Curse Return: Demon Void Girl Doesn't Want to Be a Weakling

At the same time, a real voice came from the side and behind, so close it was almost touching his ear.

What are you grabbing?

A pale hand reached out from the side and grabbed at the back of Shiro's neck, its five fingers spread wide, each fingertip now a bone spur.

As the real person was being dragged deeper into the forest by Hanami, he tore off his only remaining left arm from his shoulder again and fired it as a ranged weapon, while his main body continued to be dragged away by Hanami.

The arm was reconstructed behind Mashiro's side, growing back into a complete limb at an incredible speed, from the fingers to the wrist, from the forearm to the shoulder.

The real person tore off his entire left arm to use as a projectile weapon.

Without turning his head, Zhenbai thrust backward, the silver blade piercing precisely into the palm of that hand.

After piercing the palm, the blade continued forward, the tip of which was about to touch the real person's wrist.

The real person's hand deformed after being stabbed, and a mouth split open in the palm, filled with small, barbed bone teeth, biting down on Cong Yu's knife, trying to forcibly lock the blade.

At the same time, two new bone spurs grew from the two sides of the crack in the palm, bypassing the blade and stabbing towards Mashiro's wrist as he held the sword.

With a flick of his wrist, the high-speed vibration from the sound wave shattered Cong Yu's bones and teeth instantly. Then, he kicked back with his right leg, accurately striking the real man's wrist.

The real wrist transformed into soft tentacles the instant it was kicked, wrapping around her ankle. The force was not strong enough to restrain her.

But the real person doesn't always think about trapping anyone; what he always wants is slaughter.

His five fingers each transformed into miniature bone blades, which he used to sever her Achilles tendon.

The bone blade cut into the skin, leaving five shallow, almost invisible wounds.

Click-clack.

Ignoring the minor wounds on her heel, Mashiro used her left hand's Murasame to slash horizontally as she caught the blade, the silvery light sweeping across Mashiro's forearm.

The blade cut into the muscle, but was once again deliberately deformed and dodged.

The real man's arm split open before the blade even touched it, allowing the blade to pass through the middle and retreat unharmed behind the water array wall of Tuogen.

“Interesting.” The Master withdrew his left arm and stepped back behind Tuogen.

His face was filled with intense curiosity. "I've used so many spells on you, but your body doesn't change at all. I can't even touch it. Why is that?"

"So you've already used the spell. I didn't feel anything at all."

Mashiro stood up straight, and Congyu twirled in her left hand before landing in her right.

The five wounds on my heel have begun to heal, and the blood was almost covered by new skin before it could even flow out.

"Coming all the way to save your own companion? What a waste of your life."

In the few seconds that the two sides were locked in a standoff, Hua Yu's barrier formation was completely blasted through by Cang.

A dark blue gravitational sphere slammed into the vine curtain from the front, tearing a large hole in the center of hundreds of layers of interwoven plant fibers. All the vines struck by the sphere were crushed to the atomic level by gravity and disappeared.

Just this one second.

Tuo Gen activated his Water Escape Technique, and water vapor gushed out from the cracks in the ground.

The edge of the dense forest was shrouded in a salty, fishy mist, making it impossible to see one's hand in front of one's face.

Mashiro's perception of her curse power was interfered with by the mist, and the remnants of Hanamichi and Tagore's curse power were mixed together, making it impossible to distinguish who was where.

Mashiro didn't stop to wait for the mist to dissipate.

She charged into the mist, slashing horizontally through the rain, the blade touching Hua Yu's retreating back.

The blade slashed horizontally into Hanamichi's left side, but missed a vital spot. Hanamichi twisted her body to dodge most of the attack as the blade entered.

As Mashiro drew her sword, she twisted her wrist, and the blade made a horizontal cut in Hanami's body.

Hua Yu's left arm was completely severed, leaving her bare below the shoulder, with roots still wriggling at the cut.

Gojo Satoru walked up from behind Mashiro, his fingertips still in the same position as when he launched the Azure. His gaze behind his sunglasses pierced through the mist, sweeping over the receding afterimage of the cursed spirit.

Hua Yu only had her right arm left, tightly embracing Lou Hu. Zhen Ren was dragged back by Hua Yu's vines, both of his arms severed at the shoulders, and were regenerating. Tuo Gen's tentacles were affected by Cang Bo and hung limply at his sides.

"Wow, it runs so fast!" Gojo Satoru put his hand in front of his eyebrows and gazed into the distance.

Mashiro did not answer. She stood there and inserted Murasame into Hanami's severed arm that had fallen to the ground.

The blade hummed, the severed arm turned to ashes, and immense magical power surged into the body through the blade.

They did escape; it wasn't that she didn't want to chase after them.

The water mist was still there, but Hua Yu's curse power had already merged into the entire mountain forest, and Tuo Gen's water escape technique completely covered the remaining curse power.

The real person used the transformation of non-action to activate all the broken branches and debris on the ground, turning them into more than a dozen small insects that scurried around in all directions, disrupting the last clues.

A few seconds later, the four magical reactions completely disappeared into the forest.

"They escaped." Mashiro said, turning around as she pulled Murasame back into her body.

"It's not your problem."

Gojo Satoru walked to her side, glanced down at the withered vine remains on the ground, and said, "A person in a vegetative state uses their left arm to create space for escape, while patients use both hands as expendable resources."

"That octopus must have specifically practiced how to conceal its magical power using water techniques. Their retreat coordination must have been prepared many times in advance."

He kicked at the remaining trash on the ground.

"They never intended to fight you from the beginning; every step they took was just to buy time to retreat."

He paused, his gaze behind his sunglasses landing on Mashiro's face.

The wheels spinning above the girl's head gradually slowed down and finally stopped.

A hint of curiosity flashed in Gojo Satoru's eyes, but he still didn't intend to ask any further questions.

"You feel it's a pity?"

“It’s not a pity.” Mashiro looked away and stretched. “They ran away, but they paid a heavy price. At least they won’t be able to cause trouble for a while.”

Chapter 33 The Death List

Gojo Satoru called Ichiji, and soon the car arrived.

Mashiro and Gojo Satoru got into the car and asked Ijichi to drive to the administrative building.

Ichi gripped the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the mountain road ahead, illuminated by the car headlights.

The car drove along a rugged mountain road, experiencing some bumps.

In the back seat, Gojo Satoru pulled up his eye mask to cover his eyes, leaned back in his seat, and breathed evenly; it was hard to tell if he had fallen asleep.

Mashiro glanced at him, and sighed softly, thinking that he didn't have much time to rest.

She silently activated her spell and used sound wave control to make all the noise coming from inside and outside the car disappear.

A short while later, Gojo Satoru woke up again and straightened his clothes.

Mashiro silently stopped the spell and asked him, "Have you seen the data that Nanami found?"

“I’ve looked at it. The resigned account, the backup terminal, and the section chief’s medical records—all three clues point to the same group of people.” Gojo Satoru flipped his phone over. “But he didn’t have time to access the physical server’s backup logs. I’ll add those tonight.”

The administrative building is located on the east side of the main campus of the Magic Academy. It is a three-story concrete building with ivy covering the exterior walls.

At this time, all the windows are dark, except for a motion-sensor light in the foyer.

Gojo Satoru swiped his card at the door, and the glass door slid open.

The server room on the third floor is at the end of the corridor. The room is not big, with four server racks placed side by side, and the buzzing sound of fans fills the entire space.

There was a table against the wall with three terminals on it, one of which had a thin layer of dust on its screen.

Mashiro walked up to the terminal and ran her finger along the edge of the table. A trail of dust was left behind.

"No one has used this machine recently. The dust has just fallen naturally and hasn't been wiped."

“Backup terminal.” Gojo Satoru stood in front of the server rack, took off his sunglasses, and his six eyes gleamed faintly in the darkness.

His gaze swept across the metal casing of the server rack, stopping at the side of one of the servers. "This server has residual cursed energy. It's very faint, and the residual time is more than forty-eight hours; it wasn't left today."

Mashiro sat in front of the backup terminal and pressed the power button.

The screen lit up, and the system startup progress bar slowly advanced. She brought up the system log interface.

The data previously sent by Nanami had already marked a suspicious time point: twelve hours before the Juvenile Academy mission was assigned, the resigned account was activated.

Three hours before the task is assigned, the backup terminal is started from hibernation.

The operation log was overwritten one hour after the task was assigned.

The backup logs are not connected to the internet. The records on the server can be deleted, but there is a backup on the local machine that cannot be deleted.

"found it."

The screen displays a copy of the operation log, which records the complete execution process of two instructions.

The first task is to assign a juvenile academy mission to the window system. The mission is rated level two and does not display the existence of a special-grade cursed spirit.

The second order was to issue an emergency mission to the Second Branch of Tokyo through the auxiliary monitoring system, with the designated recipient being the first-class sorcerer Kujo Mashiro.

The two commands were issued four minutes apart from each other, both from the same terminal, and the login account belonged to Takashi Yamada, an employee who left the company two years ago.

But Mashiro continued scrolling down and found a record in the log that hadn't been completely overwritten: three different administrator accounts had logged in one after another in the early morning.

“Three accounts,” Mashiro said. She pointed out the line of text to Gojo Satoru.

"Section Chief Shigeru Sakakibara logged in at 2:31 a.m. and set up automatic task assignment."

"Deputy Section Chief Yoshio Tanaka logged in at 2:33 and activated the permissions of the departed account, Takashi Yamada."

"Sato Hikaru from the Technical Supervision Bureau logged in at 2:37, executed the dispatch instruction, and set up automatic overwrite in six hours."

Three accounts, three logins, with intervals of two minutes and four minutes respectively, clearly indicate that the operator was the same person using three accounts with different permissions to complete the entire process step by step.

Gojo Satoru put away his sunglasses, looked at the three names on the screen, and there was no smile on his lips.

"The section chief was responsible for sending out meeting room notices and also prepared medical records in advance to prove his alibi. His authority was used to call up templates, but he wasn't the one actually doing the operation; he only needed to provide the account. The deputy section chief was responsible for activating the accounts of employees who had already left the company, so that the instructions couldn't be traced back to living people. Sato Hikaru was responsible for the final distribution and erasure of traces. Three people, three steps."

Mashiro took a picture of the operation log. "The section chief and deputy section chief are both clerical positions, but they also have spells. Sato Hikaru, the technical director of the window system, is a level three sorcerer."

Gojo Satoru walked up to the server and pointed his finger at the spot on the metal casing where the filth was most concentrated.

“Here. Sato Hikaru left behind remnants of his cursed power during the operation. I can sense the type of his technique; it's a low-level cursed power sensing technique. I've already memorized the characteristics of his cursed power.”

"So it was Hikaru Sato who did the trick. Shigeru Sakakibara provided the account and the leave request. Yoshio Tanaka was responsible for activating the account after leaving the company."