The mission was over, but the sound of it still lingered in Arata's head.
Not the curse's rhythm—that distorted drumbeat was gone, erased with the curse itself—but the memory of how it bent the world.
He sat on the edge of the temporary lodging they had taken near the ruined school. The sky was turning orange, the setting sun spilling across the fractured walls and warped beams. His hands rested loosely on his knees, calm, steady.
Kusakabe was inside, reporting details to the higher-ups.
Alone, Arata thought back on the fight.
The curse had been strange, yes. Using sound to manipulate space wasn't something he had seen written about in the records Gojo let him skim through. But strange wasn't terrifying anymore. He had already fought and killed a true special grade before this. Nothing could surprise him to that degree again.
Still…
He replayed the moment where the curse expanded the hall. The rhythm was simple: vibration, amplification, release. Sound turned into distortion. Arata tapped his fingers against his thigh in the same beat, listening to it in his head.
"Resonance-type… it used the world as its instrument," he muttered quietly.
It wasn't brute strength. It wasn't speed. It was precision. Every beat forced the environment to obey, reshaping the battlefield itself.
Arata's gaze fell on his right hand. A faint spark of cursed energy flickered at his fingertips before fading again.
He had reinforced his arms with cursed energy to resist the pressure. He had used his wolf spirit to stabilize his flow and the heat spirit to push through the distorted air. It had worked. The curse was gone.
But the fight had revealed something else.
"Control."
The word escaped him in a whisper.
He wasn't lacking in strength. Not anymore. His body was fast, strong, sharper each day thanks to training. His cursed energy pool was vast, and with the wolf regulating it, he rarely wasted even a drop. But against an enemy like that resonance curse… raw strength alone wouldn't be enough. He would have to be creative with his powers. He would have to study.
He had felt it. The space expanding under the beat. The invisible push against his chest. The hall stretching until the distance felt endless. If his control had slipped even slightly, if his reinforcement had faltered for a second, he would have been crushed like the beams overhead. Not enough to kill him, but enough to make Kusakabe enter the fight. Enough to waste more time on it. That would already be a failure.
He breathed out slowly.
"I can't just follow lessons," he thought. "Gojo, Kusakabe… they'll teach me what they know. But to reach the peak, I have to go further than what's already been done."
It wasn't arrogance. It was fact. Every special grade stood on their own path. Gojo with Limitless. Yuki Tsukumo with her odd theories. Even Geto Suguru, despite falling into darkness, had carved his own way forward.
If Arata wanted to walk among them—not just stand beside them, but surpass them—he couldn't only copy.
He clenched his hand into a fist.
"Experiment. Inspect. Break down what I face and build something new."
His eyes shifted toward the ruined hall once more. The battlefield was silent now. But in the silence, he imagined the beat of that curse's rhythm. Tap, tap, tap… stretching walls, bending space.
He wondered.
Could he replicate something like that using his own cursed spirits? Not sound exactly, but the principle—turning an element into an overwhelming control over the environment. The wolf had given him balance and regulation. The heat spirit had given him destructive force.
What would come next?
He didn't know yet. But the thought made his chest tighten—not with fear, but with excitement.
The world of jujutsu wasn't static. It wasn't just about learning the old ways, repeating what ancestors had done. It was alive, growing, changing. And now, so was he.
Kusakabe's footsteps echoed behind him. The man stepped out of the broken doorway, expression unreadable as always.
"You're quiet," he said.
Arata looked back at him calmly. "Just thinking."
Kusakabe grunted. "Good. Don't let Gojo's stupidity rub off on you. Thinking is the only thing that keeps us alive."
Arata gave a faint smile but didn't argue. He wasn't planning to explain everything he had just realized. That was his burden, his path.
As the sun dipped lower, he stood. His bag was already packed; he traveled light. Kusakabe tilted his head slightly.
"Ready to move?"
Arata nodded once. "Yeah. Let's go."
They left the ruins behind, walking toward the faint lights of the city in the distance. What will happen with the ruins and how will it be repaired was the headache for higherups. Arata's mind, however, was already far ahead. Past training. Past missions. Past the next fight.
He was thinking about the peak.
And how he would climb it.