Reeking of cheap cherry vape and sugared alcohol.
"I'm telling you, it was staged!" a tall guy in a leather jacket argued, waving his phone in the air. "There's no way half a park gets erased and someone just vanishes! It's AI footage! The government's just warming us up before some new Hunter guild announcement!"
"Are you stupid, Kenji?" snorted the girl walking beside him, bright pink streaks in her hair. A chibi Ai Hoshino keychain from B-Komachi glittered on her designer bag.
"I saw the livestream myself! That white-haired guy folded a Bureau van like an accordion! He's a real monster!"
The group stopped.
Right across from our alley.
Three meters from me, tops.
One of the boys pulled out a lighter, trying to shield a cigarette from the wind, then stepped toward our darkness to get out of the draft.
Behind me, I heard Marin suck in a sharp breath and hold it.
Ai froze, flattening herself against the wall.
If that guy took even one more step, his eyes would land on my white hair—or worse, he'd recognize his idol from the merch hanging off his friend's bag.
Confrontation was inevitable.
With an inward sigh, I didn't lift my hands or strike any dramatic pose.
I simply thickened the flow of mana circulating around my body.
Cursed Technique: Infinity — Isolation Mode.
The field that usually repelled physical objects instantly restructured itself. The space between me and the teenagers warped. It required needle-fine precision. I made Infinity swallow every sound coming from our side and softly bend the light entering the alley. To the guy with the cigarette, the darkness ahead became a perfectly impenetrable wall of ink, dense and absolute, with not so much as a single rustle coming from inside it.
Click.
The lighter flared.
The glow lit up the boy's face—but the rays aimed in our direction dissolved against the invisible wall of my mana, illuminating neither the folds of my coat nor Marin's frightened expression. He took a long drag, then exhaled straight into my unseen barrier. The smoke spread comically over the invisible half-sphere a few centimeters from my nose.
Then he turned back to his friends.
"Who cares about that Ghost guy," he said. "More importantly, did anyone get tickets for Ai-chan's next concert? Scalpers totally lost their minds after that incident on stage."
The girl with the keychain sighed heavily.
"No. Sold out in like two seconds..."
They stood there for another minute, loudly discussing show business and Hunters, before finally moving on and melting back into the crowd.
Only once their mana signatures dissolved into the city's general flow did I release the isolation field.
Marin exhaled noisily and slid down the wall into a crouch.
"I... I almost died from cardiac arrest," she whispered, clutching her chest. "Gojo-kun, how did they not see us?! He was right there!"
"Light-refraction illusion. Tiny trick," I said lightly, even though maintaining a barrier that delicate had cost me a fair amount of concentration. "But I can't keep it up for long, especially not while we're moving through a crowd. One random bump and the illusion falls apart."
I turned toward the girls.
The situation couldn't have been clearer.
Without flawless, tangible, absolute camouflage, we wouldn't make it ten steps down that street before somebody recognized us. Then the panic would start, the Bureau would arrive, and I'd have to break urban infrastructure all over again—which I sincerely did not want to do on an empty stomach.
"All right," I said, looking toward the glowing crepe stand at the far end of the street. My stomach growled again, treacherously, demanding a massacre of carbohydrates. "We need a different kind of magic. The kind that doesn't just fool the eye, but rewrites the way the world physically perceives us."
I closed the one uncovered eye and reached for the System interface in my mind.
Time to remember what it felt like to be a thousand-year-old elf with terrible posture.
Only her magic could create an illusion dense enough to fool not just cameras and even the Six Eyes, but the touch of random passersby.
Hey, tin can, I called mentally, bracing myself for yet another act of capitalist extortion from my digital symbiote. How about lending me the pointy-eared gremlin for a couple of hours? I need advanced illusion magic, urgently. How much are you going to rip off me this time? Another hundred thousand coins in debt?
A translucent blue window appeared in front of my eyes instantly, nearly blinding me in the alley's half-darkness.
[Sync System: Processing request...]
[Warning, Host!]
You are about to voluntarily relinquish S-rank physical attributes, an infinite mana reserve, and the Six Eyes in an uncontrolled urban environment. And all of that for... a carb run?
The artificial sarcasm in the lines was almost visible.
Yes, for crepes with whipped cream, I shot back irritably. Take the coins and hand over the template before I change my mind and walk into the crowd looking like this, then make you deal with the fallout from World War Three.
The System window flickered, the border color shifting from warning yellow to neutral blue.
[Sync System: Switching between already unlocked templates does not require Coins.]
[This is a base System function.]
You already "paid" for the right to use this avatar with your blood and system debt in the past.
[To switch, you do not need to open the menu.]
Simply snap your fingers and clearly visualize the desired form.
[Try reading the manual, Host.]
I raised an eyebrow above the edge of my blindfold.
Free?
That was new.
Normally the System never missed a chance to skin me alive for anything remotely useful.
"Girls, eyes on me," I said, lifting a hand to draw the attention of Ai and Marin, who were still pressed nervously against the wall. "Little costume-change trick incoming. Don't panic."
"A trick?" Marin blinked at me. "Gojo-kun, I thought you said we weren't doing makeup."
"We aren't. I'm just switching profiles."
I raised my right hand to eye level.
Thumb and middle finger touched.
In my mind, with perfect clarity, I pictured the melancholic elf girl with silver twin-tails whose body I had spent two full days inhabiting while trying not to die from mana poisoning.
Snap.
The transition felt nothing like teleportation.
It didn't tear at my ears or twist my stomach.
It felt more like someone suddenly yanked the stopper out of a giant inflatable mattress.
The world around me instantly became enormous.
It was as if all the heavy, boiling S-rank mana had been vacuumed out of me in one second and replaced with the cool, weightless breeze of an ancient forest. All six-foot-three of me simply vanished. My powerful muscles deflated, and my center of gravity dropped somewhere around my knees.
The huge black bomber jacket, which had fit me perfectly a second ago, abruptly turned into an unmanageable tent. It collapsed over my shrunken shoulders with a heavy rustle. The wide turtleneck collar slid up at once, swallowing my entire face, and the sleeves drooped all the way to the asphalt.
I tried to take a step, got tangled in my own oversized pant legs, and almost pitched face-first into a puddle.
"...For God's sake," I muttered.
The voice came out utterly flat. Quiet. Even.
Frieren's voice.
I started fighting my way out of the bomber jacket, trying to free at least my nose.
"Damn this gravity... and this field of view at trash-can height..."
When I finally managed to throw back the heavy fabric and lift my gaze, I found two pairs of very round eyes staring down at me.
Marin had both hands pressed to her cheeks.
Like any true cosplayer, she wasn't focused on the mere fact that I'd transformed—she was studying the details. The perfect taper of my ears. The change in my skin tone. The complete shift in my mana signature.
Ai Hoshino, on the other hand, reacted in a completely different way.
Every last trace of worry evaporated from Japan's greatest idol in an instant.
Her face broke into a wide, helplessly delighted smile, and the stars in her eyes shone so brightly they might as well have lit the entire alley.
"Frieren-chan is back!" Ai squealed, instantly forgetting her growling stomach and the danger of being recognized.
She dropped gracefully to her knees right there on the wet, dirty asphalt so she'd be at eye level with me. Her slender hands immediately reached for my long pointed ears, while her fingers tangled themselves in my silver twin-tails.
"I missed this cutie so much!" she chirped, shamelessly squishing my cheeks.
"Satoru-kun, stay like this until tomorrow! Please? You're so cozy to cuddle to sleep when you look like this! I just want to tuck you into my pocket and carry you around all day!"
With a heavy sigh that sounded far too old for my new body, I dodged her next attempt at hugging me and shuffled half a step back.
"Hands off, Starlight. I did this for camouflage, not so you could use me as a plush anti-stress toy," I replied in my usual arrogant, condescending tone.
The problem was, coming from the mouth of a tiny deadpan elf girl, that tone didn't sound cool.
It sounded completely ridiculous.
Ai only laughed harder, covering her mouth with one hand.
"Oh my God... this isn't just a hologram... you're actually changing your physical body"
Marin whispered, finally finding her voice. She stepped closer and carefully touched the sleeve of my absurdly huge bomber jacket, as though she expected it to burn her.
"Gojo-kun... you are an absolute, one-hundred-percent cheat code. Half the cosplayers in the world would sell their souls for a skill like this."
"If you knew what switching templates does to your mana channels, you'd probably keep your soul," I said in Frieren's melancholy monotone, tugging the slipping collar back down from my eyes. "Less admiration, more work. I hate this height. Let's get the magic done before I change my mind and we go eat dinner out of the nearest dumpster."
I reached mentally into my Inventory.
A wooden staff materialized in my tiny hand in a soft flash of red light.
It was heavier than I remembered. Gold inlays set into the wood glimmered faintly in the half-dark, and the red crystal at the head began to pulse with quiet light, answering the calm, ancient mana flowing through this body's veins.
I tapped the butt of the staff against the asphalt.
The sound rang out more sharply than expected.
"All right," I said, looking up at the girls with my unblinking green gaze. "I'm about to cast an illusion on you. Fair warning—this isn't the kind of optical trick modern Hunters are used to."
"Then what is it?" Ai asked, tilting her head curiously.
"A sensory overwrite of reality," I explained, shifting my grip on the staff. "Elf magic works differently. The illusion won't just change your appearance, your clothes, and your mana signature visually. It'll be fully tangible."
Marin gasped and clutched at her heart.
"So... if someone tries to touch me...?"
"They'll feel exactly the fabric and the shape I build into the spell," I said with a nod. "The only giveaway is if someone shoots you and the bullet passes through the illusion layer into your real body. But let's hope it doesn't come to that."
I raised the red crystal of the staff toward the girls.
"So then, ladies?" I asked in a flat voice, drawing mana into the spell. "Marin, you're first. Who do you want to be on this lovely, danger-filled night?"
"You know..." Ai said softly, and for a brief moment, her voice lost its usual playful stage sparkle.
"Make me someone completely ordinary. Someone no one would ever look at twice in their life. I want to be invisible to the crowd."