Once [Projection Sorcery] catches you, every second fractures into twenty-four frames.
That means you have to script twenty-four discrete movements.
Any motion your body physically can't perform? The frame simply won't render.
Miss a setting, fail to mimic the pose, and you lock up for a full second.
Jogo had never practiced living as a flip-book.
Truth be told, neither had most Cursed Spirits—or humans.
"Ghh—!"
Jogo froze behind what looked like a sheet of glass no thicker than a storefront window.
[Projection Sorcery] had judged him in error; the penalty was a one-second freeze.
Deliver a clean hit inside that single second and the reward was devastating.
Zenin Naoya had no intention of letting the chance slip.
"First blood, then."
Crash!—glass shards of cursed light burst apart as Jogo's body was punted across the slope.
The Special Grade Curse tumbled, gouging a trench in the dirt before slamming to a halt.
"Not bad—Special Grades hit different. Feels good on the knuckles."
Naoya grinned at his first clash with a Special Grade.
No arrogance, no euphoria—only a calculated sneer meant to tilt the enemy's mindset.
The simpler Jogo's emotions, the easier his reads would be.
"You insolent whelp—!"
Jogo rocketed out of the dust cloud, both palms wreathed in flame.
Naoya sidestepped the incoming fireballs and stacked more [Projection Sorcery] cuts, accelerating with every frame.
"Whoo, dangerous stuff. If your mama could see you now she'd be—oh right, Curses don't have moms. Tragic, huh?"
"I'll kill you!"
"Funny, that was my plan from the start."
Even while wisecracking, Naoya's path was a strobing blur—hit and fade, faster, faster, brushing the lower edge of Mach 1.
[Projection Sorcery] was speed incarnate, but every sequence had to be pre-planned—telegraphed to anyone smart enough to read vectors. Naoya kept the lines jagged—feints, slides, arcing leaps—exactly how he trained against Koyanskaya of Darkness, that alien Foreigner.
"Stats are lower, processing's slower. Compared to the Foreigner, this is target practice."
Jogo's raw output was high, but every predictive line he drew was a full beat behind Naoya's.
Two clean [Projection Sorcery] hits later, Jogo's forehead was a dented skillet.
Naoya patted the flattened cranium, then mule-kicked it like a soccer ball. Boom!
Dragged through the air by the impact, Jogo finally skidded to a stop, crouched amid swirling embers.
Twice tagged, the rage cooled enough for thought. 'His Technique accelerates himself and freezes whatever he touches…'
He didn't know the name [Projection Sorcery], but the outline was dead on.
Jogo was fast—just not fast enough to catch someone who started his sprint outside the blast radius.
Power means nothing if you can't land a hit, and Naoya was turning that maxim into a lecture.
'Fine. Then I'll turn the whole field into a hit box.'
Jogo summoned Shikigami—mosquito-sized insects with oversized stingers.
"Firepower Bugs."
He scattered them like shrapnel and, the instant he felt Naoya's current sweep past, detonated them all.
KEEEEE!—a metallic screech carved through the air an instant before the swarm exploded.
WHOOOM! Flames erupted on every side; the silent mountainside became a hellfire amphitheater.
Jogo strode through the burning wasteland, scanning. The cutting mountain wind had gone still; now only the stench of char and brimstone drifted.
"Hmph. That should—"
"—think it's over already, do ya?"
Finished. The word no sooner formed than Naoya appeared behind him, suit charred, left eardrum bleeding, torso mottled with second-degree burns—yet grinning.
"You dodged that?"
"Course I did."
Before Jogo could whirl around, Naoya's fingers brushed his shoulder—two frames faster than reflex.
Freeze.
Then Naoya's front kick rammed into the Curse's spine. KA-WHAM!
A flare of obsidian lightning blossomed—[Black Flash].
The phenomenon amplifies raw impact by 2.5 times—on paper. In practice, it simply means the strike hits absurdly hard.
Naoya's eyes went round. He'd studied [Black Flash], but never triggered one himself.
'Well I'll be—first time for everything.'
The surprise lasted a heartbeat. Then the rush hit—Cursed Energy streaming through every nerve, silk-smooth, perfectly tuned. Awakening via [Black Flash].
Control sharpened past verbal description.
—Those who have experienced [Black Flash] and those who haven't stand worlds apart.
Now he understood why.
'At this level I can run [Domain Amplification] and my own Technique simultaneously.'
[Domain Amplification] erases techniques inside its veil—even Gojo's Infinity. Normally it blocks the user's Technique as well, but with god-tier control you could layer the two.
First heal: Reverse Cursed Technique stitched the burns closed.
Then, another burst of [Projection Sorcery]—falling back to build distance while scripting the next phase.
•••
On the ground, Jogo's entire body screamed. Spine cracked, motor control flickering—any non-Special Grade would already be pulp.
'Can't…move…' Even with rapid regeneration, the numbness was crippling.
The footsteps approached. They didn't look fast, yet their presence swallowed the space between.
Time stretched; anger compressed. Jogo detonated his Cursed Energy.
"I'll leave not even ashes!"
The moment Naoya crossed an unseen threshold, Jogo clasped his hands—signs for Coffin of the Iron Mountain.
"Domain Expansion."
The flame-walled mausoleum slammed shut, faster than Naoya could sprint out.
"Well, damn."
Three options: Kadok's Mystic Code, [Domain Amplification], or answer with a Domain of his own.
'Risky, but why not test the new upgrade?'
"Domain Expansion."
The burning cavern tried to manifest, but night inundated it—behind Naoya, the silhouette of a vast womb unfurled beneath a slate-gray moon.
[Temporal Womb: Moon Palace].
Jogo's eyes nearly fell out. He hadn't imagined the human could deploy a Domain at all, let alone inside his own.
In Jujutsu theory—and per Gojo Satoru himself—the surest counter to a Domain is another, more refined Domain.
Refinement meant denser, finer-tuned Cursed Energy, or a conceptually stronger rule-set.
Jogo was heavily wounded; Naoya was freshly awakened. The difference in weave was night and day.
'My Domain…is buckling!'
Coffin of the Iron Mountain crumpled as the Moon Palace's darkness flooded deeper, corridors elongating toward a raw, fetal abyss.
If Jogo had launched fully healthy, maybe—but the winner here was decided.
"Sorry, looks like mine's a tad better." Naoya bared his teeth.
The Moon Palace swallowed the infernal coffin whole. Its guaranteed-hit condition snapped into place—reality flickered like film reels.
"Y-you—!"
Jogo tried to summon fire, but blood geysered from his mouth and he collapsed.
Purple blood streamed from every orifice.
—Replicate Naoya's movements down to the cellular frame.
The Moon Palace forced that impossibility on its prisoners. Not even Gojo—or a Servant—could obey it.
'Checkmate.'
Shatter one hub of their plan and the entire scheme would wobble. Naoya meant to finish the exorcism now.
But the variable he'd half-expected crashed the party.
"Domain Expansion—[Sea of Radiant Light]."
A third Domain slammed into reality, rewriting the darkness with blinding brilliance…