[At your utterly icy question, the Cursed Spirit showed not the slightest guilt or apprehension. Instead, he burst into delighted laughter, as though he had heard the greatest joke in the world.]
["Hahahaha... wonderful! Are you finally willing to talk to me?"]
[His mismatched eyes gleamed with childlike, pure curiosity and cruelty as he tilted his head and studied you.]
["Does something like this really need a special reason?"]
["Do humans need a reason to step on ants?"]
["Or are you planning to claim the moral high ground and condemn me?"]
[With that, he leaned forward slightly, staring intently at your face with keen interest as though admiring a rare work of art, trying to catch a crack of uncontrolled anger in your glacial expression.]
[But his provocative words did not anger you at all.]
[Like a precise, cold machine, you maintained the outward confrontation while secretly pushing "Phantom Parade" to its limit, continuing your deep analysis of his bizarre Cursed Energy structure.]
[Meanwhile, to guard against a sudden attack from the hidden accomplice who had erected the barrier, you multitasked, silently equipping the passive skill "Wide-Angle Vision."]
[Immediately afterward, you activated "Time Perception Expansion."]
[In your subjective world, everything around you, including the sewage dripping through the air and the Cursed Spirit's fluttering gray-blue hair, instantly became extraordinarily slow.]
[You did everything you could to use this extended subjective time to suppress the fury in your mind that threatened to burn away your reason, locking it in the deepest recesses.]
[Because you knew better than anyone that the coming battle was no joke. Against a powerful enemy of this caliber and a meticulously arranged death trap, you could not afford even the slightest emotional mistake.]
[In fact, deep inside, your extremely rational mind understood perfectly well that choosing to