Hayase sat down and sorted through it carefully.
Before the next simulation, there were two things he needed to start setting up in the real world.
The cetery fight, the one where he’d gotten crushed almost instantly, had made one thing painfully clear. His next opponent could throw out a Domain Expansion without a second thought. A real Special Grade monster. No hesitation, no restraint.
So the first priority was obvious.
He needed to start working toward Domains.
That ant not just studying whether Phantom Night Parade had the potential to form its own Domain Expansion, but also seeing whether he could use it to reproduce other techniques’ Domains and actually deploy them.
The problem was that this road was absolute hell.
He had seen Gojo use Unlimited Void with his own eyes. He’d even endured that flood of information himself inside the simulation. At least that gave him sothing to aim at. A peak he could actually see.
Phantom Night Parade was different.
Hayase wasn’t delusional about his talent as a sorcerer. Forcing his way to the very top of jujutsu combat in a short amount of ti was basically a fantasy.
Which made the second problem a lot more realistic.
If he couldn’t force his way to the top fast enough, then he needed the tools weaker sorcerers used to stay alive inside soone else’s Domain. New Shadow Style’s Simple Domain. Falling Blossom Emotion, the anti-Domain technique the Big Three Sorcerer Families kept close to the chest.
Out of those two, Simple Domain was the easier target.
The most straightforward thod would be to contact i i in the real tiline and simply throw enough money at her until the school and lineage restrictions around Simple Domain stopped mattering.
As for Falling Blossom Emotion, technically he could ask Gojo. Gojo was the treasured heir of one of the Big Three, after all.
But the second Hayase grounded himself in the current tiline, he dropped that idea.
Right now, they were classmates who had known each other for a few days.
Never mind whether Gojo, who was still deep in his obnoxious phase, would agree to teach him. The request itself was a problem. A no-na sorcerer with no background, no status, and no family prestige suddenly asking to learn one of the Big Three’s closely guarded high-level techniques? That alone would set off alarms.
And worse, there was no clean explanation for why he would even know Falling Blossom Emotion existed.
At this point in ti, he had no legitimate reason to know about it, and definitely no natural reason to urgently study a technique made specifically to counter Domains.
For a second, Hayase actually considered telling the truth.
Just a little of it.
Telling Gojo and Geto about pieces of the future waiting for them.
He crushed that thought before it could grow legs.
Too risky. Way too risky.
That wasn’t honesty. That was tying himself to a bonfire and lighting the match.
Reality only gave him one life. No save points. No reloads. Until he figured out where that stitched-up thing was hiding and how it kept tabs on him, staying quiet was the only sane option.
His gut still told him the thing moving pieces from the shadows was probably tied to the Kamo Clan.
After all, when he raided the Zenin compound in the simulation, that monster never showed up.
But there was a worse possibility.
Maybe the damage he’d done to the Zenin Clan just hadn’t crossed the creature’s line yet. Or maybe, back then, he simply hadn’t been threatening enough to bother with.
Looking back on the cetery fight now, he had definitely been reckless.
If, in that instant when gravity slamd him down, he had given up on the mutual-kill gamble with Mahoraga and instead burned through his cursed energy swapping between Limitless and Projection Sorcery, he might actually have escaped. Peak defense plus absurd speed. That combination had at least given him a chance.
Still, it wasn’t all bad.
That one death in the simulation had forced the enemy to show its hand. Resurrection. Three Innate Techniques. A Domain on the sa level as Unlimited Void.
That information mattered.
It bought him ti in reality.
Once his thoughts were in order, Hayase got to his feet and decided to test sothing about the inheritance system.
He walked to the middle of the room, overlapped his hands, and ford the familiar hand sign for the canine shadows.
Phantom Night Parade activated.
He reached for the Ten Shadows Technique, the one that had fought beside him through years of simulated bloodshed.
The shadow at his feet rippled like ink dumped into water.
Then two Divine Dogs slipped out.
One black, one white. Sleek bodies. Glossy fur. Bright, sharp eyes as they looked up at him, curious and alert.
Exactly what he expected.
The system preserved the mories and experience he’d gained in the simulation, which ant he could summon the Ten Shadows Technique’s starting shikigami just fine in the real world.
But the system was strict about one thing.
A simulation was still just a simulation. Reality was the true baseline.
Which ant Chira, that grotesque fusion he had built by sacrificing shikigami to squeeze out every ounce of combat power, did not carry over into the real world’s shadow inventory.
And these two Divine Dogs were new.
They had no mory of fighting beside him. No familiarity forged in blood and battle.
Hayase crouched and slowly reached out a hand.
The two dogs stepped closer, pressed wet noses against his palm, and sniffed.
A beat later, recognition settled in. Their tails started wagging. They leaned into him, letting him scratch between their ears.
Honestly, the reset was a good thing.
A fresh Ten Shadows Technique ant he had room to experint before subjugating the stronger shikigami. If he used this blank period properly, he could take advantage of the technique’s inheritance rule, the one where destroyed shikigami passed their power on, and create fusions far more deliberately than he had last ti.
He dismissed the Divine Dogs and headed for the training grounds.
Logically, he’d already ruled out Geto as the mastermind.
Still, logic wasn’t insurance.
If Geto had so dormant split personality even he didn’t know about, or if the thing hiding in the dark was buried deeper than Hayase’s analysis could reach, then the smartest move was simple.
Go see the two strongest teenagers in person.
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