Curse Revealed

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Timewheel: Forward.

Ren kicked apart the wooden door leading to the corridor and passed through the suspended fragments. He rushed toward the source of the screams, where the cursed presence had reached its strongest point.

He shattered another door and stepped into the room.

The sight that entered his eyes was grotesque.

A tattooed man held a short blade and knelt on the floor before two corpses. His face mixed strange excitement with terror.

On the other side stood the most imposing thing in the room: a massive, misshapen monster.

It looked like a square block of flesh. On its front face, a huge eye split open vertically. Its black-red pupil looked like an insect sealed in amber, but Ren could sense its gaze shifting toward him.

The powerful cursed spirit had no limbs in the normal sense. Two enlarged human-like arms extended from each side and propped it against the ground. On the underside of its body was a wide mouth without teeth. Beyond that, each of its six faces had a different number of restless eyes, rolling everywhere.

It looked like an eerie die.

At that moment, it was swallowing half a corpse. Blood splashed in midair, frozen in a twisted painting.

Without hesitation, Ren released his technique and instantly poured the cursed energy gained from Reverse Cursed Technique into his cursed technique.

Timewheel: Reverse.

His targets were the ordinary people who had been killed. When the reversed technique landed on them, Ren felt fierce resistance. The main source came from the three ordinary people who had already been swallowed by the cursed spirit.

Because the targets involved what was very likely a Special Grade cursed spirit, the spirit stood like a reef long battered by a river, stubbornly blocking the reversal. The technique was already harder to use in reverse, and this made it worse. Not only did his cursed energy drain violently, but pain began stabbing through Ren's head.

In the short span of that exchange, something warm slid over his upper lip. At the same time, the effect of his reversed technique was forcibly interrupted.

Three women and one man appeared in the room, dazed, their faces still marked by absolute terror.

When they saw the scene before them clearly, their minds could not process it. Only when they noticed the tattooed man frozen there with a bloodstained knife did they come alive enough to fall to the ground in fear.

"What... what happened?"

The tattooed man's memory was still fixed on the moment he personally offered five sacrifices to the god. Why were four of them alive now?

He looked at the knife in his hand and fell into confusion. Then he suddenly lifted his head and stared at Ren, whose nose was bleeding.

"It was you! You ruined the offering to the god. I will sacrifice you too!"

The man charged at Ren with the knife. Ren, who had just wiped the blood from his nose, did not pay him much attention. Most of his focus remained on the cursed spirit, which had begun to grow restless and lock onto him.

As for the tattooed man, when he rushed up and raised the knife to stab Ren's neck, Ren suddenly kicked him.

The man's figure blurred and slammed into the wall more than thirty feet away, smashing a crater into it. He sprayed a burst of blood in midair, but strangely, he did not die. He slid down, barely alive.

"Ren!"

Kento Nanami rushed in and saw the cursed spirit. Its powerful presence made him instinctively tighten his grip on his weapon. He entered combat mode in an instant.

"Nanami-san, please get those four people out first," Ren said without turning around.

He moved to meet the die-shaped cursed spirit crawling quickly toward him.

Nanami made a quick decision. He pulled up one woman whose mind had collapsed from excessive terror, then shouted to the other three, "Follow me. Now."

Timewheel: Forward.

Godspeed Slash.

Several cuts suddenly split across the die-shaped cursed spirit's body like torn cloth. Black blood sprayed out, staining much of Ren's clothing.

At the same time, the ordinary cursed blade in Ren's hand shattered apart. To break through the spirit's defense, he had poured in too much cursed energy. Combined with multiple slashes at the same moment, the cursed tool finally could not endure it.

While the die-shaped cursed spirit howled in pain, the huge eye on its front face suddenly released black-gray light. In an instant, it condensed into a pillar as thick as a bucket and flashed through the air, leaving a scorched scent behind.

The attack was quick, but there was no way it could hit Ren.

The eyes on the cursed spirit's body suddenly turned backward. Ren stood there now, fist raised and burning with surging cursed energy.

The next moment, all movement vanished from the spirit's sight.

One punch. Two punches.

Black Flash triggered.

Then he used his reversed technique to reverse himself.

The die-shaped cursed spirit, just sent flying by the burst of overwhelming force, froze once more in Ren's eyes.

Pseudo Black Flash: Twofold.

Chaotic black, lightning-like cursed energy slammed into the largest eye at the center of its body. Like smashing a waterlogged marble, Ren's fist burst the eye open.

But it did not end there.

Ren reversed his technique again.

Against the discomfort already rising inside him, Ren reversed himself once more. Wild black light seemed to roar over his fist, opening like a bloody mouth as it bit toward the wound left by the shattered eye.

Pseudo Black Flash: Threefold.

The technique released. The die-shaped cursed spirit's body trembled violently in midair, then exploded with sheets of liquid. Like a fired cannonball, it punched through wall after wall behind it. Judging from the smoke-filled holes, it had flown out of the building.

"What... is that? Is that the god's true form? Did I see the god with my own eyes?"

The tattooed man lying on the floor, barely alive, seemed to see the cursed spirit at that moment. In a daze, supreme joy appeared on his face.

Then a shadow fell over him.

The figure looking down at him had dark red hair as if stained with blood. The clothes drenched in unknown black liquid made the face-obscured figure look like a ghost.

"Demon..."

Ren reached down, grabbed the man, and carried him through the hole in the wall.

The cursed spirit had already struggled back up outside. Its warped body began recovering rapidly, and even the eye Ren had smashed started growing back. The sight was grotesque.

At the edge of death, the tattooed man finally saw the full appearance of the "god" in his heart. Its terrifying form momentarily overwhelmed whatever devotion he did or did not truly possess.

Especially when those strange eyes stared at him, it felt as if voices whispered and wailed beside his ears.

"Hm?"

Ren watched in surprise as the cursed spirit's recovery speed increased sharply. Its presence strengthened by several degrees in a way that defied common sense.

Was it the effect of its cursed technique?

"Fear," Nanami said, walking over from the side.

Ren heard him and looked down at the tattooed man he had thrown to the ground. The man had been terrified moments ago. Now his face was strangely calm. His gaze toward the cursed spirit contained all kinds of emotions, but none of the fear from earlier.

Ren narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "Nanami-san, you mean this cursed spirit's technique can absorb fear and turn it into power?"

Curses were born from negative emotions in the first place. But if this curse could actively absorb nearby fear, then in certain circumstances, it would become terrifying.

It was already strong enough to qualify as Special Grade. If it faced an opponent who felt even the slightest fear toward it, it could absorb that fear and strengthen itself, creating a snowball effect. The stronger it became, the more terrified the opponent became, and then it would grow stronger again.

There might be an upper limit, but before reaching it, the spirit could likely grow to a horrifying degree. Maybe it had reached its current level because it was born in this hellish place and had absorbed the victims' fear.

Ren's thoughts moved quickly. Then his foot shifted. He hooked the tattooed man and launched him toward the cursed spirit.

The spirit did not distinguish ally from enemy. To it, the tattooed man was only another source of convenient food, someone who had made food for it. Now that it had been inexplicably wounded, it angrily stretched out a hand, grabbed the tattooed man, and crushed him like a sponge.

Nanami loosened his tie slightly and said nothing. He had seen what the tattooed man had done. Sorcerers could not casually kill ordinary people. If they did, they would face investigation and might even be judged as curse users.

But in this case, was it not the cursed spirit that had killed the man?

Just as Nanami prepared to attack the spirit alongside Ren, Ren stopped him.

"Nanami-san, let me handle it. Their leaders are still on the rooftop, and there are many victims inside the building. Please keep the scene under control. I need to take this cursed spirit away from here. Otherwise, it will keep getting power."

The loud noise from earlier had already been heard by the people trapped inside the Curtain. Though they did not know what had happened, that did not stop them from feeling fear. After all, they had experienced that hell.

With those emotions feeding it, the cursed spirit had already recovered almost completely on the outside. Its huge body charged toward them on four hand-like limbs, and the eyes across its body released light again.

Several black beams tore through the air.

The beams Ren dodged instantly opened several large holes in the building behind him. From the look of it, the structure might not survive much more damage.

Ren activated his technique at once. In the next instant, he and the cursed spirit vanished from the spot together, leaving only a huge hole in the surrounding wall.

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