Crafting his own cursed tool

Two days later.

Boom-!

A Cursed Energy Cannon blasted past the building's outer wall. An entire section of glass facade shattered, raining shards onto the street.

Long Xi vaulted through a broken seventeenth-floor window into an office, landed on a desk, and slid through a row of scattered documents.

The next blast punched through the wall.

He kicked the door open and charged into the stairwell. Dust poured over his head, choking him so badly he nearly swore.

"Ryu Ishigori!!!"

Long Xi looked back as he ran.

"Are you doing this on purpose?! Who the hell spars like this?!"

On a distant rooftop, Ryu Ishigori stood in the wind, grinning with wild delight, looking rather like Azu unleashing a Moon Fang Heaven-Piercer.

"We're only getting started, Long Xi! Didn't you want to train?!"

"Training's fine, but not like this!"

Long Xi slid down the stair railing as another huge hole blasted open in the wall behind him.

The whole building shuddered, forcing him to pick up speed again.

The poor played with cars, the rich played with watches, and the filthy rich played Run, Long Xi, Run.

[You say you're hard to pursue, hoping I'll give up on you, but want the priciest gifts too? Watch me rip that mouth off you!]

[Let's go!!!!]

[GO! GO! GO! Off we go!]

Long Xi had no time to pay attention to the chat.

He simply pushed himself to run even faster.

Over the past two days, he had studied the basics of barrier techniques with Takako Uro.

Innate cursed technique, barrier shell, technique integration, sure-hit rules.

They sounded like four simple terms, but learning them could twist your brain into a pretzel. After the first day, Long Xi's only thought had been: No wonder so many people can't use a domain.

He really couldn't blame Little Deer for that.

She had never even had a chance to learn. To put it in more accessible terms, it was like driving a car.

Except you had to build the car, pave the road, and write the traffic laws all at once, while making sure everyone who entered could only drive by your rules.

Who could handle that?

Learning it in two days? That was such a ridiculous joke he couldn't help laughing.

Still, he had gained something.

He had barely reached the threshold of barrier techniques. Did that count as learning how to make a barrier shell?

But a complete deployment was still a long way off. Continuing to pour all his time into it would undoubtedly waste a lot of time.

So he turned his attention to another method available here that could make him stronger quickly.

Cursed tools.

In the world of jujutsu, cursed tools could form in several ways.

One was to soak an object in cursed energy for a long time, but he didn't have that much time.

Another was to make a weapon meet specific conditions, allowing it to undergo a qualitative transformation through slaughter, cursed residue, and saturation with cursed energy.

There were plenty of cursed spirits in the Sendai Colony.

At least a few thousand. Not many were strong, but the numbers were enough.

Long Xi's plan was simple: kill them all, then see whether meeting certain special conditions would turn his weapon into a cursed tool.

The vessel he intended to turn into a cursed tool was a sword he had taken from a museum.

Apparently, some master swordsman had wielded it centuries ago. Its name was long: Fiore ... Liberi.

The label said it was a historical artifact and prohibited touching it.

Long Xi had understood only three things at the time.

Expensive, ancient, famous. Its buffs were stacked to the max.

Then he had taken it. With all those buffs maxed out, it might as well have shoved a sign in his face saying, "I should turn into high-tier loot."

It wasn't that he felt no guilt at all. Mostly, with the Tokyo Metropolis reduced to that sorry state, who knew whether Japan would even exist once everything was over?

If the cultural heritage department had complaints, they could come take a number in the Culling Game first.

Now, every time he cut down a cursed spirit, he felt as though the sword might fall apart. Without cursed energy reinforcement, it probably would have snapped into several pieces already.

He was even starting to miss his Emperor Bell.

He had never taken it apart or studied how it had formed before he destroyed it completely.

Another Cursed Energy Cannon came hurtling toward him.

Long Xi kicked off the outer wall and leaped to the neighboring building, swinging the old sword sideways to deflect the blast.

Boom!

A distant mall sign exploded into several pieces.

The next second, Ryu abandoned his ranged bombardment and leaped off the rooftop. Cursed energy burst beneath his feet, propelling him toward Long Xi.

"Dodging all the time is boring!"

"Let's get closer!"

Long Xi turned and ran.

"No thanks. A healthy distance between men is better!"

Ryu Ishigori chased him even faster, the two becoming streaks of light weaving between the high-rises.

Long Xi dodged while clearing out the cursed spirits along his route.

Streets, subway entrances, abandoned malls, beneath collapsed pedestrian bridges-he searched every place he could.

Some cursed spirits had only crawled halfway out of the shadows before the old sword pinned them to a wall. Others had just opened their mouths, without making a sound, when they met one of Ryu Ishigori's stray blasts head-on.

Long Xi stared at a cursed spirit that had been blown out of existence and paused for half a second.

"Stealing my kills now?"

Ryu Ishigori answered without a shred of guilt.

"Whoever kills it gets the credit, right?"

"The sword gets the credit!"

"Then have the sword chase them itself."

On another distant rooftop, Riko Amanai leaned over the railing, cupping her hands around her mouth.

"Long Xi-san! You can do it-!"

A bag of convenience-store snacks sat beside her.

Yuta Okkotsu stood nearby with a bottle of water. He had only meant to take a quick look, but ended up watching for almost the entire morning.

Takako Uro sat on the edge of the rooftop with her arms folded.

"Boring."

Riko Amanai turned her head.

"That's the eighth time you've said that, but you're still watching."

Takako Uro paused for half a second.

"I'm checking whether he's wasting what I taught him."

"Got it. The teacher's checking his homework."

"Boring..."

The chat was lively too.

[Riko-chan cheering him on is way too cute.]

[Break a thousand! Break a thousand!]

[Long Xi! Can you stop doing slice-of-life stuff? You came to this world to fight for me! Long Xi! Go fight already!]

Long Xi glanced down at the old sword.

The purple-black patterns within the cracks in its blade were growing darker.

He leaped through a gap in the building, raced across a fractured road, and headed toward the coast.

Ryu Ishigori finally stopped at the edge of the building.

"Going into the sea again?"

Long Xi looked back and waved his sword.

"No stock left on land."

It sounded strange, but it was true. He had cleared out almost all the cursed spirits on land within the Sendai Colony.

Looking down from the high-rises, the streets were so empty they hardly resembled a Culling Game colony. Instead, broad patches of blood remained uncleared.

Even the sea only had a few groups left.

He had killed some before, but there were always others hiding deeper.

I'll call it a day once I've killed a thousand today...

Seawater enveloped his body, its saltiness and cold pressing in together.

Long Xi pushed the water aside with cursed energy. Below him, wreckage on the seabed mingled with purple-black cursed residue.

So many cursed spirits had been exorcised over the past few days that the entire stretch of sea had turned purple. It looked unnerving, as though someone had dumped hundreds of barrels of paint into it.

Long Xi tightened his grip on the old sword.

The power of Sweet Rain spread through the water.

It wasn't creating rain, but controlling the surrounding water.

The currents compressed into fine threads, winding toward the cursed spirits on the seabed from every direction.

The first. The second. The third.

The blade cleaved through cursed spirits, and seawater swept their remains away.

An octopus-like cursed spirit emerged from a sunken ship, its tentacles covered in teeth, and lunged at Long Xi's back.

Long Xi stabbed backward into its head.

Cursed energy exploded, churning up mud and sand.

The old sword gave a faint sound.

Within its cracks, one purple-black pattern slowly settled into place.

Just a little more... He continued deeper...

The water pressure squeezed his eardrums painfully, and his lungs began to feel tight.

But there was nothing here that could truly threaten him anymore.

All that remained was quantity, and quantity was perfect nourishment.

The last cursed spirit hid beneath a reef. He cut it apart with a single slash.

At last, Long Xi swam upward.

Splash!

The sea's surface broke.

He burst out of the purple water, soaked hair plastered to his forehead, the old sword held in a reverse grip.

After reaching shore, he looked down and found a severed cursed spirit limb still hanging from his shoulder. The thing was like an office drone unwilling to clock out, clinging to its workstation even after death.

Long Xi pulled it off and tossed it back into the sea.

"That should do it."

On the distant rooftop, Riko Amanai jumped up and waved.

"Come back for dinner-!"

Yuta Okkotsu gazed at the purple-tinged expanse of seawater.

"Did he really clear them all out?"

Takako Uro stood, sweeping her gaze over the sea.

She had met many sorcerers.

But she had never met one like Long Xi. She had absolutely no idea what went on inside his head.

Long Xi lifted his head and looked at the sword in his hand again, hoping it would have changed by the time he left the instance.

"Time to wrap up."

"Now there really isn't a single one left to kill..."

"At least, not in this area..."

They ate dinner at the temporary base.

Takayanagi had brought a pile of boxed meals, reheated everything that could be heated, and covered two tables pushed together with them.

The evacuees they had rescued were nearby too.

They still couldn't leave the colony, but they no longer had to kill one another for points. Their lives, at least, were safe.

The boxed meals tasted mediocre.

The rice was hard, the fried food had gone soggy, and the sauce was so salty it was as though the cook had a grudge against salt. Still, Long Xi ate quickly, his chopsticks barely stopping.

After all, unlike the major battles of the past few days, this had only been physical labor...

After dinner, Long Xi leaned against a wall and opened his panel.

There was only a little over an hour left...

The system had already explained that once he left, this world's instance would enter a frozen state...

Though he was still reluctant to leave, his first journey into an instance was about to come to an end...

But before that, I should say a few goodbyes...

(Kids, I won...)

(Although I haven't finished all my exams yet, I'm still willing to believe that I'll win this time...)

(Also, while I'm at it, there might be a stretch of slice-of-life coming up. Do you all like reading that? If not, I'll fast-forward through it and write the fights.)