Major spoilers for all 58 chapters and all six volumes, including the late-game conflict among Luke, Rejat, and Gresham.
On October 1, 2026, Hyperinflation became free to read in full on Shonen Jump+ for one day as part of the service’s 12th-anniversary campaign.[1]
A complete reread makes several early scenes look completely different.
The funniest example is Rejat.
Once you know what he becomes later, the natural reaction is:
“Wait. You actually got caught in that slave hunt?”
And he was standing almost next to Luke when Luke had barely learned how to use his power. Every banknote Luke generates carries the same serial number. Late in the manga, that number becomes important enough for the government side to pursue desperately.
Early on, however, the highly capable imperial spy is already right there.
That is a terrifying amount of danger in the opening stretch.
0. First, separate three questions
Three memories are easy to blur together:
- Was Rejat searching for Luke from the beginning?
- Did Rejat intentionally pretend to be captured as a slave?
- Could Luke make generated notes disappear or pull them back into his body?
The short version:
No. No. And the third ability is not established in the official and character materials checked for this article.
Rejat was not originally sent to find a boy named Luke. He belonged to the Victorian Empire’s secret intelligence service and had infiltrated a Gaboul village to investigate the special abilities associated with the Gaboul people.[2]
Then he was caught in a slave hunt instigated by Gresham.[2]
He genuinely became a captive.
While imprisoned, he met Luke, helped plan the revolt, and gradually suspected that Luke might be the ability user he had been sent to investigate.[2]
So the sequence is:
investigate the ability → get caught unexpectedly → discover the target among the other captives.
For a spy story, that is an impressively confusing mix of bad luck and good luck.
1. Rejat’s original mission was not “find Luke”
This distinction makes his early behavior much easier to read.
Rejat’s assignment concerned the mysterious special ability connected to the Gaboul people.[2]
He did not arrive with an order saying:
“Capture the counterfeit-money boy Luke.”
Luke had only just acquired his power.
Rejat was pursuing something vaguer: reports and traditions surrounding a Gaboul ability and a “savior.”
Then, inside the captive group, an unusually clever boy begins organizing a revolt and using suspicious money.
From Rejat’s perspective, the thing he came to investigate practically walked into the same cage.
The infiltration itself had gone wrong.
Yet the mission target appeared anyway.
2. The capture was real, which gets funnier the more competent Rejat becomes later
Rejat is undercover, and “Rejat” itself is described as a mission alias.[2]
That makes it easy to misremember the entire capture as part of the disguise.
But the character material says he was actually swept up in the slave hunt and captured.[2]
That becomes hilarious on reread because later Rejat is not merely intelligent.
He is described as skilled in hand-to-hand combat and firearms, with excellent situational judgment.[2]
By volume 5, he has located Luke’s hideout and leads a small elite force in a surprise attack on the old castle.[3]
So the same man’s early status is:
“Got caught in a slave hunt and became a prisoner.”
That is not necessarily inconsistent. A spy is not an invincible battle-manga hero. Surprise, numbers, lack of equipment, and the need to preserve a cover identity can all matter.
Still, once you have seen late-game Rejat, it is impossible not to think:
“You really look like the kind of person who should have found a way out of that.”
3. Rejat is genuinely strong, just not a superhuman monster like Dau
It is easy to remember Rejat as “the brain guy.”
That understates him.
His character description explicitly says he is good at combat and firearms.[2]
He is an operational intelligence agent who can think, shoot, and fight.
The later castle assault also fits that image.[3]
But he is not Dau.
Dau belongs to the category of “are human muscles even allowed to do that?”
Rejat is more grounded:
training + weapons + judgment + anticipation, all at a very high level.
So the memory that he was physically formidable is basically right. He is simply not the type who should be treated as a one-man army capable of crushing unlimited enemies bare-handed.
His real terror is not invulnerability.
It is recovery.
Once the board turns bad, he rebuilds his plan absurdly fast.
4. Early Luke was generating money almost next to the worst possible observer
The official volume 2 summary states the central flaw directly:
Luke can generate large quantities of counterfeit notes with the same serial number.[4]
That flaw powers the strategic game of the entire series.
One note can look perfect.
Two notes with the same serial number can expose the pattern.
By the final volume, obtaining the serial number itself becomes one of Rejat’s critical objectives.[5]
Now go back to the beginning.
Luke barely understands his power.
People are packed around him.
Rejat is among them.
And Rejat is precisely an imperial intelligence officer investigating mysterious abilities.
The dangerous observer is way too close.
If early Rejat had obtained multiple Luke-generated notes and compared them carefully, he might have discovered the identical-number weakness much earlier.
That is a rereading inference, not a stated alternate-history event.
But once the final arc establishes the serial number as a national-level strategic target, the early proximity becomes obviously precarious.
5. The practical mystery: where did all the generated paper go?
On reread, a physical problem starts competing with the serial-number problem.
Luke generates a note.
Then another.
Then more.
The scene changes.
Where is all that paper now?
The official volume summaries and character materials checked here do not establish a power that lets Luke erase emitted notes or pull them back inside his body.
The later story instead treats the notes as physical objects that can circulate, be collected, examined, and strategically compromised through their serial number.[4][5]
The most natural possibilities are therefore:
- he generated only what he needed at the moment;
- he hid notes in clothing or luggage;
- allies collected and stored them;
- the manga simply skipped mundane storage actions.
The problem is that early Luke has very little freedom or luggage.
So the reader’s last remaining low-tech storage hypothesis becomes:
“Was he keeping them in his underwear?”
That is not canon.
Please do not make it canon.
And if he was generating large amounts over multiple days, underwear capacity becomes its own hard limit.
A power capable of destabilizing the world economy may have encountered a logistics bottleneck first.
6. The power is interesting because generating more money also generates more evidence against Luke
The first volume already teases that Luke’s ability has a “fatal flaw.”[6]
Volume 2 makes the same-number property explicit.[4]
So the power is not simply “unlimited money.”
Every additional note is also another physical object that can reveal the weakness.
That creates a beautiful risk structure:
use the power more → create more purchasing power → also create more evidence.
And Rejat is nearby.
The worst outcome for Luke is not merely losing one note.
It is giving an enemy enough notes to compare.
After you know how important the serial number becomes later, even early scenes where nobody is actively hunting the number gain suspense.
The reader knows the future threat before the characters do.
7. Gresham is also there from the start, and somehow never leaves the board
Another striking reread fact is how early Gresham appears and how long he remains relevant.
Volume 1 already places him at the center of the slave trade and auction economy surrounding Luke’s crisis.[6]
In a more conventional series, he could easily have been:
“the corrupt merchant from the opening arc.”
Instead, he survives as a major strategic actor.
The official volume 4 summary still warns readers not to take their eyes off Gresham during the Luke-versus-Rejat counterfeit war.[7]
Volume 5 again brings Luke, Rejat, and Gresham’s conflicting interests into the same castle crisis.[3]
Enemy.
Partner.
Secret profiteer.
Enemy again.
Temporary partner again.
That rhythm keeps repeating.
Luke and Rejat embody a conflict between an ability user and the state.
Gresham enters like market incentives given human form.
Profit matters more than sides.
Deals matter more than loyalty.
That is why he never falls off the board.
8. A second read reverses the information asymmetry
On a first read, the audience does not know who Rejat really is.
He looks like:
an unusually intelligent Gaboul captive.
On a reread, the audience knows the hidden variables:
- imperial secret intelligence;
- mission to investigate the ability;
- trained in combat and firearms;
- future central opponent to Luke;
- obsessed with discovering the Hypernote serial number;
- later leader of an elite castle assault.
Now put that same man back beside early Luke.
The meaning of the panel changes.
What originally looked like:
“an ally listening”
becomes:
“a state spy observing.”
Hyperinflation is full of shifting deals and betrayals, but rereading changes the reader’s role too.
First time: you learn information with Luke.
Second time: you watch what Rejat might be noticing.
That makes the opening arc feel like a different story.
9. Conclusion: Rejat’s strength is not “never getting caught”; it is rebuilding the mission after getting caught
If you remember only late Rejat, he can look almost omniscient.
That makes his genuine early capture feel strange.
But across the whole series, the capture actually fits his core trait.
Rejat is not invincible.
He gets caught unexpectedly.
He did not know Luke in advance.
He did not initially understand the full power.
Yet from captivity, he joins the revolt, studies Luke, connects him to the mission, and eventually turns the situation into a national counterfeit-money conflict.
He is not the man who prevents every accident.
He is the man who redesigns the operation after the accident faster than everyone else.
Luke, meanwhile, was extremely lucky early on.
New power.
Poor control.
Same-number notes.
An imperial spy standing nearby.
And yet the most fatal information does not immediately leak.
Knowing the later war, the opening becomes:
“Thank God Rejat did not get two clean samples and compare them right there.”
As for the storage problem, the current verdict can remain:
Canon answer: unclear.
Reader’s stupid final hypothesis: underwear.
A manga about a counterfeit war that could overturn the world economy somehow becomes, on reread, a story where one of the first practical questions is “where did the paper go?”
That is very Hyperinflation.
References (7)
- 集英社 / 少年ジャンプ＋12周年プレスリリース, 「12日間12作品日替わり全話無料公開」, 2026-09-22 prtimes.jp
- マンガペディア, 『ハイパーインフレーション』作品・人物解説（レジャットの所属、任務、捕縛、技能） mangapedia.com
- 集英社コミック公式 S-MANGA, 『ハイパーインフレーション 5』 s-manga.net
- 集英社コミック公式 S-MANGA, 『ハイパーインフレーション 2』 s-manga.net
- 集英社コミック公式 S-MANGA, 『ハイパーインフレーション 6』 s-manga.net
- 集英社コミック公式 S-MANGA, 『ハイパーインフレーション 1』 s-manga.net
- 集英社コミック公式 S-MANGA, 『ハイパーインフレーション 4』 s-manga.net
