An Overwhelming Victory

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The red-cloud black robe was impossible to miss.

The deathly pale face looked half-alive at best.

"White Zetsu?!"

Their lives had already started flashing before their eyes, and the sudden rescue from above jolted them awake.

Everyone looked up in shock and called out his name.

White Zetsu clasped both hands behind his back, the corner of his mouth curved in a faint smile as he strolled toward them.

His posture was perfectly straight, every movement arranged to look like a master arriving on stage.

"Yo. Long time no see."

Nanami retreated rapidly back to the beach.

Maki gripped Dragon Bone.

Sweat poured down Nobara's face.

Megumi had reached his limit after the domain disappeared.

The four of them stared at White Zetsu, dumbfounded, and then at what stood behind him.

On the sea rose a colossal thing that almost pierced heaven and earth.

Its deep-brown trunk was crooked and twisted, like a sinister giant tree watered with blood.

Branches crossed in every direction. There was not a trace of green on the tree, not a single flower.

Countless enormous human-shaped cocoons hung from it, wrapped layer after layer in white cloth.

Pale ribbons drooped downward, releasing an overwhelmingly ominous air.

"The domain that appeared at the base years ago..."

Maki looked at White Zetsu in disbelief.

"That was you?"

White Zetsu nodded slightly, his tone impossibly calm.

"Domain Expansion? Simple enough."

"White Zetsu-senpai!"

There was no time for a reunion. Megumi, who still kept part of his attention on Dagon, shouted a warning.

"Why panic, Little Shadow?"

Facing the group and turning his back to Dagon, White Zetsu waved one hand.

"Living Bloom."

Boom!

Hundreds.

Thousands.

Tens of thousands.

Millions.

The fish shikigami surging across the sky were caught in a world-sized net woven from pale ribbons hanging on both sides of the God Tree.

The ribbons wrapped, tightened, and compressed them.

Purple blood rained down until half the sea was stained in a brilliant, poisonous color.

The countless fish were compressed into huge oval masses, and their cursed energy was rapidly stripped away.

Without turning his head, White Zetsu spoke two more words.

"Dead Bone."

As the words fell, the struggling fish inside the wrappings slowly went still.

The bloodstained ribbons turned snow-white again.

The huge masses shrank until they looked no different from the countless giant cocoons hanging upside down from the tree.

Living Bloom.

Dead Bone.

One to begin, one to finish.

With four light words, White Zetsu erased the crisis Nanami and the others could not handle.

Nobara stared at him in a daze.

For some reason, she remembered the story White Zetsu had told back at the juvenile detention center, about him and a cursed spirit he called Mountain Pheasant.

This was the first time he had successfully made himself look that impressive.

Basking in the four sorcerers' shocked gazes, White Zetsu could barely hold down the corners of his mouth.

...

A special grade cursed spirit had suddenly appeared.

Itsuki Zenin's attendant.

And that abnormal cursed energy pressure...

Floating in the air, Dagon's eyes filled with killing intent.

Even if White Zetsu were not protecting the human sorcerers in front of him...

He was still with Itsuki Zenin.

With the killer who had murdered Hanami.

It was only a single eerie ancient tree, and the domain shell had not even finished forming.

Dagon believed it was another unfinished domain like Megumi's earlier and remained confident in his victory.

Special grade cursed spirit Dagon.

A curse born from humanity's hatred and fear of the ocean.

Death Swarm was a domain technique that could summon endless shikigami.

In theory, there was no upper limit to the number as long as a massive source of cursed energy supported it.

Dagon had his cowardly side. As a cursed womb, he would tremble behind a pillar when Nanami and the others appeared.

But Dagon valued the bonds between companions even more.

To him, Mahito, Jogo, and Hanami were family.

If his anger toward Nanami and the others came from the fact that they were humans, the same race as Itsuki...

Then toward White Zetsu...

Immense cursed energy gathered into one. Dagon brought both fists together for his strongest strike.

"Technique Release: Death Swarm!"

Boom!

It was like a nuclear bomb detonating beneath the ocean.

Waves hundreds of meters high exploded upward, and everything within a hundred meters filled with shikigami.

Sea roaches magnified a hundred times.

Dragon-shaped sea monsters with mouths full of saw teeth.

They blotted out the sky as they rushed in.

Facing Dagon's strongest strike, fueled by every drop of his cursed energy, White Zetsu finally stopped posturing.

He raised both hands in front of his chest and formed a familiar clone hand sign.

"Domain Expansion: Thousand-Burial White Sovereign Souls."

Earlier, to look impressive, White Zetsu had not formed a hand sign.

He had only used overwhelming cursed energy to construct a half-finished domain.

That was why Dagon misjudged the situation and skipped the probing stage.

The ribbons hanging from the ancient tree moved with White Zetsu's will and roared upward.

"Our cursed energy really does clash badly."

The God Tree White Zetsu summoned was not the true body inside Itsuki's Kamui Dimension. It was an imagined construct formed inside his mind.

The shrouds hanging from it were the same.

Their number depended entirely on cursed energy supply.

And White Zetsu...

Feeling the upper limit of cursed energy stored in his mind, White Zetsu revealed a playful grin.

Five hundred years' worth of energy burned out in an instant.

Four thousand five hundred remained.

Rumble!

The ancient tree's branches shook, and the number of ribbons surged.

Pale ribbons howled into afterimages.

White filled the horizon like an avalanche.

A brilliantly colored tide of shikigami.

Silent, snow-white shrouds heavy with death.

It was a sight that seemed to divide heaven and earth, accompanied by a deafening roar.

Nobara, Maki, and Megumi stared at the scene, hands clamped over their ears.

And that was not all.

The sea continued to rise and quake. The beach shook and began to crumble.

Dagon's entire ocean domain was collapsing little by little.

In its place emerged the ruins of a battlefield.

The deep-brown earth shared the same source as the ancient tree, covered in trenches, pits, and scars.

This was the shell of White Zetsu's completed domain, reminiscent of a vast war-torn battlefield.

He had also studied open-barrier domains under Itsuki's urging over the years.

Unfortunately, he had not succeeded yet.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

The shattered domain burst apart, and the four humans and one curse returned to reality.

It had been an overwhelming battle, decided by an absurd gap in cursed energy.

The final scene before the domain broke was Dagon, the special grade cursed spirit, wrapped in white cloth and hanging upside down from the trunk of the ancient tree.

Staring at White Zetsu's back, Kento Nanami's expression grew extremely complicated.

So did Megumi, Nobara, and Maki's.

The battle was over.

The survivors did not celebrate. Instead, they fell into a strange silence.

White Zetsu had once been their companion, and moments ago he had saved their lives.

At the same time, he was one of the hidden hands behind Satoru Gojo's sealing, with unknown objectives.

The news Yuji had delivered.

The information Mei Mei had sent...

Nanami and the others had learned it before this battle began.

Now that the enemy was gone, what would White Zetsu do?

The Zenin Clan had already been stripped of standing by Jujutsu High and the Gojo Clan, and a warrant had been issued.

This White Zetsu was not the powerless weakling being held at Jujutsu High.

The initiative always belonged to the strong.

With White Zetsu standing opposite Jujutsu High and Satoru Gojo under Itsuki Zenin's lead, would he attack their side?

White Zetsu stood with his back to them, secretly waiting for gasps, praise, and admiration.

After a long silence, and after temporarily forgetting about sides and loyalties, White Zetsu grew impatient.

In the end, he turned around helplessly.

"Lady Thirteen. Niece..."

"Uncle Zetsu looked cool, right?"

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