Would you still remain unmoved?! Li Shunchen!! Answer me!

"Creeeak-"

With a teeth-grating scrape, the village chief shoved the rotten wooden door open.

There was no enormous Grade 1 Cursed Spirit as imagined, nor any horrifying scene of flesh and blood flying everywhere.

What greeted your eyes was a small, empty, dark room, reeking of feces, urine, and blood. Right in its center stood a narrow wooden cage, filthy and no better than a dog crate.

Two skeletal little girls were locked tightly inside. They wore ragged clothes, and their exposed skin was covered in bruises, whip marks, and burns of every size.

At that moment, they clung tightly to each other like two frightened kittens. Through their tangled hair, they stared fixedly at the firelight outside the door, their eyes filled with utter terror and despair toward this world.

Suguru Geto stood outside the door, his figure like a statue frozen in place.

His eyes, which always held a gentle smile, now had violently constricted pupils. All the color visibly drained from his face, leaving it paler and colder than frost.

He drew a deep breath and pressed hard against his throbbing brow. In an intensely restrained voice that sounded ready to snap at any moment, he asked the village chief beside him.

"...What is this?"

"What do you mean, what?"

The village chief questioned him with a puzzled expression, pointing at the two girls in the cage as though it were only natural, his tone full of disgust.

"Master, those two are the culprits behind this whole string of Spirited Away incidents!"

"No!"

Suguru Geto's voice abruptly rose, a trace of teeth-gritting fury entering his tone.

"We were just about to find what caused the incidents in the village! These are clearly just two children..."

"They're not children! There's something wrong with their heads!"

The village chief loudly argued back without yielding, even turning to point at a deeply wrinkled old woman among the crowd watching outside.

"They've attacked the villagers over and over with those unbelievable monster powers! That old woman's grandson was nearly killed by them just a few days ago! Everyone can testify!"

At those words, the slightly older, short-haired girl inside the wooden cage jerked her head up.

Agitated, she tried to argue back, but even the movement of her mouth tugged at the wound on her face, which was deep enough to expose the flesh. Her expression twisted with intense anger and pain.

"That was because-they were the ones who..."

"Shut up! You monster!"

Before the girl could finish, the equally furious village chief interrupted her by kicking the wooden cage hard.

His aged face flushed red, the village chief spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and cursed viciously.

"Your parents were just like you, monsters that brought misfortune! If we'd known you'd cause so much trouble, we should have strangled you when you were still babies!"

"..."

The instant the words "babies" and "kill" left the village chief's mouth, all the air in the room seemed to have been sucked out.

Suguru Geto slowly lowered the hand pressed against his brow. He raised his right hand, his index fingertip moving slightly, and a mass of pitch-black cursed energy instantly gathered, taking the form of a small, low-level cursed spirit with furry antennae.

The cursed spirit slipped through the gaps in the wooden cage and gently settled on the two girls' shoulders.

"D-don't... don't be afraid."

But when he turned his head, the expression on his face had changed completely.

At that moment, the string called the "Greater Good" within Suguru Geto's heart snapped completely.

There was no more struggle in his mind, no more confusion. He recalled your cruel warning by the vending machine: if even newborn babies had to be disposed of like garbage for the so-called "Greater Good," what kind of hell would that world become?

But now, looking at these "monkeys" who caged and abused their own kind, looking at these non-sorcerers who declared so self-righteously that they "should have killed them as babies"...

Only one cold, insane thought remained in Suguru Geto's heart. If this is the price...

If this is the hell that must be endured to build a paradise without cursed spirits, with only sorcerers...

Then my future self can bear all these sins.

Suguru Geto was so furious that he laughed. It was an extraordinarily radiant smile, yet filled with endless killing intent. He turned and spoke to the village chief, who was still prattling on.

"I understand the situation. It's too cramped in here. Let's talk outside first."

Oblivious, the village chief thought the "master" was finally going to perform his rites. He nodded repeatedly and led the villagers back out into the clearing.

The moment Suguru Geto stepped over the wooden hut's threshold, the false smile vanished completely from his face.

He raised his hand. Immense cursed energy gathered wildly in his palm like a volcano about to erupt. He was going to use Cursed Spirit Manipulation to crush the foul-mouthed village chief before him and every monkey present into bloody pulp in an instant.

Yet nothing happened.

The swarm of cursed spirits Suguru Geto had expected to blot out the sky did not appear. The cursed energy gathered in his palm seemed to encounter an invisible, absolutely motionless wall. The instant it spilled beyond his body, it strangely dissipated like melting snow.

His pupils contracted. He immediately detected the extremely faint yet omnipresent cursed residue in the air... yours.

Suguru Geto whipped his head around and glared fixedly at you beside the door.

"Shunchen... what did you do?"

You pushed up your slipping glasses. Their lenses reflected the light of the torches in the villagers' hands, concealing the emotions in your eyes.

You drew a deep breath, your tone infuriatingly calm.

"Cursed Technique Reversal: Nagi Daytime Prohibition. This is the reverse of my innate technique, Phantom Parade. It can no longer copy other people's techniques, but within a certain range, it can forcibly cancel out the frequencies of techniques I've already copied and mastered."

"Simply put, Geto, as long as I stand here and keep using Nagi Daytime Prohibition, your Cursed Spirit Manipulation won't work."

Suguru Geto froze. He stared at you in disbelief, shocked not only that you had developed such an outrageously powerful cursed technique reversal in so little time, but even more by what you were doing now.

"You're... revealing your technique?"

To achieve absolute suppression of his Cursed Spirit Manipulation, you had even gone so far as to use Revealing One's Cursed Technique to raise the baseline of your technique's effectiveness.

The villagers outside the room exchanged bewildered looks. They could not understand any of your talk about "techniques" and "reversals." All they saw was the two "masters" suddenly turning on each other.

"What are you doing right now?!"

Suguru Geto finally lost control of the rage within him. Pointing at the ignorant villagers, he screamed hysterically at you.

"Are you going to protect these monkeys?! Even after seeing what was inside that door with your own eyes, would you still remain unmoved?! Li Shunchen!! Answer me!!"

Faced with his deafening demands, you abruptly raised your head, equally undisguised fury burning in your eyes.

"Of course I saw what they did! I'm just as disgusted and angry as you are!"

You abruptly stepped forward and shouted back.

"But that's exactly why I have to stop you! No matter how rotten this world is, order is necessary! There are laws and rules to judge and punish them. It shouldn't be me, and it certainly shouldn't be you! Once you kill these ordinary people here today for so-called justice... Geto, you really won't be able to turn back!"

Before your words had faded, the ground beneath your feet shattered with a crash. You shot forward at a terrifying speed, closing in to subdue Suguru Geto, who could not use his technique, through hand-to-hand combat.

"Don't disgust me with that high-and-mighty righteousness!"

Suguru Geto roared. Facing your ferocious attempt to grapple him, he did not retreat even half a step.

The dull thud of fists striking flesh exploded through the night air. Though his technique had been sealed, Suguru Geto was a monster known as a "close-combat mage."

He easily deflected your swinging punch, then landed an exceptionally vicious side kick squarely in your abdomen.

You grunted and flew backward, crashing hard into a dead tree trunk and snapping it.

Suguru Geto did not pursue you. Standing where he was, he made several more attempts to summon cursed spirits, but under your Nagi Daytime Prohibition, his cursed energy still vanished like a clay ox sinking into the sea, neutralized and dismantled every time.

He finally realized that as long as you remained conscious, he could not kill these monkeys. To slaughter the village, he would have to deal with you first.

"You don't actually think... you can beat me in hand-to-hand combat, do you?"

Suguru Geto looked coldly down at you as you climbed out of the wreckage, his tone filled with absolute confidence and coldness.

You coughed twice and spat out bloody saliva. That kick had nearly broken your ribs, but in the next second, Suguru Geto's mocking expression froze on his face.

In the torchlight, he saw with astonishment that the deeply sunken bruise on your abdomen and the blood at the corner of your mouth were rapidly healing at a visible rate.

In less than two seconds, your injuries had completely healed.

"What...?"

Suguru Geto's narrow eyes abruptly widened, his face full of disbelief.

"Reverse Cursed Technique? How is that possible?! Doesn't your technique only let you replicate and maintain one ability at a time?!"

Suguru Geto thought that since you were maintaining a cursed technique reversal to suppress Cursed Spirit Manipulation, you could not possibly "simulate" Reverse Cursed Technique at the same time to heal yourself! It was an absolute contradiction!

You wiped the remaining blood from your chin, your gaze as sharp as a blade. Pushing off hard, you charged at Suguru Geto again.

"Geto, you're strong. I know that better than anyone."

Your fist tore through the air, hurtling toward his face with unflinching resolve. Alongside the rush of your punch, your utterly calm voice rang out in his ears.

"But when I used a cursed technique reversal of my very own just now, you should have realized."

"I no longer need to rely on 'simulation.' Now, I've truly and completely mastered Reverse Cursed Technique!"