The Curse of Shattering (Twenty-Six) (Bonus Chapter for Alliance Leader "Reader 1608")

The research expedition was nearly over. It was time to make a bold hypothesis and test it carefully.

Knowing that the Kamakura Family's swordsmanship was essentially a ritual, was there any way to counter it?

Cas's idea seemed reasonable: find a way to cut off the higher power.

But if my guess was right, the other end of the ritual was most likely a true deity.

Whether a team led by a demigod could restrain a being of that rank was clearly questionable.

Perhaps it was time to try thinking in reverse. If there was nothing I could do about the other end, why not target this end instead?

The Kamakura Family's situation was clearly unusual. Even if they did nothing, a breach was bound to appear.

A mere meditation session had been enough to make Kamakura Shinji collapse. That showed the Kamakura Family members were now in a state unlike that of ordinary ritual supplicants—they were practically under a deity's "gaze" at all times.

For hundreds of years, that nameless god had clearly had them anchored.

The two glove dogs Ni Huayuan killed might have been caught in the crossfire for that reason. They were too close to the Kamakura family and too filthy, so the god had casually slain them.

As for how to do it, I wasn't an expert in that field, so it wasn't easy to guess.

Fortunately, though, I didn't need to guess.

I'd once used brute force to deal with a concept like this kind of "anchoring."

The Return Edict I'd just acquired clearly had some ability to dispel concepts of this sort.

So just now, I'd decided to target the Kamakura family and repeat what I'd done with the Emissary Mask.

And if it worked, that would essentially confirm my theory about the