Cell Division Is Also [Propagation]

Haruta Shigemo froze for a moment, then immediately burst into undisguised laughter.

"Hahahahaha!" He pointed at Morien and laughed uproariously. "Are you an idiot? Over something like that?"

"What do you mean, 'something like that'?" Morien waved the cleaver in his hand. "This is obviously extremely important, okay?"

"You know nothing about the beauty of femboys!"

While Morien and Haruta Shigemo argued, the knife with hands that Haruta Shigemo had thrown up suddenly stood upright.

Using the hands growing from its blade and hilt, it propped itself up. Then, with a forceful push against the ground, it swiftly stabbed toward Morien's back.

This move almost never failed him.

Unfortunately, Morien had read the script.

Morien suddenly let go, and the cleaver in his right hand fell to the floor.

He turned, reached out, and grabbed the blade with his curse-energy-coated right hand.

Splat!

The blade slightly cut open the skin of his palm, but it did not cause much damage.

He had gambled correctly.

Judging from their performance in the original work, whether it was Haruta Shigemo or this knife, separating them would drastically reduce Haruta Shigemo's overall strength.

Yet this disgusting idiot always loved throwing his knife around, relying on the information gap to bully people.

As long as someone had intelligence on him and knew the knife could move freely, his behavior was no different from cutting off one of his own arms.

Although this knife could move freely, without its wielder, it probably was not even as strong as an ordinary person.

At least in the original work, when it launched sneak attacks, it could not even chop through a person's leg bone.

And without this knife, Haruta Shigemo's displayed combat ability was barely equivalent to that of a Grade 3 jujutsu sorcerer. He was not particularly strong.

His own cursed technique had no offensive power whatsoever. All his skill points had gone into staying alive.

Haruta Shigemo, Grade 2 curse user. His cursed technique was "Miracle Storage." By erasing the memories of small bits of everyday good luck, he stored miracles. When faced with lethal danger, they would automatically activate and cancel out the fate of death.

His survival ability was strong, but he was basically incapable of dealing damage. On top of his body being weak in combat, without his weapon, he could barely be considered a Grade 3 sorcerer.

"Oh dear, it got caught." Yet Haruta Shigemo did not look worried in the slightest.

He chuckled and ran toward the stairs, seemingly intending to head straight up to the second floor and fight Morien head-on.

Taking advantage of this opening, Morien turned to look at Ijichi, who had gotten back to his feet. His voice appeared in Ijichi's mind.

"Do you know barrier techniques?" Morien asked.

"No." Ijichi answered honestly.

"Right... Then if you can't... a Curtain might work."

"You can do that, right?" Morien pressed.

He remembered Ijichi casting a Curtain in the original work.

"I can." Ijichi nervously glanced toward the stairs and nodded as he answered at a rapid pace.

"Then cast a Curtain now. Cover this small area nearby. Don't make the range too large, then keep wishing for me in your heart."

"Wish that I can take care of that person."

"Ah, uh... okay." Ijichi nodded.

He was an untalented jujutsu sorcerer who did not even possess a cursed technique.

But fortunately, he had one virtue: he was obedient.

He did not know who Morien was. There was no information on Morien among either jujutsu sorcerers or curse users.

But he knew Haruta Shigemo. He knew he was a curse user, a wanted and vile man. He also knew that Morien had saved his life not long ago.

So, he chose to obey.

"Emerge from the darkness, darker than black. Purify that which is impure."

The lights inside the shopping mall suddenly dimmed.

Morien looked around and nodded in satisfaction.

"Good. It really works."

Ijichi was completely confused and had no idea what exactly worked.

But he understood that he should remain quiet at a time like this.

"A Curtain?" Haruta Shigemo, who had just run upstairs, raised his head in confusion before looking at Ijichi, the assistant supervisor.

For a Grade 3 curse user, the climb from the first floor to the second was not long. The two had only spoken for a few seconds before Haruta Shigemo ran up.

"Forget it. It doesn't matter."

He grinned, raised his hand, and threw a punch at Morien's face.

Morien swung his right hand, still gripping the long blade, forward, intending to use Haruta Shigemo's knife to cut his own hand.

But the next instant, the hand growing from the hilt suddenly jerked upward, dodging Haruta Shigemo's fist.

Morien had no choice but to take two steps back with the momentum of the raised hand, turning sideways to avoid Haruta Shigemo's next punch.

However, the knife began shaking wildly, dragging Morien's arm back and forth with it. It took tremendous strength to keep it steady, leaving Morien unable to stand firmly and cutting his palm in the process.

He also could not grab the hilt directly, because the hilt of this knife was a hand, with the blade growing out from beneath the wrist. If he grabbed the hilt, the knife could simply twist its wrist and turn the blade around to cut him.

This was why Haruta Shigemo was never afraid to throw his knife away.

If an enemy seized the knife, it would be difficult for them to maintain their balance while dealing with the knife itself causing trouble.

But if the enemy did not seize the knife, they would have to constantly guard against sneak attacks.

Of course, if the enemy was strong enough to forcibly control the knife...

Haruta Shigemo would have already run away.

He was the biggest bully of the weak and coward before the strong among curse users.

If Morien's curse energy had not looked so weak, he never would have come up to launch a sneak attack.

Whoosh!

Haruta Shigemo's fist sliced through the air with a faint whistle and struck Morien in the stomach while he was standing unsteadily.

Morien recoiled in pain, and his grip loosened. The long knife spun up into the air before rapidly falling back down.

Its blade cut a gash in his palm.

Haruta Shigemo raised his hand and caught the falling long knife, then stepped forward and slashed.

However, after synchronization, Morien's reflexes and flexibility had likewise reached several times that of an ordinary human.

He bent backward with the momentum into a back bridge to evade the attack, then planted one hand on the ground and kicked upward, forcing Haruta Shigemo back.

The Knowledge Pursuer from before had not been for nothing.

Although Knowledge Pursuer was painful and agonizing, the Hidden Sage truly gave him the real thing.

For example, some fairly basic fighting techniques.

Morien certainly had not understood all of them, but his sufficiently strong control over his body allowed him to barely use the techniques within.

He braced himself against the ground, swung his raised leg upward, spun with the momentum, and regained his footing.

Without giving Morien a chance to steady himself, Haruta Shigemo's knife followed immediately after.

Morien switched the cleaver in his left hand to his right and stepped forward to clash blades.

He had not played with knives much, nor had he ever cut anyone before, but decent technique combined with exceptional reflexes allowed Morien to barely exchange a few blows.

Though several more wounds were still scraped across his body, he could barely keep fighting.

But...

Crack!

With a crisp sound.

The cleaver in Morien's hand shattered.

Even wrapped in curse energy, it had still broken after several clashes.

"Aha! Your knife isn't a cursed tool!" Haruta Shigemo cried out in delight.

Seizing the advantage, he slashed Morien across the chest, cutting diagonally from his left shoulder all the way down toward his right waist.

Fortunately, Morien retreated quickly, so the wound was not particularly deep.

Indeed, even covered in curse energy, it was still only an ordinary cleaver.

"This is really bad, isn't it?" Haruta Shigemo asked with a grin. "What are you going to do without a weapon?"

Morien casually tossed away the remaining handle, revealing the palm that had just been cut by the blade.

The wound in his palm rapidly healed.

"What will I do?" Morien replied with the same smile. "Didn't I say I was a summoner?"

"I'm the Mother Bug."

As Morien's wound healed, his cells began dividing in large numbers.

And division was precisely a manifestation of the [Propagation] Path.

As he spoke, an extremely tiny butterfly detached from around Morien's wound, then rapidly grew larger.

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