[Time record: Forty-nine minutes have passed since the Black Hole passed over the Zenin estate.
And there is less than ten minutes left until the Black Hole reaches the "densely populated, difficult-to-evacuate" zone.
In truth, after doing the math carefully, one would realize it was impossible for the Black Hole to annihilate Tokyo entirely. Because Tokyo was vast—absurdly vast. Even if the Black Hole were an eraser that destroyed everything it passed over, wiping out Tokyo would require rubbing back and forth several times.
But it was true that the Black Hole would pass through Tokyo's most densely populated areas, destroying everything along its path. The authorities had given no casualty projection at all, because the number of people was too great to count.
From the moment the Black Hole appeared to the moment it was about to arrive—less than an hour.
Earthquakes and tangled, cumbersome evacuation procedures made the evacuation work inefficient and congested.
"The important cursed objects... they all need to start being relocated," said Kusakabe, a Grade 1 sorcerer, looking at the burly middle-aged man before him wearing black sunglasses. "Yaga-san, when are you leaving?"
The burly middle-aged man was Masamichi Yaga, a member of Jujutsu High's Tokyo campus. The Black Hole would pass through Jujutsu High as well.
After news came back that Satoru Gojo had failed to deal with the Black Hole, they had already begun packing up their things.
Relocating cursed objects, relocating the important people under their protection...
"Also, what about Master Tengen?" "...That's not your concern." Yaga looked off into the distance.
In the distance, in the sky, the Black Hole was like a dark cloud spread across half the firmament. It should have been broad daylight now, yet half the sky had gone dark because of the Black Hole. Satoru Gojo had failed.
After the first attempt, he had tried several more times together with Mahiru—not a single one succeeded.
No, saying it had failed wasn't quite accurate. There was no problem with Mahiru's understanding of the Black Hole, and Satoru Gojo's Domain operated upon dismantling the Black Hole with precision and accuracy.
If circumstances were normal, ten minutes... at most double that, twenty minutes—they'd need only twenty minutes, and Mahiru and Satoru Gojo would have the Black Hole dismantled.
What truly caused the problem was, once again, the temporal turbulence the Black Hole created.
That time-dilation effect could, astonishingly, act even upon the guaranteed-hit effect of a Domain.
As a result, Satoru Gojo's twenty minutes were forcibly stretched out to three days.
Even if Satoru Gojo increased his speed tenfold, it would still take six or seven hours.
So... there was no way left.
Even Satoru Gojo had no way left.
The Black Hole was now equivalent to a satellite of the Earth, gravitationally attracted to the Earth itself. Although in theory an orbit couldn't possibly be this close, that was nonetheless the fact—and to hurl the Black Hole off the Earth, one would also have to escape the Earth's gravitational pull at the same time.
"The whole world is watching."
The matter of Cursed Energy and Jujutsu Technique was about to no longer be a secret.
In the blink of an eye, the world was turned upside down.
This was the best proof of the so-called claim that "a Special Grade sorcerer has the power to destroy a nation."
"However, Satoru Gojo and the others say they still have a [Fourth Plan]." Kusakabe hesitated. "But this Fourth Plan is that blue-haired Cursed Spirit's plan."
Well, in truth nearly every plan had been Mahiru's idea. They knew that.
The difference between this Fourth Plan and the others was that it would be carried out by Mahiru alone, and at the same time... it was also a very insane plan.
A Black Hole that even Satoru Gojo couldn't stop—Kusakabe didn't believe that blue-haired Cursed Spirit could stop it.
Presumably it was just a case of being out of options and clutching at straws.
Even more laughable, when the old men of Jujutsu High heard the Black Hole couldn't be stopped, they cursed Satoru Gojo furiously, and when they heard it would rely on the blue-haired Cursed Spirit, they redoubled their tirades—rumor had it they even meant to send people to make trouble.
"I'll go tie them up, then," Yaga said.
"Then I'll go organize the students' retreat," Kusakabe said with a sigh.
The sorcerers were all helping with the evacuation at full strength. With the Black Hole hanging in the sky anyway, there was no longer much point in keeping Jujutsu Technique a secret.
But as said before, even so, the evacuation was very difficult.
The Black Hole would pass along the seaward side, which was one of the most bustling areas.
The earthquakes had blocked certain main roads, so the evacuation of people relied mostly on the people running on their own.
For instance, a certain famous tourist bay, where commercial centers and tourist hotels of all kinds lined the coast—this was the spot in Tokyo that would bear the brunt first.
Rumble, rumble—
The Black Hole drew nearer and nearer, and so this place quaked again for ten seconds.
Many high-rises collapsed in earthquake after earthquake, blocking the traffic routes; people who wanted to flee even had to climb over rubble three stories high themselves.
Some buildings at the bay's edge had collapsed, some had not. A tower of thirty or forty floors still stood, and atop its roof, after Satoru Gojo exchanged a few last words with Mahiru, he flew away from the rooftop.
Leaving Mahiru alone here.
The girl sat at the edge of the rooftop, a fierce wind blowing against her long blue hair. The shadow of the distant Black Hole was like a dark cloud shrouding the world, and the wind around her was the howling that comes before a storm.
The young girl drew a deep breath.
She was adjusting her condition, and adjusting her state of mind as well.
She looked at her own hands; the girl was checking whether she was ready.
That the Black Hole's time-dilation effect could actually slow the guaranteed hit of Satoru Gojo's Domain—none of them had anticipated this.
Time no longer permitted them to carry out other plans, and so the Fourth Plan—the one Mahiru herself disliked—became their only hope.
"...It'll do, I suppose."
Mahiru flexed her fingers, mobilizing Urogi's Technique a little, confirming the Technique was in normal condition.
Time was tight; she had no time to learn Urogi's Technique into her own body, so she chose a faster method—she briefly stored the other's Technique patterns upon her soul.
Before, it had been engraving. Now, it was imprinting.
So she learned quickly, but after a few uses, the stored Technique would vanish, and she'd need to imprint it anew.
...As long as it was enough for this one use, that was fine.
Mahiru's eyes flickered twice, and she turned her gaze into the distance, watching the Black Hole sweep up the far-off buildings, devouring them ceaselessly.
That area had been fully evacuated.
But over here, this bayside tourist district where Mahiru was, was the first area that hadn't been completely evacuated.
At the same time, the areas beyond this one had basically all failed to be evacuated.
"Sensei, is Mahiru really going to be okay?" Up in the sky, Nobara Kugisaki's worried voice came through Satoru Gojo's earpiece.
"She's run the experiment, and the method is sound... but I think she can't pull it off." Satoru Gojo was still saving people too, ferrying one person after another out of the danger zone with his teleport-like speed. "Because... she isn't strong."
Not strong... this meant that Satoru Gojo considered Mahiru's stats to be low.
Every plan had to be built upon strength, and Satoru Gojo believed that Mahiru's current strength still fell short of the standard needed to solve the problem.
How could she possibly do it?
Satoru Gojo wasn't optimistic about the girl.
But... at the same time, he respected her.
If, before today, he'd heard someone say a Cursed Spirit could love humans more than humans did, he'd only have laughed it off.
But not anymore.
He'd witnessed Mahiru with his own eyes, had spent time with her in person.
Perhaps this Cursed Spirit, born from humans' negative emotions toward other humans, loved humans more than humans themselves did.
So he chose to respect Mahiru's wishes.
In any case, if it failed, according to Mahiru's plan... Satoru Gojo believed he could rescue Mahiru in time.
"Whew..." Mahiru drew a deep breath.
She closed her eyes.
From afar, she could hear the roar of the distant Black Hole tearing the earth apart.
From nearby came the clamor and shouts of the countless tourists below.
"What on earth is that thing?!" someone screamed, clutching their head.
"Wuuu—uuu—uuu—..." while others wailed.
"It's all because of you! If it weren't for you I never would've come to Tokyo!..." some hurled blame at one another.
"Let me through! Let me go first!" some scrambled and shoved, trying to reach the passage to survival ahead of the others.
This passage had been cleared through the rubble by Yuji Itadori and the others.
There was more than one such passage, but there were too many people in this area. The open ground beyond the rubble was packed to overflowing; to say nearly ten thousand people remained here would be no exaggeration.
So many people, with only a sliver of escape space—without others' help, most of the people here would die here.
Less than five minutes remained until the Black Hole arrived.
The people had gradually come to understand the truth.
It seemed they were doomed.
The escape routes were too few.
Among the crowd, some again began to sit on the ground and wail.
But someone's eyes lit up, as if they'd discovered a path to survival.
"Over there! Maybe we can get out across that overpass over there!"
It was a coastal overpass; in the earthquakes, the overpass hadn't collapsed, but the cars were all jammed together.
"Let's give it a try!"
And so some began running up onto the overpass. The bridge led somewhere else, but as long as they could escape this area, wasn't that enough?
One person ran, another ran after, and still more, seeing this, after hesitating, ultimately chose to follow.
The Black Hole drew ever closer.
They ran on the overpass, ran like mad, praying their flesh-and-blood legs could outrun the Black Hole, running until their lungs were about to burst.
And then, they saw the bridge was broken.
The other half of the bridge had long since collapsed.
And by now, until the Black Hole's range of influence arrived... less than a minute remained.
"Ah... ahhhhh—" A man knelt on the ground, letting out a despairing cry. "Why is it like this..."
"Do I have to die here...?!"
"Gahhhh... gahhhh!!—"
When in despair, people always seek something to comfort themselves.
And when they can't even manage something as simple as comforting themselves, people break down.
"How could this be..." "Why is this happening...?!"
Bawling and weeping, despairing shrieks, furious cursing, berating others.
Darkness was approaching, and despair would spread.
From one person to many.
From many to countless.
The people in this area had utterly despaired.
Looking up, they could only see the black sun slowly bearing down; no one could keep calm amid this spreading atmosphere of despair.
Everyone was wailing—it was nothing short of a living hell. "God, save us..." someone suddenly prayed.
And so more and more people began wailing and begging the gods.
"God..." "Why must I die...?" "Please, oh gods..."
Their faces twisted, and the praying gestures in many of their hands were utterly clumsy—proof that they had never truly believed in any god at all.
But here and now, they found that they so desperately wished there truly were gods in this world; they found... that besides the gods, there seemed to be no one else who could save them now.
"If there's a god who can save me..." one prayed, eyes wide as they stared at the sky, mouth shouting, "I'll do anything! I can offer up everything I have...!"
Begging the gods was inherently a useless act, for there were no gods in this world to begin with.
But in the next instant, a scene that shocked everyone appeared.
This person who had promised to offer up everything, this person who had thrown back his head and shouted his plea to the sky... seemed to truly have received an answer.
His eyes suddenly went as wide as they could, his mouth gaping as if to wail. And then—
Countless threads like spider silk spilled from his mouth, like a waterfall flowing in reverse, surging up into the sky.
"?!"
The people around who saw it were stunned.
No matter how one looked at it, the scene was horrifying, yet at this moment it let them glimpse hope.
"Me too! I can offer up my everything as well!" a woman cried out, and so spider silk spilled from her features; her body went rigid, and she was even pulled up into the air by the silk.
"Me too! Save me as well! As long as I live, I'll give the gods everything else!" a girl cried out too, and so she likewise spewed spider silk and was drawn up into the air.
More people saw.
Watching the several people being pulled aloft by the spider silk, none were not astonished.
And so more people joined in.
At this point they were fully convinced this was a "miracle," for if it weren't, then why wouldn't these seemingly weightless spider threads be blown away by the Black Hole's wind?
They were fully convinced that a god truly was coming to save them, because in this moment they all seemed to hear murmurs by their ears, elevating their frenzy and despair into some calmer kind of yearning.
[Come... come and join...]
"I want to join! I want to join too!"
[Come, come and offer yourselves, and I will save you all...]
"Come save me! I'm willing to give anything!!"
And so, more and more people began to answer the god.
They faced the sky above, the spider silk rising, converging toward the heavens.
He saw these threads connecting with one another, forming a spider's web, every person a node of the web.
The web grew bones.
The bones began to stand.
The web stuck together into the shape of wings, and so a vast multitude of wings unfurled among the buildings.
Upon each wing clung countless cocoons formed of spider silk, and on each cocoon there were eyes.
They were the countless people who had given up their everything, in ecstasy.
They seemed to be singing aloud, extolling the miracle of their own lives.
[Come, we have already joined—everyone, come and join too!]
"I'm here too! I've already joined as well!"
[This is the god's blessing, this is the god's salvation—come and join!—]
"Join us! Join our Domain!..."
"—[All Voices Sing in Chorus to Heaven]!!"
Atop the high tower, the blue-haired girl opened her eyes.
And so, amid laughter, weeping, and hymns of praise, a colossal, skeletal being—its lower half a spider, its upper half styled like an Old Testament angel—using countless spider threads as a veil-skirt, drew itself upright before the Black Hole.
The weeping and laughter of the people flowed through the countless spider threads, interweaving and resounding to the heavens.
The despair and exhilaration of the people, under the girl's guidance, were pieced together into the substance of a Domain; here, once again, she displayed her miracle known as the "open-type Domain."
The scene was too overwhelming, and what this Domain contained too terrifying, so much so that Satoru Gojo, the strongest modern sorcerer who had just rushed back to the scene... was left utterly dumbfounded.
And... it made him secretly take back his disdain for Mahiru.
This Cursed Spirit girl, at this moment... seemed truly to be a god belonging to humanity alone.
____
👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Homelander: Founding the Hero Association
Let's hit these goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = 1 extra chapter for the public!