tap tap tap tap
Nanami’s steps down the stairs were quick.
He had already told Junpei what to do, but to think trouble would break out the moment he stepped away.
Still, there was no time to blame his own carelessness now.
Taking nearly three steps at a time, Nanami reached the second basement floor before long.
He burst out through the stairwell door and immediately spotted the VIP, Yamamoto Mie, who had parked her car, pressed the lock button, and was just turning away.
“Damn it, what the hell am I paying valet parking for?”
Yamamoto snapped as she slung her bag strap over her shoulder.
Then an ominous hand reached for her from behind.
swish
“Eek! W-what is it!”
“Step back. I won’t say it twice.”
“Who the hell are you? And what’s with that sword? Do you even have a weapons permit—”
thud
Nanami struck the back of Yamamoto’s neck and knocked her out cold.
Non-sorcerers often couldn’t see curses, so when danger actually appeared, they either froze up or ran wild.
In situations like this, knocking them out was surprisingly common.
That woman clearly couldn’t see curses, and she looked exactly like the type who’d make things worse if left alone.
-The second basement floor is full, so please move your cars to the first floor, please please please
Even after Nanami’s attack tore off one of its arms, the curse showed no sign of stopping.
Its grotesquely tall frame and unnaturally long limbs made it look even more bizarre.
Its face was deathly pale, plastered over with masks in a hideous mess.
“No time to put up a Curtain, I see.”
-Please move your cars to the first floor, please please please
The curse twisted its body in a grotesque motion and charged at Nanami.
In its long fingers it held a glow stick, where it had gotten it from who knew where.
In the brief instant before impact, Nanami measured the glow stick’s length with his eyes.
Fifty centimeters. From what he could see, the weak point was the grip where the right index finger was attached.
The technique was ready. All that remained was to pull the blade back with full force and cut.
[Ten Shadows Cursed Law]
The cursed tool wrapped in cloth moved at the exact timing, following his technique.
The instant an unavoidable strike landed on the target’s 7:3 ratio point,
the glow stick in the curse’s hand suddenly grew larger.
clang!
Its finger was still severed clean off, but aside from a slight crack, the glow stick was fine.
The sudden change in size had broken the accuracy of [Ten Shadows Cursed Law].
-No attack is allowed
As if the severed finger didn’t matter at all, the curse thrust the oversized glow stick forward.
Ridiculous as it looked, its mass couldn’t be ignored.
crack!
Nanami’s blocked body was shoved backward.
He adjusted his stance for a follow-up attack, but the curse didn’t strike again. Instead, it turned its back and started to flee.
“Think I’ll let you get away?”
Nanami dropped low and charged forward, then swung with the momentum and cut at the curse’s leg.
swish!
From that turned angle, it couldn’t block in time, so the blow landed, but only shallowly.
The line drawn across its leg healed in an instant, and the curse opened the door and slipped inside.
Nanami’s feet stopped as he chased after it.
“So this is where it was.”
{No Unauthorized Entry}
The reason it had fled here was simple.
An unfinished domain.
That was likely why the cursed residue had cut off at this door, and why he couldn’t detect any special traces.
“So it’s luring me in.”
Fighting inside would obviously be more disadvantageous than the brief exchange they’d just had.
It was a trap in plain sight, but what else could he do?
He didn’t have the luxury of waiting here and asking Ijichi for backup.
Just as Nanami was about to step inside, Junpei’s figure seemed to flicker before his eyes, but he ignored it.
The mission assigned to Junpei was to exorcise the Grade 1 curse together with him.
Not to fight a curse on the verge of becoming special grade, one that possessed an unfinished domain.
So, the one fighting here was me alone.
“From here on out, this is overtime.”
He’d settle the situation before Junpei got dragged into it.
----------------------
“I hope Nanami’s okay.”
Heading down to the first basement floor, Junpei let out a sigh after watching the other VIP, Sonoda Kazuchi, safely enter the building.
Not only had an unexpected situation broken out, but he couldn’t even get in touch with Nanami anymore.
He’d been told not to move until further instructions came, but how could he possibly stay calm?
They’d already confirmed that this side wasn’t being attacked. It would be better to do something than just sit around here.
Thinking that, Junpei turned his head and found a strange door.
{No Unauthorized Entry}
“What is this?”
The door, with bright red letters that looked like they’d been written in blood, was rusted as if it hadn’t been maintained in years.
Even if this was the basement, a door like that in a fancy department store?
And there definitely hadn’t been a door here a moment ago.
A door that had appeared out of nowhere.
Nanami not answering.
Junpei realized this door was connected to the murder case.
It looked like something he absolutely did not want to go through, but Junpei opened it without hesitation.
He might have been fragile, but he wasn’t a coward who ran from duty and possibility.
creeeak
With the grinding sound of rusted hinges, the door opened, and the space around Junpei changed at once.
His body reacted before his mind did to the reality revealed without warning.
“[Moonlit Wave]!”
Junpei summoned the jellyfish shikigami and, without letting his guard down, began surveying the revealed space.
This place, which looked like a mix of an old, filthy studio apartment and a parking lot, had the same kind of doors he’d seen earlier scattered all over it.
Junpei frowned at the grotesque scene.
He didn’t want to be here for even a second longer.
He’d meet up with Nanami, exorcise the curse, and get out.
“Nanami! Are you here? Answer me if you can hear me!”
“Yoshino-kun?”
For a moment, he heard a voice that sounded unusually flustered.
“Duck!”
BOOM!
A car burst through one of the doors plastered against the wall and slammed toward Junpei.
“Ghk!”
thump
The moment he summoned [Moonlit Wave] to knock the car away, a long white hand reaching for him from behind came into view.
It’s not a ranged slash. I’ll counter right away!
Junpei quickly made up his mind and drove [Moonlit Wave]’s spikes into the exposed arm.
The poison he’d mixed was a neurotoxin.
He thought it would soon stop moving, but he’d miscalculated.
shrrk
The instant the curse’s hand touched it, [Moonlit Wave] shrank.
That exposed Junpei’s body, which had been protected without a gap, and before the startled Junpei could pull away, the hand lightly brushed his pinky finger.
crack!
“Agh!”
A shout burst from Junpei’s mouth in pain and rage.
“[Moonlit Wave]!”
He belatedly tried to bunch the spikes together and pierce the curse along with the car, but by then the curse had vanished.
Junpei looked down at his trembling hand.
It had only touched him for an instant, but the nail on his pinky had shrunk and been ripped away.
Seeing the finger dripping blood, Junpei finally understood why the victims had died from limb amputations.
That bastard’s technique was compression.
It compressed the victims’ limbs down small and tore them off outright.
One touch and you die!
It was a death-touch type technique, like Mahito’s.
He thought the poison should be taking effect by now, but he couldn’t let his guard down.
Given that this grotesque space still hadn’t disappeared, it was clear the fight wasn’t over.
Then Nanami’s voice came up from below, piercing through the floor.
“Yoshino-kun, are you up there?”
“Nanami? Up there?”
“This is an unfinished domain created by the curse. I think we need to revise its danger rating. It’s safe to say it’s on par with special grade. I’ll handle it alone, so get out of there now.”
“Even if you say that, there are too many doors. I don’t know where I’m supposed to go!”
“.......No choice. Since I don’t know when it’ll attack again, I’ll explain quickly.”
The technique is compression.
The space is structured so that the first and second basement floors are connected by countless doors, and only the curse knows the layout.
To get out of here, you either exorcise the curse or destroy the core of the barrier.
“Where’s the barrier core?”
“Judging by how the cursed energy is flowing evenly out of all the doors...”
clang!
“Nanami!”
“Don’t worry about me! All these doors lead to one place, and the barrier core is probably there! You won’t get there by normal means. Find the hidden door!”
With that, only the sound of fierce clashes and Nanami fighting remained.
And the moment that sound cut off,
BOOM!
a glow stick was fired like a rocket from one of the doors and slammed into [Moonlit Wave].
“Damn it!”
It looked like he wasn’t getting out of this without getting hurt somewhere.
---------------------------
Junpei’s poison had definitely worked on the curse. As always, the problem was that the opponent was no good.
As long as the barrier core existed separately, the curse could draw cursed energy from it and recover on its own no matter how much damage it took.
It was a kind of chicken game: whether Junpei and Nanami would wear out first, or the cursed energy concentrated in the core would run dry first.
And in that chicken game, Nanami might have had a chance, but Junpei was clearly at a disadvantage.
bang! bang! bang! bang!
“Dammit, dammit, dammit!”
After tasting Junpei’s horrifying poison once, the curse decided to get dirty.
It handled Nanami, who was its favorable matchup, with its own body, and whenever it felt pressured, it fled through the doors and forced Junpei into ranged combat by hurling compressed objects at him.
-No Unauthorized Entry
The words on the doors, which he’d thought were just some nasty hobby, were actually a binding.
It was a kind of sure-hit effect that restricted entry for everyone except the barrier core and the curse moving around it.
That was why Junpei had no way to directly damage the curse.
All he could do was hide inside [Moonlit Wave] to shield himself from attacks coming from every direction.
Every time he deflected the objects flying at him, his cursed energy was shaved away.
And because he couldn’t completely ignore the mass of the objects, every hit made him and [Moonlit Wave] lurch around, throwing off his sense of balance.
Even so, Junpei was gradually getting used to the pattern of doors the curse emerged from.
It’s a habit. Probably the host Uryu’s.
For example, if you divided the wall around Junpei into four directions and an attack came from the fourth door to the north, then the next one would likely open from the second door to the west.
That made defense much easier, but the curse would surely notice his behavior soon and change things up.
He was deliberately pretending not to know and taking hits on purpose, which was a kind of acting too.
If the feint came once the curse was certain, he could be caught off guard and take it head-on.
So right now, he needed a move that would turn the table.
“Nanami! Can you fire off one big shot?”
“I can, but if that thing dodges, it’s pointless.”
Junpei’s gaze dropped to the floor.
It looked like an ordinary floor, but wasn’t that strange?
Even while cars were flying around and glow sticks that could pierce walls were smashing into everything, the floor alone remained perfectly intact.
Even though the walls, aside from the doors, were already a wreck.
There had to be a reason the floor couldn’t be damaged.
Then Junpei remembered something Mahito had once said.
There’s such a thing as a special-grade vengeful spirit. Like Hanako of the restroom...
Department store.
Basement.
First and second floors.
An unbreakable floor.
A ghost story every building has at least one of.
It’s a hidden floor.
He’d counted them all, and every door had the words No Unauthorized Entry written on it, and the curse had used every single one.
The answer wasn’t here.
“You really hid it well. How am I supposed to solve this? What a vicious bastard.”
Through exhaustion, pain, and furious thinking, Junpei had reached a kind of high.
Grinning as he formed hand signs, he shouted to Nanami.
“Nanami! Please smash the floor where I am—no, the ceiling where you are!”
“Did you find something...!”
“Just tell me if it’ll work or not!”
“That is enough.”
[Ten Shadows Cursed Law]—[Crashing Crashing]
Nanami’s trump card, which imbued destroyed objects with cursed energy, erupted in full force.
There were already enough objects.
The cars scattered all over the place were flung by Nanami’s strength and cursed energy, battering the ceiling.
-Please stop the destruction
“Go to hell!”
The curse, sensing danger, burst out and reached for Junpei, but he was already forming his hand signs.
Death was close. Cursed energy was exhausted.
Someone once said that a sorcerer’s growth curve wasn’t always smooth.
At the limit, Junpei understood the essence of jujutsu, and his technique advanced another step.
What he imagined was a freer version of himself.
A form that drifted through the air, sometimes carrying a sharp dagger in its body.
He spread his left hand and raised his right with only the middle finger extended.
The union of hand sign and chant gathered cursed energy and forged a new shape.
“[Sediment Moon].”
A yellow manta ray appeared in midair and caught Junpei as he fell.
“That is...”
Nanami stared inwardly in shock at Junpei, who had summoned a new shikigami.
The nature of his cursed energy: poison.
A shikigami immune to physical strikes.
Nanami had thought that just polishing the power he already had would make Junpei a guaranteed Grade 1 sorcerer, but he’d gone one step further than that.
One Crane Among a Flock of Chickens.
A crane among a flock of chickens.
The crane that had lived among the chickens called non-sorcerers was beginning to spread its wings.
As Nanami was briefly lost in thought, the ceiling collapsed and a newly revealed door came into view.
“There it is, Yoshino-kun!”
The only door that didn’t say No Unauthorized Entry.
Suspended at a height Junpei couldn’t reach even by jumping, it alone emitted a strange cursed energy.
-Not there, not there, not there, not there
“What do you mean, not there?”
Riding [Sediment Moon], Junpei shot toward the door at incredible speed.
His body sliced through the air with the sensation of riding a skateboard.
Behind him, the curse screamed and burst out through a door, flying after him, but it was already caught in his firing line.
“[Retribution].”
Needles shot from the yellow manta ray’s tail at terrifying speed.
fut! fut! fut!
-It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts
The curse’s face was covered in needles, turning it into something like a hedgehog as it lost momentum and fell.
Leaving it behind, Junpei opened the door and stepped inside, where he found a man whose body had already been half-assimilated into the space, leaving only his face exposed against the wall.
It was the missing guard, Uryu Kazuya.
“S-save me...”
“...Sorry.”
At the same time Junpei raised his cursed energy, Nanami also finished preparing to draw his blade at the falling curse in midair.
“Seven to three.”
“Retribution.”
The barrier core and the curse were destroyed at the same time.
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