001 - The Boy Who Devoured a Curse
Sugisawa, Sendai, Japan.
A construction site.
The silver moon hung high overhead, but thick black clouds pressed beneath it, swallowing the light before it could reach the ground.
A humanoid monster stood amid the rubble.
Dark brown eyes covered its body from head to toe. Corrosive pus dripped from its enormous mouth and struck the concrete with a sharp, sizzling hiss.
The ground melted into pits of every size. A foul stench rose from them, thick and rancid, like worms dragged fresh out of a sewer.
The nauseating creature stood nearly three meters tall, massive enough to look like a giant.
Across from it stood a tall teenage boy.
Ren Zenin had long black hair that fell loose over his shoulders and a casual outfit that made him look almost out of place in the ruined construction site. His hands rested in his pockets as he lifted his head, and the monster's reflection appeared in his silver-white eyes.
Against something that large, even a boy over six feet tall looked almost childlike.
"A Grade 4 cursed spirit?" Ren looked at the monster in front of him, calm and faintly disappointed.
A streak of scarlet slid through his sharp eyes.
Greed flared in the monster's dark brown pupils.
"Fix the pipes... fix them today!"
"If you can't fix them, don't even think about leaving!"
The twisted voice sounded like several middle-aged men scolding someone at once, each layer warped into something eerie and wrong.
Boom!
The monster charged at Ren. Its massive body made the ground tremble with every step.
"Fix them! Fix them!"
Bang!
The cursed spirit barreled toward him like a tank, carrying enough force to crush a normal person into pulp.
"Heh."
Faced with a monster that could have flattened an ordinary human with ease, Ren's lips curved in disdain.
He tapped one foot against the ground. The cross pendant at his throat gave off a faint glow, and just before the Grade 4 cursed spirit slammed into him, his body blurred into an afterimage.
Boom!
The cursed spirit crashed through a concrete wall and shattered it. Dust burst into the air, hiding the monster's huge frame.
"Hah... hah..."
Confused, the monster scratched its head.
The boy had no cursed energy at all. He should not have been able to dodge its attack so easily. The Grade 4 cursed spirit did not have much of a mind to begin with, and for a moment, it could not understand what had happened.
Jujutsu sorcerers and cursed spirits had been tearing at each other for thousands of years.
Non-sorcerers were food. Prey.
Yet that boy, who seemed no different from an ordinary human, had vanished from in front of it in the blink of an eye.
The countless eyes across the monster's body rolled in every direction, searching for him.
Then a mocking voice sounded beside its ear.
"Looking for me?"
The words were like a whisper from a demon in hell. The low-grade cursed spirit, which should not have possessed enough awareness to understand fear, shuddered from head to toe.
"Fix... fix them... if you can't..."
Its feeble intelligence could only repeat the grudge that had given birth to it.
"A cursed spirit born from a foreman's abuse over broken pipes, huh?" Ren said to himself. "I wonder what that tastes like."
At some point, he had appeared on top of the monster's head. His fingers rested lightly together, and his gaze dropped toward the cursed spirit as if he were looking at a delicious meal.
Roar!
The Grade 4 cursed spirit swung its enormous palm upward in rage, smashing toward its own head.
The force of the blow stirred the air.
Ren stood on top of the monster and did not move. The wind from the strike whipped his hair around his face.
"Fix them! Fix them!"
"Six Vaults Devourer ? Devour."
Boom!
As the cursed spirit roared, Ren calmly spread his folded fingers and opened his mouth slightly.
A terrifying suction force erupted from him at once, sweeping outward like a hurricane.
"Fix... fix..."
The cursed spirit did not even manage to finish a single sentence.
Its massive body shriveled as if someone had punctured a balloon. The dark brown eyes covering it lost their color, loosening one by one like weathered plastic beads.
Plop. Plop.
Countless eyeballs fell from the cursed spirit's body.
The cursed energy inside it was drawn out by Ren through some strange method, then swallowed into his stomach.
A breath later, the Grade 4 cursed spirit scattered into the wind like ash.
Ren's expression carried a hint of enjoyment.
He murmured, "Chocolate. Not bad."
That terrifying cursed spirit had been nothing in front of him. Not even a child's toy. If anything, it was closer to a dish waiting to be chosen from a buffet.
"Six Vaults Devourer really didn't disappoint."
Ren opened the panel in his mind.
[System]
Host: Ren Zenin
Current Arts: Divine Forge ? Hundred Refinements; Six Vaults Devourer
Divine Forge ? Hundred Refinements Mastery: Complete (100%)
Six Vaults Devourer Mastery: Beginner (9%)
Sovereign Wind Array: Locked
Spirit Dominion: Locked
Hands of Dual Perfection: Locked
Heaven-Piercing Talismans: Locked
Grand Void Insight: Locked
Primordial Sourceflow: Locked
"Two years already."
Ren flexed his wrist, his eyes drifting out of focus for a moment.
He had awakened in this world with memories that did not belong to this life, and somehow, he had become a child of one of the Big Three Sorcerer Families: the Zenin clan.
In this life, he had been born as Ren Zenin.
That name had not brought him any favor.
In a family where cursed energy determined a person's worth, Ren had been born without a trace of it. To the Zenin clan, that made him little more than a stain on their bloodline. In the end, they had cast him out under the polite excuse of "training."
The moment he left the clan, the system that had arrived far too late finally awakened.
What it gave him were the Eight Supreme Arts: eight impossible techniques that stood above the laws of any ordinary supernatural world.
There was only one rule.
Ren could not unlock the next Art until he had fully mastered the previous one.
Even with the system's support, it had taken him two full years to master Divine Forge ? Hundred Refinements. Only recently had he unlocked Six Vaults Devourer.
Divine Forge ? Hundred Refinements allowed him to refine objects into high-quality cursed tools almost instantly. The Grade 4 cursed spirit from earlier had simply been too weak. It could not even withstand the devouring force of Six Vaults Devourer, let alone force Ren to use a cursed tool forged by Divine Forge.
Ring.
A clear, delicate chime sounded beside his ear.
The small cross pendant hanging from his neck glowed with a faint blue light. Unlike an ordinary accessory, it rang softly like a wind chime, pulling Ren back from his thoughts.
"Come out," Ren said. "Or don't bother showing yourselves ever again."
He snapped his fingers.
With a soft pop, a rocking chair appeared behind him out of thin air, absurdly out of place in the eerie construction site.
Purple wisteria patterns covered the chair, giving it an elegant, almost aristocratic air.
Ren leaned back into it and turned his cold gaze toward one corner beyond the construction site. The air around him seemed to thin, as if the night itself had gone cold.
At last, two men in black suits and sunglasses stepped out from the entrance.
Dense cursed energy clung to the man in front. He was clearly no ordinary person.
He looked at Ren, who was reclining in the rocking chair as if he owned the night, and stepped forward while the other man remained half a pace behind him.
"Master Ren," the older man said. "You have been outside long enough. It is time for you to return home."
The words sounded polite, but there was no room for negotiation in his tone.
It was as if Ren only needed to hear the order, and he would obediently follow them back.
Ren rocked gently in the chair, enjoying the moonlight that had finally broken through the clouds.
He did not answer.
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
"Ren Zenin!" the man snapped. Veins bulged across his forehead. "Do not push this too far!"
Everyone in the clan knew what Ren had been: a useless waste without a shred of cursed energy. Somehow, he had stumbled into strange techniques, enough to alarm even the Zenin elders. They had personally ordered these two men to bring him back.
But seeing that former failure ignore him with such casual contempt made anger burn in the man's chest.
For the sake of the elders' orders, he forced it down.
"The Zenin clan?" Ren narrowed his eyes, as if even looking at the man was too much trouble. "I'm not interested."
He waved one hand, dismissive, as if shooing away a fly.
"Bastard!" the man roared. "Do you understand what you're saying? Do you know how many sorcerers would kill for the chance to enter the Zenin clan?"
He stared at Ren as if he were looking at a madman.
The Zenin clan was one of the pillars of the jujutsu world. Its power and resources were beyond imagination. The man had expected Ren to leap at the chance to return.
He had not expected this.
"You think a few crooked tricks make you special?"
The man shouted and swung his left arm up.
Dark purple cursed energy spread across it in a rush. Power surged through his body.
"Tremor!"
The punch tore forward, wrapped in strange cursed energy, tinging the surrounding air purple as it shot toward Ren in the rocking chair.
As a Grade 2 jujutsu sorcerer, the man was confident he could teach this ignorant brat a lesson.
In his estimation, Ren was a Grade 3 at best.
And a new one at that.
But in the next instant, the night changed.
A cold silver flash lit the darkness, then vanished.
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