Chapter 128: The Special Grade Cursed Spirit Born from Magma
"Rooooar!"
The roar rolled through the mine like thunder trapped underground.
Loose stones shook free from the ceiling. Dust spilled down in thin gray curtains, scattering across the jagged floor.
Yami stood still in the tunnel, facing the wave of heat that rushed toward him. Sulfur burned in the air. Mixed into it was something far worse than poison.
Malice.
Not the hatred of one person.
This was a collective resentment, layered and fermented across centuries. Countless miners had been buried alive in this darkness, crushed beneath collapsed stone, suffocated in airless tunnels, and cooked by the underground heat they had feared all their lives.
They feared cave-ins.
They feared the dark.
More than anything, they feared the magma below, that unseen furnace capable of melting flesh, bone, tools, and hope alike.
That fear had become a curse.
And somewhere ahead, that curse was waiting.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Yami continued forward without drawing his sword.
The deeper he went, the redder the mine became. The rock walls looked burned from within, pulsing faintly with heat. Each breath would have scorched the lungs of an ordinary person. Even a Grade 1 sorcerer would have needed to reinforce their body with Cursed Energy just to keep moving.
Yami only adjusted his breathing.
"Total Concentration: Constant."
His breath fell into a long, steady rhythm.
The scorching air entered his lungs, but instead of burning him, it fed the cycle inside his body. His blood ran hotter. His muscles loosened, then tightened with greater efficiency. His senses sharpened.
Sun Breathing was never afraid of heat.
It was born to move through it.
Click.
A dry, grinding sound echoed from the darkness ahead.
Yami stopped.
In the faint red glow of the ore-veined walls, several twisted shapes dragged themselves into view.
They looked like miners, or what was left of miners.
Some were fused with blackened stone. Some had shriveled limbs and cracked faces. Some had no lower bodies at all, crawling forward with swollen hands while tar-like sludge poured from their mouths.
Cursed Spirits born from the dead who had never escaped the mine.
Cannon fodder.
But pitiful, all the same.
"Let… me… out…"
"So hot…"
"So dark…"
Their whispers brushed against Yami's ears like nails scraping stone.
Dozens of them lunged at once.
Yami sighed.
"I'm sorry."
His hand moved to the standard-issue tachi at his waist. The blade was borrowed from Tokyo Jujutsu High, and after several recent battles, it was already badly chipped.
"But this is the only way I can set you free."
The blade left its sheath.
"Sun Breathing, First Form…"
The air snapped tight.
"Circle Dance."
A bright ring of flame bloomed in the dark mine.
Yami moved through the charging curses in a clean arc. The damaged tachi cut with impossible precision, guided by speed, breath, and heat. There was no clash of Cursed Energy, no elaborate technique.
Only a sword stroke refined to the edge of violence.
Chhk!
Charred limbs flew.
The Cursed Spirits touched by the flame did not even have time to scream. Their bodies burned away, their resentment reduced to ash before it could cling to the air.
A curse crawled along the ceiling and dropped behind him.
Yami turned, kicked it away, and used the recoil to flip backward.
"Sun Breathing, Fourth Form: Illusory Sun Arc."
His body blurred.
Red afterimages flickered through the tunnel, confusing the remaining curses. Their claws struck empty air, then crashed into one another.
Yami twisted midair and raised the blade.
"Fifth Form: Fire Wheel."
He descended upside down, the tachi carving a burning wheel through the darkness.
Boom!
The floor split open.
A scorched crack tore across the tunnel for more than ten meters, swallowing the last of the miner curses in a blast of heat.
When the flames died down, silence returned.
Yami landed lightly and exhaled.
White vapor slipped from his lips.
Then came a small, sharp sound.
Crack.
The tachi in his hand finally gave out.
The blade snapped near the hilt. The broken steel fell to the ground in several glowing fragments, ruined beyond repair.
Yami looked at the bare hilt in his hand and shook his head.
"As expected. It still can't hold."
Without a proper sword, he could not bring out even half of his strength.
If he were at his true peak, perhaps he could make do with his fingers and raw sword force. But right now, that was asking too much.
He tossed the broken hilt aside and kept walking.
The heat grew worse.
The dark red stone walls gradually turned crimson, glowing like iron pulled from a forge. The tunnel sloped downward, and after one final bend, the cramped passage opened into a vast underground cavern.
Yami stopped at the edge.
Below him, magma churned.
Thick waves of molten rock rolled through the cavern floor, casting red light across the ceiling. In the center of the magma pool stood a raised stone platform.
And above that platform floated a crystal the size of a human head.
It glowed an eerie, beautiful red.
Yami's eyes sharpened.
"Scarlet Ore."
Even from dozens of meters away, he could feel the heat contained inside it.
This was not ordinary ore.
It had absorbed the energy of the earth veins for hundreds of years, along with the despair of the miners who had died here. Time, flame, resentment, and pressure had compressed it into a material worthy of a Special Grade Cursed Tool.
This was exactly what he needed.
Yami stepped forward.
Glug.
The magma pool below him bubbled.
Glug, glug.
The surface swelled violently.
Then something rose from the molten rock.
It was enormous.
Over ten meters tall, its body was formed from dark red lava and black obsidian. Cracks ran across its surface, glowing from within. Every breath it took sprayed sparks and poisonous gas into the air.
A Semi-Special Grade Cursed Spirit born from humanity's fear of underground heat and magma.
The Lava Cursed Spirit.
"Rooooar!"
It slammed one massive palm into the magma pool.
A wave of molten rock rose at once, more than a dozen meters high, crashing toward Yami like a burning tide.
"Troublesome."
Yami frowned.
He was unarmed.
Even with his body and the protection of the Demon Slayer Mark, taking a full wave of magma head-on would still leave him badly injured.
Retreating was the safer option.
Unfortunately, retreat had never been one of his habits.
"No sword, then."
A dangerous light flickered in Yami's eyes.
He bent his knees.
The stone beneath his feet cracked.
"Transparent World."
His gaze emptied.
In an instant, the world became lines, pulses, heat currents, and flows of force. The magma wave no longer looked like a solid wall. It had weak points, gaps, unstable currents.
Yami found one.
Bang!
He launched himself forward like a fired cannonball.
Rather than pulling back, he charged straight into the magma tsunami.
At the last possible instant, his body twisted in midair. He slipped through a narrow gap in the molten wave, so close that the heat burned the edge of his coat black.
The Lava Cursed Spirit froze.
It had not expected a human to dodge that.
Half a second.
That was enough.
Yami landed on the raised stone platform and reached out.
His right hand closed around the Scarlet Ore.
Hiss.
The smell of burning flesh rose at once.
Even Yami's body could not fully ignore that level of heat. Skin seared beneath his palm, but his expression did not change.
"System."
He growled the word in his mind.
"Establish a Binding Vow."
[Ding! Temporary Shaping Binding Vow established.]
[Effect: Activate Temporary Shaping for ten seconds. Scarlet Ore will be forcibly reconstructed into a sword blank.]
[Cost: The ore will revert after ten seconds. Synchronization will decrease by 3%.]
Boom!
The instant the vow formed, the heat sealed inside the Scarlet Ore flooded into Yami's body like a released furnace.
His blood surged.
His muscles tightened.
Something inside him, something that had been held back, snapped loose.
[Ding! Extreme fire-element resonance detected.]
[Synchronization breakthrough: 40%.]
[Unlocked: Sun Breathing, Tenth to Twelfth Forms.]
[Unlocked: Demon Slayer Mark.]
A deep red mark bloomed across the left side of Yami's forehead, shaped like a flame caught in motion.
His heart rate surged past two hundred beats per minute. His body temperature climbed. His blood felt less like blood and more like molten fire moving through his veins.
Yami's fingers tightened around the ore.
"Take shape."
The Scarlet Ore yielded.
Under the force of the Binding Vow and the breakthrough in synchronization, that impossibly hard crystal stretched, compressed, and reshaped in his hand.
One second later, Yami held a rough crimson sword blank.
It had no polish, no edge worthy of a finished blade, and no proper fittings.
But it could endure his heat.
For now, that was enough.
Yami turned in midair, facing the enraged Lava Cursed Spirit below.
Ten seconds.
That was all he had.
His grip settled around the sword blank.
"Now…"
The mark on his forehead burned brighter.
"I have a sword."
He raised the crimson blade.
"Sun Breathing, Tenth Form…"
The cavern's heat bent toward him.
"Bright Sun's Grace."
He struck downward.
A spiral of flame tore through the air from above, bright enough to paint the entire cavern red-gold. The slash fell like a fragment of the sun, carrying the full force of Yami's newly awakened mark and the heat of the Scarlet Ore.
The Lava Cursed Spirit roared and raised both arms.
It was useless.
Its lava armor, which had been tough enough to withstand its own molten domain, split like paper beneath the blade.
Rumble!
The cavern shook.
Magma surged. Stone cracked. Red light swallowed every corner of the underground space.
When the glow faded, the Lava Cursed Spirit had been split from head to toe.
Its body collapsed into ash before it could regenerate.
Yami landed on the stone platform, breathing hard.
The sword blank in his hand trembled.
Ten seconds passed.
The crimson blade twisted, shrank, and reverted into the Scarlet Ore.
[Ding! Binding Vow duration ended. Scarlet Ore has reverted.]
[Synchronization settlement: 40% -> 37%.]
[Weakness period has begun.]
A wave of fatigue swept through Yami's body.
His knees nearly buckled, but he steadied himself. He looked down at the Scarlet Ore in his palm. Even through the weakness, his eyes were bright.
"I saw it."
The world at forty percent synchronization.
That heat. That clarity. That blade.
Yami put the ore away carefully, a small smile appearing on his face.
"Next, I need to find someone who can forge this properly."
Someone capable of turning this ore, born from magma and resentment, into a blade that could carry the sun.
A new Shiranui.
.....
https://discord.gg/KvMN2CFsMR
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03]