*****
The battlefield had gone quiet.
Not the calm of victory.
The kind of quiet that waits.
Miwa wiped the dark residue from her blade with the edge of her sleeve before sliding it back into its sheath. The metallic click sounded louder than it should have.
Mai rolled her shoulder once, feeling a sharp pain growing on her shoulders, wincing faintly from the strain. "…That's the last of them."
"Yes, I guess so, I sense no cursed spirits presence around the area" Momo spoke from above.
The wind around her had finally settled, but her gaze hadn't. Her eyes were fixed somewhere beyond the clearing.
"This mission is half-way over." Momo added "We still have one final thing to do, and rescue Shinji"
Miwa and Mai exchanged a glance.
Right.
Without wasting another second, they moved.
Momo rose higher, scanning ahead. "North path. Avoid the collapsed trees."
Miwa and Mai followed below at a sprint, boots crunching over gravel and splintered wood.
The abandoned building came into view
And then—
The air shifted.
A faint tremor passed through it.
Inside the abandoned building
Shinji's world had shrunk to a single, desperate struggle.
The clown-like curse had forced him onto his back. Its elongated fingers trying to press into his forearm but,as he tried to shield his face. Its painted grin hovered inches from his eyes.
He could smell it.
Rot.
Some sort of dampness. Something stale and wrong.
His arm trembled under the growing pressure of the cursed spirit above him. His lungs burned.
It was stronger.
He knew he was about to die.
His frail thoughts didn't flash with memories of home or childhood.
They fractured.
A tunnel lit by lantern glow.
The faint sway of a net overhead.
Long grayish-blue hair speaking softly in warm light. "You're so easy to talk to."
The memory dissolved.
The claw edged from the cursed spirit drew closer to his face.
His mind splintered under the weight of fear, panic and helplessness
This feeling was somewhat all too familiar like he had felt it once before
Then, — A violent surge of negative emotion flooded his chest.
And something answered.
Not gently. Not quietly.
It erupted suddenly.
A sharp burst of cursed energy flared around his body, snapping outward like a struck wire. It coiled around his hands instinctively.
He didn't see it nor understood it.
But he felt it.
Heat, Pressure and Release.
He shouted without meaning to — "Get away from me!!"
And drove his fist upward into the cursed spirit above him.
The impact cracked through the building like thunder.
The cursed spirits painted face warped grotesquely as it was launched backward, sent flying meters away from where he lay, tearing through a fractured wall and slamming into an electric pole outside with a shriek of bending metal.
Silence.
Shinji lay there, chest heavy, breathing inconsistent, gasping for air
His hands trembled as he stared at the cursed spirit few meters away from him
"…I did that?" He thought to himself
That wasn't normal. That wasn't possible.
But there was no time to process it.
The cursed spirit who layed motionless for a while, suddenly twitched and began moving.
Then, it jerked upright.
Its head snapped back into place with a sickening pop.
Its grin stretched wider than before.
And it ran at him.
Fast.
Unhinged.
Shinji scrambled to his feet and bolted.
He didn't think. He didn't plan.
He ran as if his life depended on it, cos in reality, it actually were
Through broken doors. Past collapsed walls. Over shattered desks.
Behind him, the curse tore through everything in its path. Furniture exploded into splinters. Concrete cracked. Its laughter echoed in manic bursts.
There was no reasoning now.
No questions, but the instinct to survived the terror from the cursed spirit slowly gaining grounds on him
And then, suddenly he stopped
A dead end.
Collapsed fencing. Twisted metal.
Nowhere to go.
The cursed spirit slowed its pace, deliberate closely approached him
Almost savoring it.
Its shadow stretched long across the pavement as it approached.
He turned towards the cursed spirit behind him
Nowhere left to run or hide.
The cursed spirit crouched. Ready to spring, lunge forward and devour its prey.
His breathing grew shallow.
And then — In the sour of the moment, The atmosphere around him changed
Somewhere, something inside him had changed.
The fear he felt didn't disappear but was compressed.
Condensed into something dense and heavy.
He stopped shaking. His spine straightened and his expression emptied.
Calm.
The air thickened, and the cursed spirit froze mid-step.
It felt it.
A slow, crushing pressure rolled outward from Shinji's body in steady waves.
Cursed energy around Shinji didn't flicker this time.
It flooded the ground beneath his feet fractured with a faint crack. Dust lifted into the air without wind
The cursed technique trembled
Its grin faltered.
The atmosphere grew unbearably heavy—
Ancient. Dense as if something vast had opened its eyes.
*****
Outside the building
Momo stopped mid-air.
Miwa and Mai halted instantly below her.
They all felt it all at once
A surge of cursed energy that felt close and massive
Momo's eyes widened slightly, and thinks to her self "This overwhelming dense of cursed energy I feel it's like something I've never felt before"
Miwa swallowed hard, trembling in fear as she thinks to her self "Is there a stronger Cursed spirit nearby, she hadn't sensed before hand but how…How could this be?"
Mai's grip tightened around her rifle.
The pressure around the abandoned building increased
It was chaotic, yet — contained.
Overwhelming.
This massive pool of cursed energy— They all felt and their minds racing for questions, than answers
Did a cursed spirit something slip past them?
Was something awaiting there all along?
The level of the cursed energy was similar to a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit
This mission had slightly just derailed, and the next line of action was to exorcise a powerful, yet tricky to exorcise Grade 1 Cursed Spirit in the area