Kiniro stared up at the cloudless sky as the wind howled past his ears, 'Well, that went about as well as I expected.'
Kiniro replayed the last two seconds in his mind, still shocked by the blistering speed the curse had demonstrated as it charged him with its horns lowered.
'Luckily, I wasn't impaled, but now I'm pretty sure some of my ribs are broken. ' Kiniro mused as he took a deep breath, only to feel his lungs light up with pain, 'Yep! Damn, that hurts!'
But even with the agonizing pain, a manic grin spread across Kiniro's lips as he tasted the blood in his mouth and the thrill of his racing heart, 'I wonder if every bone feels like this when it's shattered into pieces?!'
Kiniro's demented musing was interrupted as a shadow suddenly passed over his face, and the open sky was suddenly filled with a dense canopy of leaves far overhead, 'I'm in a forest?'
Realizing he should probably stop messing around, Kiniro finally summoned his cursed energy, letting it drape around him like a thick cloak. Feeling the now familiar power surging through his entire body, Kiniro's eyes nearly rolled into the back of his head. Though before he could fully enjoy the high, Kiniro's flight came to a sudden end.
The massive Japanese red pine, taller than most buildings, trembled from the impact, sending a flurry of its thick green needles falling to the ground.
"Uuuugggh," With a long-winded groan, Kiniro sat up before pulling himself out of the crater he had formed in the tree and dropping the thirty or so feet to the ground, landing with only a slight bend in his knees, "Glad I used cursed energy when I did, otherwise that impact would have probably snapped my neck."
Looking back, the way he had flown, Kiniro peered through the trees and could just barely make out the vague shape of some building far off in the distance, 'Man, I must be at least a mile away!'
Reaching up, Kiniro scratched his head as his eyes gained a golden hue, 'But it looks like my technique doesn't need line of sight to activate!'
Even with an entire forest separating them, Kiniro could still clearly feel the mark of sin his technique had been left behind after experiencing the cursed spirit's wrath. 'Alright, time for round two.'
"Mammon."
---
Saturo stared at the tree line that had swallowed Kiniro up after he had been sent flying by the cursed spirit. Scratching his cheek, Saturo couldn't help but feel a slight twinge of doubt, 'Maybe I was a bit overzealous.'
Looking back to the training field, Saturo stared at the spirit now going on a rampage, tearing up the ground searching for its next victim, 'I should probably exorcise it, before it can bring down any of the buildings.'
Pushing off the railing, Saturo was about to intervene when he felt a flare of cursed energy that stopped him dead in his track and after a second, a massive grin spread across his face, 'Looks like I was right from the beginning, and here I was about to ruin your fun.'
"I'mmmm baack!"
Kiniro's taunting voice echoed across the field as he suddenly appeared standing atop the cursed spirit's forehead, and the mark he left behind disappeared in a flash of golden light. "Did you miss me?"
The cursed spirit went cross-eyed as it stared at the ant standing on its face, though its confusion only lasted a second before its bullish nostrils flared with rage and it let out another blood-curdling screech.
"Ahaha, I missed you too!" Kiniro laughed before pushing off and sliding down the spirit's forehead, "Here, let me give you a little souvenir from my trip!"
Kiniro hit the spirit's heavy brow and jumped, flying up into the air.
Spinning around, Kiniro faced the cursed spirit, and with a thought, infused the stick in his hand with cursed energy, nearly making it shatter into splinters from the sudden surge of power. 'Good thing I didn't get attached!'
With that final thought, Kiniro cocked back his arm, hefting the deteriorating tree branch like a javelin, "I hope you like it!"
There was a soft thump, like an air cannon going off as Kiniro threw the branch with all his might, aiming at one of the sickly yellow orbs in the cursed spirit's left socket.
Even though the tree branch was essentially a splinter compared to the cursed spirit, the amount of cursed energy Kiniro had imbued into the wood gave it the impact of a cannonball. And between a cannonball and an oversized eye, the winner was obvious.
"SCHHEEEEEEEE!!!"
The cursed spirit cried out, recoiling as one of its four eyes burst open like an overripe fruit, sending a fountain of purple ichor spraying into the air.
"Bullseye!" Kiniro cheered as he landed on the ground, sliding back before coming to a stop.
Standing up, Kiniro made a show of pumping his fist as the cursed spirit's blood rained down on him. The dark purple liquid felt cold, not like ice or snow, but the psychological chill that would shoot up the spine during a tense moment.
'Freaky,' Kiniro thought as he held out his hand, catching some of the purple liquid in his palm and staring, 'But why does it look…kinda tasty?'
After a brief moment of hesitation, Kiniro brought the blood close to his face and sniffed it twice before shrugging and using his palm as a cup to take a tentative sip.
The moment the chilled liquid hit Kiniro's tongue, his entire body stiffened as an indescribable taste rushed through him, 'What is this flavor?!'
The blood tasted like pure liquid bliss, and in his state of euphoria, Kiniro remembered what Saturo had said about cursed spirits, 'Of course, they're born from the cursed energy of non-sorcerers, a physical manifestation of their negative emotions and their sins!'
An excited shiver passed through Kiniro's body, caused by a bottomless hunger that suddenly roared from within the depths of his soul, 'MORE!'
For the first time, Kiniro truly devoured cursed energy in every sense of the word, and the effect was instantaneous. Kiniro felt his cursed energy reserves swell, the single sip of cursed blood holding more cursed energy than an entire year's worth of congregations.
'I guess normal humans really don't have much cursed energy at all,' Kiniro mused as he wiped his lips and stared at the Cursed Spirit with lidded eyes, 'Because now that I've gotten a taste of the real thing…the difference is as clear as night and day.'
The cursed spirit stopped its wild thrashing as its empty eye socket began to bubble and froth with dark, awful-looking foam. But Kiniro watched as, in a matter of seconds, the cursed spirit regenerated its lost eyes.
"Well, that seems a little unfair," Kiniro muttered as he glanced at the back of his hand and the mark of sin branded into his skin, "But I guess I can't complain that much."
"Asmodeus"
Muttering the proper incantation, Kiniro watched the mark of sin absolve, and the resulting golden light infused his body, causing an immense, almost erotic pleasure. In the blink of an eye, the stabbing pain in Kiniro's chest disappeared along with the minor cuts and bruises he had suffered. And just in the nick of time
"SCHHEEE!"
With another screech, the curse finally reacted, rearing back onto its hind legs as its abdomen curled underneath its body to point in Kiniro's direction. The bulbous organ then swelled before spewing a deluge of dark-red webbing that hissed and steamed as it soared through the air.
Staring at the caustic webbing sailing towards him, Kiniro grinned, 'That looks spicy. I probably shouldn't let it touch me without knowing just how durable my body is with reinforcement. But I need the attack to land so my technique can activate.'
Kiniro's mind raced as he stared at the caustic web flying towards him, stretching out to cover almost fifty yards in every direction, 'But does the attack need to land on my body for it to register…it's not the actual damage that activates my technique, but the intent behind the action. And my body isn't the thing responsible for measuring intent, that is a judgment I make from the soul, the source of my cursed energy.'
Kiniro's grin broadened as he felt something resonate within his mind, and a second later, cursed energy surrounded his body, oozing from his pores like viscous syrup to create a thick shroud expanding nearly an inch from his skin. 'Neat.'
With a fearless grin, Kiniro faced the caustic webbing head-on and watched as the red strands slowed for a fraction of a second while traveling through his shroud, 'Hold on, why does it look like it's passing through molasses…is my cursed energy…sticky?'
Before Kiniro could fully explore the new complexities of his skill set, he was forced to activate his technique as the web melted through the resistance of his cursed energy and attempted to close around him.
"Mammon"
Kiniro appeared behind the Cursed Spirit on the backside of its abdomen, which was still curled up under its body from firing the web, meaning he was upside down. In an instant, gravity attempted to reassert itself, but Kiniro flexed his shroud of cursed energy and felt himself stick to the Curse, 'Neat.'
Reaching down, Kiniro slapped his hand against the smooth carapace and attempted to devour the cursed energy he knew constituted the cursed spirit. Kiniro's efforts were met with strong resistance, like trying to suck cement through a straw, something Kiniro had never encountered before. Though it only took him a second to figure out why.
'This is the first time I've tried to devour the cursed energy from a source that was actually aware and able to control it themselves. It only makes sense that there would be some kind of built-in resistance.'
But while Kiniro analyzed the new limitation of his ability, the Cursed Spirit, with its limited capacity for thought, felt, for the first time, something besides the overwhelming urge to extinguish human life.
While Kiniro believed his attempt to consume the spirit's energy had been a complete failure, the reality was that he had dealt a far more significant blow. Consuming the spirit's energy would be no different from consuming its corporeal form, equating the eternal hunger for sin within Kiniro's soul to the same hunger that drove a starving wolf to stalk the underbrush looking for an unaware rabbit to feast upon.
That is what the Cursed Spirit felt: the primal fear of a prey encountering a predator.