That afternoon, the fly-sized cursed spirit stuck to the glass hadn’t even had time to let out a wail before it was shredded into scattered ash by a stroke of cold, glinting light.
By the time he’d dealt with the minor nuisance and his work, and finished tidying up the student council room, the sun had completely set.
Night fell, and neon lights took over from the daytime clamor.
Uchiha Ayato’s residence was in a mid-to-high-end apartment building in Toshima Ward.
The place couldn’t exactly be called a mansion, but it was still leagues better—a hundred and eight thousand li better—than the run-down little hovels over in Akabane.
A sofa sat in the center of the living room; a solid-wood display cabinet against the wall held neatly arranged rows of case files and a few anti-surveillance micro-cameras, and in a corner of the living room, a pricey Roland FANTOM-8 had been casually placed.
A sixteen-year-old orphan with no one to rely on in the social registry could never possibly afford the six-figure monthly rent here.
And all of this came from Uchiha Ayato’s “side gigs.” Still an orphan upon arriving in this world, he had begun planning his path to independence early on.
After graduating from elementary school, he left the welfare facility and started making a living on his own out in the world.
Using his age as cover, plus a handy bit of the Transformation Technique and the Clone Technique, or using Genjutsu to control a few crows for covert photography, he could be said to have made quite a name for himself in the circle of underground private detectives.
Digging up a politician’s secret dealings down to the very bottom, or snapping a few unmentionable photos of some wealthy wife’s cheating husband—he could effortlessly stuff fistfuls of cash into his own pockets.
Earning money honestly is pretty dull, isn’t it?
“Sigh, dealing with monsters is way easier than coaxing a middle-school girl.” A lazy mutter drifted down from the ceiling.
Uchiha Ayato was hanging head-down, his black hair—still carrying a hint of dampness from the shower he’d just taken—drooping toward the floor, his feet firmly suctioned to the ceiling.
He cradled his phone in both hands, thumbs tapping rapidly across the screen.
Concentrating chakra evenly at the soles of his feet to maintain this anti-gravity posture was part of his basic daily routine for training his chakra control.
“Ding-dong.” The delivery notification of Line sounded.
The chat box on the screen was crammed full of the text he’d just typed up— [Anon, I went too far with my words this afternoon.] [Watching you run off, I immediately felt regret.] [If my words wounded you, that was by no means my intention.] [Whenever I think you might really be going to some faraway place, I always feel a little at a loss.] [Maybe you’re right—I suppose I really can’t bear to part with you.] Utterly sappy.
It was hard to imagine this was a message a middle-school boy would send to a girl—and one who wasn’t even his girlfriend, at that.
But Ayato didn’t so much as blink.
“With this, tomorrow when we meet she’ll probably go back to her sparkling self again, right?” Ayato knew Anon would forgive him.
Because she was exactly that kind of saintly girl.
Even if you made her angry, all you had to do was set her up on a pedestal and smooth her feathers, and that little temper of hers would instantly scatter clean away like a popped balloon.
Ayato tossed the phone aside and got ready to flip down from the ceiling.
In that very instant, his movements abruptly froze.
A wisp of extremely viscous, dank fluctuation—imperceptible to ordinary people—came drifting from two streets away, carrying a smell that mixed rust and foul sewer water.
By this world’s grading system, it had probably already reached the level of a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit.
“Tch.” Uchiha Ayato knit his brows in annoyance and reached up to scratch his hair: “A Cursed Spirit, huh…” “Of all the times to pick, it just had to pick when I was about to sleep.
Really won’t let a guy have any peace…” ……
Meanwhile, inside a big house with a yard.
“Aaaaaaahhh——!” Chihaya Anon had wrapped herself up in her cotton quilt, her whole body wildly rolling and squirming back and forth across the mattress like a maggot.
“Thud!” Her knee slammed into the wall, but she couldn’t have cared less about the pain.
She abruptly threw off the quilt and sat up, her eyes shimmering with an excitement that almost spilled over, the glow of the phone screen lighting up her cheeks awash with red clouds.
Those few messages on Line had already been read from start to finish at least five times by her.
“I knew it!” “I knew Ayarin actually couldn’t bear to part with me!” Anon took a deep breath and pressed the phone tightly against her flat chest.
She tilted her head back, staring fixedly at the bedroom ceiling, the corners of her mouth curling up wildly into a smile with a sugar content way over the legal limit: “Hehehe…” “He talks so nasty, but really he’s just head-over-heels bewitched by me…” “Ayato-kun, love~” ……
Uchiha Ayato stood by the window, his pupils contracting in an instant.
The black irises drained of color in a flash, an eerie scarlet spreading across them, two black tomoe spinning rapidly around the rims of his pupils.
The world his retinas captured had changed.
The foul-smelling air current that had been hidden in the night now turned into clearly visible wisps of dark purple mist.
Every time the source of that cursed energy squirmed, the concrete walls it passed would give off the cracking sound of something strained beyond endurance.
Uchiha Ayato turned his head to look at the living room; he had just renewed next year’s rent not long ago.
This thing’s dead-straight path of travel perfectly pierced right through his little nest.
If he didn’t stop it, he’d have to move out tomorrow.
“Having to move again would be such a pain.” Ayato sighed, casually tossed his phone onto the sofa, turned and pulled open the wardrobe, and drew out a trench coat convenient for concealing equipment, draping it over himself.
But before heading into battle, he might as well check his stats first— [Name: Uchiha Ayato Chakra: 349995/350000 MEGA Sharingan: Double Tomoe Ninjutsu: Chakra Sensing, Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique, Fire Release: Great Fire Annihilation, Fire Release: Great Dragon Fire Technique, Wind Release: Vacuum Sphere, Wind Release: Wind Cutter Technique, Lightning Release: Chidori, Lightning Release: Kirin…
Rank: Genin (has not passed the promotion exam)] Based on past experience, the chakra (cursed energy) volume of a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit was roughly 10,000–30,000, while a Special Grade Cursed Spirit was somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000—the two separated by an entire order of magnitude.
Of course, chakra volume wasn’t the only standard for judging strength.
Even with an overwhelming advantage in chakra volume, if the opponent had all sorts of bizarre tricks up their sleeve, victory wasn’t necessarily guaranteed.
As for the actual degree of threat, he’d only know once he saw it on-site.
Closing the system panel, chakra gathered at the soles of his feet.
Uchiha Ayato gave a light leap, his whole body like a crow beating its wings, swiftly melting into the night of Tokyo.
In the residential district two streets away, the streetlamps flickered twice, let out a “bzzt” of electric current, and then went on strike for good.
A monster covered in severed human limbs, resembling a deformed gecko, clung to the side of a residential building, the lights of thousands of households reflected in its huge eyes, the mucus dripping from the corner of its mouth instantly corroding the anti-theft grilles.
It was a Grade 1 Cursed Spirit manifested from humanity’s collective fear of “home-invasion crime,” belonging to the category that posed enormous danger to humans.
The cursed spirit’s vision caught the black shadow descending from the sky.
It let out an ear-piercing shriek, its entire body drawing taut like a full-moon bow.
It hissed.
“Too slow.
Your openings are as full of holes as a sieve.” Ayato’s voice rang out from directly above its head, the dynamic vision of the Sharingan stretching every one of the cursed spirit’s movements into a frame-by-frame slideshow.
Forming the hand seals was practically done in an instant.
Chakra compressed madly in his palm, the high-frequency vibrating lightning-attribute chakra tearing through the air, the blinding lightning glow lighting up half the block.
Lightning Release: Chidori.
There was no scorching stalemate.
Ayato’s figure drew a sharp arc of light diagonally through the air, passing right by the cursed spirit.
The instant the lightning glow died out, the cursed spirit’s massive body exploded apart with a roar.
The smell of charred flesh smothered the original stench.
The powerful Grade 1 Cursed Spirit didn’t even have room to struggle—it was exorcised in the blink of an eye.
“Not much of a challenge, though my clothes still got a little dirty.” Ayato shook off the electric arcs lingering on his right hand, the drooping ends of his hair swaying gently in the air current.
A faint blue glowing panel materialized out of thin air in mid-air, dispelling a small patch of the night— [Long-Term Quest: Send one thousand Summoning Beasts back to the Three Great Sacred Lands (369/1000).
Reward: Sage Mode] Even though he’d already seen this prompt nearly four hundred times, Ayato still felt a little speechless.
So, like—how on earth does it connect cursed spirits to summoning beasts?
The urge to rant was rising!
“Oh-ho-ho, no wonder the reports Ijichi submitted said these few blocks have been unusually peaceful lately…” “So it turns out some public-spirited citizen has been quietly sweeping up all along~” “And the work’s pretty clean and tidy, too.” “Not bad, not bad~” Uchiha Ayato: !!!