Suguru Geto smiled at that.
There was no mockery in that smile, no contempt, but something complicated and impossible to name, like a man standing at the edge of a cliff who looked back along the path he had taken and found no one left behind him.
"Do you know what Special Grade means?" His voice was quiet, but on this field steeped in cursed energy and blood, every word rang clear. "It means someone capable of destroying an entire nation single-handedly."
He extended a hand, and a pitch-black rift split the air beside him. A cursed spirit slowly emerged from it, its body enormous and magnificent.
Its face was beautiful yet uncanny, a faint smile lingering at its lips, as though mocking them-or pitying them. An ancient, potent aura of cursed energy filled the air, pressing down so heavily it was almost impossible to breathe.
"And this-" Suguru Geto turned his palm upward, as though presenting a prized collectible to Yuta Okkotsu. "Is one of the twenty-six registered special grade cursed spirits, Tamamo-no-Mae Incarnate."
Before his words had faded, a black vortex appeared behind him. It revolved slowly, its edges blurred and warped, as though someone had sliced a wound into reality with a knife, revealing endless darkness within.
Something writhed, churned, and howled in that darkness-not one, not ten, but thousands. The cursed spirits he had spent years swallowing, subjugating, and taming all seethed within the vortex like a thick soup brought to a rolling boil. Every one struggled, waited, and yearned to be released.
"And next," Suguru Geto's voice sank, like a stone cast into deep water, "I will merge all six thousand cursed spirits I possess."
His fingers curled slightly. The vortex behind him abruptly expanded, its darkness swallowing the moonlight and every other trace of