In that instant, Rémy began foaming at the mouth. The most spectacular upgrades, those designed to birth an invulnerable god upon the earth, had just fallen into the greasy hands of a sociopath who once thought it brilliant to take a selfie with his friend's dick in his mouth.
—¿Where the fuck am I? !¿What did they do to me?! — Cartman bellowed, convinced the aliens had kidnapped him again and he was trapped in some kind of virtual reality.
He had been in his morning routine, dying of boredom at school like every day. His existence boiled down to a cycle of mediocrity that only he managed to make tolerable through pure hatred. Cartman's daily life began with the torment of enduring his mother's screams as she tried to feed him something that wasn't exclusively fat, followed by the ordeal of boarding the school bus.
Once in class, his schedule was simple but packed. Seventy percent of the time was dedicated to planning how to ruin Kyle's life simply for existing, twenty percent to sleeping with his eyes open while Mr. Garrison rambled about some historical tragedy, and the remaining ten percent to launching spit-soaked paper balls at kids who looked "too poor" to defend themselves. And now, out of nowhere and without warning, he had been dragged into some kind of godforsaken abandoned Chinese village.
Cartman turned his head and his eyes landed on someone who, judging purely by the stench of death in the air, had to be a kid around his age.
«Eww, he must be French», Cartman thought in disgust.
The worm, with its purulent eyes, roared uncontrollably. Upon detecting that new source of energy, strangely saturated with cholesterol and pure malice, it launched itself to attack, jaws wide open, ready to erase the intruder from existence.
—¡¿What the fuck?! — Cartman bellowed, starting to run at the maximum speed his short, chubby legs allowed toward the subhuman with black hair.
It was a beast that vaguely reminded him of ManBearPig, but miraculously uglier. Something that seemed impossible under the laws of nature.
Cartman reached Rémy, who was still in a depressive trance, with surprising agility for someone of his build, but not to help him. With a quick and treacherous move, he positioned himself behind the black-haired boy/thing, grabbed him by the waist, and used him as a human shield that was comically undersized.
Rémy reacted to the contact. The bubble of saliva floating on his lips burst, and completely beside himself, he screamed at Cartman.
—¡Let me go, you fucking bastard! ¡You're my summon, go kill it!
Cartman, far from being scared by the shout or confused by such incomprehensible nerd nonsense, wrinkled his nose and took a step back. He covered his mouth with one hand, pretending to gag even though the boy emitted no stench, while keeping the other firmly on Rémy's waist to use him again as a human barricade.
—¡Ugh! ¡Don't talk to me, you're gonna give me communism or some third-world disease! — Cartman shrieked in his highest, most disdainful tone. —¿Don't they know what dental floss is in this cheap-labor country? ¡Your breath smells like a dog sandwich!
Rémy, who had finally snapped out of his stupor only to be insulted in three different ways in ten seconds, felt a vein throbbing dangerously on his forehead. The terror the worm had inspired was being replaced by a genuine, stabbing desire to strangle the child.
«¿Aren't you supposed to follow my orders?» Rémy thought, clenching his teeth in rage.
While Cartman remained engrossed in his hate-filled rant, the giant worm reared up over them, its bloodshot multiple eyes fixed on the little red-jacketed invader. The creature let out a sonic screech that made the area's windows vibrate.
Both turned at once, hugging each other and screaming in unison at the imminent advance of their executioner. However, while Rémy screamed from pure existential terror, Cartman did it with a mix of indignation and disgust, trying to bury his head between the boy's arms so he wouldn't get dirty from the viscosity the monster spat as it leaped.
—¡Do something! ¡I promise if you save me I won't report you to immigration until Monday!
Cartman shrieked in the middle of the forced hug, squeezing his eyes shut. Rémy gave him a stunned look, his face mere centimeters from the Colorado boy's facial fat. The disgust he felt was almost as powerful as his fear of dying. He could smell the trail of stale cheese sticks and pure selfishness emanating from Cartman's pores. In that moment of unwanted proximity, he wasn't hugging an ally, he was hugging a parasite trying to use his ribcage as a bulletproof vest.
—¡¿You want me to do something?! — Rémy shouted, grabbing Cartman with both arms before hoisting him into the air with strength born of pure adrenaline and hatred. — ¡Fine, I'll do something!
Without a second thought, he hurled the child straight into the creature's open maw. As he flew through the air, Cartman's screams and insults (too specific and hate-filled to be worth mentioning in a civilized narration) echoed with deafening power.
The worm, confused by receiving its meal in the form of a ninety-kilo projectile, closed its jaws around the red jacket. However, instead of the sound of breaking bones, there was a metallic crash, as if a freight train had slammed into a safe. The creature began shaking the boy like a dog playing with its favorite toy. It smashed him against the ground with seismic violence, launched him into the air only to catch him again, and shook him with wild frenzy.
—¡Nice job! — Rémy shouted at the top of his lungs, raising his thumb, though it wasn't entirely clear which of the two he was congratulating.
Meanwhile, the worm continued slamming Eric's body against the pavement with force capable of demolishing a small building. The sound of the impacts—a rhythmic metallic CLANG—began to synchronize with the insults pouring from the boy's mouth.
Rémy stood there, calmly enjoying the show. Watching Cartman being used as a medieval mace against the ground was, without a doubt, the most therapeutic thing that had happened to him in his entire life. After what felt like hours but was really just a few minutes of seismic violence, the worm began to slow down. Its exhaustion became evident in the hoarse gasps escaping its throat and the definitive end of the blows.
The creature released Cartman, who fell to the ground with a dry thud, leaving one final crater in the pavement. Rémy expected to see a corpse or at least a pile of minced meat, but Eric remained in one piece thanks to the improvements he had assigned with the system's help.
—¡Tsk! — he lamented deeply, feeling a pang of regret for having done such a damn good job allowing the system to reinforce the fat kid's molecular structure.
Cartman slowly got up, dusting off his knees with an expression of absolute contempt. Not a scratch, not a bruise, not even his hair messed up under the yellow-and-blue cap. The only thing that seemed damaged was his pride and, of course, his patience.
That only confused him more. ¿Since when was he so tough? This horrid alien simulation had definitely been made to torture him. In his mind, the fact that he hadn't been ground to paste wasn't a blessing, it was a technical glitch by the aliens or the Jews to keep him trapped in this Asian ghetto longer.
¡And anyway, it had hurt like hell! He felt every impact as if his skin were steel but his nerves were exposed to air conditioning.
The worm let out one final roar, more out of frustration than aggression, but that was the last straw for his finite patience. In one last desperate act, driven by hunger and uncontainable rage, the creature lunged forward with jaws unhinged and swallowed Cartman whole in a single bite.
Rémy froze, watching the round bulge of the boy descend down the monster's translucent, purulent throat. The silence that followed was sepulchral, broken only by the sound of the creature trying to savor what, according to its instincts, should have been an easy meal.
—Well, whatever — Rémy muttered, shrugging coldly as he prepared his legs to run. —In any case I can summon him again.
One of the fat kid's upgrades was precisely being infinitely summonable, ¿it couldn't be that hard to bring him back from the dead, right? But the worm didn't follow. It didn't even bother to turn and look at him.
Confused and curiosity at its peak, Rémy stopped dead and watched the creature with growing distrust. The monster didn't seem to be enjoying its meal. On the contrary, it had gone rigid, eyes bulging, and an expression that—if not for its demonic nature—Rémy would have sworn was pure gastric regret.
Rémy took a step back, realizing the worm wasn't digesting Cartman. Its belly was inflating impatiently. The worm desperately tried to vomit, shaking its head from side to side while its guts swelled like balloons about to burst. The beast's body began emitting a high-pitched squeal, the sound of flesh stretching beyond its permitted limit. Rémy could see the round silhouette of Cartman moving under the monster's skin, pushing upward with brute force.
The squeal of stretching flesh reached its limit. The worm's intestines couldn't withstand one more second of pressure and, without golden flashes, without epic music, and without a trace of dignity, the wretched thing's body simply gave way.
A dull, wet sound, like a thousand soaked sponges slamming concrete at once, echoed through the alley. The worm exploded in a torrential rain of green mucus, black bile, and chunks of viscera that flew in every direction.
Rémy didn't have time to react. Before he could take his first step to flee, a hot, viscous mass struck him full-force, covering him from head to toe in the monster's slimy remains. The smell was an unbearable mix of rotten fish and stagnant sewer.
In the middle of the disaster, Cartman emerged from the center of the explosion. He landed on his feet, or rather bounced against the ground covered in layers of fat and gastric juices. He was completely soaked. His blue cap dripped thick liquid and his red jacket was now an undefined brown.
Silence fell, broken only by the sound of the curse's guts dripping from the alley walls that were slowly beginning to vanish into black smoke.
Rémy, with a piece of flesh stuck to his forehead, closed his eyes and took a deep breath, instantly regretting not having escaped earlier as he felt the stench seep into his lungs. Definitely the worst day of his life.
At least he was no longer in danger.
-------------------------------------
—CURSE ERADICATED SUCCESSFULLY—
MISSION STATUS: COMPLETED
TARGET: Grade 4 Curse (Lower Class)
STATUS: Eradication confirmed
PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS: Thanks to your exceptional talent and ingenuity in decision-making, your summoned character (ERIC CARTMAN - RANK E) has eliminated a Grade 4 curse.
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ADAPTATION BONUS: Due to the trait "Adaptive Configuration Force," the learning coefficient has been tripled.
Base Experience: 10 EXP
Multiplier Applied: x3.0
Experience Gained: 30 EXP
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—UNLOCKED REWARDS—
RESIDUAL ESSENCE EXTRACTION 500 fragments of condensed Cursed Energy have been collected from the target's corpse. These fragments have been processed and converted into System Credits, the official currency for interdimensional transactions.
Current Balance: 500 Credits.
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PROTOCOL UNLOCK: "BLACK MARKET ACCESS"
The Supplies Acquisition tab has been enabled in the main interface.
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PASSIVE TRAIT UPGRADE: "STEEL SKIN, CRYSTAL NERVES"
Due to extreme exposure of your summon to Grade 4 physical impacts, Eric Cartman has developed permanent molecular resistance (Rank E).
Effect: Physical durability increased by 20%.
Penalty: Susceptibility to pain and volume of auditory complaints increased by 15%.
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SPECIAL GRADE ITEM (TEMPORARY): "ANTISEPTIC WET WIPE"
A high-density hygiene item generated by the system to mitigate the altered state "Cursed Mucus Stench."
Use: Single consumable.
Effect: Removes odor penalties and guarantees 5% sanity recovery for the operator.
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RECOGNITION COLLECTIBLE: "PLASTIC PARTICIPANT MEDAL"
A null-value item granted by the system to simulate a sense of achievement in the invocation.
Effect: When given to Cartman, reduces his "Indignation" bar by 2%, while increasing his ego by 400%.
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¿DO YOU WISH TO CLAIM THE REWARDS?
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Faced with the avalanche of information and little rectangles that appeared right in front of his eyes, Rémy blinked repeatedly, trying to process the floating text while the curse's mucus dripped rhythmically from his bangs onto the asphalt.
—¿Grade 4…?— Rémy repeated in a whisper, feeling his knees about to give out.
That classification belonged to Jujutsu Kaisen, a world where the life expectancy of a civilian—or a mediocre sorcerer—was measured in seconds if you didn't have the right surname or a halfway decent cursed energy reserve.
His brain completely melted under the weight of reality. The term Grade 4 kept hammering inside his skull. In that world's hierarchy, that was the lowest, the weakest, the equivalent of an annoying insect to a real sorcerer. And yet that insect had almost turned him into pulp and had required a fourth-grader to be used as a biological bomb to be defeated.
His body, now on autopilot, ignored the shop notification and the absurd plastic medal. His trembling fingers, covered in fluorescent green substance, virtually pressed the "Antiseptic Wet Wipe" icon.
Instantly, a small metallized pouch appeared in his hand. When he tore it open, an artificially citrus scent, almost heavenly compared to the stench, flooded his nostrils. Rémy began frantically rubbing his face.
The artificial lemon scent was the last thing his nervous system registered before the emotional short-circuit became definitive. Rémy lowered his hand, holding the wipe that was now nothing more than a gray, slimy rag—a sad trophy of his first victory in that nightmare world.
He looked at Cartman, who was still kicking in the middle of a pool of guts with gigantic indignation, gesturing and spitting insults Rémy could no longer process. The sound of the boy's voice became a distant, poorly tuned buzz while the weight of knowing they had barely survived the lowest category of that universe finally crushed his will.
Finally his knees gave out and Rémy fell backward to the ground, right next to a piece of the worm's intestine that was still spasmodically contracting. His eyes fixed on Japan's gray sky, but his mind simply flipped the switch. Completely detached from any trace of consciousness, he sank into a deep faint, leaving a bile-covered Cartman as his only and terrible guardian in the alley.
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Repeated pokes from a wooden stick on his cheek woke him, rhythmic and annoying, as if someone were checking whether a roadkill animal was still alive. Rémy slowly opened his eyes, greeted by the suffocating heat of the summer sun, a blinding white light that made him instantly regret regaining consciousness.
He was still in the village plaza. Rémy lay sprawled on scorching pavement, surrounded by people walking past with expressions ranging from concern to indifference. The curse mucus stench was still there, soaked only into his clothes like a cursed perfume.
The one poking him was the butcher's son, a kid who occasionally bothered him with stupid questions and who now looked at him with a mix of morbid curiosity and childish confusion.
—¿Did you die, Rémy? — the boy asked, jabbing the stick's tip into the young man's shoulder. — My dad says people who fall asleep on the ground under the sun dry up like raisins. ¿Are you dry inside?
Rémy got up clumsily, feeling a sharp dizziness behind his eyeball. He frantically looked around for the round red silhouette of Cartman, but all he saw were the local market stalls and the usual neighbors moving under the heavy afternoon heat. Some gathered around the craters Cartman and the curse had left, wondering how they appeared and when.
—I wish I were dead, buddy… — he said hopelessly. —¿Did you see a fat kid? — Rémy asked in a hoarse voice, ignoring the raisin question. —One with a blue cap and red jacket… really loud.
The butcher's son frowned and stopped poking him with the stick.
—There's no fat kid here, just you smelling like rotten fish — the little one replied, wrinkling his nose. —¿Why do you smell like that? ¿Did you fall in my dad's guts barrel?
Rémy didn't answer. His gaze shifted to the edge of his vision, where a small rectangular icon still floated, invisible to everyone else, waiting for him to claim what he had won in that mucus-and-teeth hell.
«¡Whatever! That bastard can't escape from me.»
The fact that Cartman wasn't physically materialized in the middle of the village plaza was good news. If the system had stored him in some digital corner of his mind, it was a problem he could postpone for at least a few minutes.
He said goodbye to the butcher's son with a vague gesture and, ignoring the nosy questions from his elderly neighbors, who looked at him as if he were a walking corpse that had just crawled out of a septic tank, ran back home.
His lungs burned from the hot summer air, but the fear that the curse stench would become permanent on his skin gave him wings. He crossed the threshold of his house and locked the door, leaning his back against the cold wood. The silence of his home was a momentary balm. Only then, with his heart hammering against his ribs and cold sweat mixing with the dried bile on his clothes, did Rémy allow himself to stare at the glowing rectangle floating in the air.
In front of his eyes, the notifications floated impassively, defying the laws of optics and logic. He reviewed the same lines that had assaulted him last night, but this time with a clear mind and total focus on the content while he stripped off his foul-smelling clothes and stepped into the shower.
The cold water hit his skin with necessary violence, washing away the hardships in Rémy's heart. As steam began to fog the tiles, Rémy stood there, head resting against the faucet, watching the water go down the drain.
Rémy ran his hand through the air, sliding the glowing rectangles with a mechanical gesture. His eyes stopped on the figure of 500 Credits. It was little, a pittance compared to the risk of being devoured alive, but it was the only tangible resource he had to navigate this new and twisted game board whose rules he still didn't know.
—Grade 4 — he whispered, letting the water wash his mouth. — If that thing was the lowest rung, that means the outside world is a slaughterhouse.
Sliding the menu to the right, the Black Market Store unfolded with a faint glow.
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—SORCERY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: BLACK MARKET INTERFACE—
TECHNICAL NOTICE: A desynchronization has been detected in the local object database. ACTIVE RESTRICTION: The "Cursed Tools" catalog and objects from the Jujutsu Kaisen plane remain LOCKED until the User reaches Authority Level 5 or is recognized by an official sorcery faction.
-------------------------------------
—It had to be…— Rémy murmured, letting out a frustrated sigh that mixed with the shower steam.
He gently banged his forehead against the tile. The system's logic was cruel. He was trapped in a world of sorcery, but the tools of that world were barred from him by bureaucratic technicalities. It was like being in the middle of a shootout and the system offering him a colorful slingshot because he still didn't have a weapons license.
¡No way in hell was he joining the sorcery school!
At least that was the plan, but…
Rémy looked at the translucent screen, which now had the colorful design of a betting page, before sighing. It was well known to everyone that as long as you had a system, the problems wouldn't stop coming. He could swear to himself that he would hide, that he would escape, that he would be the most neutral being possible, but fate would always find a way to drag him into the main cast and, consequently, all the problems that entailed.
He closed his eyes under the stream of water, letting the heat finally relax his shoulders. The idea of a peaceful life in the village now felt like a distant dream, an old photograph beginning to yellow. The system wouldn't give him a quiet existence. It would give him unnecessarily specific missions, danger categories, and a collection of psychopath sorcerers and curses to survive.
Dejected, he kept browsing the tab.
The store was divided into hierarchical sections, but most appeared with a digital padlock and a message: "INSUFFICIENT AUTHORITY LEVEL." Special-grade tools, refined cursed energy weapons, and advanced sorcery grimoires were out of reach, wrapped in red static that forbade even reading their descriptions. However, the "Origin Supplies: Colorado" section was fully lit.
Rémy swiped his finger, watching the icons go from absurdly useless to dangerously bizarre. The system seemed to have looted every corner of South Park's history, from the most mundane episodes to the epic battles for the Throne of Rods.
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—ORIGIN CATALOG: COLORADO (SUPPLIES & ARTIFACTS)—
FILLER ITEM: "ASPIRIN NECKLACE FOR CANCER" (1 Credit)
Type: Placebo / Medical Trash.
Effect: Cures neither cancer nor curses. Only makes the summon feel 0.5% more "spiritual."
Description: A cheap beaded necklace Cartman tried to sell as miracle medicine. Literally useless.
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CONSUMABLE: "MEXICAN DEATH BEANS" (10 Credits)
Type: Gastronomic Projectile.
Effect: After consumption, the summon generates a persistent toxic gas cloud for 2 turns.
Risk: High probability that the User will also suffer asphyxiation damage if not wearing a mask.
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EQUIPMENT: "WOLVERINE CLAWS (CARDBOARD)" (150 Credits)
Type: Short-Range Weapon (Rank F).
Effect: Increases physical melee damage.
Note: They are literally kitchen knives taped to wool gloves with duct tape. The system inexplicably considers them a valid weapon against curses.
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ARTIFACT: "BUTTERS' DISCRETION EYE" (200 Credits)
Type: Primary Detection Tool.
Effect: Allows viewing Threat Level, Unhappiness Grade, and basic stats of any target. Essential for not dying by surprise.
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TACTICAL CLOTHING: "AWESOM-O 4000 ARMOR" (500 Credits)
Type: Camouflage / Protection.
Effect: Grants the "Cardboard Robot" state. Curses ignore the summon's presence unless it attacks first.
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ELITE ITEM: "STICK OF TRUTH" (125,000,000,000 Credits)
Type: Special Grade Relic (LOCKED).
Effect: Whoever possesses the Rod controls the universe.
Status: Out of budget. The system laughs at your 500 credits.
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ADJUNCT SUMMON: "THE PANTS OF FLOTATION" (10,000 Credits)
Type: Combat Mobility (LOCKED).
Effect: Allows levitation and area attacks based on gravitational farts.
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—¡I knew it, they're going to force me to be a sorcerer! ¡I want to turn into a monkey! — he bit his nails anxiously, unconsciously ignoring the astronomically priced items. — If the system gave me Cartman to kill that Grade 4 thing… it means it expects me to keep killing — he whispered, heart pounding against his ribs.
¿Did he even have cursed energy?
If someone asked him if he had watched the anime, Rémy could only answer no. All his knowledge of the anime was limited to TikTok videos, rancid memes, X screenshots, and edited videos with Brazilian phonk music where guys with blindfolds or face scars struck epic poses while the screen shook. He knew there were "domain expansions," very basic things about curses and sorcerers, the protagonist's face, and that a guy named Gojo was basically a god, but the technical details of cursed energy flow were a total mystery to him.
¿Did he also have to channel negative emotions? Because if fear and anxiety counted as fuel, Rémy could now power an entire city.
Suddenly, a small help box—with a design vaguely reminiscent of a pause menu specifically designed to remind you of a carnival—popped up next to his right ear. Rémy stared at the box, now flashing with a sickly violet tone, exuding a far more cynical vibe than the previous notifications. The pause-menu design twisted until it formed a new info card that seemed written with arrogance.
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—EXISTENTIAL PERPETUAL BURDEN—
Type: Unique Existential Condition
Rank: — (Irrelevant to you)
User Energy Status: Null. Empty. Nonexistent.
Let's face it: you have no cursed energy, you don't generate it, and honestly, you never will. You're not a sorcerer, not a vessel for a millennia-old demon, not even an extra.
¿Why would you want that dirty, exhausting emotional residue?
That would be too much work for someone so… you.
System warning: Don't try to "felt" anything. The only thing you'll achieve is giving yourself an aneurysm or ending up smelling like burnt toast.
You already have me. ¿what more do you need?
— Archie
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—¡Ah, on top of everything, that bastard is stalking me! — Rémy shouted, his voice echoing off the wet bathroom tiles. —It makes no sense. ¿How am I supposed to buy cursed tools in the future if I Can't feed them by myself?
There were systems without any personality. Cold and mechanical ones that limited themselves to giving stats and rewards. ¿Why couldn't his be like those? ¿Why did he have to carry a cynical administrator who not only reminded him of his absolute mediocrity but also seemed to enjoy it with suffocating familiarity?
The confirmation that he was a total zero on the jujutsu scale stung more than soap in the eyes. He felt stalked, prisoner of an idiot who forced him to be a sorcerer who somehow could see curses without having a trace of cursed energy.
Rémy passed the towel over his face with unnecessary force, trying to erase the sensation of being watched from inside his own eyelids. The idea of being an empty vessel, a battery that didn't generate charge but was fed by a parasite with a superiority complex, turned his stomach.