Evil Spirit Consultant

Chapter 245 Cancer Rosary

"This tile is so big it can be held in one hand (I've seen this thing before)..."

The hidden basement of the underground antique shop was filled with a strange smell of formaldehyde mixed with a fresh aroma.

The antique shop owner knelt behind the screen, the dim candlelight casting his shadow in the shape of a demon, making him look exceptionally eerie—if one ignored the bruises on his face.

His eye sockets turned bluish-black like a panda's, one of which was swollen. His nose looked a little crooked, and because several of his teeth were broken, he spoke with a lisp.

The boss glanced at the half-bead that Yang Liu and the others had brought and immediately made a judgment: "This thing is called a cancer rosary. I saw this thing with my master when I was an apprentice."

The owner, who could be considered a little old man, spoke with eyes full of memories, and then picked up the kerosene lamp to examine the bead more carefully.

"Cancer beads? That doesn't sound like a good thing." Sasaki Reiko curled her lip. "Hey old man, it's pitch black here. Don't you turn on the lights? How can you even see clearly at your age?!"

"Hmph! What do you know? This is tradition! Besides, I'm only sixty years old, still very young!"

Despite saying this, the boss glared fiercely at Sasaki Reiko: "You came in without asking any questions and beat up our people, and then you actually dared to mock our traditions like this... It's really, really..."

The boss looked at the two people sitting in front of him and was furious. He was so angry that his hair stood on end. In a fit of rage, he... lost his temper.

I can't beat them, damn it!!!
"Where did this witch find this monster from..." the boss thought through gritted teeth.

As the largest underground black market dealer in the entire Fukuoka Prefecture, and even the entire Kyushu region, the boss certainly couldn't have gotten to this point by just talking.

For those thugs who come here to sell stolen goods, reputation, connections, and language are all useless; only strong force is the necessary guarantee to ensure that their business will not be taken away.

It can be said that the extraordinary individuals in the boss's lineage are very strong, even exceptionally strong.

Unlike other magic-based professions that directly use spiritual power to convert into spells, the extraordinary individuals of the Boss lineage take an extra step after refining their spiritual power: in their daily training, they use their spiritual power to "refine" the ghosts and demons they collect, extracting pure soul energy to mix with their spiritual power as the "energy source" for casting spells.

The drawback of this lineage is that it is difficult to accumulate power, and once the power is exhausted, it is impossible to recover combat strength in a short period of time.

Its advantage is that it is very powerful. The refined power has the characteristic of adding negative energy to any spell - ignoring all spell protection, and can only be resisted by one's own cultivation and life force.

In the context of games, this would be what's known as true damage.

This lineage may not be particularly outstanding in a one-on-one situation, but its destructive power becomes exceptionally considerable in a multi-on-one situation.

Even if it's just those new shop assistants who haven't been training for long, once the number exceeds ten, with their cooperation, even a master-level shopkeeper could easily crash and burn.

Moreover, this store, as the headquarters, has more than 20 employees, including the owner, who are stationed there. Even if five or six restaurant owners work together, they can handle it.

But these two guys in front of me are the exception!

Sasaki Reiko needs no introduction. Although her surname has been changed, she is still considered the head of the Mikami family by the local supernatural beings. And the Mikami family is most notable for the sheer number of shikigami they control!
As a system specializing in "bullying the weak with the many," the underground black market bosses can only obediently take a beating when they encounter the Mikami family, who are even more adept at bullying the weak with the many.

The boss could at least understand Sasaki Reiko's methods, but he couldn't understand the monster next to him at all.

"Why are spells not working on him? Is this guy even human? And why does he seem to get more and more excited as the fight goes on..."

Endless doubts swirled in the boss's mind, so much so that he unconsciously stared at Yang Liu for a rather long time.

Noticing the other person's gaze, Yang Liu, who had been sitting behind Sasaki Reiko in a daze, came back to her senses.

Considering that the other party had just organized a group of people to "feed" her, Yang Liu decided to be nicer to him. So, after a moment of preparation, she gave him a "kind" smile.

"Holy crap! What does that smile mean? Is this a threat? This is absolutely a threat! This is intolerable!"

Between suppressing his frustration and slamming the table in anger, the boss chose... suppressed anger on the spot.

So he smiled despite his bruised and swollen face, and then obediently got up and turned on the basement light switch.

Suddenly, the entire basement was as bright as day, and the eerie atmosphere created by the various props disappeared instantly.

"Ah, it's finally bright now. Let's continue. What exactly is this cancer rosary?" Sasaki Reiko stretched contentedly.

"What else could it be? Of course, it's the tricks those old men in the military pulled." The boss curled his lip.

He sat back down at the low table, looked at the broken beads before him, and after thinking for a moment, decided to say a few more words:

"The original name of the object is unknown. All that is known is that it was researched by a secret department of the military during World War II. Originally, they did not just intend to create weapons of mass destruction, but it was part of a deification project."

The military used the souls of war dead and victims of wrongful convictions as materials, absorbing the negative energy, such as the intense obsessions of people near death. They wanted to master the technology of fusing human souls, obsessions, and special energies through energy conversion under extreme conditions, and create a sufficiently powerful artificial god… Of course, they ultimately failed; this thing was merely a byproduct of that experiment.

"This thing is actually called cancer rosary beads, then..." Yang Liu couldn't help but make some connections when she heard the name.

The boss nodded in agreement: "That's right, just as you think. This thing naturally failed as a god-making project, but it's very successful as a weapon of mass destruction."

During World War II, people's understanding of cancer was not sufficient, so they only knew that this thing had terrible effects. Any enemy who fought against this thing, even if they were not injured at the time, would die suddenly within one or two months after returning home.

However, the users don't fare well either. Although they die a little slower than the enemies, they are basically replaced every six months. Their death is similar to that of the enemies. Their only advantage is that their power will increase rapidly before they die.

For this reason, for a long time these things were referred to as cursed demonic artifacts.

(End of this chapter)