[Before long, as the footsteps of your uninvited group broke the deathly silence, a rustling stir spread among the dilapidated houses around you.]
[Like a pack of hyenas catching the scent of rotting flesh and blood, a scrawny old man with a deeply wrinkled face and a shabby, yellowed kimono hurried out of the shadows, leading several extremely wary villagers armed with rusty farming tools.]
[The old man leading them was the village chief. He practically stumbled up to you, his face, covered in deep furrows and age spots, twisting violently.]
[His expression mingled the wild joy of someone grasping a lifeline, a pathological fear of something, and an utterly absurd malice that seemed to consider itself justified.]
["You... you three must be the 'masters' sent from Tokyo! Wonderful, wonderful! I never imagined you would be so young. Have you finally come to deal with those two monsters?!"]
[The village chief's voice was hoarse and shrill, as grating as nails scraping a blackboard.]
[At those words, Suguru Geto's already slightly furrowed brows instantly drew tighter.]
[With the keen instincts and extensive experience of a Special Grade Sorcerer, he immediately sensed something profoundly wrong.]
[The village chief's expression and tone when he mentioned "those two monsters" were simply too strange.]
[When ordinary people faced Cursed Spirits, the vast majority should have shown pure, uncomprehending, utter terror of death. But the eyes of this village chief and the villagers behind him were filled less with fear of terrifying Cursed Spirits than with a condescending "disgust" and "hatred."]
[This clearly did not fit the mission brief the higher-ups had designated as a "Grade 1 Cursed Spirit exorcism."]
[Suguru Geto kept both hands in his pockets, but his gaze turned sharp as a blade as he fixed it on the village chief and demanded