The truth is that in the world of Jujutsu Kaisen, Barrier techniques are a deep and wildly varied art.
Square ones and round ones, red ones and blue ones, spiked ones and angular ones, revolting ones and perfectly pleasant ones... the classifications alone are too many to count, and the theory behind them is deep enough that decades of study still won't get you to the bottom of it.
Which is why an ultra-"academic" discipline like Barrier technique only has two practitioners who really understand how to play with it — two old-timers who have been alive for a thousand years.
And that is also why, in the original story of Jujutsu Kaisen, the main cast almost never used Barrier techniques in a fight, which meant the audience never once got to see a real Barrier duel.
So what does a real Barrier duel actually look like?
Phantom Kenjaku narrowed his eyes.
The new layer of firewall protection he had just added to the Culling Game had been broken through again. That new layer had only been a light probe, but the response had come back fast and precise, and the style of it didn't feel like Mahiru.
It felt more like another old schemer.
"Who are you?"
First, rule out his past self.
Then rule out Tengen, whom he had already assimilated.
Mm... good. No candidates left.
So that was it.
"Have they found some other reclusive sorcerer?" Phantom Kenjaku's gaze hardened. "A master of Barrier technique I don't even know about... this world really is something."
So many hidden dragons and crouching tigers.
No matter, though.
The Barrier knowledge Kenjaku had piled up over several thousand years was not something any ordinary person could rival.
Barrier technique, after all, was a craft that fed on nothing so much as experience and accumulated learning.
Youngster! Get ready to taste the weight of a thousand years!
Kenjaku spread his arms and swept one hand through the air. Dozens of system windows opened and closed across the space around him, flickering in and out without pause.
This time he was serious.
Over the last thousand years he had researched something like several dozen distinct types of Barrier, and in that moment all of them became several dozen different "firewalls," thrown up to hold back the intrusion.
Ha. How about that, then?
Could you still break through now?
Phantom Kenjaku was in a fine mood.
And in the world of the past, Kaori Kenjaku went blank for a moment.
How had the other side set up so many familiar defenses in the space of a heartbeat? Every last one of them was some obscure treasure of a Barrier that she had worked out over her own thousand years.
Hold on. Somebody stole my research?
Or had the other side, by sheer coincidence, studied every single Barrier she had ever studied?
No way to tell. But Kaori Kenjaku was in a fine mood too.
She could feel the confidence radiating off the other side... and the other side had no idea she had researched all of these as well.
— Did luck like this really exist?
So she swept a hand through the air, Cursed Energy turning, and unraveled every new defense one after another with brisk efficiency.
— And across the gap, Phantom Kenjaku's eyes went wide.
What???
The Barrier user on the other end was that good??
He was startled. He was dumbfounded. He was rocked to the core.
How was this fair! Those Barriers were his hidden collection, the ones he kept stuffed down his own pants!
It was as if the other side lived inside his gut, as if they had been sneaking looks at his diary — as if they knew exactly where every one of those Barriers was weak!
But how could anyone know that!
There couldn't really be a genius out there who could see through every Barrier at a single glance, could there?
Damn it...
"Then how about this!"
Kenjaku was angry. Furious, he played his trump card outright — his Open Domain, Womb Profusion!
That's right! A Domain was a kind of Barrier too! It could just as easily be used to build a firewall for the Culling Game! And because it was an Open Domain, the strength of that firewall was extraordinarily high. Absurdly high!
A Domain could only be countered by a Domain.
Unless the other side also possessed an Open Domain, there was absolutely nothing they could do! ...And even if they did! He would still be able to read from their sou—
[Confirm using "Womb Profusion" to construct the firewall?]
Faced with the prompt, Kenjaku chose "Yes" without a flicker of hesitation.
"Let me see it, then!"
Let me see how you handle this one.
And then...
[Beep. Beep...]
[Confirmed: the "Womb Profusion" firewall has been cracked by "Assistant Manager No. 2"...]
Kenjaku's eyes went wide.
He sank into a long, long silence.
"This is bad."
It seemed Kenjaku had just discovered that the other side really was a monster of an expert.
His Open Domain had been torn open, which meant the other side had an Open Domain of their own.
That, of course, wasn't the important part.
The important part was that, by all logic, the other side must have opened their own Open Domain to contend with his in order to crack his firewall at all.
And yet the only Domain he could sense the presence of was Womb Profusion!
He could not detect the faintest trace of what Domain the other side had used!!
Because surely the other side's Domain couldn't be the exact same as his own!
That was a genuinely terrifying thought!!
He couldn't keep going like this.
Kenjaku gritted his teeth.
Up to now he had focused on raising firewalls, trying to keep the other side out of his system. But he could feel that this was, for the moment, simply beyond him.
Fine. Then he would take a step back.
He began locking down the system's permissions and setting a password.
That way, even if the other side could break into his system, they wouldn't be able to do a thing with the account.
It was already a considerable concession.
He made the password absurdly complex, and in theory he was the only person alive who knew it.
It came from a small incident across his thousand years, something important to him and known to no one else. To anyone else's eyes it would look completely random, and there was no way around it.
Phantom Kenjaku let out a breath.
That ought to hold now, surely?
But...
"Ha..."
But on the other side, Kaori Kenjaku was smiling.
She had clearly worked out who her opponent was.
Obviously. Phantom Kenjaku had gone and opened his Domain; there was no possible way Kaori Kenjaku wouldn't recognize him after that.
It was a Domain ninety-nine percent identical to her own!
"Me, from another world?..."
How curious. How truly, deliciously curious... why would her enemy be another her?
A parallel world?
A copy of herself?
Or someone else entirely who had lived through something similar to what she had?
Countless guesses flickered through Kaori Kenjaku's mind. For now, she hadn't connected any of this to Mahiru.
But she was thoroughly entertained.
She thought this was the most fun she'd had in ages.
And then she saw that the other side had set a password. Because of that password—
"...?"
If the other side was very likely "another self" who shared her experiences and perhaps even her soul, then this password... if I were standing in the exact same situation, what password would I set?
Mm...
A deeply, deeply intrigued smile spread across the woman's face.
Shall we give it a try?
And so...
In the future world, Kenjaku's mind went blank. Utterly, comprehensively blank.
The password he had believed uncrackable... the password that, in theory, only he could know...
had been broken by the other side with insulting ease.
The other side...
"Their mastery of Barrier technique runs that deep? They can do even this?!!"
And in that moment, what he felt was something close to helplessness.
____
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