Just as I approached the door, it creaked open.
A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out, brow furrowed. His eyes fixed warily on me.
"Master Samurai… Who are you looking for?" he asked, cautious but respectful.
His suspicion wasn't without reason. While many in Fengyu wore black robes—especially martial cultivators who trained their bodies for battle—my presence was too sudden, too close to his home, and radiated too much spiritual pressure.
Samurai, unlike spellcasters, did not wield traditional magic. They walked the Path of the Blood Pulse—training their bodies through grueling discipline, forbidden elixirs, and spiritual forging rituals. Their flesh became armor, their bones weapons, and their blood a conduit of ancestral strength.
Though not officially recognized as spellcasters, many towns employed samurai as cursed spirit hunters to reduce the burden on licensed conjurers.
However, the power imbalance between samurai and commoners often led to corruption. Some samurai used their strength to extort, threaten, or even harm civilians under the guise of duty.
This man had likely witnessed such abuse before. It explained the fear behind his respectful tone.
"There is a cursed spirit in your home," I said calmly, voice devoid of aggression. "I am not here to harm anyone. I came to purge it."
His eyes narrowed. For a second, his jaw tensed. He was trying to recall something.
Then his expression shifted.
He remembered.
A story had circulated recently—one where a samurai claimed there was a cursed spirit inside a wealthy merchant's house. The merchant, terrified for his family's safety, pleaded for help. But the samurai demanded a shameful price in return: the man's beautiful wife.
At that time, there happened to be only one samurai in Fengyu Town, and the administrator, who was a Spellbinder, would not go out for such a trivial matter, so the rich man had no choice but to agree to the samurai in humiliation for the life of his family.
As a result of the bizarre farce, the so-called samurai "uprooted" the cursed spirit and vanished without a trace, floating away like some divine savior. The following day, a true samurai happened to pass by the area. He heard rumors from the villagers and, driven by curiosity, decided to visit the wealthy man's residence to investigate. However, when he arrived, he found nothing—no lingering aura, no spiritual residue, not even a warped piece of reality left behind by a strong cursed entity.
It was strange—too clean.
To perceive cursed spirits, one must possess innate spell power, the spiritual force that connects a person to the supernatural realm. Without it, cursed spirits are entirely invisible to the naked eye. The warrior himself had no spell power. However, he was equipped with a magician-crafted spiritual lens, a precious tool that could partially bypass this limitation by synchronizing with ambient curse waves. These tools allowed ordinary individuals, even those without talent, to witness echoes of cursed beings—ghostly images, outlines, movement trails—but never their full form.
Still, even low-grade cursed spirits, once defeated, leave behind residual traces: corrupted energy particles, emotional echoes, changes in temperature or light behavior, especially when they're forcibly "uprooted." The complete absence of such signs meant only one thing—the entire event was a fabrication.
This suspicion quietly took root in the mind of the seasoned warrior. He didn't voice his thoughts aloud, not yet. His instincts urged caution. He stood before a supposed samurai, someone who claimed to have the power to exorcise cursed spirits, but gave off no aura, no spiritual presence, and left no evidence of his actions. He was a phantom cloaked in authority.
And in this kingdom, questioning those cloaked in authority could be a death sentence.
The hierarchy was clear. Samurais and Spellbinders were the two pillars that upheld the fragile peace of the realm. Their privileges far outstripped those of ordinary citizens. But among the two, magicians reigned supreme. In terms of power, they might as well have belonged to an entirely different species. To some of the colder and more merciless magician clans, ordinary people were no different from livestock—chickens, ducks, pigs, dogs—tools, really, to be used or discarded.
In especially dark cases, the price of eliminating a particularly violent cursed spirit meant the sacrifice of hundreds, even thousands, of innocents. It wasn't uncommon for entire villages to be wiped off the map just to remove a single curse node.
The strong man forced a smile, bowing his head slightly. "Sir Samurai, my home is very safe. There are no cursed spirits here."
I looked at him for a long moment, my eyes unreadable. Eventually, I returned the smile, though it didn't reach my eyes. "Forget it," I said softly.
Relief bloomed across the man's face—but it was short-lived.
The moment his muscles relaxed, he collapsed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, completely unconscious.
I stepped over his body without a second glance and entered the house.
---
Second Floor.
My eyes met those of a somewhat affluent woman, her body draped in thin, almost transparent robes. Her posture and attire were designed to provoke—but I wasn't here for her.
I didn't even spare her a proper glance. Instead, my eyes honed in on her shoulder, narrowing like a blade being drawn.
A grotesque, two-meter-long cursed spirit clung to her back—its bloated worm-like body squirmed with tight clusters of glistening tentacles. It rippled with malevolence. Its spiritual aura was wet and dense, like rotten meat.
As if it sensed that I could see it, the creature bared its malformed teeth. Rings of serrated, concentric mouthparts twisted open in a mocking grin.
"No Entry Curse," I muttered. I could feel its identity from its unique aura signature—a spiritual entity that used its presence to bar others from approaching, infesting those it possessed with paranoia, fear, and pheromonal confusion to drive away intruders.
It was of the same rank as the Fire Curse I had previously enslaved—but clearly superior in mass, vitality, and innate strength. Even within the same rank, power varied wildly. Cultivation of cursed spirits, like the humans who enslaved or battled them, followed complex gradients.
I approached silently.
The woman closed her eyes in a mix of terror and confusion. She couldn't see the cursed entity, but she could feel it in her soul. The presence behind her had begun to squirm violently.
I activated the Blood Furnace Pulse.
It surged through me.
Powerful waves of energy and blood Chi erupted from my core. With a single strike of my palm, I lashed out.
Smack!
The cursed spirit shrieked, its cry inaudible to the woman but searing in my ears. The monstrous worm was launched from her body like a cannonball, spinning in the air before slamming against the wall.
Before it could recover, I was already beside it—my face drawn tight with brutal intent.
I grabbed it with one hand. My curse power surged—feeble, barely even qualifying as a proper curse mark—but I still tried to dominate its essence.
The worm thrashed. It screeched in defiance, resisting the taming bond.
So I punched it.
Once. Then again. My blood energy drove deep into its spirit flesh. Even if it could only exert one-tenth of the effect, the damage was significant. The worm writhed in agony.
"Be enslaved by me," I growled, "and become my partner."
Punch. Punch. Punch.
Each strike broke down a piece of its will. Each impact crushed a portion of its chaotic nature, reshaping it to serve.
There is no way, my pitiful curse power does not allow me to directly forcibly enslave the curse spirit, even if it is just an inferior curse spirit.
But it doesn't matter, the magic power is not enough, violence is needed.
Finally, when the cursed spirit was on the verge of death, I injected a pitiful stream of spell power into its core.
The bond took hold.
I had succeeded in enslaving it—not because of my strength in spellcraft, but because of my persistence, my brutality, and the sheer desperation I used on him.
The spell bond flickered faintly between us.
I turned away from the trembling woman, who now sat slumped on the floor—legs spread, her lower half soaked in cum I didn't waste a moment on her. I vanished from the second-floor balcony, leaving no sound, no presence.
---
Third Floor, Small Town Hotel.
I sat cross-legged on the bed and linked my thoughts to the Spirit Cage—a spiritual subspace, designed to store cursed entities. Only enslaved spirits could enter it, and only I could control them from within.
Inside, the tentacle worm lay nearly motionless, its grotesque body twitching as it absorbed the sparse spell power that lingered in the environment. Recovery was slow—at this rate, it wouldn't regain full strength for two weeks.
My own curse power was still pathetic.
A thought formed.
I summoned the tentacle worm back into reality.
With a sudden thud, the fat, half-dead insect fell onto the floor. It looked like it had been steamrolled—its tentacles crushed, its sides sagging like melted dough.
"Practice spell refinement," I ordered.
It didn't respond.
Then, through the bond, I heard it whisper:
[It hurts… I'm starving…]
My face darkened.
I raised my hand to strike again.
The cursed spirit jolted awake and immediately began devouring the ambient energy in the air, converting it into spell power and channeling it back into my core through the bond.
I closed my eyes.
Inside my dantian, the faintly glowing curse threads increased. From 100… to 101… to 102.
---
Half a day passed.
I opened my eyes, emotionless.
"Too slow."
The tentacle worm, now emaciated and visibly shaking, had a premonition.
The next moment, I sent it back into the Spirit Cage and invoked the Soul Furnace Law.
Fire surged.
The worm ignited. A deep, purifying flame consumed it from within.
It screamed as it died.
The flames compressed the spiritual residue into a concentrated flow of cursed energy, which was fed directly into the Spirit Cage.
101 silks. 110 silks. 120 silks.
When the tentacle worm curse spirit was fully consumed, my spell power had nearly doubled.
I exhaled deeply.
So efficient.
Even if I had spent a month refining spell power through normal methods, I wouldn't have gained so much.
Of course, this method wasn't accessible to most conjurers. For them, forcibly consuming a cursed spirit was suicidal. It risked spiritual backlash, insanity, or outright death and worst of them all becoming Curser—unless the spirit was vastly weaker.
And even then, the gains were meager. Spell capacity was limited by the Spellbinder's own foundation. The body could only hold so much power before saturation occurred. Beyond that point, the only path forward was refining quality—condensing purer, higher-grade spiritual threads.
And to do that… one had to devour stronger cursed spirits.
This was the true way of my cultivation.
Forge through violence. Rise through blood. Cheat fate with cruelty.
If you don't want to take the immense risk of devouring a cursed spirit directly, your only option is to slowly cultivate the cursed spirit with its cooperation, nurturing it over time to slowly extract magical essence.
But things that ordinary conjurers find difficult—or even life-threatening—are now trivial to me.
With a physical body comparable to a fourth-order magical creature, and a terrifyingly powerful consciousness equivalent to a high-tier Legendary spellcaster, the baseline of what I can safely devour is no longer dictated by recklessness, but by the capacity of my flesh.
My current physique is more than capable of absorbing inferior cursed spirits without the slightest strain.
"Continue," I muttered calmly, feeling the doubled—though still meager—magical power flowing through my veins.
My figure flickered and vanished from the guest room.
---
Over the next few days, the atmosphere in Fengyu Town became increasingly strange.
One after another, Samurai were found injured or unconscious. Some fled the town in embarrassment, as if a terrifying cursed spirit was hunting them relentlessly.
The residents of Fengyu Town began to live in fear.
Rumors swirled—whispers about a deranged warrior who was systematically uprooting cursed spirits. Entire homes had been damaged, and residents and Samurais alike were being knocked out mysteriously.
The growing panic eventually reached Thorne Lex, the administrator of Wind Whisper Town. Lord Thorne treated the matter seriously. He dispatched five elite Samurais from his own household and mobilized dozens of guards to comb through the town of Yuzhen, determined to catch the mysterious spell-wielding figure who was throwing the system into chaos.
Yes, chaos. Disruption of the existing market.
You see, all cursed spirits born within Wind Whisper Town had been meticulously divided by prior arrangement.
Fifth-level cursed spirits were shared between the Lex family and the Kageno family. Among the lower-ranked spirits, those posing a higher risk were reserved for visiting Samurai—outsiders. When such a Samurai removed a dangerous cursed spirit, half of the bounty issued by the kingdom went to the Lex family, while the other half rewarded the Samurai.
As for the less dangerous and more manageable spirits, they were handed over to Samurais trained and employed directly by the Lex family.
The Kageno family, meanwhile, had only one samurai besides Claire. That samurai was forbidden from going out to earn bounties; instead, he was tasked with staying inside Kageno Manor to prevent mishaps.
---
As for me—Sid—no one yet knew that I had become a spellbinder. However, the fact that I practiced the Violent Bear Sword Technique must have leaked. My physical changes had been too dramatic to go unnoticed, especially in a manor watched by hundreds. It was inevitable that at least one spy had reported what they saw.
But Claire and I had never cared whether that secret got out or not.
Samurai, after all, are mere tools in the eyes of binders.
"There are fewer and fewer cursed spirits," I murmured atop a rooftop, wrapped in my black robe.
Thanks to my rapid and aggressive culling, nearly all cursed spirits in Wind Whisper Town had been eradicated. The ones that continued to manifest were too weak to be of use to me.
Still...
I could feel the current circulating within me—the powerful curse energy that had swelled to a hundred times what it was when I first began. I nodded in satisfaction.
"That's enough. These low-grade cursed spirits are of little value now."
In addition to the massive increase in my own curse energy, I had also gained several spells by devouring hundreds of inferior cursed spirits.
I wasn't sure if it was due to the low quality of the spirits I consumed, or if the drop rate of spells was simply that poor. Whatever the case, I had only acquired a few minor incantations after so much effort.
Likely, it was both.
"Hmm?" I narrowed my eyes and turned toward the distance.
Several Samurais clad in silver armor were sprinting across rooftops, rapidly closing the distance between us.
"You bastard, I finally found you!"
The lead Samurai gritted his teeth, his face twisted in frustration as he stared at me.
Can you blame me for being angry?
They had once enjoyed a cushy life—fine wine, warm beds with women, and leisure. But ever since Thorne issued the order for my capture, they had been chasing shadows across Wind Whisper Town, sleepless and irritated.
The silver-armored Samurais exchanged glances, then grinned cruelly as they charged at me, swords drawn with a hiss of steel.
They intended to kill me on the spot.
Expressionless, I barely moved my lips.
"Spell: Poison Fire."
Curse energy surged through me and erupted outward. Invisible to the common eye, a toxic green flame ignited on the bodies of the approaching warriors.
Thanks to their enchanted gear—which allowed them to perceive curse energy—they saw the sickly green fire and froze in terror.
"He's a conjurer!"
As if they'd seen a ghost, the four Samurais screamed and scrambled backwards. They began flooding their bodies with blood energy in an effort to extinguish the flames.
Surprisingly, it worked. The poisonous flames dissipated quickly, burned away by their internal energy.
The five warriors stared in disbelief.
Was it really that easy?
The green flames had seemed far more dangerous.
"This guy's a low-tier conjurer!" one of them realized. Their expressions shifted from fear to greed.
Even a low-tier spellbinder was valuable. If they could capture me and deliver him to Lord Thorne, the rewards would be substantial.
After all, I was a conjurer—the very kind of being that treated Samurais as pawns.
Normally, they would have to bow and scrape before someone like me, fearful of giving offense. But now... this was a rare opportunity.
At least three of them were already intoxicated by the possibilities.
"So this is the power of an inferior spell," I muttered, unimpressed, as I watched the green flame vanish.
Even the acid breath of one minute old me is tens of thousands of times better.
Still, since I had it, I might as well see it through.
"Spell: Ice Prism."
Thick four prisms of enchanted ice materialized from thin air and hurtled toward the four warriors.
Panic flashed across their faces. Afraid that I had more power hidden up my sleeve, they roared and invoked secret techniques, forcing their blood energy to boil at great personal cost.
The four crystalline ice prisms pierced through the bodies of the silver-armored warriors, cutting through the air like frozen bolts of judgment. As they made contact, a portion of the magic was melted away by the violent fluctuations of boiling blood energy and the turbulent force of the samurais' internal reserves. Another fraction of the spell was intercepted by the enchanted equipment — runic armguards, silver-etched cloaks, and layered energy plates — that shimmered briefly in defiance.