The Honored One Awakens

"What is this?"

Ren and Gojo controlled the powers they had been about to release at almost the same time.

Both of them had already reached a level where they could send and withdraw force freely. Faced with the sudden change, they drew back their attacks.

Tenbu's figure separated from Ren's body and appeared behind him again.

Ren looked at the dark space around them, his eyes narrowing. The near-prophetic intuition brought by the Six Vaults Devourer told him that besides the two of them, something else was here.

"Ren, looks like I dragged you into this," Gojo said. He did not seem surprised. Somehow, he had put on another pair of black sunglasses.

Since birth, countless people had wanted Satoru Gojo dead. At first he had been annoyed. Now he was almost numb. He could no longer count how many reckless curse users had appeared in front of him.

None of them were still alive.

What he had not expected was that someone would dare make a move in front of so many families.

"Heh heh heh. Satoru Gojo, you really are injured."

A dark voice came from every direction.

Ren sat down cross-legged as if this unknown space were his own sofa. There was no tension in him.

Gojo tilted his head, rare anger in his eyes.

He had felt that in his fight with Ren, he had almost touched a realm he had never reached before. It would have pushed his strength to another level.

But a group of scraps had interrupted the fight.

Cold anger gathered around him.

"Since you came, stop hiding. My friend is still waiting for me. If you want to fight, hurry up."

His tone was still frivolous, but something inside it had changed.

"Satoru Gojo, do you know why we hate you?"

The voice drifted, and even the Six Eyes could not immediately find its location.

"Prepared for the Six Eyes? Interesting," Gojo said. Then he sighed. "Sorry, but compared with the people who like me, the people who hate me are not even worth mentioning. Being this handsome and talented is such a burden."

There was the sound of teeth grinding.

"It is that attitude. That is why we hate you even more. Why did your birth change everything? Why do you interfere with our pleasure? Why do you use your view of the world to cage everything? Those ignorant humans, those weak pieces of trash, should be our playthings, our toys, our dolls!"

The voice grew hysterical.

Gojo's face darkened as the speaker continued.

"Why?" he said. "There is no why. I am not interested in what you want to do or what you can do."

His voice echoed through the black space.

"If I have to give a reason, then it is because I want to."

"Because I am strong enough."

The black space rippled.

Black tentacles shot from every direction, each carrying several mixed cursed energies. They attacked Gojo like venomous snakes.

Gojo smiled faintly.

Limitless activated, and several layers of infinity surrounded him, stopping the tentacles.

"Have you considered cutting out your brains? Are you seriously using this against me?"

He mocked them, but he was also searching for their aura.

"Heh heh heh. Gojo, you really have grown slow!"

The skull-like voice burst into laughter.

Gojo paused.

Then his pupils tightened.

Black haze began to appear on the tentacles.

Cracks spread across the infinities formed by Limitless.

Gojo released cursed energy and tried to withdraw, but countless flexible tentacles trapped him. The moment they touched him, he realized with surprise that he could no longer mobilize the cursed energy inside his body.

"Do you know how long we planned this?" the skull voice laughed. "That man was right. Your technique is incomplete. As long as we disturb... disturb..."

The voice suddenly got stuck, as if it had forgotten the word.

"Whatever. You are trash right now. Die!"

More tentacles filled the space. Their tips became sharp sickles covered in jagged teeth.

Gojo, however, seemed to fall into thought.

"Interference. Weakness. Weakness."

"Has he gone mad?" one of the voices said.

Then Ren's voice appeared beside the skull.

"Did you forget you left me here?"

The voice was cold and emotionless.

Ren tilted his head, raised his left hand, and stabbed it into the black space. His fingers closed around the hidden skull-like man's neck and pulled him out.

The man was thin and bony, hanging in Ren's hand like a powerless chick.

"Impossible! How did you find me?"

"Maybe I can smell your stench."

Ren waved a hand in front of his nose with visible disgust.

"Third! Fourth!" the skull shouted.

"Stop calling."

Ren looked at him impatiently and moved a finger.

Behind him, Tenbu's figure emerged.

When the skull saw her, his tiny eyes widened and his whole body trembled.

In front of him floated a black-haired woman in white. Her clothes looked soaked with water, blood dripped from her feet, and her hair spread in every direction like cold snakes.

At the ends of that hair hung his brothers.

The short dwarf had his limbs twisted off. The tall fat man had his belly cut open. The tattooed man's skin had been completely peeled away.

Their eyes were wide open, as if even at death they could not believe what had happened. They had planned everything carefully. Their arrangement could deceive the Six Eyes, but it could not hide from Ren's intuition.

While Gojo had been talking, Ren had controlled Tenbu and dragged them one by one out of the shadows.

It had barely taken effort.

"Your cursed energy and techniques are all occupied by this black thing around us, aren't they?" Ren said. "They could not even use their techniques."

His voice carried mockery, and his eyes had no warmth.

"Trash like you came to interrupt our fight?"

The skull seemed to go mad. Blood tears slid from his eyes as he stared at the miserable corpses.

The tattooed second brother who loved collecting human skin, the short third brother who liked cutting off hands and feet, the honest-looking fourth brother who loved eating human flesh. Now one had lost his hands and feet, one had been skinned, and one had been opened from belly to throat.

"We only wanted freedom! What did we do wrong?"

Ren's face did not change.

"Explaining principles is troublesome," he said. "So just treat it as the bad taste of the strong."

He was too lazy to look at the skull any longer.

The world was not simply black and white. Good and evil were not always clear. Ren did not want to explain such complicated and simple truths.

But one thing was always correct.

The strong remained strong.

Only strength could possess everything, control everything, and define good and evil.

And in front of Ren, Skull was the weak.

Perhaps he had a method to trap Gojo while his mind was changing, but against Ren, he could only wail helplessly.

"Go reunite with them."

Ren's hand tightened.

Crack.

Skull did not even manage to scream. His throat broke, and his body fell onto the arena like an old doll covered in cracks.

Ren never asked what his purpose had been.

Their long planning, even their willingness to work with something like a demon, was pale and powerless in front of him. For a dragon, the schemes of ants were not worth hearing.

"Gojo, how much longer are you going to rest?"

He turned toward Gojo, who was still bound by countless tentacles.

He could feel that Gojo was changing from soul to body. It was a transformation most people would never find in their lives, but the young sorcerer had begun it in this strange situation.

The shock of Ren breaking Limitless, the joy of meeting an equal, the surprise of being calculated by insects, all of those emotions swirled in Gojo's heart.

The shape of the soul decided the form of the body. The strength of the body changed the state of the soul.

At this moment, Gojo seemed newly born.

His cursed energy surged like a great wave. The tentacles that could absorb cursed energy fell away in sequence.

Gojo's body floated in the air.

His blue Six Eyes were cold and empty of emotion.

Ren looked at him thoughtfully.

In the original line of fate, Gojo's transformation should have happened during the Tengen incident, after losing to Toji Fushiguro. Ren's appearance had changed that.

The Imperial Contest had not existed in the original world line. Without the contest, the plan of the black-robed man and these curse users could not have unfolded like this.

All of it led to one result.

The transformation finished early.

Gojo's cursed energy slowly gathered back into himself, but Ren could sense clearly that he had become stronger.

The fear of death carried a great terror. Cursed energy came from negative emotions, and the emotions between life and death surpassed all others.

He opened his eyes wide, white hair moving without wind, a somewhat manic smile spreading across his face.

"Ren, I know this is not the right time, and I should not say it, but sorry."

"I have never felt this good."

"Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the honored one."

His cursed energy gathered violently, and explosions erupted around him in midair. Within the blasts, Gojo's aura shone like the sun.

Ren smiled faintly. Tenbu sank back into his shadow.

Behind him, a crimson moon seemed to rise.

"The result is not decided."

"Then fight."

The black curtain had not retreated.

The stage opened again.

x

x

x

If you're enjoying the story so far, consider supporting me on Patreon ❤️
You'll get weekly early access to chapters, along with some exclusive content:

https://www.patreon.com/cw/TheDevotedReader