You can read early chapters on my [P].[A].[T].[R].[E].[O].[N].
Link: [email protected]/Arson09
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"What happened?!" the beast thought incoherently. He had just been in the tunnels, and now he was suspended in mid-air 300 feet above the ground.
"That human..." The beast gained some coherence, recalling Ethan's face. Then came the memory of what the human had asked him: 'Where is Mahito?'
"How does he know that name?!" The beast spoke out loud, a flicker of surprise and worry in his tone. "Wait, did that human hit me? What an incredible speed. Is this the sorcerer he warned me about? Is this Park?"
A conversation the beast had had with the humanity Curse surfaced next.
"You are saying a single human poses a threat to our entire existence," the beast had asked, looking at the shadowy silhouette of Mahito.
"Yes, Ethan Park could be dangerous," Mahito had replied, though his malicious smile had not left the curse's face even when he talked about the potential end of his species.
Before the beast could do anything to save himself from his current predicament, a small rock that had traveled with the Curse on his upward journey
flickered, and in its place appeared the Divine General Mahoraga. The General gripped both of the beast's antlers and delivered a brutal front kick to his stomach, resulting in a brutal mutilation of the beast's antlers.
Grunt! Grunt!
And the beast was launched downward towards the bottom of a hill, though Mahoraga remained suspended mid-air.
"MAHHHHH!" Finally, the General let out a bellowing roar as he threw the antlers away and flickered out of view.
Down below, on the edge, Ethan had watched the display. "Someone is cranky..." he commented as Mahoraga dissolved back into his shadow.
Ethan jumped into the dust cloud that formed after the beast had landed, spiderwebbing the entire rocky floor. With a swift release of cursed energy, Park blasted the dust and smoke out of the area.
Though as soon as he landed in the center, the beast was nowhere in sight. Suddenly, Ethan's eyes locked onto the tree trunks.
The towering silhouettes of monstrous spiders began to crawl out from the dark canopy, their segmented legs clicking together. Along with the giant monstrosity, hundreds of tiny, pale black arachnids began to erupt from the bark, carpeting the forest floor in a skittering wave that advanced toward his boots.
"Time for you to die, Sorcerer!" the beast's voice echoed from around the forest. "You may have been born stronger than other humans... but in the end, you are just like all the rest of them. You are no match for my cursed technique. Inside this barrier, I am effectively a God..."
Ethan remained unbothered by the advancing threat. He glanced sideways. "If I had a nickel for every time I encountered a curse who fancied himself a God... I would have two nickels. Which isn't much, but it's weird that it happened twice..."
'Is he looking at me?!' the beast thought frantically as he adjusted his position. Ethan's eyes followed his movement. 'How is this possible... I should be hidden. Is my technique failing me?'
'His cursed technique revolves around nightmares and illusions. That implies... he isn't the creator of this barrier,' Ethan concluded. As the vibrant tail of his Kitsune emerged from his shadow, he continued,
"Illusionary techniques of such a low level won't work against someone like me..."
Ethan added as the spiders that were about to close in on him vanished from their place. Lady had done her work, and as usual, it was phenomenal, as she even had the beast trapped within his own mind.
Inside the beast's mind, he was reliving his earliest of memories. The memory of a brave woodsman.
A long, long time ago, in the darkened forest, the beast moved along the forest floor without making any sound. He was following the light... the light of the lantern.
He had given the humans trapped inside an ancient Fromville several lanterns, and he had given a lantern to the woodsman personally.
The lantern worked similarly to the talismans of the current town. As long as humans were in the lantern's light, he couldn't harm them. That was the binding vow he had used to enhance his technique to another level. The only trick was... only the beast possessed the oil that could keep the lantern lit.
The woodsman was collecting an urgent supply of wood. As the weather favored rain in the coming morning, it was crucial they had dry wood.
The beast lurked from behind one of the distant trees, looking at the human who was brave enough to traverse during the night with him around.
"It seems you are running out of oil, woodsman..." the beast spoke from beyond where the lantern light ended. "Why not let me take the lantern for a while?"
"BEGONE, beast..." the woodsman answered his call without looking back. "I have fought you for the lantern before... and I will fight you again."
"No need for violence, woodsman..." the beast replied in a silky tone. "Now, what direction did those children go?"
The beast was asking about the pair of children that had been the latest prisoners of Fromville. The woodsman didn't give him what he wanted.
"Don't you care about keeping the lantern lit? Don't you care about your daughter's soul?" the beast tried manipulation as he circled around the dazed woodsman, using the man's daughters as tokens in his favor.
The woodsman looked down; he didn't want his daughters to die. He wanted them to live a full life like he had. He wanted them to have families... to have children... to be loved. But he also didn't want to snuff out the lives of those pair of children that had made it here recently.
"One cannot trade the souls of children like they are mere... tokens. There has to be another way," the woodsman pleaded with the beast.
"NO," the beast announced. "There is only me. There is only my way. There is only the forest... and there is only surrender."
Before the woodsman could reply, the beast started retreating. "Be sure to keep the lantern lit... or your daughter's flame will go out... forever."
Seeing it retreating, the woodsman shouted, "Beast! Beast!" But in response, the cursed spirit only sang his favorite song.
"TRALALA LALALA, chop the wood to light the fire..." came the distant melody.
Some days later, The Beast had, of course, killed the woodsman's daughter along with the pair of children from that day. Though, he made sure to keep the woodsman alive so he could watch.
Now, the beast loomed over a drunken woodsman who sat beside his daughter's rotting corpse.
The lantern had started to flicker. There was no oil left. The last remaining oil was in the lantern, and it was running out fast.
'It wouldn't last the night,' the woodsman thought grimly as he stood.
"I curse you, Beast! A day will come when you will be as helpless as I have been today. You will plead for mercy, like I have, but just like today, it will not be heard," the woodsman declared as he tipped over the lantern, and the flames went out. "You will die the most horrible of deaths."
Those were the woodsman's last words.
"You will die the most horrible of deaths.
You will die the most horrible of deaths."
And those very same words echoed inside the beast's mind again and again until they effectively blotted out all other thoughts.
After what felt like days to the curse, the echo stopped, and the beast was back in the real world once more. He looked up and saw a human with an eight-handled wheel hovering above his head.
"Run," Ethan simply said as he charged forward, continuously activating Boogie Woogie to change position.
The curse stood taller than Ethan's frame. He observed Ethan's march for a moment, before the word 'Run' registered in his brain and he complied. The Curse understood instinctively, This man is more savage than Beast.
'He and his shikigami can swap places with inanimate objects too,' the beast observed. 'I don't see the winged shikigami. Why is he marching towards me? Isn't he a summoner? Is he going to fight me in close combat?'
"ETHAN PARK!! IS THERE ANYTHING YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF DOING?!" the beast asked rhetorically as he flew in the opposite direction from where Ethan was closing in.
The curse prepared to dodge and counter the sorcerer he was facing, though as he looked back up, he saw a sight, a sight he was familiar with: a flock of shikigami birds that looked awfully like his murder of crows.
Afterall, Everyone who ever entered Fromville had encountered a murder of ravens as their welcoming party.
Yes, Ethan had discharged Raiju's Barrage, the same attack that had vaporized Mahoraga from multiple times during his taming rituals.
A single Raiju strike was capable of obliterating a special grade's defenses, and the beast was being targeted by a murder of them.
'What the hell?! Crows?!' the beast questioned as he flew with speed across the forest. 'They are following me,' he noted.
The irony of the situation didn't elude the beast. He had hunted humans in this very forest for centuries on end, and now he was being hunted in the same forest by someone he couldn't harm.
"Is this what they felt?! Is this what he felt?!" the beast spoke, recalling the woodsman, who had faced him with nothing but bare hands.
"Such helplessness," he added, looking around forward. A moment later, the Raiju barrage that had separated at the beginning came from the front, where the beast was heading. "How could the woodsman stand against someone like me, knowing he would be dying? Just how?!"
The beast didn't get his answer as multiple Raiju hit their mark, creating circular holes in the curse's form, spewing out purple gore and guts.
"I know you tried your best, but that's what makes it so disappointing," Ethan said as he observed the beast's battered form. It hadn't died, of course; Park had aimed the Raiju to strike non-lethal spots only.
"Partially Summoning: Tiger Funeral Reversal: Po: Cursed Spirit Manipulation," he muttered, and the beast started dissolving around him, swirling toward Ethan.
"It hurts, hurts...., I didn't mean to, Please...." the curse spoke incoherently.
Ethan's focus remained on his hands, where a dense core of cursed spirit energy was materializing.
A bright flash later, the ancient cursed spirit canonically known as the Beast was exorcised and absorbed by Ethan Park.
Ethan dropped the condensed orb into his shadow, where Po waited, and a few seconds later, the Beast emerged back from Ethan's shadow.
"You can speak coherently, can you not?" Ethan asked the cursed spirit.
"I possess a higher level of sentience than most of my kind," the beast answered truthfully.
"You like the sound of your own voice, don't you? Next time, a simple 'yes' would suffice," Ethan instructed, and the beast lowered its head in submission.
"Satisfy me with your answers... or my shikigami will have a feast," Ethan added as the Divine Dogs flickered out across the distant hill, and the Kitsune emerged from Ethan's shadow and started nuzzling Ethan's hand. "Do you understand what I am telling you?"
"Unfortunately, I do. I will answer truthfully," the beast complied.
"Where is Mahito?" Ethan asked, clenching his fist.
The beast looked at the man before him and answered, "I don't know where he is exactly... but he isn't here."
'A curse under Cursed Spirit Manipulation cannot lie to its master...' Ethan sighed out, unclenching his fist, which had gone white.
"What exactly is this place? It's not a simple barrier. Tell me everything you know," Ethan asked next.
"This place has been many things across eons... a sanctuary... a meeting ground... but in the last two decades, it has been used for another purpose," the beast provided.
"What is it?" Ethan questioned.
"It's a...Storage, Storage for Hundreds of millions of Dormant Cursed spirits,"