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--<<>>--
Jubei started walking after saying his part.
He turned on his heel and headed toward the far edge of the estate grounds, where a large wooden shed sat along the tree line like something that had been deliberately placed as far as possible from the main estate.
I could see it from here. A heavy structure, reinforced with thick beams and what looked like iron brackets along the walls. One door, two guards guarding it.
Guess that's today's lesson.
With that thought, I followed Jubei.
Then I noticed the other kids still standing.
I turned around, and saw my classmates were still there. They were standing together with pale faces, staring at Jubei's with horror.
"What?"
Tomoe stepped forward, leaned in close, and whispered.
"Don't you know about that shed?"
"No, this is the first time I've seen it."
Tomoe's eyes widened as if I'd just said I am his father. (VADAR)
"It's the shed of monsters! We've heard sounds coming from there. Horrible sounds. Like something scratching at the walls from the inside."
Saya nodded. "One of the older kids said he walked past it at night and heard something screaming."
Daichi crossed his arms, but did not walk up. "I'm not scared."
He was absolutely scared.
I looked at the shed. Then back at them.
"Interesting."
And I turned and walked after Jubei.
Tomoe gasped. "Wait for us!"
My classmates ran after me. After all, no one wants to be out done by a four year old, right?
***
As we got closer and closer, I felt it.
The cursed energy.
It bled out of the shed like fire from a furnace, leaking through gaps.
And inside that energy, I could see the shape of whatever was producing it.
My eyes widened, not from fear, but with shock.
I had seen cursed energy in humans. It looked structured, and flowed through a circuit, which was different for everyone. (This is from a 6 eyes point of view, which I made up.)
This, however, was nothing like that.
The energy inside that shed was raw. It writhed and moved with no rhythm, just a churning mass of negativity compressed into a physical form.
I kept walking, as I was still processing what I had just seen.
Jubei glanced back at me with a knowing grin.
"You can see it already, can't you?"
I nodded.
He whistled. "The Six Eyes really are something else."
Then he explained.
"That," he said, pointing at the shed, "is a cursed spirit."
Behind me, the kids gasped.
"We're going to fight a curse?!" Tomoe's voice cracked with fear.
"Yup," Jubei said, without turning around.
"But we just started!"
"And?"
Tomoe had no answer for that.
I barely heard the exchange. My attention was locked on the shed, and on the thing inside it. The closer we got, the more detail the Six Eyes fed me, and the more my stomach twisted.
***
Soon, we reached the shed.
The two guards at the door straightened when they saw Jubei approaching and bowed.
"Welcome, Commander. Here for a class?"
"Yeah," Jubei nodded. "The usual."
They nodded and unlocked the door.
As the door swung open, cold air rushed out.
The kids behind me flinched.
But my eyes never left that thing.
"Now," Jubei said, turning to face us, his back to the open doorway. "Before we go in, let me ask you all something."
His voice pulled me away from the thing.
"How many of you know about the grades?"
Saya raised her hand. "It's like ranks, right?"
"Correct." Jubei held up a finger. "The grading system is used to classify sorcerers, cursed tools, and cursed spirits by their strength. You start at Grade Four, the lowest. Then you move up, grade three, grade two, then grade one."
"Wow," Tomoe gasped. The fear was temporarily forgotten.
"But, there is a rank above Grade One."
Daichi's eyes went wide. "Even above Grade One?"
Jubei nodded. "Yup. Special Grade. The absolute strongest. Sorcerers and cursed spirits alike. The ones that operate on a completely different level from everyone else."
The kids were quiet, taking all the information in.
Saya then asked the question I was thinking about. "What grade are you, Commander? And what about the clan head?"
Jubei smiled proudly. "I'm a solid Grade One sorcerer. Your clan head, Soran, is a top-tier Grade One."
I wonder how rare Special Grade is, I thought. And how close my father is to crossing that line.
"Now then," Jubei said, with total seriousness. "You are all going to face a cursed spirit."
"WHAT?!" The scream hit my ears from six directions at once, realized Jubei was not joking earlier.
"Sensei, we can't-"
"We're going to die-"
"I don't want to-"
"SHUT IT."
Silence.
"I am a Grade One sorcerer. Nothing in that shed is going to kill you while I'm standing here. The point of this exercise is not to fight. It's to overcome your fear. To understand what a cursed spirit is, so that the first time you face one for real, you don't freeze up and die."
The children nodded slowly.
I, on the other hand, said nothing. I wasn't worried about safety.
What I was worried about was the feeling that had been growing in my chest since we'd gotten close. The one I couldn't find a name for.
Just then, I watched Jubei's cursed energy shift. It moved from his core outward, spreading across his body, and then fully coating his body.
He looked at me as he caught me staring.
"This," he said, flexing one hand, "is how you reinforce your body with cursed energy. You'll learn it eventually. For now, just watch."
"Understood."
Joke's on him, I already understood how to do it.
I will try it later.
"Follow me," Jubei said, and we did.
The inside of the shed was dark.
Not completely. Torches were lined on the walls at regular intervals.
The air inside was cold, and the smell? Somehow was even worse.
The deeper we walked, the worse it felt.
Finally, we reached the cage.
Iron bars as thick as my arm, bolted to the stone floor and ceiling.
And there was more. Covering the surface of the cage were paper tags.
A huge amount of them. Each one was inscribed with characters I couldn't read, but I could see the cursed energy woven into them, which was forming a web of interlocking barriers.
"Is this a barrier?" I asked.
"Bingo," Jubei nodded. "Talismans imbued with cursed energy. They suppress and contain whatever's inside. Without them, even a low-grade curse could break out of a cage like this."
Just then, I saw it happen.
The thing moved.
A dark creature rushed from the far corner of the cage, slamming into the barrier with a force that shook the iron bars.
The barrier glowed, keeping the thing contained.
The kids screamed.
Saya grabbed Tomoe as Haruto dropped to his knees. Miya threw herself over him.
Daichi stumbled backward, his tough act breaking completely.
But I didn't move.
Because I was looking at..... that thing.
And it was looking at me.
Four eyes, glowing red. Set into a face that shouldn't be working. It was a grotesque, misshapen skull covered in something that looked like rotting flesh.
Its body was worse.
Seven limbs. Each one of them was long like the legs of a spider. The color? Dark as charcoal, covered in the same rotting flesh.
The more I looked at it, the more my stomach lurched.
Not from fear.
No, not even close. I finally figured it out.
It was from pure disgust.
Just a few hours ago, I'd stood on a grassy plain and felt peace and maybe happiness for the first time.
The mountains.
The sky.
The wind.
The world in its glory, and it had cracked something open inside me that I'd thought was sealed forever.
I had looked at the world and found it beautiful.
And now I was looking at this thing.
This abomination. This tumor of collected misery, stitched together from the worst of what people felt and given legs and eyes and hunger. It existed because people suffered. It existed to harm humans. It fed on the residue of pain, and it would create more pain if it could. That was its entire purpose.
It was the opposite of what I had come to love.
It was disgusting. Plain and simple as that.
So disgusting that something inside me shifted.
"How dare…"
The words came out of me before I could stop them.
But Jubei heard it. He turned to look at me and for the first time since I'd met him, the old man's grin was nowhere in sight.
But I could care less right now.
I stared at the creature behind the barrier, as its four red eyes stared back.
"How dare something like this exist in this beautiful world?"
--<<>>--
Yeah, our MC is going to be a generational hater.
And I know it's a little short but I had to cut it right here for the dramatic effect. But I will make that up with the next chapter, which trust me, will be super cold👀👀.