Happy Halloween

Suguru Geto stood among the trees, a few drops of dark red blood staining his cuffs.

His voice was calm, with a slight edge of impatience.

"But that's all there is to it. No matter how fast a monkey runs, it can't get out of the woods."

He tilted his head. His bloodshot eyes held utter indifference, steeped in malice.

Then he raised his hand, as casually as if he were shooing away a fly.

The villager Gu Yanzhi had transmigrated into had no talent as a jujutsu sorcerer and couldn't see cursed spirits.

All he heard was a low hum bearing down on him from above.

Then a sickly sweetness of decay flooded his nose, and searing pain exploded in his chest.

Gu Yanzhi died on the spot.

His consciousness sank into boundless darkness once more.

[Host death detected]

[Identity: mountain village resident · A Cheng]

[Cause of death: killed by Suguru Geto's cursed spirit]

[Drawing inheritable abilities-]

Gu Yanzhi opened his eyes in the void, gasping for breath.

It took him several seconds to recover from the suffocating sensation of being crushed. He dropped onto his backside and stared at the screen in front of him.

"You fucking..."

His voice was still trembling. "This is what you meant by a character connected to the plot?"

"I'm Chovy! If you're going to send me into another world, give me a decent start!"

[After massacring the village, Suguru Geto released multiple cursed spirits to search the surrounding area and eliminate witnesses. One of them discovered the host in the woods.]

The system completely ignored Gu Yanzhi's complaints and continued its announcement.

"...So he searched the mountain and cleaned up after the massacre. Fine."

Gu Yanzhi gave a tight, teeth-gritted smile. "In other words, whether I ran or not, or where I ran, the outcome would've been the same."

[Given the host's combat strength at the time, yes.]

"Oh, now you fucking answer me."

Gu Yanzhi slapped his thigh and stood up. "Whatever. Let's see what my first death left me."

The glowing screen refreshed, displaying three plain, clean lines.

[Physique: the body of a villager hardened by years of labor]

[Cursed Energy: an ordinary person's amount of cursed energy]

[Cursed Technique: none]

Gu Yanzhi stared at those three lines for several seconds.

These inheritable abilities are way too basic.

How long am I going to have to struggle before I get anywhere?

After a moment's hesitation, an idea sparked in Gu Yanzhi's mind.

"System, do physique and cursed energy stack cumulatively and end up taking just one slot, or does each person's physique take up its own slot?"

[Physique and cursed energy both stack cumulatively and will ultimately occupy only one slot, dear.]

Gu Yanzhi smiled. In that case, even if the system only sent him into cannon fodder, he could accumulate gains through repeated deaths until quantity became quality.

Now that he had found a way forward, he needed to decide whether to choose cursed energy or physique.

He understood the logic behind choosing cursed energy-it was the foundation of cursed techniques. If he later transmigrated into a sorcerer and inherited a good technique but had no cursed energy, it would be useless.

But "later" was far too uncertain.

He had died at Suguru Geto's hands on his very first transmigration, without even a chance to put up a fight.

Knowing this shitty system, his next few lives would probably be ordinary people too.

Even ten ordinary people's worth of cursed energy would still be mediocre. Who knew how many deaths it would take to reach the level of a first-rate jujutsu sorcerer?

He would also have to draw a good cursed technique along the way. Otherwise, a vast reserve of cursed energy without a technique would be of limited use.

Both conditions depended on luck, and neither could be missing.

Choosing physique, however, brought someone to Gu Yanzhi's mind.

The Heavenly Restriction Tyrant-Toji Fushiguro.

Toji Fushiguro had been born with a heavenly restriction. Completely forsaken by cursed energy, he had gained a body beyond human limits in exchange.

In theory, by stacking physiques through the system, Gu Yanzhi might be able to build his own homemade Heavenly Restriction Tyrant.

Cursed energy and cursed techniques might depend on luck, but every ordinary person he became in his future lives would have a physique.

Even taking it a step further, if he transmigrated into a dog, he could still improve his physique a little.

As long as he kept choosing physique, he could keep stacking his physical strength.

It would still take a great many deaths.

But this path was clearly more reliable. He wouldn't have to gamble on luck at all.

Besides, if he wanted to join battles between Special Grades later on, Gu Yanzhi thought even a hundred deaths might not be enough if he relied solely on accumulating ordinary people's cursed energy.

Yet if the physiques of a hundred people were condensed into a single body, the result would surely be terrifying.

Then he could achieve transcendence through his body alone: a left fist that dealt massive damage and a right fist that hit just as hard. Once he reached the Heavenly Restriction Tyrant's level, he would have more room to maneuver in battles against those Special Grades.

"I choose physique."

[Selection confirmed. "The body of a villager hardened by years of labor" inherited into the inheritance bank.]

[Slot one loaded. Current causality points: 0. Begin the next transmigration?]

Gu Yanzhi took a deep breath. His first transmigration had been a blank-slate start: he ran into Suguru Geto and immediately got wrecked.

This would be his second. Slot one held a middle-aged farmer's physical strength. Stacked onto his new body, that would give him the strength of two adult men. It wasn't much, but surely he wouldn't be an ant anymore.

"System, can you give me a less hellish start this time?"

Gu Yanzhi received no answer. Orange light washed over him, and his consciousness sank into darkness again.

[Transmigration in progress...]

[Drawing a random identity...]

Gu Yanzhi opened his eyes once more.

The first thing he felt was vibration-heavy and rhythmic, accompanied by the grinding noise of wheels against rails.

The chilled air from the air conditioner mingled with sweat and cheap air freshener.

He was standing in a train carriage, his left hand gripping a hanging strap and his right holding a briefcase.

This time, he was a typical Tokyo office worker.

Sure enough, this dogshit system doesn't have any good characters for me.

The villager's physique in slot one had already stacked onto this body.

Gu Yanzhi could clearly feel the change in strength, and many of the chronic ailments this body had developed in middle age had improved too.

He wasn't superhuman yet, but at least he wouldn't be pushed around so easily anymore.

It felt like a decent start: an unremarkable office worker riding the train home to his family.

"Nothing special, but at least I won't get killed instantly."

He had barely finished marveling that the system had finally done something decent when someone gave his tie a vicious yank.

The pull was hard enough to send him stumbling forward, his briefcase slipping from his hand and crashing to the floor.

Gu Yanzhi instinctively steadied himself-the strength of two adult men rooted his feet to the floor, leaving him utterly unmoving.

Instead, the recoil dragged the person pulling him half a stumbling step forward.

"Well, look at you, old man. Pretty strong."

The man provoking him wore a black mask and a solid black jacket, bundled up from head to toe.

Two more people stood behind him, fanned out to block off the corner of the carriage.

Looks like I've run into some thugs trying to shake me down.

Gu Yanzhi glanced down at the hand gripping his tie, then raised his eyes and calmly met the black-masked man's gaze.

He had just been instantly killed by Suguru Geto in the woods, and now some thug was grabbing him by the tie.

The stark contrast was almost funny.

"I'm talking to you, old man! You mute or something?"

Gu Yanzhi was about to speak-

The carriage announcement sounded.

"Shibuya-Shibuya Station is coming up. Please exit through the doors on the left."

Shibuya.

Today was October 31, 2018.