"Can't stand seeing a little girl pushed into a fiery pit?"
The kind smile on Suguru's face gradually vanished, and those narrow eyes that were always squinted slowly opened, revealing a cold, scrutinizing gaze.
"Sir, your words aren't very pleasant to hear. This is a protection mission issued by the higher-ups of the Jujutsu World, and it is a necessary move to maintain the stability of all of Japan's barriers."
He raised his hand, a wisp of thick, black cursed energy swirling around his fingertips.
"You have no residual cursed energy on you, yet you appeared here silently. Are you an assassin from the Curse User group 'Q', or a mercenary hired by the Star Religious Group?"
"Do I look like the kind of fanatical cultist who would kowtow to the air?"
Yamada stood beside Riko, not even giving Suguru a direct look. He simply lowered his head to unwrap a mint, tossing it into his mouth. A refreshing taste spread across his tongue.
"Don't try to pressure me with some grand righteousness about 'all of Japan's stability.' Only incompetent trash would entrust the survival of the world to the sacrifice of a fourteen-year-old middle schooler."
Yamada glanced at the dazed Riko, who was slumped on the ground. "To call the erasure of someone else's soul 'Assimilation'—you sorcerers who claim to be righteous really have a nauseating way of doing things."
These words were like a sharp thorn, accurately piercing through the "righteous" belief of "the strong protecting the weak" that Suguru had always held onto.
"It seems negotiations have broken down." Suguru's eyes turned cold, and his wrist suddenly flipped.
"Roar!"
A slender, centipede-like Cursed Spirit covered in sharp blades lunged out from the shadows behind him.
The Cursed Spirit opened its mouth full of fangs, biting straight toward Yamada's neck.
Suguru didn't use lethal force, he only intended to use this Grade 2 Cursed Spirit to restrain this boastful man and find out who was behind him.
Facing the hideous giant insect lunging at him, Yamada didn't even take his hands out of his pockets.
"Watch out!" Misato couldn't help but cry out from the side.
In the next second, a hair-raising scene occurred.
The centipede Cursed Spirit passed straight through Yamada's chest at the moment of contact, as if it were passing through a non-corporeal holographic projection.
Yamada still stood steadily in place, not even a corner of his clothes being moved.
"What?!" Suguru's brow furrowed sharply.
His Cursed Spirit gave no feedback of hitting a solid object, that strike just now felt like hitting thin air.
An illusion? Or some kind of special optical camouflage?
"Suguru, step back. This guy isn't right."
Satoru, who had been standing by without speaking, reached out to stop Suguru, who was about to continue summoning Cursed Spirits.
He had pulled down his small black round sunglasses halfway, revealing those "Six Eyes" that looked like a brilliant sky.
Those were the eyes born only once every few hundred years in the Jujutsu World, capable of seeing through the flow of all cursed energy and the essence of cursed techniques.
But at this moment, those eyes were filled with a rare gravity.
"My eyes can't see through him."
Satoru stared intently at Yamada, a wild and arrogant grin spreading across his face.
"No cursed energy, no sparks of a technique being activated. But the moment that centipede passed through him, the space around him folded. It wasn't an illusion, he shifted his body into another dimension."
"A space-type ability?" Suguru's heart skipped a beat.
"Bullseye." Satoru cracked his neck, his bones making a snapping sound.
With his hands in his pockets, he strode toward Yamada with his long legs.
"I don't know where a wild card like you came from, but your ability has successfully piqued my interest."
The moment the words fell, Satoru's figure vanished from the spot without warning.
Teleportation!
In the blink of an eye, he had crossed a distance of over ten meters and appeared directly in front of Yamada.
With a sneer, Satoru's right leg, like a steel whip, tore through the air and lashed toward Yamada's head.
In Yamada's black pupils, a crimson hexagram totem quietly emerged.
Kamui activated.
Whoosh—
Satoru's powerful whip-kick passed through Yamada's head without resistance, the resulting gale collapsing half of the red brick wall behind Yamada.
"It really is spatial shifting!"
Satoru's strike missed, but instead of being discouraged, the fervor in his eyes grew even stronger.
Using the momentum of the missed swing to turn in mid-air, he joined his fingers on his left hand, condensing a ball of pale blue cursed energy that radiated a terrifying suction.
Cursed Technique Lapse: Blue!
This gravitational black hole, derived from Limitless, was pressed toward Yamada's chest.
Since physical attacks could be avoided through intangibility, he would use a spatial distortion with absolute attraction to forcibly tear him apart.
However, Yamada's next move caught Satoru off guard.
He didn't continue to remain intangible. A split second before the pale blue cursed energy ball touched his clothes, the Kamui vortex in Yamada's right eye suddenly reversed.
He raised his right hand, fingers spread, and instead of avoiding it, he actively met Satoru's Blue.
"Taking my Blue head-on? You're asking for death!" Satoru snorted coldly.
Hum!
Two completely different spatial forces collided violently in the center of the playground.
Satoru's Blue—that absolute gravity capable of attracting and crushing everything—was forcibly absorbed and swallowed by an even more domineering spatial vortex the moment it touched Yamada's palm.
Kamui's spatial shifting didn't just work on oneself, it could also transfer an opponent's energy attacks.
"Ab... absorbed?" The arrogance on Satoru's face finally showed a crack.
Before he could regroup, Yamada made a backhand grab. His arm passed through the invisible barrier surrounding Satoru, which was claimed to be "impossible to touch".
The principle of Infinity was to bring the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise into reality. The closer an object got to Satoru, the slower it would become, eventually falling into an infinite halt, never able to touch his actual body.
But before Kamui, this defensive logic was pierced through a dimensional bypass.
Yamada partially phased his palm, transferring it directly into the inner space, and then re-materialized it at Satoru's shoulder.
Tap.
Yamada's hand firmly gripped Satoru's shoulder.
The entire field fell silent.
Suguru's movement to provide support stopped dead in its tracks, his eyes full of disbelief.
Riko and Misato were even more stunned.
That absolute defense of the genius known as the strongest in the Jujutsu World had actually been broken by this black-haired youth with his bare hands?
"The infinite extension of distance is a good defensive concept."
Yamada's deep hexagram eyes looked at Satoru, who was inches away. His tone was calm, yet it carried a hair-raising pressure.
"Unfortunately, as long as the distance is within the same coordinate system, it is meaningless to my eyes."
Cold sweat slid down Satoru's cheek. He could clearly feel what terrifying explosive power was contained in the hand resting on his shoulder.
As long as the other party wished, that hand could crush his scapula at any time, or even pierce straight through his heart.
He had lost.
In less than three rounds of confrontation, he had been utterly crushed by the opponent in the spatial domain he took pride in.
"Satoru!" Suguru shouted, forming hand seals as he prepared to release a Special Grade Cursed Spirit under his command.
"Don't be nervous, I don't plan on killing him."
Yamada released Satoru's shoulder, casually patting the dust off his Jujutsu High uniform before stepping back to create some distance.
The crimson in his eyes faded, and he returned to his lazy and nonchalant appearance.
Satoru stiffly withdrew his hand and pushed his sunglasses back up his nose, hiding his somewhat unsettled gaze. He did not launch another attack rashly.
"What exactly is your goal?" Suguru walked to Satoru's side, staring warily at Yamada.
"I said it before, I'm just passing through."
Yamada turned and walked over to Riko, who was still sitting on the ground.
The fourteen-year-old girl looked up at the youth who had just coaxed her with candy and then suppressed two monster-like sorcerers in the blink of an eye. In her eyes, besides fear, there was mostly a sense of bewilderment.
"Little girl."
Yamada looked down at her. "I'm asking you. Set aside the so-called 'fate' and 'righteousness' those old men brainwashed you with, and answer me with your own conscience."
"Do you want to die?"