Suguru Geto widened his eyes, quickly adjusting his focus in the dim light.
Then, as though drawn by a magnet, his gaze locked onto the enormous shadow on the ceiling whose presence was impossible to ignore-the Gnawing Rat Duke.
He studied it intently, then began "plotting out loud" right in front of it:
"Born from humanity's disgust toward rats, fear of disease, the anxiety of surviving in slums, and the collective guilt of doing nothing... it's definitely a special grade!"
"It feels strangely familiar." Dio propped his chin on the hand that wasn't holding his blade, looking thoughtful. "Are things the whole world hates, like cockroaches and rats, especially likely to spawn special grade cursed spirits?"
"Probably. Humanity's collective fears are the most likely to give rise to powerful cursed spirits.
"The more universal and primal the fear, the more tenacious and 'vigorous' the curse it produces.
"Anyway, are you planning to subdue it?"
"No." Dio waved dismissively, undisguised distaste on his face. "I'm only after the Elephant God anyway. This cursed spirit is pretty ugly. I don't really like it. Want to take it?"
"No problem." Suguru Geto looked rather pleased. "The more special grade cursed spirits, the better. Especially a type like this, which looks particularly suited to fighting in swarms and can even transform ordinary rats. Its strategic value is immense."
Before he had finished speaking, the black swarm surged toward the two of them at the entrance from every direction, like oil coming to life.
Before the tide of rats reached them, its nearly tangible cursed aura and putrid stench came crushing down like an invisible wall.
Suguru Geto flicked his right hand, and the three sections of Playful Cloud sliced through the stagnant air with a sharp whistle.
At the same time, he closed the fingers of his left hand around empty air, and two distinctly different fluctuations of cursed energy tore through space and descended.
Incarnate Tamamo-no-Mae materialized ahead and to his left, its figure as hazy as smoke.
It deployed a Simple Domain, an invisible barrier covering a ten-meter radius. Within it, the rats swiftly withered as though drained of their vitality, their fur falling away and their skeletons laid bare.
Incarnate Taira no Masakado descended at the same time. Gripping its sword in both hands, it twisted at the waist and unleashed a vicious diagonal slash.
The blade, wreathed in cursed energy, smashed into the ground and plowed a furrow more than half a meter deep.
The shock wave spread outward. Every rat within four meters of the slash's path was blasted into a bloody haze and bone fragments before it could even squeal.
A stable spatial passage opened beneath Suguru Geto's feet at the same time. Hundreds of giant centipedes poured out like a tide and plunged into a brutal battle with the rats.
The scraping of carapaces, the squealing of rats, and the snapping of limbs rang out without pause.
Cursed Spirit Manipulation allowed the user to reinforce the cursed spirits under their control with cursed energy.
Essentially, this was a derivative application in which the sorcerer used the connection established by the cursed technique to channel cursed energy meant for reinforcing their own body directly into a cursed spirit.
If the cursed spirit itself was sufficiently capable and could independently reinforce itself with cursed energy, the energy supplied externally by the sorcerer would stack with its internal power, producing a second layer of reinforcement driven from both within and without.
Even an originally unimpressive grade 3 cursed spirit could, under this stacked reinforcement, briefly attain a terrifying level of offensive power sufficient to break through a special grade sorcerer's defenses.
Using them against these rats, which were nowhere near as strong as grade 3 cursed spirits, was naturally more than enough.
But there were simply too many rats.
Mumbai had over ten million permanent residents. Amid all its hidden filth, how could its rats number merely a million?
The cleared areas were filled again in an instant by the swarms pouring in behind them.
They crawled from every crack in the walls, ceiling, and drainpipes, as though the entire underground space were a living organ secreting rats.
Suguru Geto was already spinning Playful Cloud into a black whirlwind.
The first section swept across, smashing seven or eight lunging, reinforced rats in half at the waist.
Turning with the momentum, he flipped his wrist and suddenly whipped the tip of the third section outward. With the force of a cracking whip, it struck like a scorpion's tail at a giant rat diving down from above and to the side, precisely piercing its skull.
Not a single movement was wasted. Every swing came with the dull crunch of shattering bones.
Rat corpses piled into mounds around him, only to be trampled into pulp by those coming after them.
Suguru Geto was more accustomed to dealing with larger creatures.
Apart from his Maximum Technique, he had no other wide-area attacks, and he struggled to adjust to swarming creatures far shorter than a wheel.
Sweeping strikes were most effective against the rats; thrusts and vertical blows covered far less ground.
If it worked, he would keep using it-
Suguru Geto spun through a series of sweeping strikes, the wind from his staff cutting down every rat in the fan-shaped area ahead like a scythe and clearing a patch of ground.
Then he fed a dozen or so low-grade cursed spirits into a vortex and launched them like rockets, instantly clearing the ground within a twenty-meter radius.
The distance gradually closed. The Gnawing Rat Duke remained hanging upside down from the ceiling, "watching" the battlefield with its hollow eye sockets.
Just then, Dio did something that made the corner of Suguru Geto's eye twitch-he actually lay back!
Behind him, the golden shikigami, the World, silently appeared. With its knees slightly bent and both arms extended, it used precise mechanical positioning to form a temporary humanoid "recliner" in midair.
Dio leaned back onto it in utter leisure, even crossing his legs, as though the bloody slaughter before him were nothing more than a dull play.
"You're already here, so don't just stand there... no, lie there and watch!"
Suguru Geto swept three lunging giant rats away with one strike. Catching sight of this out of the corner of his eye, he nearly lost control of his breathing.
The rats attacked in ever-fiercer waves. Even he was beginning to feel the strain of the constant expenditure.
"The rats are endless, so we should take down their leader first, shouldn't we?" As though he had only just woken up, Dio slowly rose from his seat in empty air. "I'll help you drag it down."
He loosened his neck and wrists, his joints giving faint cracks.
The next instant, cursed energy flowed at high speed, as though through fiber-optic broadband, evenly coating his entire body.
Then Dio took a step-
Bang!
A clear shoeprint sank into the ground beneath his foot. He vanished from where he stood, leaving only an expanding ring of air that blasted the approaching rats into the air.
The relentlessly surging tide of rats split like waves cleaved by an invisible blade, curling back to either side, breaking apart, and scattering.
The wind pressure generated by his supersonic movement alone was enough to crush the rats in his path into pulp.
Upon reaching the spot directly beneath the Gnawing Rat Duke, Dio unleashed cursed energy from the soles of his feet. The ground exploded with a roar, and he shot upward like a cannonball, sweeping his greatsword horizontally.
Yet the instant his blade touched the Gnawing Rat Duke, the cursed spirit collapsed like a liquid into countless rats, which pattered down like a filthy rainstorm.
Immediately afterward, the rats rapidly gathered several dozen meters away, merging and reforming into the cursed spirit's twisted shape.
Dio's expression did not change. In midair, he precisely stepped onto a "surface" formed by the flowing air and used it to launch himself a second time.
There was no sluggishness from inertia in his movements. Trailing a blurred afterimage and a brief sonic boom, he flashed before the newly reassembled Gnawing Rat Duke once again, like an elusive gust of wind!
At that very instant-
Another mass of cursed energy, so enormous it inspired terror, abruptly entered everyone's perception.
The Elephant God!? It came too?!
Before you continue