Chapter 323

Before the class went hunting for Izuku, Tenya had pressed Nezu for hard proof that the people sheltering at U.A. would be safe with him inside the walls. Nezu grants that the boy is the greatest asset the heroes hold, which makes parking him at an unprepared shelter reckless, and answers that the school's defenses rival what Tartarus had. Momo counters that Tomura levelled Tartarus, so Nezu explains that the attack on the campus a year ago sent him back to the drawing board with additions of his own design. His confidence rests on a simple claim: U.A. can travel.

Each section of the grounds, he says, works like a game board panel rigged to convert into a subterranean shelter, after which the shelters join an underground network and move in any direction. Because the system could still collapse, he laid roughly three thousand layers of Bulwark plating beneath it, and any anomaly unlocks the connecting pillars so the plates go mobile, stalling an attacker while the shelters flee. Shiketsu High, he adds, hardened its own campus first after Himiko Toga impersonated Camie Utsushimi, and several hero schools now keep comparable provisions, a fact that startles the students given the distance involved.

Fumikage works out that the countermeasures target Tomura's amplified Decay and wonders how Nezu foresaw it back when the School Festival was underway. Intuition, comes the answer, and he paid the bill personally. The price staggers the class, while Endeavor notes that Nezu's work on Quirk morality education has made him famous worldwide and continues still. Nezu observes that intolerance and misunderstanding keep the single step toward each other looking impossibly far, yet he believes the case for Izuku's return can be argued, and trusts the students to make it.

In the present, the barricade holds and the crowd stays unconvinced. Present Mic tries to settle them and Best Jeanist steps up to claim responsibility for the plan, explaining that Izuku was used as bait to draw the enemy out, that a shortage of manpower left the search empty-handed, and that while the boy is indeed the villains' target, he is also their best weapon, so wearing him down further only costs more lives. He asks them to let Izuku rest and return to the fight at full strength.

They refuse, insisting they are paying for the heroes' failures, and the swelling hostility sets off Izuku's Danger Sense. Ochaco floats over the crowd onto the building with a microphone. She tells them Izuku holds a special power, that he left in the first place so nobody would be troubled, and that he only came back because she and her classmates dragged him. The villains want that power because it is the one thing that can stop them, she says, and asks the crowd to actually look at what he has endured out there while still trying to fix everything. The mood begins to turn, and one woman recognizes him as the person who helped her. Special powers exist, Ochaco declares, but special people do not. As she speaks, Katsuki promises Izuku that they will step in wherever he cannot manage alone, and Nezu reflects that the single step is a hard one, but taking it clears a road for a hero who could outgrow even All Might.

The U.A. Barrier is explained in detail. After Tomura's first assault, Nezu redesigned and personally financed the defense system, converting each section of the school into an underground shelter that can move through a fortified network, ringed with layered plating and automatic threat detection.

Best Jeanist tries to reassure the civilians and fails to calm them.

Ochaco appeals to the crowd to see Izuku's condition and everything he has done for them, and to let him rest.

Cementoss is shown carrying scars and a plate in his side from his fight with Geten.

With Class 1-A and Shota Aizawa away, Eri is revealed to be under Class 1-B's care.

The chapter points readers to Volume 8 while recapping the alliance that U.A. and Shiketsu High planned once the Remedial Course Arc had ended, though the scene in question actually ran in Volume 18. Volume 33 corrected the error.

Seventeen pages long, it ran in issue 38 of 2021 and belongs to Volume 33, with Class 1-A, Nezu, and Enji Todoroki on the cover. Episode 137 adapts it.

Horikoshi's author comment admits he still gets nervous watching people read Jump in stores, and that this time they were reading Black Clover.