The clouds surged before his eyes and, before either Larkin or Tanya could, Satoru saw the stars in the distance, the infinite vastness of the cosmos unraveling before him. His Six-Eyes saw all of it; the light from the distant stars, the radiation from the nearby sun, the waves of dark energy that fluttered in the darkness of space, and the faint haze of Cursed Energy that seemed to blanket everything– all of creation. Satoru could hardly believe it. How was such a thing even remotely possible? What sort of suffering and despair could generate this much Cursed Energy?
Well, the answer was rather clear, honestly, shown by the fate of the planet that was rapidly disappearing behind them. This galaxy was suffering. No... more than that... this whole galaxy was embroiled in what was quite possibly the largest war Satoru had ever conceived, encompassing thousands, maybe even millions, of worlds across seemingly infinite distances. And that meant if he could somehow figure out a way to harness this Cursed Energy, the same way Kairos did, then he'd have an infinite pool of it to draw from, which meant – in theory – Satoru could spam as many Hollow Technique: Purples and Domain Expansions as much as he wanted.
And it wasn't just any form of Cursed Energy either, but the sort that was created through endless wars and never ending violence, of cries of innocents and the dying screams of... an innumerable number of lives. Cursed Energy, borne of war and death, was the most potent of them all, giving birth to the most malicious and most powerful Cursed Spirits. Kairos... now made just a tiny bit more sense. Such an entity could not have existed in his time, on his Earth, but he was someplace else now, a wider and bigger galaxy. The Cursed Spirits here would be far greater than any he'd faced before – greater than even Sukuna at full power, because Kairos was honestly just ridiculous. Following the law of nature, however, it was only fair to assume that the big blue bird was, in fact, not the strongest, because there was always a bigger fish, always something stronger.
How fucking exciting!
Several pings caught his attention and Satoru only became vaguely aware of the massive projectiles that stopped meters away from the vessel's hull, held in place by the vastness of Infinity, giant shells, each one larger than a freaking car, each one more than capable of blasting apart their ship. And there were hundreds of them, launched from a single direction. Ah, Larkin was right, the Astartes started blasting at them the moment they got within range of their ship, which was also huge. Huh, every goddamn thing he'd seen, thus far, has been weirdly huge. "Holy shit."
"The batteries are not hitting us!" Larkin announced, beads of sweat rolling down the side of his face as his heart pumped rapidly in his heaving chest. The man had taken a leap of faith, Satoru mused, and was rewarded for it. The best part was that maintaining Infinity at this output was actually pretty easy; so, stopping such massive projectiles barely took any effort on his part. "They're stopping before they can even hit us! It's a miracle."
Damn right it was. Satoru turned and regarded him with a grin. "See? Didn't I tell you to just trust me?"
The ship thrummed peacefully as it traversed the cold emptiness of space, inviolable. And then, Satoru stood up and pointed forward and, when he spoke, he did so in his best rendition of Captain Picard. Oh yeah, that felt good. He'd always wanted to do that. Waking up in a science fiction "Now, engage the hyperdrives!"
"I have no idea what that is." Larkin chuckled as he reached for several buttons. The ship then thrummed and seemed to groan, Satoru noted, as a rush of Cursed Energy seemed to flood from somewhere in its center. Amazing, he thought, immediately realizing that whatever was going on was the result of the melding of sorcery and technology. Such a thing wasn't impossible or unheard of; indeed, sorcery and technology were used in tandem in many places, by many people. But none of them could hold a candle to whatever sorcerous mechanism Larkin had just activated, unleashing a stream of Cursed Energy so potent it seemed endless. Actually, no, Satoru mused, it seemed familiar. In fact, this was precisely the Cursed Energy signature of the very same realm, where Kairos drew its power from.
How incredibly interesting.
Larkin's faint smile faded and he spoke with a grim tone as he reached for a lever and wrapped his fingers around it. Satoru noted the hesitation in the man's eyes, the fear in them. "But I am about to engage the warp drive. My knowledge ends here... whatever happens next... is up to fate and chance."
Oh, that sounded absolutely lovely. Satoru grinned. "Do it."
Larkin nodded. "Engaging Gellar Field."
Another deep thrum came from the bowels of the ship and the wild torrent of Cursed Energies that'd previously been flooding out from somewhere at the center of the vessel suddenly coalesce and condensed around the ship itself, forming a dense shield layer right over the outer reaches of Infinity. Satoru raised a brow, but otherwise kept silent as Larkin pulled more and more levers, pressed more buttons and did a whole lot of cool shit. Sighing, Satoru sat back down and, instead, turned his attention to the entirety of the ship itself, to the mechanism that seemed to harness Cursed Energy and, importantly, the method it used to do so. Because the machine had to be siphoning Cursed Energy somehow.
If Satoru could emulate the method it utilized, then he'd be freaking golden.
Six-Eyes saw more than any set of eyes could possibly perceive, even if or when he closed them. The perception of infinity, the truest expression of Limitless, and the ability to view Cursed Energy down to the subatomic level was little more than a happy little side effect; the true function of the Six-Eyes was to allow the user to perceive the motions, the ebb and flow, of space-time itself. And it was through the Six-Eyes that he now watched the strange device at the core of the vessel, one that siphoned Cursed Energy and turned said energy into a shield... for something. Satoru wasn't sure what the shield was for, but he didn't really care about that; with Infinity covering it entirely, there were very few things that could possibly harm this vessel.
The engine, it seemed, manipulated Cursed Energy in such a way as to open a breach into that hellish dimension, where Kairos likely originated from. Once a breach was open, Satoru surmised, the machine would then begin siphoning and purifying the Cursed Energy through what appeared to be some form of conceptual strainer, which filtered out the malicious elements that were present in the Cursed Energy, rendering it down into its most neutral state, which was then transformed into a shield. Satoru wasn't particularly interested in the last bit, but the first two processes certainly caught his attention.
Before he could investigate any further, however, the ship buckled. And his eyes snapped open just in time to see a massive tear in space-time before him, as though the very skin of reality had been torn and forced apart. His eyes bled. And from the other side of the tear came an endless sea of eldritch horrors, of Cursed Spirits so unspeakably powerful that a single gesture from them would've shattered entire worlds. Eons passed within moments, infinity unraveling before him, stretching out endlessly, seconds breaking down into a trillion instances. The entities that dwelled on the other side were... beyond anything he'd ever known, concentrations of impossibly dense Cursed Energies; there were may of them, numbering beyond count, but only four stood out, towering over all others like great mountains that loomed over everything else.
Holy fucking shit.
Four pairs of blazing eyes snapped towards him and Satoru nearly froze. Instead of freezing, however, he stared right back and grinned, almost daring the four of them to do something. He felt a faint amusement emanating from them, followed by a wave of malignant Cursed Energies that almost seemed to swallow him whole, an entire ocean of it, endless and boundless, Limitless. This is what true power must be like, Satoru realized, infinite and untethered, without restraint. But they were, the four of them, different from each other; one seemed to writhe and twist endlessly without goal or function, one was decaying and rotting and living all at once, another was of temptation and pleasure unbound, and the last was of violence and aggression in their purest forms.
Amazing...
The entities, all four of them, turned to regard him with curious glances... as though he was an oddity, something they've never seen before.
"Take a long and hard look!" Satoru held out his hands to the side, eyes wide and manic. If his grin was any wider, his cheeks would've torn. He wasn't sure why he did it, but Satoru then flared his Cursed Energy as intensely as he could, bathing the entire vessel in it. "I may not be the strongest, but I sure as hell won't stop until I am standing over all four of you!"
This is what he had to strive for, the ultimate power, the truest form of Limitless.
Beautiful...
His grin did not falter. And Satoru held out a hand and gestured them to come hither, daring them. Hey, if he was going to die, then he'd go out swinging. But, for the first time in a very long time, Satoru felt genuine fear – not of death. He wasn't even entirely sure just what he was afraid of. It was a sort of primal thing that really had no real explanation. It was just... fear. But, he was Gojo Satoru and he'd happily smile as he stared back at death itself. But, alongside that fear, was the greatest excitement he'd ever felt as well, dwarfing his excitement when he faced the King of Curses himself by orders of magnitude.
But, holy shit. Just what the hell was he even looking at?
Were these even Cursed Spirits? Satoru had to wonder.
Were they gods, perhaps? Satoru had never been religious, but, if there were gods, then this was probably as close as one could feasibly get, using only Cursed Energy as the basis for power. Could he achieve a similar level of strength? Perhaps, with time and plenty of effort; why not? He was Gojo Satoru, after all; the very concept of impossible didn't mean shit to him.
One of the four reached out to him, the eternally writhing shapeless mass of tendrils and mouths and eyes and limbs. Its full attention was...almost overwhelming and Satoru would be lying if he said he didn't almost fall to his knees from the weight of the pressure that'd suddenly pressed over him. Still, he kept his grin and forced himself to stay up, bolstering every single muscle, bone, and cell in his body with Cursed Energy, just to keep himself from falling. Amusement rolled off the entity like an avalanche. Whispers came with it, offers of power, riches... anything and everything his heart desired, in exchange for eternal servitude.
Nah.
Satoru batted away the flaming blue tendril that'd appeared in front of him. "No thanks, dude. I got enough on my plate at the moment and I am not interested."
"I like this one."
"Gay."
Satoru blinked and, suddenly, he was back on the bridge of the vessel, standing still, bleeding from his eyes, nose, and mouth. The lights were dead. Larkin and Tanya laid on the floor, convulsing madly; like himself, the father and daughter due bled. Everywhere around him, Satoru noted blue flames and eldritch feathers, and – somewhere in the darkness – laughter. Not mocking or japing, but simple happiness. The entity he'd denied was happy for some fucking reason.
His smile fading, Satoru wiped the blood from his face and turned to Larkin and Tanya, his eyes narrowed. "What the hell happened here?"
And, when he glanced outside, the stars were different.
AN: is now up to Chapter 15!