Suguru Geto stood where he was.
"The Queen of Curses..."
His gaze fell on Yuta Okkotsu and Rika, the curve of his lips still composed.
But the air behind him had already begun to distort.
Suguru Geto raised a hand.
"Since you like them big."
Before he finished speaking, a blackish-purple rift split open in the space behind him.
A Special Grade curse squeezed out of it.
The thing had no definite shape, resembling a constantly churning sphere woven from countless grayish-white limbs.
An open mouth grew at the end of every limb, its densely packed teeth ceaselessly opening and closing.
"Then try this."
The spherical curse made a very low sound.
It was a deep, scalp-prickling whimper, as though hundreds of mouths were making it at once.
It rolled toward Rika, its enormous shadow almost swallowing her.
"You want to hurt Yuta...?"
Rika's originally vacant gaze abruptly froze.
Then a fury that seemed capable of burning everything in the world to ashes erupted in her eyes.
"I'll kill you!!"
She did not dodge. Instead, she roared and charged into that writhing mass of flesh.
Her small, bandage-wrapped hand plunged into the Cursed Spirit's thickest core. Her five fingers clenched viciously, crushing its grayish-white outer skin.
She did not crush it with a Cursed Technique, but used the most primitive, most brutal method, as though tearing apart a rag.
Rip!
"ROOOAAAR!!"
With a tremendous sound like leather ripping, a huge gash was forcibly torn through the spherical curse.
Hundreds of limbs convulsed wildly, their mouths letting out shrill screams, but Rika gave it no chance to reassemble.
She used both hands, pulling in opposite directions and viciously tearing the curse's body apart.
Muscle fibers snapped, skeletal structures collapsed, and grayish-white flesh splattered like a torrential downpour.
Rika flung half of