A Homegrown Yuta Okkotsu

The air in the convenience store froze for a few seconds.

The boy jolted and ducked back behind the counter, nearly striking the back of his head against the corner of the register stand. He covered his ears, but the voice kept speaking.

"No one's nearby. You're safe for now." The voice was lazy and hoarse, carrying the irritation of someone roused from a long nap. "With the level of cursed energy I'm putting out, no one except the other few kings should dare come here to die. But their abilities counter one another, so none of them can make a move against the others anytime soon. They won't come looking for trouble just yet."

The boy's eyes widened, and he pressed the back of his head closer to the counter. What was this voice talking about? Cursed energy? Kings? Was I hallucinating? First his family had disappeared, then the entire street had become rubble, and now someone was talking inside his head.

Without a doubt, the voice belonged to Gu Yanzhi. Somehow, he had cursed this boy and attached what remained of his body to him, while his own body fell into a deep sleep.

But this act of parasitism had brought an unexpected benefit: the instincts of a cursed spirit no longer tainted him. The ever-present thirst for blood and slaughter had been cut off by something the moment he attached himself to a human body, leaving it unable to interfere with his consciousness.

His thoughts were clear now. He no longer had to fight his own body every moment of the day.

Seeing the boy huddled up like an ostrich, Gu Yanzhi sighed and began explaining what had happened.

He gave him the gist: he wasn't a bad person, just an older guy who looked like a cockroach monster. He had seen two people chasing the boy through the sewers, killed them, and then, for certain reasons, become a parasite attached to him.

Hearing this, the boy felt a stabbing pain somewhere in his mind again. Sewers. Being hunted. Those words slipped like keys into a locked corner deep within his memory, and then a name surfaced.

"Did you see Xiaozhi back then? What happened to Xiaozhi?"

Gu Yanzhi thought for a moment, then said he hadn't seen anyone named Xiaozhi.

But he told the boy not to panic and began explaining their current situation: they were inside one of the Culling Game's barriers, and for now, the destruction was confined to the area within it.

The boy hadn't seen his family since the Culling Game began, so the person who had started the game had probably taken them outside the barrier before it started.

"Think back. Did you have a dream one night about someone wearing a kasaya, with stitches across his forehead?"

The boy froze. There really had been someone like that. One night, half asleep, he had seen a figure in a kasaya standing beside his bed. The stitches on the man's forehead had been especially clear in the moonlight. The man had rattled off something, but the boy had been too sleepy to listen. He had rolled over and gone back to sleep. If that really was what had happened, his family should be fine.

Seeing the boy sigh in relief, Gu Yanzhi immediately poured cold water on his hopes.

He coated the boy's eyes with cursed energy.

"Look out the window."

Mishima raised his head and looked toward the convenience store's glass window.

Then he froze as though nailed to the spot. There were monsters everywhere in the distance. A massive figure, as large as a small hill, crawled slowly against the city skyline, each step sending a dull impact rumbling through the ground.

Winged things circled in the sky. Farther away, something crouched at the edge of a high-rise rooftop, its eyes glowing red as it lowered its head to gnaw on the prey clutched in its claws.

"See that? You're in a very dangerous situation. One wrong move, and you'll die." Gu Yanzhi's voice was flat.

"Most of the small fry will be scared off by my cursed energy, but once they discover I'm just a paper tiger clinging to a boy, you probably won't survive. So now I'm going to teach you how to use my cursed energy and cursed technique."

The boy was silent for a few seconds, then nodded. "Let's do it."

Gu Yanzhi poured cursed energy into the boy and had him try coating his entire body with it for defense and physical enhancement.

To be honest, this was the first time Gu Yanzhi had transmigrated into a being with vast reserves of cursed energy. His control over it was, to put it mildly, crude.

In his previous lives, he had always relied on his body to meet attacks head-on, never systematically studying how to use cursed energy. Even his earlier battles with other players had relied on instinct. What he taught Mishima was simple and blunt-go by feel, coat his body in cursed energy, and strengthen his defense and power.

Any ordinary person subjected to this teaching method would have started swearing: no cursed energy theory, no analysis of cursed techniques, no hand signs. Just a slapdash approach of "pour the energy in and figure out how it feels."

But Mishima seemed to have some talent. After several failures, he gradually found the knack. An extremely faint film of cursed energy appeared over his arm, held shakily for a few seconds, then dissipated.

If this kid had cursed energy of his own, he would probably make a decent jujutsu sorcerer.

During the long practice session, Mishima asked, "My name is Mishima Yuto. What should I call you?"

Gu Yanzhi paused, then replied, "My name is Gu Yanzhi."

Mishima began chatting intermittently as he practiced. "Mr. Gu, your name doesn't sound local."

"Mr. Gu, don't you think our relationship right now is kind of like Naruto Uzumaki and Kurama?"

"Pretty cool, isn't it?"

The boy kept talking, and only then did Gu Yanzhi realize that he was right.

But as soon as that thought surfaced, another comparison came to mind-Yuta Okkotsu and Rika.

A boy burdened by a curse, and a girl transformed into a cursed spirit.

Here I was, working on my homegrown heavenly restriction tyrant project. I never managed to make the tyrant, but I ended up with a homegrown Yuta Okkotsu instead.

After several hours of practice, Mishima had become familiar with the basics of using cursed energy.

Gu Yanzhi then began teaching him his cursed technique. Mishima calmed his mind and gathered cursed energy, and a swarm of cockroaches crawled out of the corners, spreading beneath the shelves like a writhing black carpet.

Mishima flinched in fright, cutting off the cursed energy. The cockroach swarm immediately scattered.

"Mr. Gu, your cursed technique is way too disgusting!"

"If you're that scared of something disgusting, go die. My cursed technique is damn powerful," Gu Yanzhi snapped. He had clearly anticipated Mishima's reaction.

"If you're so strong, Mr. Gu, why don't you do it yourself?" Mishima retorted.

Gu Yanzhi's tone changed.

All his earlier laziness and casualness vanished. His voice dropped, low and deadly serious. "If I come out myself, you'll be the first person to die."

Mishima froze, while Gu Yanzhi continued, "I just explained what cursed spirits are. I'm one of them, and an extremely bloodthirsty one at that. I can only stay rational inside your body. The reason I'm teaching you is that I want you to find someone. Next, you need to head to Sendai Stadium and find a person named Yuta Okkotsu."

"Then ask him to kill me."