"What's going on here, Satoru?"
Masamichi Yaga had just returned from the Tombs of the Star. Holding a wooden stick covered in talismans, he spoke with obvious concern.
"Everyone's already come out except Yuji, Mimiko, Nanako, Aoi, Megumi, and Noritoshi..."
Satoru Gojo glanced at the object in Masamichi Yaga's hand.
"Oh? So this is what they're using to break the Barrier..."
Rakuenji, standing off to the side, seemed to catch the note of "disdain" in Satoru Gojo's voice toward Tengen and abruptly cut in.
"This is Tengen-sama's Barrier-breaking measure for this Barrier."
"Heh... that sure took long enough. Akira's been in there for five hours already..."
At that, Rakuenji stopped arguing with Satoru Gojo and looked around. Sure enough, Akira Zenin was nowhere to be seen.
"How... how is that possible? Is there really a Curse User in there capable of holding him back?"
Satoru Gojo shook his head.
"I think I know why...
Well... hand me that wooden stick. Everyone else, get away from here immediately. And notify the nearby residential areas to evacuate the civilians.
This barrier is already pretty unstable. Right now, it's like a sheet of paper wedged between massive Cursed Energy and a Binding Vow... I have no idea what'll happen once that paper gets punctured..."
"Gojo-sensei, can I come in with you too?"
Satoru Gojo looked over at Yuta Okkotsu, who had only just arrived. According to him, he'd run into an ice-using Curse User and another Curse User with a pompadour while out on a mission. Both had been unexpectedly troublesome, which was why he was only getting here now.
Gojo gave Yuta Okkotsu a quick once-over.
"You... should be fine, though it'll still be a bit of a stretch... Well, regular classes aren't going to push you any further anyway, so come along."
...
Once everyone had retreated a safe distance, Satoru Gojo casually threw the wooden stick at the edge of the barrier, the point he'd identified as the foundation supporting its formation.
The next instant, it was like crushing a rotten egg that had been left sitting for three months with your bare hand.
Black smoke shot into the sky, carrying the stench of rot mixed with the foul reek of curses.
Countless "ghosts" squeezed out through the widening hole, drifting up into the air and wandering aimlessly...
Seeing that, Satoru Gojo reached out and pulled. All the "ghosts" in the air were dragged together by gravity, compressed into a single mass, and drawn to his side.
Even crushed together, they made no sound. They simply devoured one another in silence.
They were all "dandelion seeds" that had turned into Cursed Spirits...
Yuta Okkotsu stared in shock as Satoru Gojo crushed them into fragments.
What shocked him was not Gojo's methods. Gojo-sensei's strength was beyond question. Of course he could do something like this.
What shocked Yuta Okkotsu was that, in terms of raw Cursed Energy alone, every one of those dandelion Cursed Spirits was at Grade 1 level. In fact, if "flight" counted as a "technique," then those things were genuine Grade 1 Cursed Spirits...
Satoru Gojo carefully examined the residue inside [Blue].
"These aren't Cursed Spirits. They're more like a kind of Cursed Corpse with the core hidden away..."
Yuta Okkotsu nodded. Since Gojo-sensei said the core was "hidden" rather than "absent," that meant he had already confirmed its existence for himself.
If that was the case, then the plan to neutralize the Cursed Spirits by outputting Reverse Cursed Technique was dead in the water...
After a brief moment of thought, Satoru Gojo took Yuta Okkotsu and stepped into the barrier as it gradually faded away.
...
If the dandelion Cursed Spirits outside had shocked Yuta Okkotsu, then the swarm of Cursed Spirits and the black sludge inside were genuinely terrifying.
The swarm of Tree Spirit Cursed Spirits was one thing. It only meant that nearly a third of them were already approaching the level of Special Grade Cursed Spirits. But the black sludge gave Yuta Okkotsu only one clear warning in his mind.
Absolutely do not touch it.
After setting Yuta Okkotsu down on a hilltop, Satoru Gojo stood high above that land of shadows, surveyed the surroundings, then thrust one hand forward. Red light burst out with repulsive force, instantly clearing a huge open space within the shadows.
At the edge of that newly cleared area, Aoi Todo's group appeared. Judging by the look of them, they were already running out of steam...
After a brief exchange, Satoru Gojo had Yuta Okkotsu join up with Yuji Itadori and the others, and sent them off to find Megumi Fushiguro and Noritoshi Kamo together. He himself headed alone toward the center of the forest.
At that point, anyone who wasn't blind could see that something was deeply wrong there.
Black mist had swallowed the entire area. Three towering figures, each nearly ten meters tall, stood in a triangular formation, as if guarding something at the center. Countless Cursed Spirits surged tirelessly toward that center, only to be cut down by Mahoraga like moths flying into a flame...
And it wasn't just the Tree Spirit Cursed Spirits. There were countless other inhuman things as well, creatures with lolling tongues, jutting fangs, bodies that ran on all fours, and mouths covering them from head to toe. They looked like animals twisted into something else entirely.
"Should I wake him up...?"
Now that he had made it this far, Satoru Gojo found himself hesitating.
Or rather, he had never come in here to wake Akira Zenin in the first place. He had come to stop the situation from getting any worse.
It wasn't right to interfere with such a hard-won chance to rest...
"Well, I'll just wait for Akira to wake up on his own...
Still, these Cursed Spirits are really noisy... Sleeping is better in a quiet environment."
Satoru Gojo looked down at the swarm of Cursed Spirits below and immediately fired off two [Purple], wiping the area clean. The blasts produced two deafening explosions, but the murmuring babble of the gathered Cursed Spirits did lessen quite a bit.
What Satoru Gojo had not expected, however, was that with fewer Cursed Spirits around, the bow-wielding Mahoraga immediately turned its bow toward him.
"Clang."
"Wuuu..."
Two black arrows shot toward Satoru Gojo with tails that sounded like crying. They stopped right in front of his brow...
Watching the arrows dissolve into specks of light, Satoru Gojo raised an eyebrow.
"You fruit-serving thing, do you seriously only follow dead orders?"
It was not as if Satoru Gojo had never seen this long-armed Mahoraga before. Akira Zenin used to summon it all the time to carry fruit around. Back then, though, this thing was supposed to be white...