Conan's side began to prepare to make contact with the woman known as "Hirota Masami," intending to obtain more information about that organization from her, and preferably, to pull her younger sister over to their side as well.
Meanwhile, Miyauchi Hikage spent a good while that night in his house with Jerry, studying ghosts. Unfortunately, the research didn't last long before the plan had to be temporarily suspended.
Activating the Relic required far more electricity than Miyauchi Hikage had imagined. A moment's carelessness would trip the breaker and cause a short circuit.
Until he found a suitable energy source, trying to run this kind of project was a bit too conspicuous.
He couldn't have Professor Agasa inventing things in his lab all day, only for the final monthly electricity bill to be less than what he, a single high school student, used, right?
Miyauchi Hikage was definitely not going to use that targeted gacha roll on an energy source.
After all, helping to complete a B-rank request only filled the progress bar by about 5%.
At this rate, he might not even be able to save up for one targeted roll in a month. Miyauchi Hikage naturally had to use this opportunity to improve his own strength. He was just waiting to get himself a skill like a Reality Marble or a Domain Expansion.
Therefore, he could only see if the diary would be sensible enough to give him a useful reward.
In the end, Miyauchi Hikage only confirmed that these vengeful spirits and ghosts with fragmented consciousness, the kind that even exorcists would probably be too lazy to clean up if left on the roadside, would indeed show a submissive posture in the face of overwhelming power. He then had Jerry help train these ghosts, as long as it didn't play them to death and remembered to seal them up again after training.
And in the early morning of the next day, the first thing Shinomiya Kaguya—whose Hamon training was already showing initial results, allowing her to be full of energy with just five or six hours of rest a day—did after waking up was to check her diary and her phone.
There was no new entry in the diary, and the comments from the girls were still the usual ones.
Actually, she wanted to organize all the girls in the group, having them unify the direction of their comments to the Mysterious Person each day in order to better probe for more of the information she wanted from him.
In fact, with her status and the persona she had established in the group, most of the girls were quite willing to cooperate.
But the problem was, the probability of their unified comments being selected by the diary was very low. Except for being selected a few times at the beginning, the diary seemed to later treat their comments as spam and no longer displayed them.
Therefore, after trying for a week, Shinomiya Kaguya had no choice but to give up this idea before opinions arose among the girls in the group, letting everyone continue to write comments according to their own thoughts, at most asking some questions incidentally after their normal comments.
However, after opening the chat group, Kaguya discovered that the group, whose member count had not changed for a while, had suddenly added one more person last night.
And it seemed that because of this person's addition, the chat group was quite lively last night?
Realizing this, Kaguya quickly scrolled the chat history to the top, wanting to figure out what had happened last night.
After reading for a while, Kaguya's spirits were also lifted.
It was that mysterious multinational criminal organization that the Mysterious Person had mentioned in the early days.
Kaguya had always remembered that magical drug that could make people younger after taking it. However, because of the Mysterious Person's warning, she had not asked Hayasaka Ai to help her investigate.
Even for Edogawa Conan, who had turned into a child, she had only gained a simple understanding of his situation.
Originally, she had thought about seeking him out for investigations, but ever since learning from the God-Mother of Shitamachi that Beika Town was a dumping ground that the hidden world avoided, she now had to deliberately bypass Beika Town when traveling, let alone go there personally to investigate.
As for that mysterious multinational criminal organization, Kaguya was even more reluctant to act rashly.
After all, although that organization had a bunch of moles and undercover agents, and even the members who weren't undercover looked quite comical, it was still a criminal organization. A terrorist organization that dared to strafe the Tokyo Tower with an armed helicopter. She did not want to be targeted by them now.
And most of the girls in the chat group had similar thoughts. They were all ordinary people. Even if they had obtained the fortuitous encounter of the diary, it was indeed too much to ask them to confront such a terrorist organization.
However, the girl who joined the chat group in the early hours of last night had revealed her identity upon entering the group. She was a member of that organization, and she had also directly stated that the drug mentioned by the Mysterious Person in the diary was developed by her.
For this purpose, she had even uploaded two drug charts to the group that no one could understand to prove her identity.
And for such a genius researcher, who had no intention of proactively joining their chat group for the past month, to suddenly join last night and so eagerly prove her identity in the group, there must be something important she needed their help with.
As Kaguya thought this, she indeed saw the other party's request for help below.
"She received a request to defect from the organization, can escape by herself, but is not confident she can escape safely with her sister, so she wants our help?" Kaguya frowned after reading last night's chat history.
This seems very troublesome.
Sending people to keep an eye on suspicious individuals appearing in Akihabara, helping Takanashi Rikka's uncle, who was on the verge of death at any moment, to avoid a plane crash, and having the God-Mother go over to help when the Goko family's house was haunted—these were all things she could accomplish with a wave of her hand.
But this time was different; it was a confrontation with that mysterious criminal organization of unknown background.
More importantly, that "Miyano Shiho" still didn't know where her sister was now. She could only confirm that she should be in a certain area of Tokyo, carrying out a mission assigned by the organization. The only other clue was a photograph.
Although the Shinomiya family was large and prosperous, it was not particularly outstanding in terms of military industry and security.
To find her sister's whereabouts without a sound and then secretly rescue her would not be an easy task.
"In any case, I'll do my best. That Miyano Shiho did say that as long as we help her rescue her sister, she has a way to escape from there herself... and as long as we can protect her sister, she is willing to do anything..."
The allegiance of an 18-year-old genius scientist who could develop a youth-restoring drug—Kaguya had no intention of letting go of such an opportunity to recruit talent.
After some thought, Kaguya felt that this matter might require some assistance from the main family.
Or, could she find a way to use this opportunity to rope in that great detective who had turned into a child?
After all, he and that organization were clearly mortal enemies. And after she gained the allegiance of that Miyano Shiho, if that great detective wanted to return to his original form, he would also have to be mindful of the Shinomiya family's disposition.
"It seems I'll have to make a trip to Beika Town as soon as possible," Kaguya thought for a while, then stated her position in the group, saying that she would do her best to help and that she also needed the other party to provide more information about that organization.
After temporarily handling the matter in the group, Kaguya had to consider her own affairs.
Under her persuasion, Miwa Kasumi had now been conquered by her with various delicacies.
She had even promised to take her to see Tokyo Jujutsu High today. For this reason, she had already taken leave from Shuchiin Academy last night.
After washing up, Kaguya called for Hayasaka Ai and instructed her to investigate the matter of Miyano Shiho's sister. She also reminded Hayasaka that this investigation must not be known to outsiders and that she could only use people who were absolutely trustworthy. Even if they couldn't find anything, their own safety was the top priority.
She briefly mentioned some of the reasons, which made Hayasaka Ai's face turn a little dark.
After obtaining those powers, is my young lady causing bigger and bigger commotions?
Searching for information on some middle school students all over Japan before was one thing. Keeping a strange God-Mother at home was another. And going to Kyoto to chat with the old master of the main family and suddenly becoming the future core of the family relying on those special powers was yet another.
Now, how did she even get involved with a terrorist organization?
She was just an ordinary maid; she didn't want to get involved in such a dangerous matter!
But she was, after all, just a maid. Hearing the tone of Kaguya's voice, she knew she couldn't stop her decision and could only act carefully according to her request.
"By the way, where is Miss Miwa?" Kaguya asked Hayasaka again.
"She woke up at six in the morning and should be training in the courtyard now. As per your instructions, I have removed the security and surveillance in the courtyard so she can train in peace."
Kaguya nodded. Although she was about to step into the hidden world, apart from Hayasaka Ai, who had grown up with her, there was no need to let the other people in the family know too much.
She told Hayasaka to continue with her work, while she went alone to the place where Miwa Kasumi was practicing her swordsmanship.
The other girl was indeed very diligent. She had already been training here for over an hour and still had no intention of resting, repeatedly practicing her sword drawing.
It wasn't until she saw Kaguya's arrival that she sheathed her katana and greeted her.
"I'm not disturbing your training, am I?"
Miwa Kasumi quickly waved her hands. "No, no, my morning practice for today is almost done. I just felt I had a bit of a breakthrough these past two days, so I trained a little longer."
Hearing this, Kaguya also became interested and continued to guide the topic towards Shinkage-ryū. "You've had a breakthrough in your sword style? Can you let me see the techniques of Shinkage-ryū?"
Miwa Kasumi was a little embarrassed.
But thinking of all the delicacies the other party had treated her to last night, things she had never eaten before, Miwa Kasumi still nodded.
After all, it was just a drawing slash. It didn't involve leaking any secrets of Shinkage-ryū, so it was no problem to demonstrate it.
So, after having Kaguya take a few steps back, Miwa Kasumi released some Cursed Energy and demonstrated the power of the Shinkage-ryū "Iai Batto" infused with Cursed Energy in front of her.
Even from three or four meters away, one could clearly feel the violent airflow generated by her sword swing. Kaguya assessed its power.
It was indeed much stronger than her current Hamon, not to mention the other party hadn't even used her strongest move, "Simple Domain."
This was something the unguarded Miwa Kasumi had told her herself last night.
So, Kaguya also proposed to Miwa Kasumi that she was interested in learning Shinkage-ryū and hoped that she could help with an introduction.
However, to her surprise, when Miwa Kasumi heard that she wanted to learn Shinkage-ryū, a clear hesitation appeared on her face.
After a long while, Miwa Kasumi explained to her with some struggle, "If you want to learn Shinkage-ryū, you have to form a Binding Vow with the school. If you have other choices, you'd best consider it more before making a decision."
This appearance made Kaguya a little puzzled. "Is the restriction of that Vow very strong?"
Actually, if Kaguya had expressed her desire to learn Shinkage-ryū yesterday, Miwa Kasumi would probably have been quite happy.
After all, there was a small reward for recruiting people, and this way, Kaguya would be considered her junior, making it more hopeful to pull her into Kyoto Jujutsu High.
But this morning, when she woke up, she flipped through her diary and found that a new entry had been updated. After reading that entry, Miwa Kasumi's mentality was about to collapse.
The reason was simple. In today's diary entry, that Voldemort had mentioned some more secrets of the Jujutsu world.
Such as the higher-ups of the Jujutsu world being secretly turned into puppets by a conspirator, how Gojo Satoru's best friend defected and became a Curse User, and how the head of the Shinkage-ryū would use Binding Vows to absorb the life force of others to extend his own life.
The first two secrets made the simple-minded Miwa Kasumi stare in a daze. She had never expected the higher-ups of the Jujutsu world to be so corrupt.
She had even less expected that the defection of Gojo Satoru's friend was for the purpose of creating a world without Cursed Spirits, and to do so, he wanted to kill all the ordinary people in the world, leaving only superhumans.
Of course, what concerned Miwa Kasumi even more was the matter of the Shinkage-ryū.
As a minor character who had only practiced Shinkage-ryū for a few years, she only knew that practicing it required forming a Binding Vow and that she might have to obey the orders of the Shinkage-ryū's head in the future.
But she really didn't know that this Vow would also take her own lifespan as a price!
If it weren't for Voldemort stating in the diary that one could replace the original head and become the new head of Shinkage-ryū to change these rules, and the diary automatically consuming her Reading Value to help her adjust her mentality, and reminding her that she could use Reading Value to sever the Vow, she probably still wouldn't be able to accept this fact.