Toyokawa Sakiko, Nagasaki Soyo, and Kochou Shinobu stood quietly in the void. Ahead of them loomed Wakaba Mutsumi's Palace—a mechanical city of steel and wood, humming with silent menace.
Just moments ago, some unknown force had restored the Palace's core to its original state. Everything they'd accomplished—hours of trial, bloodless wars waged by their summoned doubles—had been rewound into nothing.
And yet none of them looked shocked. None of them looked despairing.
Soyo's frustration and disappointment tried to surface, only to be forcibly pressed down by the Willpower Glasses. Her eyes widened slightly; her emotions remained steady. If anything, she was simply… stunned by the spectacle of time reversing.
She turned toward Sakiko and broke the silence first.
"Sakiko… it looks like taking down Mutsumi's mother inside the cathedral wasn't the right path. Should we change strategy and investigate the opera house instead? Maybe that's the real breakthrough point."
She paused, thinking fast, then added:
"Or… maybe we need to do both at once? Maybe we have to defeat the guardian inside the opera house and Mutsumi's mother in the cathedral simultaneously to truly clear Mutsumi's Palace."
Sakiko didn't answer right away. She stared at the mechanical city, brows drawn, running possibilities over and over until the shape of her conclusion hardened.
After a moment, she spoke—calm, but heavy.
"I'm leaning toward the idea that even if we switch to the opera house, we'll get the same result. The time rewind will still trigger."
She lifted a hand and pointed at the Palace—perfectly restored, as if they'd never touched it.
"That voice you and I heard… that was Mutsumi's mother. Mori Minami. No question."
Her gaze sharpened.
"My guess is that if we only attack Mutsumi's Palace from the inside, we may never truly succeed. We'll have to involve Mori Minami's Palace as well. There's definitely some link between mother and daughter that we still don't understand."
Shinobu, who'd been quietly listening, gave a small nod—agreement in her violet eyes.
Soyo considered it, then nodded too.
"Got it. So… are we moving now to scout Mori Minami's Palace?"
Sakiko reached into her small bag, pulled out her phone, and checked the time.
It was already past five in the afternoon.
Then she looked at her companions.
Shinobu stood as straight as ever. As a Hashira, she was built for long hunts and harder fights. Breathing techniques had been carved into her body as instinct; her endurance and resilience were far beyond normal. Even after hours of intense movement and mental strain, her breathing remained smooth and steady. There wasn't a hint of fatigue in her eyes—as if today's chaos had never happened.
Soyo, however, was another matter.
Yes, the Willpower Glasses had dragged her resolve up to the peak of ordinary human limits. It let her stay calm through supernatural terror and high-intensity combat decisions.
But the fact that the glasses were still intact meant she hadn't broken through that ceiling. Her willpower was still, fundamentally, human—unable to overwrite physical exhaustion through sheer force of mind, unable to bend the world's rules just by refusing to yield.
Sakiko caught it: the faint weariness buried deep in Soyo's eyes, partially hidden behind the lenses.
"We stop here for today," Sakiko said, decisive.
"In a cognition-based world, your mental state is a critical parameter. It affects whether we can explore safely… and whether we make it out alive."
She looked at Soyo, her tone gentler.
"And your mental state is tied to your body. A sick child's body drags down their focus."
"Soyo. You need rest."
For a heartbeat, something unmistakable flickered in Soyo's eyes—clear loneliness, clear disappointment.
Standing beside Sakiko and Shinobu, both still sharp and full of energy, she understood immediately: she'd become the weak link.
But the moment that thought surfaced, the Willpower Glasses crushed it down into the deepest part of her mind.
Soyo inhaled. The loneliness vanished, leaving only steadiness.
She understood: Sakiko's judgment was optimal strategy, not an insult. Rest was necessary, not a denial of her worth.
"Understood," Soyo said evenly, nodding.
Once Soyo agreed, Sakiko tapped her phone and activated the Navigator app.
Space twisted.
The dizziness passed.
And the three of them were standing once more at the gates of the Wakaba residence.
Soyo glanced at Mutsumi's home… then turned back to Sakiko.
"Sakiko… do you want to… take this chance to see Mutsumi?"
Sakiko's mind immediately replayed what they'd seen in the safe room inside Mutsumi's Palace: old photos pinned to the wall, two little girls holding hands, her own smile bright and innocent.
A childhood they would never return to.
The memory stabbed straight through her.
But Sakiko also felt the pressure of too many fires at once.
Clearing Mutsumi's Palace was urgent. The key to that Palace now pointed toward Mori Minami's Palace. And at the same time, Soyo—new to the cognition world—still needed guidance and protection.
After a brief silence, Sakiko shut her eyes hard.
When she opened them, her gaze had settled into something firm and final.
"…I'll see her. Just once."
Decision made, she pulled a plain bracelet of glass beads from her bag and carefully slid it onto her left wrist.
Then she opened the group interface and bought Ominous Premonition.
Her plan was simple: once she confirmed Mutsumi's condition, she would picture forcing an entry—using the Navigator app to push directly into the Palace's core and meet Mutsumi's Shadow head-on.
If only a few beads cracked, the risk was manageable, and she'd go without hesitation.
If too many shattered, it meant the danger exceeded the margin by far—and she'd have to rethink everything from the ground up.
But there was another problem.
Metis.
Metis was violently opposed to Sakiko approaching Mutsumi in the real world. If Sakiko made contact without fully understanding Mutsumi's current state, she could easily make things worse—provoking Metis, intensifying the internal conflict, and driving the situation deeper into catastrophe.
And Sakiko didn't want to use coercion against Metis while still blind. A heavy-handed move at the wrong time could turn into the worst possible kind of "help."
So she chose a third option:
She wouldn't approach Mutsumi directly in reality.
Instead, she would enter the thin seam between reality and Impression Space—the liminal layer where ordinary people couldn't perceive her.
From that in-between dimension, she could observe Mutsumi up close while minimizing Metis's interference… and at the same time, test the danger of forcing an entry into the Palace's core.
And for that, she didn't need all three of them together. Bringing Shinobu and Soyo along would only waste time.
So Sakiko decided to split up.
First, she would settle Soyo—help her engage with the cognition world and grow stronger.
Then, once that was handled, she would return alone to the Wakaba residence to check on Mutsumi.
With her intent fixed, Sakiko didn't hesitate.
A thought, and a tall figure condensed beside her.
Her possibility double—
Gojo Sakiko.
Sakiko turned to Shinobu and Soyo and explained:
"In a moment, I'm going to shift my main focus onto another possibility double. You two will use group transfer to teleport to wherever I'm 'located.'"
The essence of group transfer was simple: group members acted as coordinates for one another. But the anchor point wasn't fixed to the main body—it followed the user's attention.
If Sakiko's attention was on her real body, the destination would be her real body.
If her attention moved completely onto her double, then the double became the destination point.
Sakiko's eyes sharpened. Her attention shifted—
And in the next instant, Sakiko, Shinobu, and Soyo vanished from the Wakaba estate gates without warning.
All that remained was the one-meter-nine cool, imposing Gojo Sakiko—left behind as a temporary coordinate in physical space.
When the transfer completed, the three of them—along with Sakiko's ordinary school "normal" double—were now standing in a narrow urban back alley.
The air smelled faintly of damp moss and dust—nothing like the manicured luxury of the Wakaba district.
From the street beyond the alley mouth came the distant roar of a subway train pulling in, and the noisy swell of evening commuters.
They stepped out of the alley.
A busy subway entrance yawned before them—stairs descending underground.
Sakiko stopped and pointed toward those steps, her gaze settling on Soyo.
"This is a subway station in the real world. But in the cognition world, it corresponds to a crucial zone—the Subway Impression Space."
She spoke with calm authority.
"Soyo, once we're there, you're going to fix the possibility-double ability onto yourself."
Seeing the questions in Soyo's eyes, Sakiko realized she needed to lay out the system clearly—structure, rules, limitations.
She collected her thoughts and began.
"The world's power usage can be divided into three layers."
"First: the real world. The everyday world that follows physical laws—the one we used to live in."
"Second: the Impression Space. The deep region where collective unconsciousness gathers and flows."
"Third: Palaces. Independent spaces carved out of the collective unconscious—formed by an individual's intense desire. Like Mutsumi's Palace we just left."
She raised three fingers.
"And the power we can wield also falls into three categories: Personas, possibility doubles, and abilities solidified by collective cognition."
"First: Personas. This is the native power system of our world—born from awakened hearts. It has a very clear limitation: it can only be used in the mental world—Impression Space and Palaces. In the real world, it can't manifest."
"Second: possibility doubles. This comes from the group chat—power from outside the world. So it isn't restricted by layer boundaries. You can summon them in the real world, in Impression Space, and in Palaces."
Her expression tightened slightly.
"But it has a fatal weakness: they only last twenty-four hours, and each summon is random."
Then she recalled that strange resonance when she and Soyo had summoned at the same time.
"Though… we might have found a condition that stabilizes the summoning. We can test that tomorrow."
She pointed again toward the subway entrance.
"Third: the ability fixation we're about to do. It's a special technique that uses the rules of the collective unconscious."
"The procedure is this: in Impression Space, you summon a possibility double and have it possess you—merge with you. In that state, you repeatedly use the double's abilities. What you're really doing is declaring to the collective unconscious: Nagasaki Soyo can use this power."
"When that impression becomes deep enough, collective cognition records it as fact. Then, even without the double, you'll be able to use the corresponding ability directly in Impression Space."
Soyo listened carefully.
Sakiko immediately followed with the limitation—because leaving out the limitation would be lethal.
"However, this fixation is based on the collective unconscious recognizing you. That means it only works in Impression Space."
"Once you enter a Palace—an independent space that has broken away from collective unconsciousness and runs on its own logic—these fixed abilities will fail."
"And for the same reason, since it's a product of cognition-world rules, you also can't bring it into the real world and use it there."
Sakiko's gaze narrowed, her mind already pushing into the next bottleneck.
There was a deeper issue.
Gojo Sakiko's Six Eyes.
Sukuna's tattoos, extra eyes, the body's "shape" itself.
Those powers were tightly bound to external traits—distinct features that the cognition world might treat as prerequisites.
In the past, trying to fix such abilities would have been almost impossible. Or rather: the collective unconscious would record a different "truth"—
That the transformed version of them could use those abilities.
Meaning: without the corresponding transformation, the world would "believe" they couldn't use them—so the power wouldn't activate without the double.
But the upgraded Wordspirit Tights changed the equation.
The tights could now transform freely. With body paint and artificial limbs, they could cosplay the double's external traits perfectly.
Which meant: even without summoning a double or merging, they could still present a form that matched the "fixed logic" the collective unconscious had recorded.
In other words—
They could finally remove the last obstacle and use those powers freely in cognition-space regions outside Palaces, without being permanently chained to random summons.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 165)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter220)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter125)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter250)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 220
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 185
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/20
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 248
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 230
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume4/40
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 125
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 145
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 120
I Can Copy Unique Skills 115
Summoning an Evil God, but the 75
Supernatural Multiverse 110
My Harem Is Indescribable 100
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 105
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 67
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 105
Still playing traditional Honk 80
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 85
What Should I Do After Switchi - Volume2/3
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 78
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
Transmigrated as Sukuna 80
Checking In in Demon Slayer 85
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 100
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 85
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 80
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 90
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 75
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 80
Why did they assign me to Uma 75
MYGO Beauties 70
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 70
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 80
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 80
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 57
The Uma Musume Who Became 55
I'm Definitely Not the King of 60
After Maxing Out Every Class 45
Naruto: I'm Konoha's Local Men 35
Honkai: World Modulation Mode 34
I, the Elden Sword Saint 27
Dio Brando Is Challenging FGO 24
No One Knows Pokémon Better 18
I, Sakazuki, Won't Go Down Tha 20
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