Chapter 22: Shackles and Undercurrents (Patreon)

Chapter 22: Restraints, Undercurrents

...

Although Satoru Anjouin's technique hadn't awakened yet, the basic knowledge bundled with the third piece of intel already let him gather cursed energy.

But his mood right now was anything but calm.

The thing he'd been dreading had actually come true — the technique he'd awakened had no direct offensive power.

So he'd have to learn... elbow techni— cough, sorry, that came out wrong. He meant hand-to-hand combat.

And the sheer number of binding-application techniques on top of that instantly made him surpass even the King of Loans.

As the smell of spilled milk under his feet drifted up his nose, Anjouin fumbled for a moment. He'd need some time to collect himself — and clean up both the room and his own body while he was at it.

His thoughts kept circling back to those growth-type restraints.

The first two growth restraints' effects could reach the level of Heavenly Restriction.

Except a reversed Heavenly Restriction, however good it sounded, would mean chasing zero cursed energy as a heaven-blessed tyrant in a world like Jujutsu Kaisen, where cursed energy reigned supreme. That would be putting the cart before the horse.

Speaking of 'Restrictions and Vows,' the first thing that came to mind was Hunter x Hunter.

Whether it was the protagonist Gon, trading his lifespan and future for immense combat power and hair that shot straight up,

or Kurapika's restriction aimed entirely at his sworn enemies, the Phantom Troupe — both were classic templates.

In a sense, this counted as a technique involving 'rules' too.

Most importantly, the intel had come with a huge number of restraint-rule templates thrown in.

Well, now the Anjouin family's real, he thought.

As he showered in hot water, Anjouin's mind blanked for a second — he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Out in the world, your identity really was whatever you claimed for yourself.

Who knew it might suddenly turn out to be true.

He'd originally planned to use the Anjouin family's decline as an excuse, but on the very first night, he'd gathered cursed energy just fine.

Whether it was pure talent or a family legacy of learning, it was enough to earn him a second look from the higher-ups.

It also made his fabricated sorcerer family lineage far more convincing.

Not that he particularly cared whether his lie was true or false.

This world, after all, never cared about right and wrong, good and evil, beauty and ugliness.

It leaned toward results — history was written by the victors.

Still, his own behavior reminded Anjouin of a movie he'd once watched.

In that movie, the protagonist walked into a bank and claimed to be the son-in-law of a certain wealthy man, hoping to land a job as a bank clerk.

For the sake of the rich man's reputation, the bank gave him the job — and then the protagonist turned around and pursued the rich man's daughter, eventually winning her over...

However underhanded the method, pulling it off was proof enough of the protagonist's ability.

Of course, if he'd been found out, his fate would have been utterly miserable — that was the price he'd have had to pay.

With the floor mopped and a fresh shower taken, Anjouin had planned to spend the rest of the night just like that.

But the buzz in the class group chat forced him to shelve that plan.

According to what he'd been told at the informal interview, every student had a chance to awaken cursed energy on their first night at Advanced Nurturing High School, and by now quite a few classmates had already faintly sensed its presence.

They were discussing it excitedly in the group chat.

Sensing they were getting a little carried away, Anjouin had to throw some cold water on them.

Anjouin: Being excited is fine, but don't forget — since midnight, we've officially been enrolled. That means the first month's conduct assessment has already begun.

Anjouin: The dorm's code of conduct doubles as the standard for student conduct in general.

Things like not barging into other people's dorms, not making noise, not damaging public facilities, not vandalizing the dorm without cause, and so on.

Anjouin: Unstable emotions can easily cause cursed energy to run out of control. That could cost the class points — or even put your own safety at risk.

The cold water left everyone a little uncomfortable, but once they saw who'd sent it, they all bit their tongues — and felt a chill of belated fear besides.

After all, even if they'd awakened cursed energy, they were still nowhere near real sorcerers, and naturally lacked any refined control over it.

Anjouin: Katsuragi, there's a specialized class tomorrow, right?

Katsuragi: Yes, one every morning.

Katsuragi: 2.8 million Private Points — I've already redeemed the new schedule.

Anjouin: There's also a club orientation at five tomorrow afternoon, but once afternoon classes end, I'll try to teach everyone how to gather cursed energy.

As the saying goes, a slap followed by a sweet date.

Having just doused his classmates with cold water, it was only natural to send them a little warmth next.

Gathering cursed energy ahead of schedule would let Class A's students get a step ahead.

One step ahead meant every step ahead — like a snowball, the advantage would only keep growing.

The class group chat immediately exploded with activity...

Seeing that, Anjouin shook his head helplessly.

It looked like none of them planned to sleep tonight. In the end, Anjouin just sent Ai Morishita a private message telling her to turn in early.

Only then did he get down to studying his own technique.

He'd known through the intel system that he was guaranteed to awaken a technique, but he hadn't expected to be lucky enough to have it awakened already.

That only made him appreciate all the more just how absurd the restraint templates the intel system offered really were.

The late-bloomer version of the growth-type restraint might not show much at first — a classic case of great talent maturing late — but seventy or eighty years down the line, it would grant a Special Grade sorcerer's worth of talent and power every single year.

Push it another twenty or thirty years, and it would grant roughly a Satoru Gojo's worth of talent and power every year.

And another fifty or sixty years after that — by the time he was past a hundred and eighty — gaining a Tiger God Emperor's worth of talent and power every year... shouldn't be a problem.

Still, Anjouin was more drawn to the early-bloomer version of the growth-type restraint.

Trading ten or twenty years of future stagnation for a boosted growth rate within just a single year.

And this kind of restraint could be lifted through the restraint-breaking effect of a reversed technique.

Anjouin immediately thought up a sneaky little trick.

It was just like taking out a loan and then destroying the loan agreement afterward — the bank might want to collect, but without any contract, it couldn't.

Sure, that kind of move definitely broke the rules — but his technique's effect of channeling in positive energy just happened to be breaking restraints.

Besides, the rules were meant for ordinary people borrowing from a bank, bound by every regulation the bank set, with no way to resist its debt collection.

But Anjouin, having awakened a 'Restrictions and Vows'-type technique, counted as a bank employee — on the bank's side, not the borrower's.

Naturally, the price he'd need to pay would be far smaller.

Still, given how difficult it was to establish a growth-type restraint in the first place, even using the reversal effect would probably demand a heavy price of its own before it could fully dissolve the restraint and let him dodge the original cost.

Most critically, the technique for reversing cursed energy times cursed energy into positive-polarity energy was fairly advanced stuff.

Anjouin set mastering the reversal technique as his next goal.

Even with so many thoughts swirling through his head, he held himself in check, tried gathering cursed energy a few more times, then began summing up the day's gains.

A sort of after-action review of today's moves.

Thinking it over carefully, today's maneuvers had carried some real risk — like walking on thin ice.

But for the sake of future stability and a comfortable environment to grow in, he'd had to make some arrangements ahead of time. Since his strength couldn't skyrocket in a short span, attaching himself to a powerful figure or joining a strong faction was the correct move for now.

Just wondering whether the changes at Advanced Nurturing would end up affecting the Brain Flower and the cursed spirit side of things...

Over on the Classroom of the Elite side, even with the school's strange changes, it was still, broadly speaking, a school story — at most gaining tags like action, hot-blooded, and fantasy.

But over on the Jujutsu Kaisen side, there was no telling whether the bosses would be affected.

—

"You've traded into quite the cute body, Suguru Geto."

A young man who looked to be about twenty spoke with a teasing smile.

He was tall, dressed in his usual black robe, with medium-length blue-gray hair and heterochromatic blue-gray eyes. Black stitch-marks covered his face and body.

Standing right in front of him was an adult woman dressed like an office lady.

"At a time like this, you should call me Itadori — Kaori Itadori."

The black-haired woman had a single stitch-line across her forehead.

The young man raised both hands in mock surrender.

"Sure, sure, Geto~" He gave his lips a flirtatious lick, deliberately needling her.

Behind eyes as innocent and unblemished as a child's lurked the cruelest malice, as if he were already sizing up the woman for weaknesses.

At the same moment, two more figures appeared: a one-eyed cursed spirit shaped like a hunched old man with a volcanic crater for a head, and a tall cursed spirit with a somewhat feminine air, gentler in bearing, with branches sprouting from around its eyes.

Together with the young man, the two formed a loose encirclement, quietly bearing down on the office-lady woman.

The woman pressed her lips together. She knew that all three Special Grade cursed spirits surrounding her ranked among the best even by Special Grade standards.

Add in the curse fetus still lurking in the shadows, and that made all four of the Special Grade cursed spirits she worked with.

One of the rare cursed-spirit factions with both intelligence and the sense to band together.

"Don't tell me you're testing my true strength just because I've taken heavy damage."

The woman's smile was brilliant.

"Heh." The youth-shaped cursed spirit looked eager to try his luck.

"Mahito, Jogo..." the tall cursed spirit cautioned, clearly unwilling to see their current alliance fall apart.

"Do we even need to cooperate? The age of curses has already arrived."

Jogo, the Special Grade cursed spirit shaped like a one-eyed old man, let out a cackling 'heh-heh-heh-heh.'

Over the past few months, curse outbreaks had clearly spiked beyond anything in history — so much so that Satoru Gojo had been forced to run all over the world just exorcising curses.

"But even all of us together still wouldn't be a match for Satoru Gojo."

The woman gave a light chuckle.

"No — more precisely, without a hostage, all of us together wouldn't last three seconds against him."

"Are you mocking me, curse user?!"

The Special Grade cursed spirit clearly held its own dignity in very high regard.

The crater atop its head teetered on the edge of eruption as it glared at her with vicious eyes.

But the woman only looked back at it with contempt.

"Above Special Grade, Satoru Gojo created the concept of 'Above Special Grade' — and that concept was really just meant as a stepping stone to the next tier."

"Haaah!"

The one-eyed cursed spirit exhaled hard, gathering a massive amount of heat in its hands.

"That tier is called 'Divine Spirit' — which is to say, what's now Tokyo's Advanced Nurturing High School."

"Advanced Nurturing is a Divine Spirit that's only just been born. To claim it, you'd need to defeat Satoru Gojo — and you... can't."

The woman still wore that same contemptuous look.

Still, he felt somewhat helpless all the same — who'd have guessed that stirring the jujutsu world into motion from the shadows would trigger a backlash of its own.

As a result, that hugely important body from before had been left in tatters, and could only be set aside for repairs.

It really had thrown a sizable wrench into his plans.