Authors Note
Hello, I just wanted to say thank you so very much for the support on earlier chapter, it means the world to me that you guys are enjoying my fic. So truly thank you for all of your kind words i'll try to make this story the best I can to live up to your expectations!
So with that being said, enjoy the chapter!
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The first building I'd crashed through was a pharmacy, as it turned out. The last remaining fluorescent light bar shone brightly and buzzed dully while flickering. Glass was everywhere, and the once-neat shelves were thrown into disarray. Pill bottles were scattered about, some spilling their contents onto the ground.
I scanned their labels with my right hand, keeping my left arm cradled against my ribs. Trying to find anything that might help with the white-hot agony radiating from my shoulder.
I found ibuprofen—high dose—and what looked like prescription painkillers. Probably opioids, given the warning labels. I dry-swallowed four of the ibuprofen and two of the painkillers, then stuffed the rest in my pockets in case their effects wore off before the night's end.
My eyes swept the ransacked counter and landed on a broken lock box. Inside: scattered Adderall tablets.
'Desperate times,' I thought, taking two and pocketing the bottle. The painkillers would make me drowsy, and the Adderall was a decent counterbalance. Or at least, it would be in fifteen-to-twenty minutes when it actually kicked in.
I didn't have that kind of time to wait around.
As a result of the painkillers starting to work—dull the pain, not fix it—my left shoulder went from "I want to die" to "I want to scream." Progress, I guess. It was still swollen to hell, felt like broken glass was grinding in the joint, and I couldn't lift it more than a few inches without my vision going white.
But at least I could think through the pain now.
Way more alert than I had any right to be given the circumstances, I stalked out of the pharmacy, wary of any curses that may have been drawn to the release of cursed energy.
There were none.
'Weird, I'd have thought that fight would have drawn at least a couple.' I was genuinely confused, but who was I to look a gift horse in the mouth?
Yeah, sure, I needed experience, but that last fight made me realize just how fucked my shoulder really was. Even with the painkillers dulling the edge, it still hurt to breathe too deeply. So for the time being, I was content to let it rest and just keep moving.
While resuming my walk away from my old apartment, I thought back to the fight. 'It's just what I thought—because I'm so new to this whole sorcery thing, I'm hugely inefficient with my attacks.'
'It's not a huge problem since those punches are relatively low cost, but still.' I walked a touch faster and shook my head, 'What's worse is the amount I'm leaking in general. I can feel it now—my body is expelling a large part of my cursed energy constantly.'
Now that was a problem.
Because I lacked the control to properly contain my cursed energy, I was expelling it faster than I could regenerate it. Stopping the flow of cursed energy in my body seemed to fix that issue—while I could still feel cursed energy escape my body, it was nowhere close to how much I lost while flowing it or activating my technique.
That was fine for outside of combat, but in Shibuya? There was no way in hell I wasn't getting caught off guard if I didn't have cursed energy flowing constantly.
I resumed the flow of cursed energy through my body, this time actively trying to stop it from leaking. The drain slowed—not much, but noticeably—and more importantly, it was a clear skill I could work on constantly to passively get better at cursed energy control.
I kept walking, using all of my concentration on mitigating the leak. It was mentally taxing and risky—I wasn't stupid, I knew dividing my focus made me vulnerable—but it was that or waste my time walking.
I walked for a few minutes, slowly decreasing the size of the leak bit by bit. It was like trying to hold water in cupped hands—the harder I focused, the more aware I became of every tiny gap it could slip through.
So focused was I on this that I nearly missed the growling and moaning to my left.
Swiveling my head, I was quickly disgusted by the sight before me.
There was a small dog-like curse feasting on a human corpse, intestines falling onto the road as blood pooled underneath. The dog, seemingly content with its meal, had yet to notice me. Its Venus flytrap-esque head devoured entire chunks of the body at once.
I froze as I took in the pale remains of the headless, limbless body spilling its organs onto the street.
Behind it, I could make out the forms of two other similar dog-like curses with different heads, also feeding on their own respective bodies in varying conditions.
I turned my head back toward the direction of the large, dark road I was walking on and started to move forward, more than a little perturbed by the scene.
Yet as my right foot lifted off the ground, I paused.
Before me, there was a choice: I could keep walking and, for the first time tonight, choose not to fight. Choose to run instead.
Or—
My eyes swept back to the feeding curses and caught movement in a window above them. A kid, maybe eight years old, frozen in terror behind the glass.
The two-meter-tall Venus flytrap curse I'd seen first bit down on its meal with its whole, huge, vice-like mouth, then threw its head—and the body—up, letting the corpse fall back into its maw.
The following swallow, as it forced the body down its throat—breaking more than a few bones in the process—was an uncomfortable enough sound that my body recoiled on instinct.
'There are civilians here too, so I'd have to hold back. Can't level the building like I did my apartment.' I thought, feeling more displeased with the idea by the second. 'Plus, I should minimize damage to my shoulder. Sure, I need experience to get stronger fast, but this could do permanent damage, and I don't have RCT yet—'
The Venus curse's head lowered, still facing away from me, before snapping straight toward the window.
Toward the kid.
It opened its flytrap mouth, letting out a bellow, before charging.
'Goddammit.'
It didn't make it more than five steps before I was beside it, slamming the meanest right uppercut I could manage into its violet underbelly.
It went sailing up and away, letting loose a high-pitched whine as it flew, before slamming into the wall of the building to our left and indenting it slightly.
Not using my technique was honestly both harder and easier than I thought it would be, but I couldn't risk decimating the building behind the curse in case there were civilians inside.
The curse crumpled as it fell onto the road.
I threw my head back toward the other two dog-curses I'd seen before. The right one was already charging. It looked like the Venus curse, but red instead of violet and with the head of a hawk. Its back bulged, and two bloody, feathered, mutilated wings ripped from its back in a spray of blood and a horrific tearing sound.
The other curse seemed content to just eat its meal, abandoning its comrade entirely.
The hawk-headed curse's speed surged as it flapped its wings once—air expelled behind it as opposed to under it like it should. Its wings leveled with the road, and I could see a soft glint along their edges.
Bladed wings.
I threw myself backward, my spine nearly parallel with the ground, watching as its wings cleaved through the air just above me. A soft whistle of displaced air marked its passage as it blurred by.
I stood upright again, barely managing to maintain my balance through the movement, and pivoted to face the curse as it flapped twice to slow its momentum. It hovered there for a moment before turning to face me, standing impossibly in the air.
Its wings halted their movement for a second before it flapped again and rocketed toward me, tucking its wings tight like a diving hawk.
"Tsk," I clicked my tongue before a lightbulb went off in my head. I sprinted full speed ahead, reinforcing my legs with cursed energy.
The curse noticed and changed its dive angle to be far steeper. Unbothered, I continued forward until it was two meters away at most, angled straight down at me.
I threw my right hand sideways in a pushing motion and triggered Fault Line—barely feeding it any cursed energy, just enough to crack space.
Crack
The recoil threw me sideways. I dodged the hawk curse's dive, and it crashed full speed into the asphalt behind me.
A cloud of dust exploded upward as the concrete cracked and caved inward from the force.
Dead silence, save for the sounds of the third curse still wolfing down the last of the hawk curse's meal.
Then it turned its head toward me.
I was greeted by the sight of an angler fish head attached to the huge dog body. Its body and head were dark grey—nearing black—and it had clouded-over eyes, almost like it was blind. But the most noticeable thing was the bright neon-blue lure attached to its head, bobbing gently in the air.
I just couldn't help but glance at it.
That was my first mistake.
The instant my eyes landed on the lure, pitch black stretched from behind me and enveloped my vision in seconds. The only thing still visible was the bright lure attached to the head of the curse.
'Fuck.'
The lure bobbed once before accelerating—right, then left, then right again—all straight at me.
I jumped back on pure instinct, before realizing I couldn't see the ground. I was falling with no idea where I'd land.
My back hit something hard. 'A wall,' my brain supplied, though I couldn't be sure.
The lure still approached ominously, and I studied its swaying motion while pressing my back harder against whatever surface I'd hit. I focused, tracking the rhythm of its movement.
Just as it entered what I guessed was striking distance, I reinforced my legs to the max and erupted from my spot, lashing out with a desperate right hook toward where I estimated its head would be.
I landed a solid hit—activating my technique but keeping the output minimal—and punted the lure in the other direction and out of sight.
Vision came rushing back in a barrage of light that temporarily blinded me.
I blinked twice, adjusting my eyes. The sight that greeted me wasn't pleasant—both the Venus curse and the hawk curse were regathering their bearings.
I knew I didn't have much time. With how hard I'd hit the angler, it should be down for a while, so I rushed straight for the hawk-headed one while it was still disoriented.
I swung my reinforced right fist into its head, crushing it against the concrete. It let out a shriek as its skull caved inward, but it didn't die.
So I did it again.
And again.
And again.
Until its head was nothing more than a red smear on the road.
Then I hit it once more.
You know, for good measure.
I was broken from my chain of ground-pounds by a venomous roar from my left. Snapping my head that direction, I saw the Venus curse had finally recovered. And it was not pleased with my continued existence.
Its neck and head stretched and enlarged, aiming to bite me whole. I dashed right, my legs burning with reinforced cursed energy, and its jaws clamped around air with an echoing CHOMP.
This, however, had the unintended consequence of placing the angler curse's lure back in my line of sight. Darkness swallowed my vision again.
I sensed movement—something—before I was viciously batted away and sent careening backward, tumbling before landing on invisible ground.
My vision returned briefly when I turned my head away from the curse, so I experimented—turning my head slowly until the angler was just barely in my peripheral, and it all went black again. I looked back, regaining my vision.
'Okay, so don't look that direction past that point,' I thought, refocusing on where the Venus curse should be—
The hawk curse stood.
Headless.
Before regenerating its head entirely and shrieking once more.
'...what?'
My moment of confusion cost me. The Venus curse extended its head again, and I barely reacted in time, backhanding the air with a sharp crack.
While it was far from my max output, the blast still sent the curse flying, crashing into—and through—a wall to my left. Its bottom jaw hung uselessly, nearly torn off.
My left shoulder screamed at me from the recoil. I felt something tear inside, hot and wrong, and my vision went white for half a second.
'Fuck, that's not good—'
The soft sound of cutting air was all the warning I got.
The hawk curse flew at me—I had no chance to dodge, so I threw both arms up to guard my chest, desperately reinforcing them with everything I had.
Pain exploded through my left shoulder as I raised it. Something definitely tore this time.
The curse's wing hit my crossed arms, cutting shallow gashes into my forearms but nowhere near as deep as I'd expected. Then it lifted me, carrying me on its wing as it changed trajectory straight up.
We soared higher and higher until we overtook the nearby buildings.
This, of course, forced the angler's lure into my field of view—its unconscious body lay in the middle of the far end of the street, still in my line of sight. My vision darkened once again.
So, finding myself unable to see anything else, I set my sights on the one thing I could see.
The lure.
'If I just kill that stupid thing, then I can worry about the immortal dog-hawk,' I rationalized in fury, despising the curse making this fight twenty times harder than it needed to be.
I took inspiration from the curse currently flying me higher still. I planted my feet on the underside of its wing—ignoring my shoulder's protests—and kicked off while triggering Fault Line in the opposite direction of the lure.
CRACK
The resulting blast catapulted me toward the lure at breakneck speed.
I reached out with my right hand as I fell.
My fingers closed around something fleshy and pulsing.
The lure.
I ripped it free and crushed it in my fist.
I channeled every bit of cursed energy I had left into my feet, causing incredibly intense vibrations at the soles. I expected the landing to be catastrophic for my knees, but as I slammed into the ground—
—the asphalt rippled beneath me like water, the vibrations propagating through the street and dispersing the force. The pavement buckled and exploded upward in a ring around me, but my legs were fine.
'Holy shit, that actually worked.'
Light flooded back. When my eyes adjusted a second later, the angler curse was already dissipating into black particles.
Dead.
'Oh. Oh, I'm an idiot.' I'd been so focused on bodies and heads that I forgot—curses aren't formed on biology. They're formed on cores that hold the soul and technique. The lure was this curse's core, so even when I obliterated that hawk's head, it didn't matter because the core was relatively undamaged.
'So where is its core? The obvious place would be in its chest, but the angler's core was its lure, so...'
I thought back to the start of the fight, when the curse had first sprouted its wings.
I glanced up. The hawk was diving straight down before unfurling its wings, spreading them wide, and leveling its flight with the road. Attempting to bisect me again.
I focused my gaze on its wings and grinned despite the pain lancing through my shoulder.
As the hawk closed in, I threw my hands up—yes, both hands, because fuck my shoulder, this was life or death—and caught one wing in each palm, reinforcing each hand to the maximum I could manage.
Agony exploded through my left shoulder. I felt tissue tear, ligaments scream, but I held on.
I winced as fresh gashes opened in both hands from the bladed edges, but my grin returned quickly as I channeled cursed energy into the concrete under my feet, pulverizing it with vibrations.
The resulting sand beneath my feet let me keep hold of the curse while keeping it level with the ground through pure brute force as it pushed me backward, my feet carving trenches through the loosened pavement.
I gripped each wing tighter, lifted my right leg, and planted my foot on the hawk's head, using it as leverage to pull.
It shrieked in absolute agony as a loud ripping sound came from its back.
Blood erupted from the base of each wing like a fountain. It pressed harder, trying to break free. I pulled harder in response, my left shoulder feeling like it was full of broken glass and molten lead.
RRRIIIIIPPPPPP
The sound echoed through the empty street as the wings were forced away from the rest of its body. Purple blood showered both of us.
The curse let out one final whine before dissipating into black particles.
I dropped the wings and stumbled backward, panting hard. I blew a damp stray hair out of my face and cradled my left arm against my ribs. It was bad now. Worse than before. I couldn't feel my fingers, just a hot, nauseating throb radiating from my shoulder down to my elbow.
I was about half out of cursed energy at this point—god, my efficiency sucked—so I was pretty content to just—
BOOM
I never knew I could sense cursed energy before that moment.
But feeling the hot, almost molten, malicious energy radiating from that impact? I knew instantly what I was sensing.
The dust cleared, and I could see just what had landed in the middle of the road.
It was short, standing at about five feet tall, with skin as pale as ash. It had a head shaped like a volcano, one large round eye in the center of its face, making it distinctly cycloptic in appearance. Its disgusting black smile stretched from ear to ear. Its ears were crooked-shaped, and its neck was covered by what looked to be a scarf of its own curse tissue. It wore a yellow and black spotted poncho over an all-black combat outfit that led to fitted brown combat shoes.
Jogo.
Special-grade disaster curse.
'Oh, I am so monumentally screwed.'
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Authors Note
Okay, another chapter in the books. That one was pretty challenging to write, but I had a lot of fun doing it and playing with Shinji's powers a little more. Yes next chapter will be a fight against jogo and no, the shoulder won't be a problem past Shibuya. Speaking of, due to the nature of the story shibuya is going to be pretty long, another 3 chapters probably, or maybe longer depends where I take it and what I think works best. Also for romance, because yes, that will be the thing in this novel, and it's gonna be a heterosexual relationship because I myself am a heterosexaul so I would find it difficult to write yoai or yuri. I'm playing with a couple of different love interests, but I'm gravitating towards two for this particular fic. Fair warning, one of the options is a gender-bend of a character, but that will be the only major canon divergence if I go that route.
I want to be open and honest about where the story is headed, so if you have any questions, comments or concerns about it, leave a comment for now. I'm working on a Discord as we speak because I want to do this long term. I also have a couple of ideas for other fics, but I'm gonna write those down for later and just focus on this fic till it has more of a foothold.
That being said, I hope you have a great day, and thank you for reading! Let me know what I can improve on this chapter, but for now, I'm going to bed.