[The door screamed open on its hinges, a sound that set teeth on edge.]
[The village chief had shoved it wide.]
[No towering Grade 1 Cursed Spirit filled the frame. No carnage. No gore.]
[What greeted you was a cramped, lightless room drowning in the stench of human waste and old blood. At its center sat a cage. Wooden slats caked in filth, barely large enough for a dog.]
[Two girls huddled inside. Skin stretched over bone, dressed in rags. Every inch of exposed flesh was a canvas of bruises, welts, and burn scars in various stages of rot and healing.]
[They clung to each other like wounded animals, peering through curtains of matted hair with eyes that held nothing but terror and the absolute certainty that the world had forgotten them.]
[Geto stood in the doorway.]
[Those eyes that always carried a trace of warmth had contracted to pinpoints. Color drained from his face so fast it was like watching a corpse form in real time, leaving something paler and colder than frost.]
[He drew a long breath, pressed hard against the vein throbbing at his temple, and forced words through a voice wound tight enough to snap.]
["...What is this?"]
["What do you mean, what?"]
[The chief blinked at him as though the question were absurd. He jabbed a finger at the two girls in the cage, his tone thick with disgust.]
["Master, these two are the culprits behind all the disappearances!"]
["No!"]
[Geto's voice cracked upward, sharp with barely leashed fury.]
["We haven't even begun investigating the cause of the incidents. These are children..."]
["They are not children! Their heads aren't right!"]
[The chief fired back without yielding an inch, whipping around to point at a wrinkled old woman in the crowd behind him.]
["They've attacked villagers with some kind of freakish monster power, over and over! That old woman's grandson was nearly killed by them just days ago! Everyone here can vouch for it!"]
[Inside the cage, the older girl lifted her head. Short-haired, face split by a wound deep enough to show raw flesh beneath.]
[She tried to speak. The motion of opening her mouth pulled at the gash, and her expression twisted between rage and agony.]
["That's because they were the ones who..."]
["Shut up! Monster!"]
[The chief's boot slammed into the cage before she could finish, cutting her off with a crash of splintering wood.]
[His face had gone an apoplectic red.]
["Your parents were the same as you, cursed freaks, every last one! If we'd known you'd bring this much trouble, we should've strangled you in your cribs!"]
["..."]
[The instant the words cribs and strangled left the chief's mouth, every molecule of air in the room seemed to vanish.]
[Geto lowered the hand from his temple. Slowly. His right hand rose, index finger twitching, and a mass of pitch-black Cursed Energy condensed at the tip, forming a small, low-grade Cursed Spirit.]
[It slipped through the gaps in the cage and settled gently onto the girls' shoulders.]
["Don't... don't... don't be afraid."]
[But when he turned back around, his face had become something else entirely.]
[The string inside Suguru Geto's heart labeled the greater good snapped clean through.]
[No more struggle. No more confusion. Your warning by the vending machines echoed back to him: if, in the name of righteousness, even newborn infants were treated as garbage to be disposed of, what kind of hell would that world become?]
[But standing here, staring at these monkeys who'd caged their own kind and tortured them for sport, listening to non-sorcerers declare with perfect conviction that they should have murdered children in their sleep...]
[If this is the price...
If this is the hell that must be endured to build a paradise free of Cursed Spirits, a world of sorcerers alone...
Then the person I'll become can carry that sin.]
[Geto smiled. It was radiant, incandescent, and brimming with enough killing intent to drown the village whole. He turned to the still-ranting chief.]
["I understand the situation. It's too cramped in here. Let's step outside to talk."]
[The oblivious chief, convinced the master was finally ready to work his magic, nodded eagerly and led the villagers out to the clearing.]
[The moment Geto crossed the threshold, that counterfeit smile vanished.]
[His hand rose. Cursed Energy surged toward his palm, gathering with volcanic force. He would use Cursed Spirit Manipulation to crush the foul-mouthed chief and every last monkey present into paste in a single, annihilating instant.]
[Nothing happened.]
[The swarm of Cursed Spirits he'd summoned didn't materialize. The Cursed Energy pooling in his palm struck something, an invisible wall of perfect stillness, and the moment it left his body, it dissolved.]
[His pupils shrank. He registered it immediately: a faint, omnipresent trace of Residual Cursed Energy saturating the air around him.
[Yours.]
[Geto whipped around, eyes locked on you where you stood by the door.]
["Hayase... what did you do?"]
[You pushed your glasses back up the bridge of your nose. Firelight from the villagers' torches reflected off the lenses, hiding whatever burned behind your eyes.]
[A deep breath. Your voice came out so level it was almost offensive.]
["Cursed Technique Reversal: Nagihiru Kinkou. It's the inverse of my innate Cursed Technique, Phantom Night Parade. In this form, it can't copy anyone else's technique. What it can do is forcibly neutralize the frequency of any technique I've already copied and mastered, within a set radius."]
["Put simply, Suguru: as long as I'm standing here maintaining Nagihiru Kinkou, your Cursed Spirit Manipulation won't activate."]
[Geto stared. Disbelief broke through the fury on his face, not only at the revelation that you'd developed a Cursed Technique Reversal this powerful in so short a time, but at what you were choosing to do with it.]
["You're... publicly disclosing your technique?"]
[To ensure absolute suppression of his Cursed Spirit Manipulation, you'd deliberately weaponized the disclosure of information, sacrificing secrecy to raise the baseline effectiveness of your technique.]
[The villagers traded bewildered looks, unable to parse a single word about techniques or reversals. All they saw was two masters turning on each other.]
["What the hell are you doing?!"]
[Geto's restraint shattered. He thrust a finger toward the ignorant crowd and screamed at you, raw and ragged.]
["You're protecting these monkeys?! Even after seeing what's behind that door with your own eyes, you still feel nothing?! Touma Hayase!! Answer me!!"]
[Your head snapped up. The fire in your eyes burned every bit as fierce as his.]
["Of course I saw what they did! I'm as disgusted as you are, as furious as you are!"]
[You surged forward a step, roaring back.]
["That's exactly why I have to stop you! This world can be rotten to the core and order is still necessary! There are laws to judge them, systems to punish them! The one person who shouldn't play executioner is me. And the other is you! The moment you kill ordinary people here in the name of justice... Suguru, there is no coming back from that!"]
[Before the last word left your mouth, the ground beneath your feet cratered. You launched forward at terrifying speed, closing the distance to pin Geto down with brute force while his technique was sealed.]
["Don't you dare preach at me from that throne of yours!"]
[Geto's roar tore through the night. He didn't retreat a single step.]
[He deflected your hook with ease and drove a vicious side kick straight into your abdomen.]
[You doubled over with a grunt, launched backward, and crashed through a dead tree trunk.]
[Geto didn't pursue. He stood his ground and attempted to summon his Cursed Spirits again, then again, but under Nagihiru Kinkou, every surge of his Cursed Energy dissolved on contact with the air, swallowed without a trace.]
[The realization settled over him like ice water. As long as you were conscious, he couldn't touch these people. To slaughter the village, he'd have to go through you first.]
["You don't seriously believe... you can beat me in hand-to-hand?"]
[He looked down at you, cold and absolute, as you dragged yourself out of the wreckage.]
[You coughed twice, spat blood into the dirt. That kick had nearly cracked your ribs. But the sneer on Geto's face froze solid in the next heartbeat.]
[By torchlight, he watched the deep purple bruise cratering your abdomen and the blood at the corner of your mouth vanish. Flesh knitting, color returning, damage erasing itself faster than the eye could track.]
[Less than two seconds. Every wound, gone.]
["What...?"]
[Those narrow eyes blew wide.]
["Reverse Cursed Technique? That's impossible! Your technique's mechanism only allows you to replicate and maintain one ability at a time! If you're sustaining the Cursed Technique Reversal suppression against my Cursed Spirit Manipulation, you can't simultaneously run a Reverse Cursed Technique to heal yourself! It's a direct contradiction!"]
[You wiped the last smear of blood from your chin. Your legs coiled and you exploded forward again, charging straight at him.]
["Your strength is terrifying, Suguru. I know that better than anyone."]
[Your fist ripped through the air with absolute commitment, hurtling toward his face. Through the roar of displaced wind, your voice reached him, calm to its very core.]
["But the moment I used my own Cursed Technique Reversal, you should have realized."]
["I don't need to rely on copying anymore. The Reverse Cursed Technique I'm using now is mine not copied."]