[As the campus cherry blossoms bloomed in another brilliant spring, you entered your fourth year at Tokyo Jujutsu High.]

[Compared with the later years of Jujutsu High in your previous simulations, which had been scarred by death, betrayal, missing faces, suffocating pressure, and loneliness, this real timeline felt unusually lively and bright.]

[Because of your early intervention, the worst outcomes never happened.]

[Suguru Geto did not collapse after encountering the abused twin girls, Nanako and Mimiko, in a remote village, and he never walked the extreme road of slaughtering non-sorcerers before defecting.]

[Satoru Gojo did not lose Riko during the Star Plasma Vessel escort mission, nor did he experience the immense psychological crash that came with his best friend’s betrayal. He was never forced into that rapid deification, forced to abandon everything and bear the loneliness at the top alone.]

[On sunny afternoons, whether in Jujutsu High’s long corridors or across the wide training grounds, the two tall Special Grade boys could often be seen bickering and roughhousing like overgrown children over pointless topics, such as whether to eat something sweet or salty that night.]

[Compared with their reckless first-year days, when they might have blasted the training field apart without a second thought, they had at least restrained themselves somewhat now that they were fourth-year seniors.]

[But under Shoko Ieiri’s exasperated, eye-rolling stare, that "somewhat" truly meant only a little.]

[Meanwhile, during missions where you had not deliberately stolen the spotlight, Yu Haibara and Kento Nanami, the juniors who had received your strict guidance and tactical advice, both avoided their destined deaths.]

[The two energetic boys were still active on the front lines of various exorcism missions, becoming exceptionally reliable pillars for Jujutsu High.]

[With a more mature and absurdly powerful Satoru Gojo, along with Suguru Geto, who still upheld his ideals and remained active on the exorcism front, the situation had changed.]

[Of course, it also helped that you remained extremely low-key while always resolving the most difficult troubles with perfect efficiency.]

[With several overpowered fighters dividing the workload at terrifying speed, the once-crushing burden of missions across the jujutsu world was greatly reduced.]

[The load each person had to bear was far lighter than in those broken simulation timelines you had lived through before.]

[The most direct and comforting result of this healthier cycle was that Shoko, who remained on standby at Jujutsu High, saw a decrease in the number of critically injured, near-death patients she had to treat.]

[In a roundabout way, this protected the physical and mental health of that precious user of Reverse Cursed Technique.]

[She no longer had to face the mutilated bodies of her companions every day and numb herself with endless cigarettes. Sometimes, under the sunlight, you could even see a relaxed smile from her that came from the heart, something that had been absent for far too long.]

[The new year’s draw arrived on schedule.]

[Ding.]

[Fourth-Year Special Draw Completed.]

[Obtained: Knight Does Not Die Unarmed [SR]]

[Knight Does Not Die Unarmed [SR]: When fighting with any cold weapon, or any physical object you subjectively recognize as a weapon, your base physical strength will receive a minor enhancement (+15%). At the same time, the weapon in your hand will exhibit improved material durability, Cursed Energy conductivity, and characteristic effects beyond its normal limits (+15%).]

---

[After studying the skill’s effects in detail, you couldn’t suppress a quiet surge of admiration. This passive ability earned every ounce of its [SR] rarity.]

[It wasn’t a simple buff to physical strength. What made it terrifying was the dual ceiling raise, amplifying both the wielder and the weapon simultaneously.]

[In live combat, strength enhancement and weapon performance improvement didn’t stack additively. They multiplied. Even a standard-issue katana, the moment your fingers closed around the grip, would undergo a qualitative leap in Cursed Energy conductivity, material resilience, and cutting edge, unleashing destructive output on an entirely different level from its baseline.]

[And given your habitual approach to fighting, cautious and vicious in equal measure, you defaulted to cursed tools in any serious engagement. The exceptions were trivial opponents or sparring matches with no intent to draw real blood. Which meant the moment you entered genuine combat, this [SR]-tier dual boost would be active as a matter of course.]

[Factor in armor penetration efficiency, weapon durability under sustained stress, and Cursed Energy expenditure across the full arc of a fight, and the net practical gain dwarfed the tidy 15% + 15% = 30% printed on the label.]

Card slots are fixed, but the default configuration automatically swaps to the optimal card combination for the relevant situation.

[You didn’t send Mei Mei charging in with sweeping investigations that would rattle every bush and scatter every snake into hiding.]

[Instead, you pointed her toward what she did best: working her covert channels as an intelligence broker to dig through dusty, forgotten corners of jujutsu history.]

[Three keywords defined the scope. Tengen. The aftermath of the Star Plasma Vessel incident. And among the Big Three Sorcerer Families, the Kamo Clan.]

[Your aim was to sift through seemingly unrelated archives and historical scraps for traces that had been deliberately erased, then use those threads to reverse-engineer the shape of whatever enormous iceberg lay submerged beneath the modern jujutsu world’s surface.]

[Even with Mei Mei, who by now qualified as a core ally, you held back the deepest layer.]

[Nothing you told her came from beyond this world’s reality. No spoilers. Every directive, every lead you handed her was framed as rigorous deduction built from intelligence gathered within this timeline’s events. A logical chain anyone sufficiently brilliant could have assembled.]

[You understood the arithmetic of this world with cold clarity: knowing too much was a death sentence.]

[The hands working behind the curtain were savage and invisible.]

[If those hands ever sensed that Mei Mei possessed knowledge she had no earthly right to possess, she’d be dead before she could spend any of the money you’d promised her.]

[In this equation, ignorance was the best camouflage you could give her.]

[Whoever lurked in the shadows had chosen to hide across the long sweep of centuries, scheming in silence. Unless cornered or unless their core plan was threatened, they’d restrain themselves from pointless killings that risked exposing their existence. That much you could count on.]

[You’d laid it all out for Mei Mei in a single, lengthy conversation. The reasoning, built on observable facts.]

[Start by eliminating the Gojo Clan, whom you were protecting, and the Zenin Clan, already entangled through their connection to the bounty hunter. That left the Kamo Clan, conspicuously absent from the Star Plasma Vessel affair, as the most suspicious of the three. You suspected that Tengen’s failed assimilation wasn’t the accident it appeared to be. Fold in the Star Religious Group, an organization with roots stretching back centuries, and the outline of a massive conspiracy began to surface.]

[Mei Mei absorbed the full scope of your reasoning without flinching. She grasped immediately why you needed to dig this deep. If you intended to seize control of this world and remake it from the ground up, you first had to drag every venomous unknown out of the dark before one of them flipped the board.]

[She asked no further questions. She pocketed the retainer, slipped into the shadows like a ghost, and began.]

[For you, the figure with those grotesque stitch lines running across their skull was a target you’d pursue to the ends of the earth, no matter the cost.]

[You had to learn who they were.]

[What those parasites, wearing stolen bodies like borrowed coats, were planning.]

[But until that moment came, you had to bury yourself equally deep in the dark. The most patient hunter, coiled and watching, waiting for the opening that would let you dismantle their conspiracy before it bloomed.]

[This was a long and lethal game. On this vast board, whoever identified the other’s existence and true purpose first would seize absolute initiative, and with it, the power to decide who lived and who died.]

[Time slipped through fingers like sand. Peaceful days bred a treacherous sense of ease.]

[On Jujutsu High’s broad outdoor training grounds, the sun hid behind a thick bank of clouds. Early spring wind, still carrying the last bite of winter’s chill, swept across the field and stirred the dead grass along the edges.]

[Half an hour ago, Satoru Gojo had lured you out here with the flimsiest excuse imaginable. Something about discovering a shop that sold an incredible fresh-cream Kikufuku and needing to "strategize an escape plan to go buy some."]

[But the instant you descended the stone steps at an unhurried pace and your feet touched the rough sand of the training ground...]

[No greeting. No warning. Not a single wasted word.]

[A monstrous pulse of Cursed Energy erupted from Gojo’s body, so vast it felt as though the air itself had been vacuumed out of the surrounding space. A dormant volcano detonating without preamble.]

[His tall frame blurred into an afterimage and closed the distance in a heartbeat.]

[It had been a long time since this had happened.]

[Not since you’d looked him dead in the eye, back then, with the kind of cold, surgical rationality that left no room for argument, and told him:]

["If I were you, rather than coming at me like a street thug looking for a pointless brawl, I’d probably wait until I’d mastered something like Domain Expansion, a real finishing move, before requesting a sparring match."]

[A very long time.]

[Gojo hadn’t used any of his standard Limitless derivatives. He stood ten paces away and stopped, chin tilted upward.]

[That signature shock of silver-white hair whipped in the turbulence of his own Cursed Energy. The round black sunglasses slid down the bridge of his nose, revealing what lay behind them: the Six Eyes, twin irises that looked as though they contained the entire sky and every star in it.]

[Gone was the usual irreverence. Gone was the laziness. What burned in those eyes now was the pride and absolute certainty of the strongest sorcerer alive, and it sent a tremor through the still air.]

[He raised his right hand. Index and middle fingers crossed, forming the mudra that heralded an absolute domain.]

[Gojo looked at you. A grin split his face, wild and supreme, and his voice rolled across the silent training ground like a divine proclamation.]

["Domain Expansion. Unlimited Void."]