[And so, the cold, utterly impartial gears of time quietly ground forward another year.]
[At a moment without any warning, the system's emotionless, mechanical notification arrived right on schedule, ringing clearly in the depths of your mind where no one could peer, mercilessly reminding you that a new year had begun.]
[A card emitting a faint glow then appeared on your retina.]
[Drunken Old Man's Liver [N]]
[Effect: You metabolize alcohol and drugs five times faster than an ordinary person.]
[Tactical value: Immunity to all knockout drugs, tranquilizer darts, and poison gas. An enemy thinks a high-dose tranquilizer dart could bring down an elephant, but when it hits you, you only feel "a little tipsy," then use that buzz to fight even harder.]
[Your eyes merely swept indifferently over the card's name. Even the seemingly entertaining detailed descriptions below failed to stir the slightest interest in examining them.]
[With a slight shift of thought, as though casually brushing a speck of dust from your lapel, you tossed this N-Rank Card straight to the bottom of your deck.]
[Because you knew perfectly well that you would probably never again have any opportunity to be reduced to relying on a card like this.]
[Yet in this seemingly unremarkable year, one event, like a fate written long ago, remained a thorn buried deep in your heart: the death of the little girl named Rika Orimoto, and the tragedy in which the boy with boundless potential, Yuta Okkotsu, unconsciously placed a terrible curse on her dead body in his utterly despairing refusal, ultimately twisting her into a "Special Grade Vengeful Cursed Spirit."]
[Long before this, through your countless late-night conversations and exchanges of intelligence, you and Kenjaku had already deduced, through interlocking chains of logic, the conditions for the birth of a Special Grade