Mori Minami's Shadow looked at Sakiko, her thoughts drifting back to an earlier time.
As far back as when Toyokawa Sakiko and the others had attacked Wakaba Mutsumi's palace, Mori Minami's Shadow had been hiding in the dark, observing everything.
Even someone as arrogant as her had found them anything but easy to deal with once she understood Sakiko and the others' mode of operation.
Sakiko's tactics could only be described as shameless.
She refused to put her real body in danger. Instead, she directly summoned avatars with powerful combat ability to explore inside the palace.
If an avatar was consumed, it did not matter. She could simply summon it again, refresh it, and it would be another avatar in peak condition.
Her real body hid outside the palace in absolute safety.
Not only that, but those avatars could teleport freely between one another, as well as between the avatars and the real body.
They could come whenever they wanted and leave whenever they pleased.
And what horrified Mori Minami's Shadow even more was the summon known as Mahoraga.
That monster with a wheel floating above its head displayed an almost cheating level of adaptation.
No matter what kind of attack or rule it faced, as long as it was not completely annihilated in a single strike, it could analyze, adapt to, and develop resistance against it within an extremely short period of time. It could even follow the trail backward and reverse-break the palace's defense mechanisms.
The defenses inside Wakaba Mutsumi's palace had been cracked by Mahoraga in less than a minute.
Mori Minami had been shocked. She had never imagined that palace rules could be forcibly adapted to and then broken.
Thus, she had no choice but to personally step in, forcibly intervene in Wakaba Mutsumi's palace, and take over control from the Shadow corresponding to herself inside that palace. Before Mahoraga could adapt to that Shadow ability, she gave it no time whatsoever and killed it instantly.
However, afterward, Nagasaki Soyo had simply resummoned Ryomen Sukuna.
And that Ryomen Sukuna's Ten Shadows Technique had also been refreshed, meaning Mahoraga could be summoned again.
Watching Sakiko and the others operate like that, Mori Minami felt helpless.
How was she supposed to fight this?
If she did not eliminate their real bodies, then there would be no end to it.
No matter how many times she killed their avatars and summons, the other side could reset them by summoning them again, while her own strength would suffer real, continuous losses. Sooner or later, she would face defeat.
That was why, when this group stepped into her own palace, Mori Minami directly established a rule: all avatars and summons that were not the true subject would have their control forcibly stripped away the moment they entered this palace.
The purpose of this rule was extremely clear. It was to cripple Sakiko and the others' avatars, preventing them from using avatars without consequence to wear her to death, forcing their real bodies to personally enter this palace.
Only when their real bodies came in would it become possible to eradicate the roots.
But the problem was not completely solved.
Before this, Mori Minami's Shadow had actually been unable to think of any foolproof method to keep them here.
Even if their real bodies entered, once they sensed fatal danger during exploration, they could teleport at any time and instantly move to the side of their companions outside the palace.
She could not stop them at all.
If she could not stop them, then she could not kill them.
Until—
She controlled those avatars.
The instant the rule took effect, avatars such as Gojo Sachi and Ryomen Sukuna were forcibly controlled by her.
At that moment, every problem that had troubled her was solved.
In the cognitive world, cognition was everything.
If one were to objectively quantify this rule, then a person's strength mainly depended on two dimensions.
First, the breadth of their knowledge.
Second, the degree of their self-doubt.
Suppose there was a fool as pure as blank paper. No matter what others told him, he would believe it, and he would believe it without question.
Then in the cognitive world, his thoughts would become absolute rules, unshakable.
But such a person was not actually strong in the cognitive world.
That was because all his cognition came from external indoctrination. His experience in the real world greatly limited what he could do.
He had unshakable conviction, but he lacked the material to construct complex rules. His upper limit of strength was not high.
Next came ordinary people who were not especially intelligent.
Over the long course of growing up, through their speed of learning, setbacks at work, and comparisons with others, ordinary people came to understand one fact very clearly: they were not particularly smart.
Although they had a certain amount of knowledge as material, the scars carved into their subconscious by reality's beatings would cause them to instinctively doubt themselves when attempting to distort reality through cognition.
"Is that really how it works? Can I really do that? Doesn't this go against common sense?"
Even the slightest trace of self-doubt would prevent the corresponding effect from being realized in the cognitive world.
Such people were destined never to become strong. They could only drift with the current.
Then what about ordinary smart people? Scholars, experts, highly intelligent talents?
Their knowledge possessed both tremendous breadth and depth. They had a profound understanding of the world's microscopic and macroscopic operations.
But they would not do either.
Their success came from knowledge, and so did their failure.
They were circumscribed by the knowledge they had learned throughout their lives. In their subconscious, they believed that everything had to be a product of logic and the laws of reality. They believed firmly in causality and in conservation of energy.
That deep-rooted rationality prevented them from wholeheartedly fantasizing and distorting things.
In the cognitive world, they could not even display one tenth of their upper limit.
The truly strongest beings who stood at the top were undoubtedly those with absolute knowledge and absolute confidence.
They possessed a vast ocean of knowledge, while also possessing a self-will that surpassed ordinary people, never doubting their own judgments.
Such beings could be called absolute creators in the cognitive world.
For example, Eisen.
Eisen could casually write in a rule in the cognitive world that teammates would not harm one another, then forcibly overwrite that rule onto the foundational rules of that world.
That was because Eisen's own experiences, magnitude, and insight into and control over the essence of all things had already far surpassed the existence of the cognitive world itself. That was why he possessed absolute confidence.
However, there was still another type of case.
Someone who only half-understood knowledge, yet possessed absolute confidence.
In reality, such people stood at the peak of ignorance described by the Dunning-Kruger effect.
They half-understood everything, yet firmly believed they understood it all. They spoke grandly in every field, believed deeply in their incorrect judgments, and would not listen to any rebuttal.
In reality, such people would only be slapped by reality and become laughingstocks.
However, when such people entered the cognitive world, where cognition was everything, a reversal occurred.
Baseless, blind, even foolish extreme confidence transformed into an indestructible source of power.
And their half-baked knowledge became the raw material for constructing abilities.
Right now, Mori Minami's Shadow was in precisely such a situation.
She understood absolutely nothing about the cursed energy system.
But she saw similarities between the cursed energy system and the cognitive world system.
So she directly and forcibly applied the operating logic of the cognitive system onto the cursed energy system.
Moreover, she was indeed an extremely powerful existence in the cognitive world. This gave her absolute confidence. Therefore, she did not doubt her own thoughts at all. In her subconscious, there was not even the tiniest thought of "I might be wrong."
After personally using Domain Expansion, she discovered:
A so-called domain was actually an inner mental landscape forcibly deployed upon the world through the expenditure of a massive amount of negative emotional energy.
And what was a palace?
A palace was an alienated region produced when a distorted mind eroded the cognitive world.
Inside a domain, a technique could be granted a sure-hit property, making it impossible for the opponent to dodge.
Inside a palace, there were absolute rules born from the Shadow's desires.
Mori Minami felt that these two things were exactly the same.
Thus, after understanding the knowledge related to Domain Expansion, her understanding of palaces increased sharply, explosively, and violently in an extremely short period of time, developing all kinds of brand-new applications.
Previously, the rule of her palace was that only avatars and summons could be directly controlled, while real bodies could not be selected.
But if a palace was equal to a domain, then under a sure-hit rule, should she not be able to select real bodies as well?
Taking ten thousand steps back, by using the Binding Vow she had learned from Ryomen Sukuna, she could simply pay the price of giving up absolute forced control in exchange for allowing a mental control effect that could originally only work on avatars and summons to work on real bodies too.
And thus, the omnipresent psychic impact that now filled the palace came into being.
Originally, Mori Minami had found Sakiko and the others' Domain Expansions extremely troublesome.
Especially Unlimited Void, an instant-kill bug of an ability that poured a massive amount of information into the brain in an instant and turned a person into a vegetable on the spot. It was simply unreasonable.
Inside the chapel of Wakaba Mutsumi's palace, she had been directly locked down from full health by Unlimited Void, then taken out in one combo.
But now things were different, because she had discovered that when domains clashed, their sure-hit effects disappeared.
And her palace was her domain.
That meant that as long as Sakiko and the others used Domain Expansion while inside her palace, it would create a domain clash, neutralizing both sides' sure-hit effects. She no longer had to worry about being instantly killed by Unlimited Void.
And the facts were exactly as she had predicted.
Not only that, the instant Sakiko and the others stepped in, Mori Minami established a Binding Vow. At the cost of drastically reducing the range of her palace, the intensity of the psychic impact within the remaining area instantly rose.
Using that compressed and strengthened sure-hit psychic impact, she forcibly shattered the protection of the Will Glasses worn by Nagasaki Soyo and Shinobu Kocho.
The instant the glasses shattered, the palace's mental control rule naturally invaded their brains. The two of them did not even have time to react before their bodily control and thought processes were forcibly stripped away. They became motionless puppets, unable to escape through group teleportation.
What remained, and what was also the most troublesome, was Toyokawa Sakiko.
Toyokawa Sakiko's Persona, Icarus, left Mori Minami utterly speechless.
Icarus possessed the ability to dispel and resist negative statuses. This meant that Toyokawa Sakiko could treat her palace like a public restroom, coming and going whenever she pleased.
Therefore, in order to keep Toyokawa Sakiko inside the palace and kill her, Mori Minami did not immediately kill Soyo and Shinobu after using a Binding Vow to strengthen the psychic impact and instantly break their defenses.
In fact, she did not even forcibly control them by stripping away their self-awareness. Instead, she dragged their consciousnesses into illusions and sealed them away.
This was an open scheme aimed at Toyokawa Sakiko's pride and sense of responsibility.
Mori Minami's Shadow knew very well that if Soyo and Shinobu were already dead, then after judging the situation, Sakiko would absolutely teleport away without hesitation, refusing to get dragged into a prolonged battle. She would return, rebuild her strength, and come back later for revenge.
But now, her companions were not dead. They were only trapped.
In that situation, what would Toyokawa Sakiko choose?
Run away? Leave her companions in the enemy's palace and let the enemy do whatever she wanted with them?
With Toyokawa Sakiko's personality, with her sense of responsibility toward her companions and the pride that would never allow her to abandon them, she could not do such a thing.
So she would not run.
She could only choose to give up the advantage of being able to retreat at any time and stay to fight head-on until she rescued her companions—or died here.
The corner of Mori Minami's mouth maintained its calm smile.
Everything was developing according to her script.
The advantage was hers!
Toyokawa Sakiko maintained her hand sign, her brain in a state of overclocked analysis. White steam had even begun rising above her head.
Less than three seconds had passed since the two sides faced each other. But in those three seconds, with the terrifying computational power brought by the Six Eyes, Sakiko had already simulated tens of thousands of possibilities in her mind.
Sakiko did not use Thought Singularity to think of the optimal solution, because she understood that the optimal solution was to flee immediately or call the group owner over.
But she refused.
After completely understanding the current situation, Sakiko felt no anger or fear. Instead, she immediately shifted to the next question.
Should she continue maintaining Unlimited Void?
The advantage of maintaining Unlimited Void was obvious. Although its sure-hit effect had been neutralized by Mori Minami's palace-domain, it likewise neutralized the high-intensity, omnipresent psychic impact strengthened through Mori Minami's Binding Vow.
But the drawback was just as fatal.
While using Domain Expansion, a sorcerer could not use their innate technique.
She could not use Blue or Red, let alone Purple. She also could not use Limitless for defense and high-speed movement.
Maintaining the domain was equivalent to giving up every attack method except punching.
Within 0.01 seconds of clarifying that logic, Toyokawa Sakiko decisively canceled Unlimited Void.
The cosmic starry sky filled with information streams instantly receded.
The neoclassical architecture once again occupied her field of vision. The marble floor and corridor returned to clarity.
And what came with the collapse of the domain was the high-intensity psychic impact pouring in from every direction like a breached flood!
But Sakiko did not even blink.
"Icarus!"
The thought exploded inside her mind. Icarus appeared instantly and entered its musical movement form.
Pitch-black chains transformed into golden musical staves, and dancing notes wove together into a halo barrier around Sakiko.
The omnipresent psychic impact slammed fiercely into the barrier.
Although it produced violent fluctuations again and again, it still blocked the sure-hit psychic impact that could instantly crush even a strong-willed person into an idiot.
But that was still not enough. The technique burnout caused by canceling her domain still remained.
After using Domain Expansion, one's innate technique would enter a temporary overload window. And Gojo Sachi without her technique would have her combat power greatly reduced.
But Toyokawa Sakiko did not need to use Reverse Cursed Technique to forcibly destroy her brain and reset the cooldown.
The instant Icarus blocked the psychic impact, Sakiko immediately canceled the possession. The cursed energy fluctuations within her body that represented Complete Gojo Sachi vanished instantly.
And the very instant she canceled it, she gave the command to possess again.
A brand-new cursed energy fluctuation descended once more. The burnout state from earlier was cleared as if formatted. Cursed energy and technique inscriptions in peak condition, as though they had never released a domain, reloaded themselves into Toyokawa Sakiko's body.
However, between canceling and resummoning, there was a tiny gap.
Even if it was only a fraction of a second, before an enemy of Mori Minami's level, Sakiko without possession protection and relying only on Icarus: Movement for defense was in extreme danger.
Sakiko had calculated even that.
Because another Young Gojo Sachi had remained loaded inside her body the entire time.
The technique burnout belonged to Complete Gojo Sachi. So once Complete Gojo Sachi's possession was canceled, what did that have to do with Young Gojo Sachi?
During the brief gap, Young Gojo Sachi supported Sakiko's base parameters. Although Young Gojo Sachi did not possess a domain or Reverse Cursed Technique, he still possessed the Six Eyes and Limitless.
That meant even after Complete Gojo Sachi's power receded, she still retained a basic level of resistance.
Under the Six Eyes' thought-processing speed, the entire process flowed seamlessly and took less than half a second.
Mori Minami's pupils contracted slightly. She sensed the other party's aura drop and recover in an utterly unreasonable instant.
And Toyokawa Sakiko wasted no words.
She directly raised her right hand, bringing her slender index and middle fingers together while lifting her thumb, forming the shape of a gun.
Her fingertip aimed straight at Mori Minami's brow.
Cursed energy at her fingertip rapidly collapsed and reversed. Negative energy that originally produced attraction transformed into terrifying repulsion.
A point of dark red light, bright enough to seem as though it would burn out the retina, condensed at her fingertip, tearing through the dim lighting of the corridor.
Toyokawa Sakiko coldly stared at Mori Minami's Shadow, her red lips parting slightly.
"Red."
The scarlet sphere of repulsion transformed into a streak of aurora, carrying terrifying power capable of smashing through everything in its path, and shot straight toward Mori Minami.
Join here to read ahead.
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