Chapter 1: You Can't Ask Much of a Cursed User's Morals
Dizziness, cold limbs.
Ringing ears, thirst, and a pervasive weakness.
Undoubtedly, these were all symptoms of massive blood loss.
'The wound… it's in the abdomen…'
'A clean pierce… there should be organ damage…'
'At this rate, I'll be dead very soon…'
Even with his mind in such a fog, Hiiro Rinko—a Special Grade Cursed User who had reached the pinnacle in the creation and use of Cursed Tools—could still make an accurate assessment of his injuries.
This battle instinct, practically etched into his soul, immediately triggered the most correct response: using the Reversed Cursed Technique (Hanten Jūjutsu).
It was a technique that restored one's own injuries by multiplying 'negative' Cursed Energy with 'negative' Cursed Energy to produce 'positive' Cursed Energy. With enough precision, it could even repair minor brain damage.
But…
'…It won't work? Ah, was my Cursed Energy completely depleted before?'
Recalling the final flash of purple he saw before he 'closed his eyes,' Hiiro Rinko ceased his attempts to manipulate Cursed Energy, accepting his fate.
He'd tangled with that bastard Gojō Satoru for so long; it made sense he wouldn't have a single drop of Cursed Energy left… Wait, no?!
Before he 'closed his eyes,' he had taken a full-power blast of Gojō Satoru's Hollow Purple (Kyoshiki Murasaki) directly to the front. The question should have been whether his upper body even still existed, not how he got such a 'gentle' penetrating wound!
'So it's not that my Cursed Energy is depleted. It's that this body simply has no Cursed Energy to begin with…'
Realizing this, Hiiro Rinko, who was lying in a pool of blood, desperately forced his eyes open.
His vision was blurry. All the scenery was heavily overlapped, like a silver chariot that had exploded its armor for a speed boost, making it impossible to see clearly.
Only his outstretched palm, a slender and small limb that didn't match the body he was accustomed to, digging deep into the ground, was vividly clear.
"Gu—"
Foam mixed with blood surged in his throat.
I don't want to die.
There were still so many research topics he hadn't attempted, so many concepts he hadn't realized…
He still hadn't gotten his revenge…
His soul and body trembled and wailed in deep resentment.
As if in response to this struggle, Hiiro Rinko suddenly felt a warmth emanate from his chest.
The numbness in his abdomen began to dissipate. It was then he felt a hard object pressed against his chest and realized the body he was in possessed a far greater-than-normal 'Life Force.'
A dead forge, various tools and finished products hanging on the wall, and piles of coal stacked in the corner—his vision gradually stabilized. Looking around, the scene that greeted him was both familiar and strange.
An old-fashioned blacksmith's workshop, not one of the two hundred-plus workshops he owned globally.
Even if he did set up a few retro workshops for nostalgia, the equipment would never be this inefficient and antique.
Then, his gaze fell, and two figures lay slumped in the blood, sights that made his heart ache.
Those were probably the parents of this body.
No breath. The amount of blood loss was clearly fatal at first glance; they were beyond saving.
Based on the surrounding marks… it was murder.
The killer's trail… gone.
Cursed Technique… as expected, also unusable.
'So, I've been reincarnated into someone else's body…'
Hiiro Rinko wasn't particularly surprised by this conclusion.
To put it simply, in the past, he'd watched all sorts of manga, novels, and films to gather inspiration for Cursed Tool creation. 'Isekai Reincarnation' wasn't a hard concept for him to accept.
"Well then… this thing saved my life a second time, huh…"
With a body-tearing ache, he struggled to turn over and pulled the hard object—or rather, a pendant—from his chest and held it up to his eyes.
Not just the recent 'resonance,' but even before, the presence of this pendant must have sustained the life force in this body, allowing Hiiro Rinko a chance to awaken in this new vessel.
'A hybrid of spiritual and life energy… I think I've seen this setting somewhere before… Ah, Chakra, right? The energy system from the Naruto world…'
'So, this family must be from the Uzumaki Clan? Normally, an ordinary person wouldn't possess this level of Life Force…'
'How did the person who could create or possess something like this end up dying so easily?'
Feeling the energy released from the pendant, Hiiro Rinko's thoughts, which should have been dull and sluggish from blood loss, felt lighter.
No, it wasn't a feeling; he was actually improving.
The disparity between his rapid-fire, 'agile' thinking and his body's weakness was striking, like trying to swim with lead weights tied to his feet.
'Is it because the 'Soul' is too mature relative to the body? So after receiving treatment or adapting to the body, the mind can, to a certain extent, ignore the body's weakness…'
He was already the type to let his thoughts wander easily, and that was even truer in this situation.
In the same way, 'inspiration' would surge forth at times like this.
"Yoshi, let's try it out—"
Instead of multiplying negative Cursed Energy to obtain positive Cursed Energy, he would directly use the 'positive' Life Force for healing.
Cursed Energy, as a concept, is energy generated from negative emotions. Anger, hatred, disgust, jealousy… these negative feelings are the triggers for Cursed Energy. Cursed Users, without exception, undergo training to generate Cursed Energy from the smallest spark of emotion.
Even in a new body, Hiiro Rinko's sensory and fine manipulation abilities with energy meant it wasn't impossible to generate Cursed Energy from scratch. However, to heal an injury of this magnitude, the Cursed Energy he could temporarily squeeze out would be a drop in the bucket.
Although he remembered that the Naruto world's techniques, including medical ninjutsu, required Chakra to drive them, for treating physical damage, pure Life Force should make no difference.
Besides, Hiiro Rinko didn't know any 'Ninjutsu.'
In any case, if he could perceive and sense the Life Force within the body, there was no reason he shouldn't be able to mobilize and drive it.
Incoherent and meaningless murmuring came from his blood-foaming mouth as he clumsily began to attempt to mobilize the Life Force that had previously fallen dormant within this body.
It was stagnant, sluggish, and inert… even so, that power still began to operate according to his will.
Slowly, slowly, a faint green glow emerged from the gruesome wound that pierced his abdomen. Internal organs, skin, and muscle began to mend at a visible rate.
Each breath still carried the coppery tang of iron, but the pain in his abdomen had subsided.
"That should be enough…"
The damage to his internal organs, skin, and muscle was healed, but the massive loss of blood was real. On his first attempt at this self-healing technique, Hiiro Rinko couldn't yet restore blood quickly.
But even though he was still weak, he had escaped the fatal threat. He wouldn't die a second time just minutes after waking up from his cross-world journey.
Struggling to flip over, Hiiro Rinko scooted little by little from the sticky pool of blood to the wall, sat up, and, pursing his lips, lifted a small hand stained with semi-coagulated plasma, clenching and unclenching it a few times.
This heavy, leaden feeling throughout his body was utterly terrible.
Moving from the body of a battle-hardened Cursed Tool user into the body of a five or six-year-old child was like forcibly squeezing into a skintight suit several sizes too small. It was natural for the soul to feel intense discomfort.
Coupled with the weakness from the massive blood loss, the inability to drive the body with ease was a normal phenomenon.
But his problem now was definitely more than just that.
Hiiro Rinko had sensed it when he first mobilized the Life Force: this body was just a bit awkward.
It wasn't just the sensory difference caused by shorter limbs; it was a more subtle barrier between 'Spirit and Flesh.'
It felt like trying to solve a multi-stage Rubik's Cube while wearing thick, insulated gloves.
"It's probably because the original soul lingering in this body hasn't completely dissipated yet…"
Hiiro Rinko, murmuring incoherently to keep his mind awake, made this deduction.
Although it was a deduction, he was quite certain of it. The undignified struggle when he was 'near-death' and the sting of pain upon seeing the two 'stranger' corpses both served as circumstantial proof.
He immediately made up his mind.
"This kind of hidden danger must be eliminated promptly…"
The problems he faced were countless, but the residual soul in the body counted as a critical one.
As for feeling guilty about taking over a child's body? Are you kidding me? Hiiro Rinko is a Cursed User.
A Cursed User, simply put, is a person who uses Cursed Techniques.
However, Cursed Techniques, in the conventional sense, actually refer to the 'Innate Techniques (Seito Jūjutsu)' naturally engraved into a user's brain. These are things that are determined at birth and cannot be learned.
There aren't many learnable Cursed Energy manipulation techniques, such as secret traditions, in the Cursed World. This is why Cursed Users, regardless of whether they possess an Innate Technique, need to be proficient in various forms of taijutsu.
From this perspective, Cursed Users are far removed from the common depiction of talisman-wielding Onmyōji in fantasy works; they are actually closer to 'Mutants' or other similar super-powered individuals.
He didn't even need to rely on the super-powered societies in other fantasy works for proof; the Cursed World he actually inhabited had countless individuals who had become anti-human criminals for various reasons.
Moreover, Cursed Energy is an energy generated from negative emotions. What kind of universal saint could you expect to find among a group of people who use negative emotions to drive their superpowers?
Furthermore, even if Hiiro Rinko's soul hadn't taken over, the child was already dead. He might as well put the body to good use.
As for whether he could eliminate the other soul…
He was a villainous old man who'd spent over twenty years in the Cursed World; was he going to lose to a five or six-year-old child?
Thus, his consciousness began to sink…