Game Over

Ren's fist tore through everything and struck the dazed Fox Mask.

The impact burst Fox Mask's head into a mist of red and white.

Dark-blue power floated over Ren's hand, erasing every trace of filth.

He shook his hand casually and swept the room with eyes sharp as lightning.

The curtain had not been broken.

Where could Kuki run?

Powerful suction erupted from Ren.

Fox Mask's cursed energy was rapidly devoured by Six Vaults Devourer.

Prey walking right into his hands really did put him in a good mood.

Kuki's figure darted through the black fog.

His cursed technique was Soul Storage. It allowed him to split his soul, absorb ordinary human souls, and store them as cursed energy.

Those ordinary souls could not improve the quality of his power, but they gave him a steady reserve, like carrying an enormous battery.

His technique could also drown a person's soul directly with cursed energy.

But as long as he released cursed energy, Ren could devour it.

So after Fox Mask died, Kuki chose to flee.

"Damn you, Fox Mask. Always acting like some untouchable genius, and you were useless. Your technique got broken once, and you froze like an idiot."

"You got me killed."

Kuki no longer cared about revenge or power.

Fox Mask's head had exploded right in front of him. Bits of blood and brain had even splashed onto his body.

Only then did Kuki understand.

In the face of death, everything else became meaningless.

What had just happened could not be called a fight.

It was slaughter.

Faced with that overwhelming difference in strength, Kuki could not raise even the slightest will to resist.

He only wanted to escape Ren's sight, last until someone outside broke the curtain, then flee to a place where no one could ever find him.

He would go back to an ordinary life.

Killing people when he felt like it.

Torturing souls for fun.

The outside world was too dangerous for an ordinary curse user like him.

He hid in the darkness like a rat.

Cursed energy became feelers, probing everything around him.

If there was even the slightest disturbance, he was ready to split his soul into the eight pieces he had left.

As long as one escaped, he could survive.

Then something changed.

A large hand appeared in front of Kuki's eyes.

Silent.

Sudden.

As if from nowhere.

There had been no cursed energy fluctuation. Even his feelers sensed nothing.

Yet that long, clean hand appeared before him and seized his head with unstoppable force.

"The cat-and-mouse game is over."

The young man's voice carried no human warmth.

It froze Kuki like winter wind.

Outside the curtain, Toji sat on the gravel with an unfinished can of beer in hand.

He looked at the curtain covering his "company" with great interest.

"Heh. You're always so lazy. Go get some exercise."

Toji drank and wiped his mouth roughly.

Sparse stubble covered his chin. He scratched at it lazily, looking more amused than concerned.

He had sensed someone eyeing this seaside villa.

He also did not believe his nominal boss had failed to notice.

"I'm not slacking. I'm helping the boss work out. Considerate, right?"

Toji looked down as if asking for agreement.

Beneath his foot, a man trembled and could not say a word.

Why is Toji Fushiguro here?

Why?

The man was Watcher, who had come to find Ren.

With the black-robed man's help, he and the bartender had reached Sugisawa.

Unfortunately, that woman had run off to find some entertainment the moment they arrived.

Watcher never expected much from her.

After making inquiries on his own, he learned that Ren's Agency was quite famous in Sugisawa. Nearly eighty percent of the area's abnormal cases were handled there.

Once he found the agency, Watcher did not act immediately.

He first considered how to speak with Ren.

But right as he finished preparing his wording, he ran into Toji, who had just left the villa to look for fun.

Before joining Ren's Agency, Toji had moved through every dirty corner of the jujutsu world.

Naturally, he recognized this unpleasant man as someone from the black market.

And by pure coincidence, the curtain rose just as they met.

Toji misunderstood.

He assumed the whole thing was Watcher's doing.

He did not listen to explanations.

In a few moves, he had Watcher pinned to the ground.

Watcher's newly enhanced body could not resist Toji at all.

Inside the villa, Kuki's corpse was tossed aside like a broken toy.

Blood leaked from all over him.

Kuki had relied on his cursed technique to do whatever he wanted.

Against a monster like Ren, he had no room to resist.

His plan to split his soul and escape never had a chance to begin.

The moment Ren found him, Ren pierced through his body.

With Six Vaults Devourer running at full force, Kuki became a giant battery, constantly offering Ren the cursed energy he had stored over the years.

That was a pleasant surprise.

Ren had thought these two could at most add a bit of progress.

He had not expected Kuki's body to contain so much cursed energy.

The cursed energy was mixed and impure, but there was a huge amount of it.

In quantity alone, it almost matched half of what one-third of Yamata no Orochi had provided.

Six Vaults Devourer, now at the advanced stage, devoured faster than before.

The power Ren swallowed could almost be digested instantly.

On the system panel, Six Vaults Devourer's mastery surged visibly.

Eighty percent.

Eighty-one.

Ninety-one.

The speed was slower than at first, but it still did not stop.

It kept rising steadily.

Ren sighed.

Kuki and Fox Mask really were good luck for him.

First, they invited him to devour Yamata no Orochi.

Then they traveled all this way to deliver themselves.

Without them, Six Vaults Devourer might have taken him years to complete.

"Good people."

Ren sounded genuinely moved by everything the Orochi Society had done for him.

At last, Kuki's decades of stored cursed energy were squeezed dry.

Six Vaults Devourer stopped only three percent short of completion.

Heaven burst with dark-blue light on Ren's chest and instantly erased Kuki's body.

No trace remained.

At the same time, a soft green light floated out of Heaven and settled into Ren's palm.

A lifelike human head had been carved into the jade.

This was the cursed object Ren had taken from the special-grade cursed spirit inside the Osaka supermarket.

It contained a vast curse and cursed energy.

Because Ren had been digesting Yamata no Orochi before, he could not use Six Vaults Devourer on the jade.

But now, he was only one step away from unlocking the next Supreme Art.

Ren did not hesitate.

He grabbed the green jade.

Six Vaults Devourer surged.

Howls and ghostly cries erupted inside the room.

"Why were you so cruel?"

"Darling, you said you would marry me."

"I carried your child for ten months. How could you do this to me?"

"I won't accept it. I won't. How could you betray me? How could you?"

The voices overlapped like the grief of countless humans, like all the abandoned women in the world crying together.

The walls glowed with eerie green light.

Thin, pale hands reached from every direction and climbed onto Ren's body.

They were cold and wet, without the slightest warmth.

The voices of women squeezed through clenched teeth, full of resentment and madness.

Ren sat on the sofa, jade in hand, expressionless.

His eyes were half closed.

Cursed energy revolved around him.

The dark blue of Divine Forge ? Hundred Refinements and the bright force of Six Vaults Devourer intertwined, blocking the horror outside.

Under that blue and gold light, the hands on Ren's body were extinguished like candle flames in the wind.

The woman's voice turned pained and vicious.

Everything around him changed.

Walls, ceiling, floor, and lamps were suddenly covered in long black hair.

It wrapped around everything, slick with sticky blood, turning the room terrifying.

The hair twisted like venomous snakes and swallowed the space.

Other than the sofa where Ren sat, everything had become a sea of death.

Ninety-nine percent.

One hundred percent.

Six Vaults Devourer: Complete.

Third Supreme Art unlocked.

A mechanical voice sounded by Ren's ear.

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