Jujutsu Kaisen: Tragedy Life Simulator-Chapter 105 - Interlude: Body [bonus]

[Somewhere on the outskirts of Tokyo, inside an abandoned underground construction site hidden behind high-level barrier techniques.]

[A man in a black Jujutsu High uniform stood alone on the bare concrete, throwing punches and snapping kicks through the air as he tested the body he’d only just taken for himself.]

["Hah... hah..."]

[The man paused to catch his breath, a deep frown settling on his face.]

[Something about this body felt seriously off.]

[Not in absolute terms. Compared to an ordinary civilian, this vessel was still absurdly strong. It could crush bone with raw physical force alone.]

[But the "man’s" standard wasn’t ordinary people.]

[It was the bodies of peak Grade 1 sorcerers.]

[Measured against that, this vessel felt almost laughably underwhelming.]

[It wasn’t just the muscle density or the lack of explosive power. Even the basic cursed energy reserves were far lower than they should have been.]

[Before today, the "man" had never had the chance to examine Touma Hayase’s body this closely. Now he was starting to wonder whether the intelligence network he’d planted throughout the jujutsu world had somehow made a catastrophic mistake.]

[Every detailed combat report said the same thing. Hayase had crushed Special Grade Geto in a one-on-one simulation at Jujutsu High. During the Night Parade, he’d torn through the battlefield in Shinjuku like a natural disaster wearing human skin. Every account pointed to physical power so ridiculous it stopped sounding believable.]

[And only a few hours ago, at the cemetery, the "man" had felt that strength for himself. The moment Hayase grabbed "Geto" by the throat in a burst of rage, the spike in raw physical force had been unmistakable. It had been strong enough to overpower a Special Grade head-on.]

[By all logic, his body-hopping technique, refined across a thousand years, should have inherited everything. The Innate Technique too. There was no reason for physical power on that level to just disappear.]

[Because he’d seen it clearly.]

[At the cemetery, when Hayase unleashed that strength, his left hand had been controlling the body, his right hand had drawn the blade, and his mouth had been using replicated Cursed Speech. That terrifying force hadn’t come from some enhancement technique. It had come from the body itself.]

[Over the course of a thousand years, the "man" had changed bodies the way a hermit crab changed shells, taking one vessel after another. But a disconnect this extreme between the information and the actual body? That was new.]

[Once in a while, he’d met martial artists whose strength didn’t come from cursed techniques at all, but from refined striking methods polished over decades, or secret combat arts passed down through generations.]

[But those bodies always left signs.]

[Muscle memory.]

[Bone structure altered by brutal training.]

[Traces burned into every part of the flesh.]

[This body had none of that.]

[Other than that heaven-defying Innate Technique, every single part of its physical specs flatly contradicted the terrifying combat records tied to Touma Hayase.]

[The "man" lowered his gaze to his own hands. They were slim. Not especially muscular at all. He muttered under his breath.]

["How strange... why is this body built like this..."]

[Before the last word fully faded, he turned, drew a deep breath, gathered every bit of force this vessel could produce, and drove a full-power punch into the reinforced concrete floor.]

[The floor cratered.]

[Shallowly.]

[Dust rose in thin little wisps.]

[He looked down at his reddened knuckles, his frown deepening.]

["No... this feels completely wrong."]

[The body’s output and its muscle memory didn’t line up at all. Something important was missing. Some central mechanism. According to the reports, when Hayase really let loose, the force of his own power tore his body apart. But this punch hadn’t even come close to finding the limit of this flimsy vessel.]

[It wasn’t just Phantom Night Parade that was abnormal.]

[The supposedly ordinary body itself was full of contradictions.]

["It’s like... in a world that runs on rules, someone accidentally slipped in a bug that ignores all of them."]

[That was the "man’s" final, exact conclusion.]

[But the crease in his brow didn’t last.]

[Compared to that miraculous Innate Technique, the mystery of the flesh barely mattered.]

[He had lived for a thousand years.]

[He had seen geniuses beyond counting.]

[He had catalogued more bizarre techniques than most people could imagine.]

[And never, not once, had he come across anything this broken, this fundamentally absurd.]

[No binding vow.]

[No brutal activation cost.]

[As long as a target came within analytical range, and as long as understanding deepened, the technique could dissect it and reproduce it.]

[What truly unsettled the "man" was the technique’s passive analysis.]

[When Phantom Night Parade sat idle and quietly gathered data in the background, it was almost impossible to notice. Unless someone caught the exact instant it activated, and had absurdly sharp perception on top of that, they’d never realize they were being analyzed from the inside out.]

["So that’s how he saw through me at the cemetery so quickly. The technique recognized Geto’s body before his conscious mind did."]

[The "man" slowly raised one hand.]

[He closed his eyes and reached through this new brain, using Phantom Night Parade to pull up the freshly recorded memory of that gravity technique.]

[A low hum spread through the air.]

[In the center of his palm, a dense and perfectly stable gravitational field took shape.]

[Effortless.]

[A flawless copy.]

[His mouth curled into something close to manic delight. He shifted his cursed energy into positive flow and pushed it through the body, activating technique.]

[A powerful anti-gravity field rippled out from his center. Shattered chunks of stone around the room rose into the air, hanging there in defiance of common sense.]

[Another perfect copy.]

[No lag.]

[No distortion.]

["Ha... haha... hahahahahaha!"]

[Watching the stones float, the "man" threw his head back and laughed.]

[In a thousand years of plotting, he had never stumbled onto an opening this perfect, this stupidly overpowered.]

[When he’d first started paying attention to Touma Hayase, his expectations had actually been pretty modest.]

[A rumor had leaked out of Jujutsu High about someone who could copy other sorcerers’ techniques, and that had been enough to catch his interest.]

[Jujutsu history had produced mimicry-type techniques before.]

[Most of them came with fatal drawbacks.]

[He simply had not expected Phantom Night Parade to be this ridiculous.]

[No wonder he hadn’t moved sooner. Hayase kept such a low profile in jujutsu society that most of his terrifying potential had been completely overshadowed by the blinding presence of two Special Grades, Gojo and Geto. Very easy to overlook.]

[The "man" let the technique fade, clearly in the best mood he’d been in for a very long time.]

[He turned and looked down at the body on the ground with the appreciation of someone admiring a masterpiece.]

[Suguru Geto’s corpse.]

[The top of the skull had been removed, and the body had been tossed aside like trash.]

[The "man" touched the neat line of stitches circling this new body’s forehead, smiling with naked cruelty and anticipation.]

["Hmm~ What a nice surprise. Once I’ve fully mastered this little ’bug’ of a technique, with Geto’s body and Cursed Spirit Manipulation backing me up... I won’t even need those annoying alliance plans with the Special Grade Cursed Spirits anymore~"]

["A new world~ I really can’t wait~"]