Xu Fu's words were like sparks tossed into boiling oil, effortlessly igniting the hatred and fury those evil spirits had been suppressing in their hearts.
The aura blackened by resentment and hatred suddenly boiled over. Thick malice spread through the air like ink made solid, filthy and pitch-black. The temperature in the entire corridor plummeted at once, and the spotless white walls around them gradually began to take on a softness, like slabs of living flesh.
"Why waste words on people this hopeless? And why make them mad on top of that?" Red Hood asked without turning around, tightening her grip on the Drake Sword.
"I only told the truth." Xu Fu still wore that calm, composed smile, utterly unaffected by the cold malice pouring off the evil spirits. "What~? Don't tell me you can't handle them~?"
Red Hood looked back at Xu Fu long and hard. Then, with an unreadable expression, she turned away again and started walking forward, one step at a time.
Only a single line drifted back on the air.
"Who do you think I am?"
Red Hood's steps were slow and steady. If not for the murderous aura radiating off her—and the sword and pistol in her hands—one might almost have thought she was out for a stroll.
To the evil spirits, though, that only looked like contempt.
Their anger flared at once, and they charged her with furious roars.
There was a rule in the world of evil spirits: if enough weak spirits gathered together, they could bring down a powerful one far stronger than any of them alone. That was why some weaker evil spirits chose to band together, rather than be devoured by stronger ones.
Even a boxing champion could be beaten down by a mob.
Even a martial arts master who could take on a hundred men alone would still be overwhelmed by a hundred thousand cavalry.
But this time, they had clearly chosen the wrong opponent.
Facing the horde of evil spirits, Red Hood immediately used the Drake Sword's built-in skill [Dragon Shockwave]. Under the roar of Drake Helkaiser, those weak evil spirits scattered one after another.
They really were nothing but a rabble. Jealousy of the living had brought them together, but Red Hood sent them fleeing in utter disarray with a single blow.
She dashed toward the lockers and activated another of the Drake Sword's skills—[Hellfire Sword].
Blazing fire coiled around the Drake Sword's blade, and with one swing from Red Hood, it became a slash of raging flame.
The strike split the lockers apart, and in the next instant, the surging fire swallowed them whole.
Though they were clearly iron lockers, they let out shrill screams in countless overlapping voices as they burned.
Old men wailing, children crying, women shrieking—it was as though innumerable souls were being scorched inside that dragonfire.
"Spare me...! Spare me, aaaah...!"
"I know I was wrong...! I'll never do evil again...!"
"I won't accept this...! I won't accept iiiit...! Why did I have to suffer something like this in the first place?!"
The blazing fire mercilessly settled the sins of those evil spirits, and within that dragon flame, they met their end.
Watching the sparks drift through the air, Xu Fu expressionlessly held out a hand and let one of them land on her fingertip.
Like fragments of a movie, broken memories began to unfold before her eyes...
She saw a scene of bullying.
Several children were bullying another, smaller child, doing all kinds of cruel things to him.
One day, those bullies got curious whether that scrawny child could fit inside one of the lockers, so they forced him to do it. And when he really did crawl inside, they locked the door.
After that, it was as if they had forgotten all about him. They never opened the locker again to let him out.
By the time someone else noticed that something was wrong with the locker and opened it, the small child inside was already dead.
Later, that dead child became an evil spirit. He created this endlessly looping maze, trapped all the people who had bullied him inside it, and killed the villains who had caused his death.
After taking his revenge, the small child attained Buddhahood and passed on.
But at the same time, the bullies who had died because of that revenge became evil spirits themselves.
Those few bullies all carried powerful resentment. They believed it could not just be them who suffered such misfortune, and so they carried the curse on.
That small child had only cursed the evildoers who had bullied him. But those bullies, in turn, hated all living people equally. Man or woman, old or young, stranger or not—it made no difference. They dragged everyone they could into this endlessly looping maze and forced them to suffer the same pain they once had.
Some of the people they killed ended up thinking the same way they did, and became evil spirits as well, turning from victims into perpetrators. Little by little, more and more of them gathered, until they formed this entire criminal gang.
A pack of bastards like that was not worth pitying in the slightest.
There was no reason to show mercy.
...
With the evil spirits successfully destroyed, the endlessly looping corridor naturally could no longer sustain itself. Xu Fu, Red Hood, and all the others who had yet to be rescued returned to reality.
Red Hood turned back into a doll, while Xu Fu met up again with Nagata Takaya and Yoshida Saori, who had been waiting outside in the real world. The group went shopping, had lunch together, and successfully bought a few new pieces of furniture for the new house.
Later, Xu Fu also told Yayoi Hozuki and the others about what had happened.
"Ugh~! Xu Fu, you're so mean..." Yayoi Hozuki flopped dejectedly over the dining table, and even the ahoge on top of her head drooped like a wilted strand of waterweed. "Something that fun happened and you went all by yourself without bringing us! That's so not friendly."
"It's not like Xu Fu went out looking for ghosts on purpose. I didn't know I'd run into evil spirits there ahead of time either," Xu Fu protested. "If you insist on putting it some way, then all I can say is that you guys just had bad luck~!"
"Ggh..."
Unable to refute that, Yayoi Hozuki could only glare at her with dead-fish eyes.
After all, she had genuinely wanted to see something like that for herself. An endlessly looping corridor, an "Exit 8" you could never reach—it sounded incredibly interesting.
And on top of that, the evil spirits there had been a coordinated collective spirit.
Keitaro Gentoga was reminded of the time the three of them had gone to play by the river and ran into ten water ghosts acting in coordination there. That had been a collective spirit too, and one of them had even possessed Eiko Hozuki.
At the time, he had nearly been dragged underwater and drowned by those evil spirits.
Judging from Xu Fu's description, the collective spirit in the subway station this time had apparently been even larger—close to thirty of them.
Yayoi Hozuki thought that was a real shame. They might have been a little weak, but that had still been close to thirty evil spirits. As long as they were turned into katashiro, that would have been the equivalent of gaining thirty extra lives out of nowhere.
And who would ever complain about having too many lives?
Otherwise, why would that old "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, B, A" be so popular?
Eiko Hozuki brought over hot milk and some snacks. Xu Fu casually grabbed a bag of senbei, tore it open, and glanced at Keitaro Gentoga.
"You're talking about me, but didn't you guys go through an adventure too? You went to retrieve a Graduate, right?"
Otogiri, the Soul Sucking Oiran was one of the Graduates Yayoi Hozuki had once cultivated, and she had placed it inside an abandoned love hotel.
That love hotel had already been a hellhole to begin with. A group of yakuza higher-ups had abducted over a dozen women they fancied, brought them there, and tortured them to death. The victims became earthbound spirits, killed the gang bosses who had murdered them, and then wandered the hotel day and night.
Yayoi Hozuki had hidden Otogiri inside that love hotel. But things had developed in a way she had not expected. Otogiri had remodeled the already-haunted love hotel, to the point that only those she personally took a liking to could reach the room where she resided.
And unfortunately, that oiran evil spirit absolutely hated Yayoi Hozuki, the one who had imprisoned her in a doll, so Yayoi Hozuki had never been able to retrieve her.
So in the end, Yayoi Hozuki had Keitaro Gentoga help.
Since Keitaro Gentoga was male, the evil spirit—who had been a top-ranked oiran in life—would most likely be eager to summon him over. And that was exactly what happened. Keitaro Gentoga successfully found the hidden room where she was all by himself.
In order to get him to help remove her seal, Otogiri first tried temptation, then intimidation. First she promised that if he helped free her, she would help him graduate from virginity. Then, when that failed, she cursed him so that red blotches spread all over his body and slowly began to fester.
The bracelet.
And then, all at once, the bracelet on Keitaro Gentoga's wrist burst with dazzling golden light. Not only did it instantly purge the curse from his body, but Otogiri herself was scorched by that golden radiance until she screamed without end.
And so, after a brush with danger but no real harm done, Keitaro Gentoga successfully retrieved the Graduate and returned safely to his companions.
"Even one of my Graduates gets suppressed by it. Just how did you make a bracelet that strong?" Yayoi Hozuki had been growing more and more concerned about the three bracelets Xu Fu had given Keitaro Gentoga and Eiko Hozuki.
A Graduate was born only after hundreds of ordinary evil spirits slaughtered and devoured one another.
And once three Graduates joined forces, they were enough to kill a deity.
Yet even an evil spirit that powerful was still afraid of the bracelets Xu Fu had made.
If those bracelets had been some kind of priceless divine artifact that was incredibly difficult to craft, that would have been one thing. But Xu Fu had tossed out three of them almost casually. As for the materials, nobody knew for sure. They only knew that she needed some part of an evil spirit—for example, the teeth and hair of that large evil spirit from the hospital.
Yayoi Hozuki was not foolish enough to believe that something so powerful could really be made from such simple-looking materials. That large evil spirit from the hospital had not even been as strong as one of her Graduates.
"Don't get it twisted. It's not that my bracelets are all that amazing. It's that it takes something this strong just to suppress the curses on Keitaro and Eiko," Xu Fu said, nibbling at the senbei in tiny hamster-like bites. "The thing that's really powerful—the thing that's really troublesome—is that curse. Or rather, the source of it... You two really picked a fight with something seriously nasty."
Even Yayoi Hozuki could not see it, but Xu Fu could.
That stubborn curse lingering on Keitaro Gentoga's hand had already condensed into a pale human face, and right now it was baring its teeth and hissing at Xu Fu.
Well, that was only natural. The golden bracelet Xu Fu had made had put that curse through quite a lot, after all. Hatred on that level was only to be expected.
At its core, the constitution Keitaro Gentoga had—the one that attracted evil spirits—was actually a kind of energy wrapped around him that came infinitely close to divinity.
If an evil spirit managed to devour a deity, it would inevitably evolve and become vastly more powerful.
But deities were never weak. Even Yayoi Hozuki had said that it would take at least three Graduate-level evil spirits working together to defeat one deity.
The energy surrounding Keitaro Gentoga resembled that of a deity, but the key difference was that he was nowhere near as strong as one.
That was why so many evil spirits had their eyes on him.
"Xu Fu~! Come explore haunted spots with us!"
Yayoi Hozuki extended the invitation to Xu Fu yet again. She had already been rejected by her so many times, but she never seemed to tire of trying, displaying truly astonishing persistence.
Xu Fu licked the senbei crumbs from her fingertips and asked casually, "Have you decided where you're going next?"
Sitting beside her, the silent Red Hood was holding a tissue in one hand, expressionlessly wiping Xu Fu's fingers and mouth clean.
Yayoi Hozuki nodded expressionlessly, set a tablet down in front of Xu Fu, and pointed at a location on the map.
"Here. The S-Rank haunted spot Old I Watergate. That's our next destination."
"Old I Watergate, huh..."
Xu Fu stared seriously at the point Yayoi Hozuki had indicated on the electronic map, rubbing her chin as she sank into thought.
If she remembered right, the evil spirit that appeared at Old I Watergate was...
"...All right. I'll go with you this time."
Keitaro Gentoga covered his face as though a headache were coming on, while Yayoi Hozuki and Eiko Hozuki started clapping as if in celebration.
"That's great! Yayoi-chan, we finally convinced Master Xu Fu to join us! Your hard work paid off!"
"Nice~! One more teammate. As a four-person party, we've finally hit the minimum headcount for team fights."
"That's not right, Yayoi-chan," Eiko Hozuki suddenly pointed out. "If you count Hood too, then doesn't that make five of us?"
"Mm... I didn't think of that." Yayoi Hozuki frowned slightly, but quickly perked right back up again. "Then we're a five-person team. Perfect for a round on King's Rift, with Xu Fu and Hood carrying us!"
"That's still not right, Yayoi-chan. You're too young. You've got anti-addiction restrictions."
"..."
Unlike those two, Keitaro Gentoga looked utterly dejected.
He had thought Xu Fu-chan would stand firm against horror just like he did.
He had never expected her to fall this fast too.
Did that mean he was really the only normal person left on the entire team?
...Then again, looking on the bright side, with a powerhouse like Xu Fu around, they would all be a lot safer too.
Keitaro Gentoga, however, had absolutely no self-awareness that he too was every bit as hopelessly in love with horror.
---
bonus chaps
100 stones -> 1 chapter
200 stones -> 2 chapters
300 stones -> 3 chapters
and so on
discord.gg/wisetl
patreon.com/wisetl
instagram: hanbaowise
twitter: WiseKingOfUruk_