"Yo, Satoru."
"Long time no see."
Clad in monk robes, with black hair framing his face, Suguru Geto waved with a gentle, affectionate smile.
Gojo Satoru's Six Eyes operated at full capacity, mist-like currents swirling within his gaze as he stared blankly at the figure before him, emotions surging through his mind.
A transformation technique?
White Zetsu impersonating him?
No.
The information fed back by the Six Eyes gave an answer completely different from the one in Shibuya Underground Station.
The body was not the real Suguru Geto.
But the soul…
That incomparably familiar expression. Those eyes.
Everything Gojo's soul perceived told him with undeniable clarity—
This was truly Suguru Geto himself.
"How can you lose focus in the middle of a fight, Satoru?"
Geto raised an arm toward Gojo, and a tide of black cursed energy burst forth.
Gojo's striking white hair fluttered.
A beam of cursed energy grazed past his ear and violently blasted toward Sukuna, who had attempted a sneak attack from behind.
BOOM!!!
Sukuna smacked away the incoming cursed energy with one hand, realization flashing across his eyes.
"Heh… so it's a séance-type cursed technique."
After the failed ambush, Sukuna looked upward.
"That guy's been hiding quite a few trump cards."
A thousand meters above the battlefield—
At the center of the pitch-black that split the world in two, atop a throne formed from shadows, sat an invincible figure.
Resting one cheek against his hand, he gazed lazily down at the three below.
As though the decisive battle between the strongest sorcerer of the modern era and the strongest in history…
Was nothing more than a game to him.
Beside the throne, figures gradually emerged from the void one after another.
White Zetsu No.1. Uro Takako. Nanako. Mimiko.
And someone whom Jujutsu High had already declared dead—
"Maki?!"
Inside a hidden observation space, the gathered members of Jujutsu High cried out in shock.
Seeing the figure displayed on the large screen, Zenin Maki, Nishimiya Momo of Kyoto, Miwa, and the others all stared in disbelief.
"Geto… what exactly is going on?!"
Even Gojo's expression turned grave as he questioned his resurrected best friend.
Geto rolled his neck and looked upward.
"There's no time to explain, Satoru."
"The real horror… is about to begin."
Ten Minutes Earlier
At the very center of the Culling Game barrier—
Within the hidden dimension opened by Kamui high in the sky, the true body of the God Tree flickered indistinctly in the darkness.
Besides Zenin Mai, there were also Nanako and Mimiko, whom Mirai had taken into Kamui after the Shibuya Incident.
And there was another figure:
The curse user imprisoned beneath the second underground level of the Jujutsu warehouse, across from Kumoi Juzo—
Ogami, the old woman.
The very same grandmother from the original manga who had summoned Toji Zenin's body information.
Years ago, Zenin Ju had already been ordered by Mirai to capture curse users alive.
The reason Ju had survived until now was because he had successfully completed that mission.
Just as Jujutsu High had deduced, in order to carry out the cursed energy assimilation of hundreds of millions of people, Cursed Spirit Manipulation was an indispensable component.
After Kenjaku had hollowed out Geto's brain, White Zetsu could no longer possess the body.
But from the very beginning, Suguru Geto's corpse had been in Mirai's possession.
Before Kenjaku acquired that body at great cost, Mirai had already thoroughly inspected it.
Kenjaku found no traces of tampering, and merely assumed the damage to the corpse was leftover injury from Geto's battle against Yuta Okkotsu.
Yet long before that, Mirai had already collected cellular samples from Geto's original body and soul.
During the battle beneath Shibuya Station, Mirai had even deliberately prevented Gojo from calling out Geto's name in order to preserve the integrity of his soul.
Throwing a container toward White Zetsu, Mirai coldly ordered the old woman:
"Begin. Summon Suguru Geto's soul."
Catching the vessel containing Geto's bodily tissue, White Zetsu grumbled unhappily:
"I knew helping you seize No.2 wasn't out of kindness."
"Thought it was a toy for me to play with. Turns out it was prepared for that dead guy."
Ignoring the complaint, Mirai merely watched Ogami's ritual in silence.
Ogami's technique was called "Séance."
It was fundamentally similar to Ino Takuma's technique from Jujutsu High.
The difference was that Ino summoned spiritual beasts to possess himself, whereas Ogami could summon the dead.
She had always maintained one strict rule:
Summon only the body's information, never the soul.
Because placing two souls within a single vessel could lead to unpredictable consequences.
Loss of control.
Mental collapse.
Ignoring commands entirely.
Unless…
There existed a moving corpse—
One body housing only one soul.
Ogami fingered the Buddhist beads in her hand as eerie cursed energy fluctuations grew increasingly violent.
White Zetsu might fool around, but when it came to serious matters, he never delayed.
That outburst in Sendai had served as a farewell to Body No.2.
He swallowed the container in one gulp, and the soul residing within the vessel voluntarily began to withdraw.
The moment the medium entered the body, Ogami's cursed energy surged to its peak.
"Séance: Suguru Geto!"
Five Minutes Later
"Geto-sama!"
Looking down at the two girls sobbing in his arms, Geto's lips curved into a warm smile.
"You're already grown up. Why are you still crying like little kittens?"
Feeling the warmth of the hand resting atop their heads, Nanako and Mimiko—who had always viewed Geto as a father figure—
Cried even harder.
Geto turned toward Mirai and spoke softly:
"So when you talked about cooperation back then… you were serious."
Neither in the past nor now had Suguru Geto's ideals ever changed.
Eradicate all non-sorcerers.
Create a perfect world inhabited only by jujutsu sorcerers.
But Mirai was even more ruthless.
Humans. Sorcerers. Cursed spirits. Nations.
It seemed he intended to erase everything even more thoroughly.
During the five minutes they spent exchanging information earlier, Mirai had hidden nothing from him, briefly explaining the current situation.
"So, how does the body feel?"
To ensure the assimilation proceeded smoothly—and to guarantee Geto's cooperation—Mirai had prepared everything in advance.
"Excellent."
Geto clenched his fist.
"I can feel the immense cursed energy contained within this body."
"The current me is stronger than I ever was in life."
"Of course," White Zetsu No.1 muttered irritably from the side.
"That body still contains over a thousand years' worth of cursed energy."
Only the unique nature of a Heavenly Restriction body could sustain the consumption required by a special-grade sorcerer.
Any ordinary body would have been incapable of perfectly wielding Cursed Spirit Manipulation.
Mirai stepped forward.
"You already know the plan. I trust you'll cooperate willingly."
Ogami's commands alone might not be enough to fully control an enhanced special-grade sorcerer.
Mirai had no intention of repeating what happened with Toji in the manga.
For Tengen's assimilation to succeed, voluntary cooperation from Suguru Geto was preferable.
The surrounding space warped slightly.
A monstrous, inhuman figure bound tightly by the branches of the God Tree emerged from the distortion.
Geto could clearly sense that Tengen's body had become far closer to a cursed spirit than a human.
Glancing at Nanako and Mimiko, whose tears had yet to dry, Geto slowly stepped forward.
Aside from protecting his family…
He also wanted one final chance to fight alongside Satoru—
Alongside the friend he once called his closest companion.
This time—
He would leave behind no regrets.
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