Jujutsu Kaisen: Tragedy Life Simulator-Chapter 91 - Heal him

[The instant Cursed Speech left your lips, the command drove straight into Geto’s soul and nailed his body in place.]

[And that split second, that razor-thin edge between life and death, was exactly what shocked the battle-hardened Special Grade fully awake.]

[You hadn’t used Phantom Night Parade’s reversal to lock down his Cursed Spirit Manipulation the way you had the last time you fought, years ago.]

[A bitter little laugh flashed through his mind. Of course. Years had passed. Why would Touma Hayase still be standing where he used to be, still be that man who only knew how to shield other people?

When he met your eyes, cold enough to make his bones feel iced over, Geto understood instantly. There was no hesitation in them. No mercy either. You had come here to kill him, and you did not care what it would cost.

But the man who had once stood at the top of the jujutsu world beside Satoru Gojo was not easy prey.]

[In the tiny slice of time the paralysis held, his sensitivity to cursed energy picked out the flaw in your Cursed Speech.

The force behind "Don’t move" wasn’t fully stable. The suppression had only been absolute at the moment it landed. After that, it was already slipping.]

[The reason was simple. The gap in cursed energy between you and a Special Grade was too big. Forcing an order onto someone at Geto’s level was shredding the technique from the inside and kicking the price back onto you.]

[Worse, his instincts had already caught the weakness in your sequence. Your technique setup hadn’t changed. You could still only keep one Cursed Technique running at a time. If that weren’t true, you never would’ve needed such careful timing to swap them around.]

[And the worst part, the part you’d missed because you were going for the kill, was even uglier. Cursed Speech could freeze his body, but it couldn’t completely shut down the cursed technique circuits fused into his soul.]

[The moment that clicked, something feral lit up in Geto’s eyes.]

[He stopped trying to fight the paralysis in his limbs. Instead, he went the other way and unleashed every cursed spirit he’d collected and beaten into submission in one violent burst.]

[There was no finesse to it. No elegant deployment. He just dumped them out like trash and turned the whole mass into the crudest shield possible, a wall of flesh, bone, and curses.]

[But you’d already seen that coming.]

[Instead of wasting effort trying to seal the part of his technique he could still force through, you chose the most brutal answer available. You would cut off every route he had in one blow.]

[The instant the Cursed Speech finished, the backlash from commanding a Special Grade tore through your throat like a serrated blade.]

[You didn’t even twitch.]

[You didn’t spare a second to heal it with Reverse Cursed Technique either. Your brain screamed under the load as Phantom Night Parade activated again and smashed straight into Projection Sorcery.]

[Twenty-four frames carved out of a single second. That impossible acceleration crashed down on your right wrist, the hand still locked around the Cleaver, the hand that had never fully healed to begin with. You pushed the frame count all the way to the limit.]

[Extreme Overload Control came off the leash completely.]

[In less than a second, the muscles in your right arm started tearing apart one fiber at a time, unable to survive that kind of acceleration.]

[Scarlet blood burst from ruptured capillaries. It collided in midair with the black, foul-smelling gore of cursed spirits, those things barely halfway out of Geto’s body before your blade pressure shredded them apart. Blood and ichor splashed together and came down like grotesque rain.]

[And you still weren’t done.]

[After Projection Sorcery hit its maximum acceleration inside that single second, you didn’t swap back to Reverse Cursed Technique to save the arm that was already seconds from collapsing. You did something even crazier.]

[You switched straight into Limitless.]

[Using the reversed application, Red, as pure propulsion, you slammed that force into the pommel of the Cleaver in less than a heartbeat. There was only one goal: make absolutely sure this strike landed.]

[Every calculation, every switch, every desperate gamble, packed into three seconds.]

["BOOM!"]

[Black sparks of cursed energy exploded inside the sea of cursed spirits like a supernova. Black Flash. The miracle born from a sorcerer hitting absolute focus.]

[Under that warped, space-twisting force, the blade ripped through the wall of spirits for an instant. But the recoil, strong enough to break bedrock, snapped your already ruined right arm with a sickening crack. Bone broke clean through a limb that was basically raw meat by now, white exposed beneath shredded flesh.]

[The shockwave blasted outward with the dying shrieks of cursed spirits mixed into it and sent you flying.]

[Midair, you bit down so hard it felt like your teeth might crack.]

[Your left hand snapped toward Geto. Index finger and pinky extended. Middle finger, ring finger, and thumb folded in. The shape looked like devil horns, ugly and lethal.]

[The air around you started screaming as cursed energy condensed.]

[And then your fingers shook, curled inward, and closed into a fist.]

[You gave up on the technique.]

[There were two reasons. Your students and allies were all around you, and without the Six Eyes, firing that attack would have been indiscriminate. The aftermath would’ve been a disaster. And second, the same old problem that had always chained you down showed up at the worst possible time.]

[You were running out of cursed energy.]

[If you’d had a little more. If your body had held together just a little better. That strike might have ended everything.]

[Only then did everyone else finally snap out of it.]

[The exchange had been so violent, so absurd, that the others had frozen where they stood. Now they rushed to reinforce themselves with cursed energy and started dealing with the low-level cursed spirits that had gone feral after losing control.]

["Touma!"]

[Panda launched himself into the air and caught your falling body with both arms. His voice was tight with urgency and disbelief.]

[Maki, Toge, and Yuta, all still barely new to this world, saw your right arm at the same time.]

[The muscles were almost completely torn away. White bone pushed through split skin and hung in the open air.]

[Every one of them went pale.]

[But what hit them even harder was your face.]

[You were white as paper from pain and cursed energy exhaustion, but there wasn’t even a trace of concern for yourself on it.]

[You hadn’t made a sound. Not even a grunt. Those cold eyes stayed locked on Geto through the thinning tide of cursed spirits, tracking him without blinking, like the broken wreck of your body belonged to someone else.]

[Like if he twitched wrong, you would throw yourself at him again immediately.]

[They couldn’t understand it.]

[The teacher they knew, the calm, gentle one they saw every day, what kind of resolve was driving him this far? What kind of conviction let him keep hurling this mortal body toward the sun, again and again, knowing full well it could burn him to ash?]

[That lesson branded itself into the first-years far deeper than any speech ever could.]

[Even Yuta Okkotsu was shaken by how pure your intent was.]

["You idiot! Why are you just standing there?!"]

[Maki’s voice cracked across the field like a whip. She spun on Yuta, who was still staring at you in shock, and the anger in her face barely covered the tremor underneath.]

["Heal him! Now!"]

[That finally kicked Yuta back into motion.]

[He rushed over with shaking hands and pressed Reverse Cursed Technique over your arm, warm light spilling across the mangled limb that was basically hanging by threads.]

["Wha... oh! Right, right, I’m doing it!"]

[But before he could even finish, you forced yourself up out of Panda’s grasp.]

[Your right hand was still wrapped in the glow of Reverse Cursed Technique. It was stiff, slow, nowhere near fixed. Didn’t matter. You bent down, snatched the blood-soaked Cleaver off the ground, and lowered your body again, ready to charge.]

[A tall figure stepped into your path.]

[Gojo didn’t turn around. He only tilted his head slightly, blindfold angled toward your ruined arm. When he spoke, every trace of his usual lightness was gone.]

["Enough. That’s enough, Touma."]