*Pop—Click!*
The crisp sound of a metal pull-tab snapping was jarringly loud at the edge of the silent woods.
However, Suguru Geto was currently completely lost in a feverish obsession, deaf to everything around him.
His eyes were bloodshot as he stared intently at Yuki Tsukumo, as if waiting for a final judgment that could rescue him from the bottomless abyss.
"Kill... every single non-sorcerer?"
Yuki Tsukumo froze for a moment.
Her originally cynical and somewhat aloof expression momentarily stiffened upon hearing those words.
As a Special Grade Sorcerer who had traveled the world, she had seen countless cruel cursed spirits and twisted curse users.
But she never expected this Jujutsu High student—whom the higher-ups always viewed as a golden boy and an enforcer of righteousness—to propose a horrific plan bordering on genocide in such a calm, almost relieved tone.
The wind stopped.
Even the irritating drone of cicadas in the air seemed to be choked off by an invisible pressure at that moment.
"Haha... Hahahaha!"
After a brief moment of shock, Yuki Tsukumo suddenly clutched her stomach and burst into laughter.
Her laughter echoed across the open training ground with a sense of unbridled arrogance.
Suguru Geto's brow furrowed slightly, his hands instinctively clenching into fists.
"Senior Yuki, do you think my idea is laughable?"
His voice was terrifyingly low, like a beast suppressing its urge to break out of its cage.
If even Yuki Tsukumo, the one who proposed treating the cause, were to reject him, the final line of logic he had built over the last few days would completely collapse.
"Laughable? No, not at all."
Yuki Tsukumo stopped her wild laughter, stood up straight, and wagged a finger.
A dangerous light gleamed in her amber eyes.
"Suguru, do you know? What you just said..."
She took a step forward, leaning close to Suguru Geto and lowering her voice, her tone filled with temptation.
"Theoretically, it truly is the most effective and thorough way to treat the cause!"
*Boom!*
These words were the final straw that broke the camel's back.
Like a demon whispering in his ear, they instantly shattered the psychological defense Suguru Geto had barely managed to build under Instructor Yoru's special training.
"The most effective... way to treat the cause?"
Suguru Geto muttered to himself, his eyes turning hollow before being rapidly filled with a fanatical zeal.
"Yes, exactly!"
"As long as those monkeys who create cursed spirits are gone, as long as this world is left with only sorcerers..."
"No more comrades will have to die, and tragedies like Riko's will never happen again!"
Yuki Tsukumo watched Suguru Geto descend into a frenzy of self-hypnosis without interrupting.
Like a cold observer, she continued to feed him her highly provocative philosophy.
"Suguru, humans are always used to pushing problems onto others, while sorcerers are used to taking all the responsibility themselves."
"Those rotten oranges at the top teach you every day to protect the weak."
"But what exactly constitutes the 'weak'?"
Yuki Tsukumo spun around, pointing toward the distant Tokyo cityscape.
"Is it those ordinary people who enjoy your protection while secretly churning out cursed spirits because of their greed, jealousy, and fear?"
"Or is it sorcerers like you, who swallow those cursed spirit orbs that taste like vomit every day, pushing yourselves to the brink of collapse?"
Suguru Geto's body shuddered violently.
Yuki Tsukumo's words were like needles, precisely tearing open the most festering wound in his heart.
The nausea of swallowing a cursed spirit orb.
The ugly cheers of the Star Religious Group members.
The image of Riko lying in a pool of blood.
Everything was frantically catalyzing the demon within him.
"Do you choose to continue being a tool for the higher-ups, protecting those hideous monkeys in an endless cycle of exorcism..."
Yuki Tsukumo turned back, staring fixedly into Suguru Geto's eyes.
"...or do you choose to cut off the source entirely and create a true paradise belonging only to sorcerers?"
"This doesn't depend on orders from the top, and it doesn't depend on some bullshit 'righteousness'."
She reached out and lightly tapped Suguru Geto's chest.
"It depends on your... true feelings."
True feelings!
These two words hit Suguru Geto's soul like a sledgehammer.
His breathing became extremely rapid, his chest heaving violently.
Black cursed energy began to ooze from his body like boiling asphalt, twisting and rolling uncontrollably in the air.
"Create a... paradise for sorcerers..."
Suguru Geto slowly raised both hands, looking at his palms which were calloused from years of fighting and swallowing cursed spirits.
His gaze turned completely fanatical and cold.
It was as if he were looking at two lambs about to be slaughtered.
"Yes... I've had enough."
"I don't want to protect those monkeys anymore."
Suguru Geto snapped his head up. The gentleness and kindness that once resided in his narrow eyes were gone, replaced only by a pure desire for destruction.
"I will—"
Just as the oath that would send him falling into the abyss was about to leave his lips!
*Hum—!!!*
The temperature of the surrounding air suddenly skyrocketed at a terrifying speed!
The already sweltering summer air seemed to be ignited in an instant, transforming into an invisible furnace!
Yuki Tsukumo's expression changed drastically.
She whipped her head around toward the shadows of the nearby woods.
A terrifying pressure that made even a Special Grade Sorcerer like her feel a pang of palpitations swept toward them with the force of a tidal wave!
"Who's there?!"
*Boom—!!!*
There was no answer.
What responded to her was a dark red streak of light that tore through the sky like a falling meteor!
It was a long blade!
A dark red long blade, burning with an incredibly domineering heat that seemed capable of incinerating every sin in the world!
The blade descended from the sky with an ear-piercing sonic boom, slamming into the grass between Yuki Tsukumo and Suguru Geto!
*Bang!*
The hard ground was instantly blown open into a massive crater.
Intense heat erupted from the blade as the center, instantly turning the grass within a ten-meter radius into scorched ash!
The violent shockwave immediately dispersed the black cursed energy swirling around Suguru Geto.
Even Yuki Tsukumo had to raise her arm to block the scalding air current.
Then.
A tall, slender figure landed lightly from mid-air, as if weightless.
He stood with one foot on the hilt of the blade, which was still glowing with a dark red light, looking down at the two of them.
In his hand, he held a can of chilled Ramune soda that had been squeezed slightly out of shape.
"It seems that the moment I take my eyes off you, you lot..."
Yoru's face was as cold as still water, his deep dark eyes burning with a rage even hotter than the Shiranui.
"...start discussing how to destroy the world."
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