Jujutsu Kaisen: Tragedy Life Simulator-Chapter 100 - Forward, Even on a Dead-End Road [bonus]
[The shattered Curtain broke apart into a storm of black cursed energy, fragments drifting down over the ruined training grounds like dark snow before fading away.]
[Geto tipped his head back and watched the white-haired figure descend through it, slow and inevitable, like some god finally stepping down to pass judgment.]
[Something complicated twisted across his face. Regret that the plan had failed. Acceptance that there was nowhere left to go. And buried underneath both of those, a thin, ugly hint of relief.]
[If he was being honest with himself, he’d seen this ending the moment he split his forces. His brain had never been the problem.]
[He looked at Gojo, standing there like a wall nothing alive could ever climb, and tugged faintly at the corner of his mouth.]
["I will say this, though... I didn’t expect you to be the one standing in front of me at the end."]
[In a gamble built on thousands of lives, Touma Hayase had always been the one ruthless enough to finish the job without blinking. Compared to Gojo, who still dragged his emotions around like chains, Hayase was the natural executioner. In Geto’s head, it should have been Hayase standing here now, soaked in blood like some war demon who’d torn straight through every obstacle in his path and come to deliver the final sentence.]
[Wind snapped at the hem of Gojo’s uniform. Behind the white bandages, he stared at the friend who had once fought at his side. He didn’t answer. His face gave nothing away either. Even the cursed energy pouring off him felt unnaturally still, like standing at the lip of a bottomless pit.]
[That silence pulled Geto’s eyes down for a moment. Something in them dimmed. He took a slow breath.]
["My family... are they alright?"]
[Gojo turned his head a little. When he spoke, his voice was flat.]
["Touma handled them."]
[That was as soft as Gojo could make it. It didn’t matter. Geto knew Hayase. He knew exactly what "handled" meant, and how much blood came with it.]
[His body went rigid. Slowly, he lifted his face to the gray sky and let out a long, hollow breath, like something important had finally been pulled out of him.]
["He really is... stubborn as ever, huh..."]
[For a second, memory dragged him straight back.]
[A corridor at Jujutsu High. Hayase’s face, cold as frozen ground, staring down Special Grade sorcerer Yuki Tsukumo while she tossed around her grand theories. And the words he’d thrown at her, sharp enough to cut.]
["If that kind of hell ever becomes reality..."]
["If, in the name of some greater good, this world turns into a paradise for monsters, where killing infants is just the price of entry..."]
["Then I don’t care if you’re Special Grade or something even worse. The moment you stand on that side, I’ll kill you."]
[Geto could see the battlefield in Shinjuku as clearly as if he were standing in it. Hayase in the middle of a lake of blood. Asakirimaru dripping red in his hand. Behind him, Nanako, Mimiko, Miguel, his family, the people who had given him everything, lying broken across the ground. Around them, heaps of Cursed Spirit remains stacked like garbage.]
[The truth was, Geto had always known.]
[A mind as sharp as his couldn’t miss what path he was really on. The road he’d chosen had been cursed from the start, doomed to end in annihilation. He’d known for years that his so-called righteous cause was full of holes. But the moment he shoved open that blood-soaked door in the village and stepped onto this road with no return, the malice of the era and his own warped sense of duty swallowed him whole.]
[After that, all he could do was grit his teeth and keep moving.]
[He had no right to stop. Not with every homeless Curse User who had followed him, every one of those so-called family members and all their hopes, piled on his back.]
[Stopping had never really been an option.]
[HUMMMM!]
[Geto raised his one remaining arm.]
[The air screamed.]
[Thick black cursed energy started gathering around him, spiraling inward and compressing at a terrifying speed. The Semi-Grade 1 spirits still fighting the Wukong, the reserves hiding in the dark, even the Special Grade imaginary vengeful spirit Tamamo-no-Mae Incarnate, all of them were dragged inward by that violent pull. Crushed. Stripped apart. Forced into one single mass.]
[Through the Six Eyes, Gojo saw every detail of the compression. The black sphere folded in on itself and bulged with nauseating waves of power. He knew what he was looking at. Geto was burning whatever life he had left for one last hit.]
[This had to be the deepest secret of Cursed Spirit Manipulation, the move Hayase had told him about once.]
[Maximum: Uzumaki.]
[Even without the thousands of spirits scattered across Tokyo and Shinjuku, the high-grade Cursed Spirits packed into this Uzumaki were enough to produce absurd destructive force.]
[But absurd only mattered when the person in front of it wasn’t Satoru Gojo.]
[He didn’t move back even half a step. Didn’t raise his guard. He spoke to Geto in the same tone someone might use to comment on the weather.]
["If Touma were standing here instead of me, he’d be busy trying to contain this without letting it hit the campus behind him. But Suguru... you know better than anyone. Pure physical power, no matter how much you pile on, means nothing against Limitless."]
[Geto either didn’t hear him or didn’t care.]
[Blood vessels burst at the corners of his eyes from the strain. He threw everything into it, every last scrap of cursed energy left in his hollowed-out soul, every remaining spirit still under his control.]
[He knew he couldn’t break through Gojo.]
[He did it anyway.]
[Like he needed to prove this life hadn’t all been pointless.]
[Like he needed proof that the ten years he’d spent carrying hate and wading through filth hadn’t been a complete joke. Proof that he wasn’t what Hayase had called him all those years ago, a man who’d stopped thinking and chosen self-destruction.]
[Even if he was not the strongest, Suguru Geto still wanted to show the world he had enough pride to burn himself to ash for what he believed in.]
["Go!"]
[The scream tore out of him half in desperation, half in madness.]
[The torrent exploded.]
[Hundreds upon hundreds of Cursed Spirits, compressed into one absolute-black column, roared forward like a dragon trying to eat the world. The ground split open in its wake, carved into a chasm too deep to see. The violence of it was enough to make it feel like the whole world might get swallowed up.]
[And still, this was just a mortal throwing everything he had at a god.]
[The invisible wall of Limitless stopped the strike dead half a meter from Gojo’s body. It hung there, trapped in endless regression. Power bled out in every direction, but it couldn’t even stir the hem of his uniform, couldn’t move a single strand of white hair.]
[That was the gap.]
[One man had given everything. The other stood untouchable. Impossible to reach.]
[Then a tiny violet point lit up inside that black flood.]
[Small, pure and heavy enough to feel like a collapsing star.]
[It sliced through the endless dark like a dying meteor and split the torrent of Cursed Spirits straight down the middle, erasing them as it went.]
[In the next instant, that violet light passed clean through Suguru Geto’s chest.]
[Hollow Purple.]
[Blue and Red fused into one.]
[Maybe, if Geto hadn’t split his forces, if this Uzumaki had been built from the thousands of spirits loose across Tokyo and Kyoto, Gojo’s attack wouldn’t have torn through it that easily.]
[It still wouldn’t have changed the ending.]
[Thud.]
[With a gaping hole where his chest should have been, Geto’s body lost all support and dropped flat onto the cold ground.]
[Blood spread beneath him.]
[But the pain from his ruined body felt far away now, almost irrelevant. What filled his fading eyes was something else.]
[Relief.]
[The kind that only came after carrying a burden for ten straight years and finally, finally putting it down.]
[The leftover energy from Maximum: Uzumaki thinned out and disappeared into the air.]
[Gojo was still standing in the same spot as before. No wounds. No heavier breathing. Nothing.]
[He lowered his head and looked at Geto lying there in the widening pool of blood. For a long time, he said nothing.]
[Cold wind stirred his white hair.]
[Minutes passed. It felt longer than that.]
[At last, Gojo slowly turned and looked toward the far-off horizon, toward the battlefield in Shinjuku that was still burning.]
[Behind the white bandages, it was as if he could see a familiar figure there. The one who always took on more than his share and kept walking anyway.]
[In a voice so quiet no one else could have heard it, heavy with old grief, he murmured,]
["So this is what it felt like for you too, Touma..."]
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simulation’s ending soon... start guessing who’s gonna kill Touma ;-;next target: 2000 PS
