As soon as I entered, I left the bag beside the reception desk.
There was no point carrying it around the entire building.
I took out only the bat and rested it over my shoulder.
Several of them started emerging from around reception.
“And now, stage two: get rid of all of you, right, guys?
What do you think?”
They answered my question with guttural screams.
I shifted into first gear, figuratively speaking, and sprinted toward them, reinforcing my body with energy.
The first sphere I fired caught a worm-like thing crawling beneath the reception desk.
The paralysis closed around its body like a bubble.
Guided by the Shinkeigan’s night vision, I rushed forward and smashed it into the floor with the bat, obliterating it.
The curse burst into a splash of purple liquid before slowly beginning to dissipate into black smoke.
Three bluish creatures about the size of dogs suddenly burst out from inside a trash can, with thick gray manes covering their backs, mouths packed with sharp teeth, and six limbs ending in hands that they used to run at a surprisingly high speed.
All three lunged at me at once.
The Shinkeigan allowed me to see the internal connections inside their bodies and detect which ones activated before each movement, giving me much greater control over the fight.
They weren’t human, but the principle seemed to work the same way.
Chronostasis shot between the three and struck the one coming from the center.
The one on the left reached me first and leapt up, trying to tear my arm off with a bite.
I raised the bat just in time and wedged it into its mouth, holding it suspended in the air.
CLANG!
Its fangs scraped against the metal, leaving several deep scratches as the beast tried to clamp its jaws down even harder.
At the same time, the one on the right tried to bite my legs, but I jumped onto it, landing on its face before launching myself high into the air, still holding the one biting the bat.
I channeled energy into both legs and slammed down into the upper part of the monster’s body with force, crashing onto it like an anvil and finishing off the first of the three.
I grabbed the bat-chewer by the neck, reinforcing my grip with energy.
Little by little, it started turning red from the lack of air until its bite finally loosened.
A few seconds later, I snapped its neck and it vanished.
With a downward swing of the bat, I destroyed the one still trapped inside my purple bubble.
A fourth brother came charging straight at me from the hallway.
I waited for the perfect timing and…
I drove my heel into its face with full force, sending it crashing into the far wall and smashing several framed pictures hanging there.
It recovered, somewhat dazed, and started moving erratically around me, knocking over several workstations.
I channeled energy into my fingers and threw the bat like a pitcher, making it spin several times through the air.
BAM!
Thanks to the enhanced accuracy of my super-eyes and my ability to predict the monster’s movement, I calculated the angle before throwing it so that, after hitting it dead-on, the bat would strike the wall sideways and ricochet back toward me.
Faster and faster, almost without thinking, more and more creatures were left suspended inside my spheres, and I killed them in different ways, one by one.
“All right…
this floor looks clean.”
Well, this is going pretty well.
Just as I was about to head upstairs, an image flashed through my vision.
The Shinkeigan had detected a new threat.
My body reacted, and I threw myself forward, sliding across the floor.
A fraction of a second later, a monster resembling a woodpecker, with three eyes spread across its head and a beak as sharp as a knife, pierced through the space where my neck had been.
I felt the air slice across the tips of my hair as it passed.
The impact was so violent that its beak buried itself several centimeters into the concrete wall, sending dust and small chunks of debris flying.
With the force and speed behind that attack, the monster had actually pierced the wall with its beak.
“…”
If that had hit me, someone would’ve had to start planning my funeral.
The bird struggled to pull its beak out of the wall.
Bad luck.
I channeled energy into my arms and gripped the bat with both hands.
The blow shattered its neck, killing it.
This floor was different.
I noticed it the moment I took a few steps forward.
There was a strange presence in the air.
Much denser than downstairs.
It wasn’t spread out.
Instead, it seemed to be concentrated in one specific place.
The restrooms at the far north end of the building.
An absurd amount of that strange energy was coming from there.
I frowned and, instead of heading straight toward them, turned into another hallway.
I still hadn’t finished stage two, so there was no point starting stage three yet.
…
“Banana, banana, banana…”
You’re not going to believe me, but standing in front of me was a small one-eyed chimpanzee with a banana tree growing out of its back.
Yes.
A one-meter-tall cyclops monkey with a banana tree on its back.
Monsters really can have all kinds of body structures, huh?
Wait…
since when can they talk?
Well, “talk” might be giving this specimen a little too much credit.
It mostly just kept repeating the word “banana” over and over.
“Banana, banana, banana…”
Along the hallway, it had arranged a line of banana peels, as if it were setting up the most cliché trap imaginable.
Or at least what that thing considered a trap.
Man step on banana.
Man slip.
Monkey smarter.
That’s probably what it’s thinking.
It suddenly turned toward me and immediately started pounding its chest while making gorilla noises, challenging me to cross its minefield.
It talks, makes plans…
not very good plans, but plans nonetheless.
It even taunts me…
What an interesting creature.
It pulled another banana from the tree growing out of its back and peeled it with a quick movement.
Then it shoved the banana into its mouth and threw the peel onto the floor directly in front of me.
“Seriously?
What do you think, that I’m going to slip on this?
And how can you even talk?”
The monkey pointed excitedly at the floor.
Then it started pounding its chest again and shouted even louder:
“BANANA!”
I’ll just walk up to it and kill it.
All I have to do is avoid these peels.
There’s plenty of space between them.
I walked forward calmly, taking my time.
All you have to do is look at the floor and not be an idiot.
The poor chimp stared at me in defeat, as if its clearly defective brain couldn’t process the fact that someone had overcome the legendary secret banana technique. Get faster updates on novelping.com.
After that, the monkey started beating itself while crying until it eventually killed itself.
…
What the hell did I just witness?
I kept taking care of more of those things.
Clearing the new floor took much longer.
It was getting harder and harder to maintain reinforcement across my entire body as my energy ran low, so I stopped using the spheres as often and focused on hitting them while moving.
Even so, I came out on top.
When the last creature disintegrated, I had to brace one hand against the wall, completely exhausted.
How many of these things have I killed already?
Fifty?
“This…
damn…
doesn’t add up…” I said between breaths, pulling the balaclava up to my mouth so I could breathe more easily.
From what I’d seen, not even funerals attracted this many of these things.
I was missing something.
I checked my phone.
The time glowed on the screen: 1:30 a.m.
Only whatever was inside those restrooms remained.
After that, I’d be done.
Takuma Ino’s POV
A few hours ago, I was notified about the appearance of a cursed object inside a building in Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto, one that was releasing a large amount of cursed energy into the air.
By coincidence, I happened to be passing through the city while visiting a friend, so I was assigned the job of retrieving it.
According to the report, there was a high chance that it was a special-grade cursed object.
Its presence had been attracting an abnormal number of curses to the building.
The report even mentioned a semi-grade 1 curse among them.
“Yeeeeah…” I said, stretching as I walked.
“I’m super motivated.”
If I complete this mission without any problems, Mr.
Nanami will have to acknowledge me.
I could try to get promoted to semi-grade 1, but until Nanami-san thinks I’m ready…
Maybe I don’t deserve it yet.
I reached the building marked in the report and frowned the moment I saw it.
“Huh?”
I couldn’t feel anything.
“What the hell happened here?” I muttered.
“Wasn’t this place supposed to be full of curses?”
The atmosphere felt completely clean, and if there really were any curses left, there couldn’t be many.
“Shit…
if I came to the wrong place, the higher-ups are going to kill me.”
I was about to turn around when I felt it.
There were no visible curses, but the presence of the special-grade cursed object was still there, clear and unmistakable.
Did someone clean this place out before I got here?
I smiled.
“Well…
time to get to work.
Shame Nanami-san isn’t here.
He won’t get to see me shine.”
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