These peaceful days had been as beautiful as a dream for Miko.
The aura left behind by Sukuna acted like an invisible barrier, dispersing the low-level spirits that usually haunted her, allowing her to enjoy a few rare days of a nearly "normal" school life.
"Miko! Let's go to that new crepe shop together after school."
The one who approached was her best friend, Yurikawa Hana. She was well-endowed, incredibly thick-headed, and usually quite scatterbrained. Her motorboating antics often led Miko to pummel her heavy swingers.
When Miko turned around and saw Hana, the smile froze on her face, and her blood seemed to turn to ice in an instant.
'How can this be!'
Her gaze uncontrollably drifted past Hana's lively, smiling face and landed behind her—on a massive shadow that clung to her like a maggot on a bone, almost overlapping with Hana's silhouette.
It was an "existence" whose ugliness and ominous nature were hard to describe in words.
It had no fixed form, appearing more like a mass of writhing, roiling thick darkness. Its surface flowed with a viscous substance resembling asphalt, and countless pale eyes of varying sizes loomed within the depths of this darkness, silently opening and closing, casting cold and slimy gazes.
Even more nauseatingly, from the bottom of this mass of darkness, countless gossamer-thin, nearly transparent black threads extended, densely entangling and piercing Hana's back, shoulders, and even the tips of her hair like a spiderweb, greedily siphoning something away.
Hana's high-quality life energy, which far exceeded that of an ordinary person, was being continuously sucked and devoured by the dark evil spirit through these threads.
Because of this, the evil spirit itself radiated a heart-stoppingly powerful aura, far surpassing any spirit Miko had ever seen before, even carrying a sinister, almost tangible sense of pressure.
The aura left by Sukuna seemed to have limited effect on this deeply entrenched evil spirit.
After all, Sukuna's main body wasn't with Miko. It was only a portion of his Cursed Energy. While it was fine against low-level spirits, its deterrent power was greatly diminished against a powerful evil spirit.
Panic flooded Miko like icy water.
What should she do?
Pretend she couldn't see it like before?
No, not this time.
She could clearly see an imperceptible hint of fatigue on Hana's face, more than usual. A slight gloom occasionally flickered in her eyes and even the vibrant radiance of life on her body seemed a tiny bit dimmer than she remembered.
This evil spirit was slowly and continuously harming her best friend.
Ask for Sukuna's help?
The thought surfaced instinctively, only to be suppressed by a deeper fear.
That terrifying existence occupying that senpai's body seemed to be "keeping the promise" and hadn't harassed her, but the extreme experience last time of having her eyes gouged out and then healed, along with his unfathomable malice and whims, made her tremble to her very soul.
Asking him for help was no different from drinking poison to quench thirst. Who knew what even more terrible price she would have to pay?
Just as Miko's mind was in a turmoil, barely able to maintain her outward composure, Hana's chirping words drifted into her ears.
"Oh, right. I heard a shrine recently opened near the station. Their fortune-telling and charms are said to be super effective. Let's go check it out this weekend. We could even get a charm for our studies."
A shrine?
A faint glimmer of hope, like a candle flickering in the wind, ignited in Miko's heart.
Perhaps... perhaps a proper shrine would have real power to drive away the thing on Hana?
...
Weekend, The Shrine.
Unlike the bustling and solemn scene she had imagined, this newly built shrine located halfway up the mountain was somewhat deserted, and the buildings were quite ancient.
Two massive stone fox statues sat on either side of the Torii Gate, wearing pleasant smiles, but Miko couldn't help but feel that a strange, lifelike glint flashed in the stone foxes' eyes as they watched her.
Hana was completely oblivious, excitedly dragging Miko to offer prayers, ring the bell, and toss coins. Then, she pressed her hands together and closed her eyes to make a wish, her expression uncharacteristically serious.
"Please, Great Deity, let my best friend Miko be happy every day."
Hearing this, Miko's nose tingled, and she nearly burst into tears. She also silently pressed her hands together, praying desperately in her heart.
'Whatever deity you are, please, save Hana and drive away that thing on her. I'm willing to pay any price.'
At the very moment of their sincere prayer, a sudden change occurred.
From the direction of the shrine's main hall, the eyes of the two massive stone fox statues suddenly erupted with a crimson light.
Their stone surfaces melted and twisted like wax, and two eerie beings with fox heads and human bodies with fox tails, dressed in ancient priest robes, broke free from the statues. Letting out sharp screeches, they turned into two streaks of red light and lunged straight at the dark evil spirit behind Hana.
'Did it work?'
A glimmer of hope had just risen in Miko's heart, but in the next second, it turned into even deeper despair.
The dark evil spirit seemed provoked, letting out a silent shriek that struck directly at the soul.
Its writhing body suddenly expanded, and countless pale eyes simultaneously locked onto the two foxes.
Black threads danced wildly, striking out like venomous snakes.
The foxes' claws and fire attacks hit the dark body, but they only stirred up a few ripples.
The evil spirit's counterattack was simple and brutal—it suddenly opened a crack-like maw, containing not fangs, but an endless, suffocating darkness.
One fox couldn't dodge in time and was entangled by several black threads, instantly dragged into the massive dark maw, vanishing without even a scream.
The other fox retreated in alarm and anger, only to have its limbs bound by even more threads surging from the shadows on the ground.
More small openings split across the evil spirit's body, spewing out foul, curse-filled black air. Upon contact, the fox emitted a sizzling sound, its priest robes and fur rapidly corroding and rotting.
"No... stop!" Hana screamed in terror, tightly clutching Miko's arm.
She could actually see it too. The power of prayer, or perhaps the shock of the supernatural battle before her, had briefly pried open the "vision" she had always kept shut.
What was even more horrifying was that the corroded fox didn't disappear after falling. Its corpse writhed violently, as if countless things were crawling under its skin, until finally—
Poof!
It exploded.
What gushed out from within were actually dense, constantly squirming white maggots.
These maggots quickly converged, actually reforming into an even larger fox with its skin peeled off, its flesh exposed and dripping with slime, radiating an overwhelming demonic aura and resentment. Its head, with only hollow eye sockets remaining, turned toward the dark evil spirit and let out a roar mixed with pain and violence.
The "deity" of the shrine was actually an evil spirit at its core. And the evil spirit on Hana was so powerful that it could easily kill such an entity and even catalyze its mutation.
The two terrifying existences—the dark evil spirit and the hairless giant fox—confronted each other.
A horrifying pressure and cursed aura spread out, completely enveloping Miko and Hana. They were unable to even move a step, with the shadow of death looming close at hand.