"Ding! Detection complete: Seele has eliminated a Special Grade cursed spirit for the host. Reward: 2,500 points."
Hearing the system notification echo in his mind, An Xora immediately knew that Seele had successfully passed the Special Grade sorcerer assessment.
To be honest, if possible, An Xora would very much like this kind of "assessment" to happen a few more times. After all, one Special Grade cursed spirit was worth 2,500 points. Four of them would be enough to purchase, at full price, a copy of the Herrscher of Life and Death's authority—or any other item of equivalent value from the system shop.
And if discounts were factored in… one had to remember that all of Seele's current abilities had only cost 8,900 points thanks to discounts. Optimistically speaking, four Special Grade cursed spirits would be enough for An Xora to manifest another new avatar with strength comparable to Seele's.
Unfortunately, although Special Grade cursed spirits weren't exactly rare, they weren't common either. Deliberately searching for them was quite difficult. Before An Xora transmigrated into this world, the Higher-Ups had possessed some intelligence on Special Grade cursed spirits, but most of them had long since been handed over to Gojo Satoru to be "taken care of."
As a result, the Special Grade cursed spirit used as Seele's assessment target was already the only Special Grade intel the Higher-Ups had collected in recent times.
Thinking of this, An Xora couldn't help but feel a pang of heartache. In his eyes, those Special Grade cursed spirits that Gojo Satoru had casually wiped out years ago were nothing less than massive piles of points.
Since the jujutsu world's intelligence network was temporarily unreliable, if he wanted to find Special Grade cursed spirits, he would have to turn his attention to events from the original plot.
Coincidentally, An Xora had just found an interesting location.
"So this is… the school Itadori Yuji attended before joining Jujutsu High in the original story?"
Although the setting never specified the exact location of the school Itadori Yuji attended prior to enrolling in Tokyo Jujutsu High, the school's name did appear at the beginning of the plot.
Coupled with the fact that Itadori Yuji himself mentioned he was from Sendai, once An Xora narrowed down the rough area and the school name, he was able to find its precise location online.
Moreover, if An Xora remembered correctly, when he had been informed about the Special Grade assessment, he'd chatted casually with Gojo Satoru for a while. During that time, Gojo had mentioned that one of his students was going to retrieve a Special Grade cursed object.
By that calculation, today should be the day the plot officially began.
With that thought, An Xora decisively contacted Seele.
Although An Xora could reach the destination before nightfall using ordinary transportation, it would still be too slow. In comparison, Seele's quantumization was far faster.
The straight-line distance from Tokyo to Sendai was only a little over three hundred kilometers—something that wouldn't even take him out of a single large province in his previous life. For Seele, it was nothing more than a matter of minutes.
...
Evening. On the rooftop of a school building somewhere.
"You idiot—did you actually swallow the cursed object?!"
With his hands poised to summon shikigami for an attack, Fushiguro Megumi stared at the bewildered-looking Itadori Yuji standing opposite him, his heart tangled with indecision.
To be honest, judging from how Yuji had gone from an ordinary human to someone who could casually one-shot cursed spirits, as well as the drastic change in his aura, Fushiguro was certain that Yuji's body had been taken over by the curse sealed within the cursed object.
According to jujutsu regulations, Fushiguro should immediately execute him, just as he would exorcise a curse.
Yet Yuji's innocent demeanor didn't resemble a curse in disguise at all, which made Fushiguro hesitate.
After all, based on their brief interaction that night, Itadori Yuji was undoubtedly a good person—someone who, by Fushiguro's standards, should be saved.
To personally kill someone like that, especially when Yuji no longer looked as though he was being possessed by a curse…
Damn it!
Just as Fushiguro was forcing his injured body—still hurt from fighting the curse—to endure an intense mental struggle, a voice suddenly sounded from behind him.
"Yo. What's the situation here?"
"Gojo-sensei?"
Seeing Gojo Satoru somehow appear beside him from behind, Fushiguro looked stunned.
"Why are you here?"
"Losing a Special Grade cursed object isn't a small matter, you know. I came to take a look—and ended up seeing this scene."
As Gojo spoke, he glanced over Fushiguro, who was half-kneeling on the ground, then shook his head.
"You're really in rough shape. Look at you—covered in injuries. How pitiful."
"Even if you don't know how to comfort people, you don't have to rub salt in the wound."
Fushiguro's mouth twitched. Right—this was the Gojo Satoru he knew. For a moment there, he'd actually thought his teacher seemed reliable.
"Oh, and I didn't expect the two of you to be here as well. Looks like even if I hadn't come, nothing would've gone wrong tonight."
After briefly surveying the surroundings, Gojo turned his gaze toward a corner and spoke slowly.
"There's… someone else here?"
Realizing what Gojo meant, Fushiguro hurriedly followed his line of sight. From a corner not far away, An Xora and Seele stepped out.
"We were just sightseeing around Sendai," An Xora said casually. "We happened to sense some commotion here, so we came to take a look. No need to mind us."
"Mr. Gojo, we meet again."
Beside him, Seele smiled and greeted Gojo Satoru.
"Um… excuse me, who exactly are you people?"
Suddenly finding that the rooftop—which had originally only had himself and Fushiguro—had inexplicably filled with several strangers, the long-ignored Itadori Yuji scratched his head in confusion and asked.
Nearby, Fushiguro—barely managing to stand up—also looked toward Gojo.
"Gojo-sensei, they are…?"
"Oh, this is An Xora. He's a sorcerer who joined the jujutsu world recently. And this is Miss Seele—also a recent addition, and a newly promoted Special Grade sorcerer."
Gojo introduced them in a relaxed tone. However, Fushiguro's eyes instantly widened.
"A newly promoted… Special Grade sorcerer?"
"Yep. She should've just completed the Special Grade assessment today. The Higher-Ups will probably issue the official notice tomorrow."
"Oh, and by the way—both of them were brought into the jujutsu world by yours truly."
Ignoring Gojo's shameless self-praise, Fushiguro stared blankly at Seele beside An Xora. It took him quite a while to snap out of it.
As a first-year student at Tokyo Jujutsu High, he was already considered extremely young within the jujutsu world. Yet the girl in front of him looked even younger than he was—barely middle-school age—and she was already a Special Grade sorcerer?
He knew that more than eighty percent of a sorcerer's strength depended on innate talent, but this gap was absurdly large—far bigger even than the difference between Itadori Yuji and his Divine Dog.
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