Chapter 1: The Strongest of the Modern Era! Yuji Itadori!
"Earthling?"
"Shimuria starling?"
"What's the difference between the two."
"Are they strong?"
A figure in a hoodie walked down an empty street, looking a little lonely.
Beneath the brim, his face was hard to make out.
Of course,
if you lifted it,
you'd be shocked to find that he was clearly an 83-year-old man, yet he still kept the face he had in his youth.
As if time had completely frozen.
Locked at the peak of his looks.
[Yuji Itadori]
As he is now.
The boyishness has faded.
The scars at the corner of his mouth and on his cheek add a heavier, more mature air.
It is now the year 2086.
With the older generation of jujutsu sorcerers gone, cursed energy in the new era has severely declined, and no new Special Grades are being born.
So,
he became the strongest jujutsu sorcerer of this age.
"Seventy years."
"Yuji Itadori, no one can keep up with your pace."
There was not a ripple in Yuji's eyes.
A dead, isolated air clung to him, and in his murky gaze there seemed to be no light.
The boy from back then could never be found again.
He no longer made a fuss, no longer acted recklessly, no longer had that old hot-blooded drive, or rather...
there was nothing left that could ignite it.
"Grandpa."
"Junpei, Mechamaru, Nanami, Gojo-sensei, Principal Yaga, Mai, Choso..."
After the Beyond Humanity: Demon Realm, after the Shinjuku decisive battle.
The war ended in victory.
He smiled.
Kept forcing himself to smile.
That was the kind of optimistic person he was, but did he really not care inside?
Impossible.
On countless nights, he would often think of them.
Too many regrets.
Too many things happened that they never got to witness.
'Gojo-sensei...'
'Choso...'
'The me now, more or less, would make you feel relieved... right?'
And it wasn't only them.
Even now.
Yuta Okkotsu, Maki Zen'in, Hana Kurusu, and other sorcerers of his generation also died one after another.
After attending Hana Kurusu's funeral, unwilling to witness the deaths of former comrades again, he vanished from the public eye.
Yes, his companions kept dying, and he could do nothing about it.
"Maybe if I could do it all over again..."
"No. Even if I did, with what I'd experienced back then, with my lack of standing, I'd still be lost and end up doing the same things."
"Even if I went back with my memories."
"So what?"
"Back then, the weak Yuji... how much could he really change?"
But now.
Now it would definitely be different.
He no longer even knew how strong he had become.
In an era without any Special Grades, what was there to measure against?
No one could force it out of him, there was no unit to quantify it.
"Near-infinite Black Flash."
"Reverse Cursed Technique."
"An unreadable total amount of cursed energy."
"Abilities inherited from the Death Painting Wombs."
"Everything Sukuna could do..."
"Physical strength surpassing Toji Fushiguro, even Mahoraga."
"Every strike able to hit the soul directly, as a natural talent."
"Over these sixty-eight years, constant refinement into an extreme understanding of my own techniques and cursed energy."
"An ageless body from being a human and cursed spirit hybrid."
"A bloodline sharing the same origin as Sukuna."
"And... I can freely use the cursed tools left behind across the entire jujutsu world."
And one more, a technique inherited from his mother, Kaori Itadori...
[Anti-Gravity System]
Kenjaku once used it to kill Yuki Tsukumo.
And as Yuji kept developing himself, due to his special constitution, he unexpectedly awakened that technique as well.
With reckless cursed energy, spending it however he wanted, grinding experience, he pushed this technique to a level never seen before and never to be seen again.
All of that...
stacked together.
That was also why Yuji didn't know what level he had reached.
After all, in this era, aside from him, there wasn't a single Special Grade sorcerer.
Even cursed spirits were pitifully rare...
Mahito never appeared.
He kept waiting.
Still,
if an alien visitor showed up, maybe it would be different.
Before coming, Yuji had learned some information.
The strongest alien, Dabura.
A name identical to a character in the virtual anime Dragon Ball.
Someone like that.
Maybe he couldn't beat him...
Back to the point.
From the fluctuations he sensed, it seemed to be a technique related to light.
"Light?"
"Then I'll have Mahoraga go first."
"If it loses, I'll go clean up the mess for that senior's grandson..."
As Yuji walked, he arrived beside a high-rise building.
Inside were the humans' side and the aliens' side.
"Hey! This isn't a place you should be!!"
A man in a suit ran over from not far away, shouting.
Yuji didn't react.
He assumed a strange posture.
"Piercing Blood."
He spoke the two words, utterly calm yet clear.
But.
The next second.
A halo of light flashed across the entire sky.
Yuji felt the world spin, and then the cursed energy inside him began to drop rapidly.
One-tenth.
Two-tenths.
Three-tenths.
It only slowed to a stop after falling to one-twentieth.
The halo vanished in an instant, everything happening in the blink of an eye.
Yuji's vision gradually became clear.
The smell of medicine.
A pure white counter.
Patients passing by.
A nurse behind the counter.
This was...
"A hospital?"
Yuji held that strange posture, facing the nurse at the counter.
"Ah, huh?"
"When did a person appear here...?"
"Um, hello sir, what do you need?"
The nurse asked cautiously.
Another nurse beside her suddenly picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Sugisawa... I'm Yuji Itadori. I called you earlier. Yes, that's right. What's going on with my grandpa? Why didn't you call me back?"
A teenage voice came from the other end.
The nurse named Sugisawa replied, "Eh, I already told him. Don't hang up, I'll go ask."
"Mr. Wasuke Itadori never presses the nurse call button, does he?"
"That makes it even scarier."
Several masked nurses muttered softly.
Sugisawa headed toward a hospital room.
Yuji froze.
'Wasuke Itadori?'
That was his grandpa's name.
But Grandpa died long ago.
Could it be the same name?
What was going on...
This place was...
a hospital?
Yuji glanced at the calendar and reacted instantly.
He had traveled through time,
or rather, the word time travel fit best.
Yuji looked at his reflection in the window glass. He was still himself, hood up.
He closed his eyes.
He had only one-twentieth of his power left.
Yes.
One-twentieth.
But it wasn't gone forever.
The remaining nineteen-twentieths, because of some kind of special interference, had vanished temporarily, and was now slowly returning.
Of course.
That wasn't the main point.
The main point was, why had he come back?
'That strongest alien's ability is related to light...'
'Could it be that at the last moment he awakened some time-type field and accidentally sent me back?'
They hadn't even started fighting yet.
How did he know he couldn't win?
And he sent him back anyway?
And also...
what is this?
A countdown suddenly appeared before Yuji's eyes.
[179 days 23 hours 59 minutes 59 seconds]
Almost exactly six months, the seconds steadily ticking down.