Curse Reply: After choosing Nawa, the cursed spirit cursed me for being cruel.

The behemoth clearly hadn't expected that this tiny human could actually withstand its attack head-on.

It retracted its forelimbs, ignoring the flowing blood, and its six legs moved restlessly on the ground, while the huge maw on its chest emitted a more frenzied roar than before.

This time it used both front paws to strike at the same time. Maki dodged to the side, and the huge paw slammed into the spot where she had just been standing, creating a deep crater in the asphalt road.

Using the momentum of her dodge, she stepped onto the house next to her, leaping into the air. In mid-air, she twisted her waist and slashed down at its joints with her long sword.

The behemoth reacted faster than she expected. It suddenly swung its body, and its thick tail swept across, leaving Maki unable to change direction in mid-air. She was solidly whipped away.

She crashed into a grocery store window, getting covered in shards of glass and wood chips.

hurts a little.

She wiped the blood from the glass cuts on her face and stood up from the ruins.

At this moment, Maki holds a knife in one hand, her gaze calmly fixed on the distance. With the blood on her body, she resembles a valiant female general from ancient times.

"I've seen through you, you big oaf."

After playing these two rounds, she roughly figured out its attack rhythm.

This guy is indeed strong, but he only knows how to rely on his strength.

Its attack pattern is very simple, consisting only of stomping, patting, and sweeping.

Maki curled the corners of her mouth into a smile, spat out the blood and foam in her mouth, gripped the knife with both hands again, lowered her center of gravity, and stepped over the broken glass on the ground to walk back towards the giant beast.

This time, she didn't wait for the giant beast to make the first move. She accelerated and sprinted forward. The moment the giant beast raised its left forelimb, her knife had already cut into the joint of that limb.

Before the giant beast raises its leg, you step forward to meet it, timing your strike perfectly before the beast exerts its power.

The giant beast was in pain, and its entire body tilted to the left, knocking down several houses.

Maki squeezed through the gap between its forelimbs and torso, and the tip of her knife cut a long scorch mark on the scales on its abdomen, causing green blood to gush out freely.

The behemoth turned around angrily, its tail sweeping across again, but she had already retreated out of its attack range, standing a short distance away and flicking the green blood off her blade.

A faint sense of excitement rose in her heart. Apart from her two teachers, Gojo Satoru and Duanmu Yan, there was basically no one who could make her go all out in close combat.

Even Xia Youjie couldn't make her go all out, but now she finally has a cursed spirit to fight with her to her heart's content.

"I hope you... can hold on a little longer."

She readjusted her breathing, held the knife horizontally in front of her, and charged towards the giant beast again with a leap.

The giant beast picked up an abandoned car parked on the roadside and hurled it at Maki.

Maki, seeing the car suddenly approaching, pushed off with her foot and faced it head-on. Gripping her knife in both hands, she slashed diagonally, the blade cutting right through the middle of the car. The two halves of the wreckage flew off her sides, crashing into the building wall behind her.

She continued charging forward, stepping over the shards scattered on the ground. "A beast should stay in the deep mountains and forests. You've come to the wrong place to run wild in a town meant for ordinary people."

The beast's massive maw split open, spewing out a foul-smelling gust of air, and its six thick limbs pounded restlessly against the asphalt road, each strike creating a shallow crater.

"Insect, tiny insect, I'll crush you!"

The giant beast raised both of its forelimbs at the same time, blocking the streetlights above its head, and the shadows enveloped her entire body.

"die!"

With its two forelimbs slamming down simultaneously, Maki sidestepped through the gap between the two giant feet, stepped onto the outer wall of a nearby house, used the momentum to push off, and slashed her long sword into its forelimb from below.

The scaly beast was in pain and its entire body tilted to one side, but before it fell to the ground, it suddenly flung Maki away, sword and all.

Maki did a somersault in the air and landed on the convenience store roof, breaking two tiles.

She took a breath and raised her hand to wipe the blood streaming down her forehead.

This guy's skin is indeed thick enough, and the defensive coverage is even.

In that case, let's use something even more ruthless.

She planted the knife in the ground and pulled out Youyun.

"I hope you can let me have some fun..."

Chapter 212 Is this a human?

Seeing how tenacious the humans were, the giant beast uprooted a nearby utility pole, dragging the reinforced concrete base and mud along with it as it was pulled out. The power lines crackled and sparks flew in mid-air.

It swung the telephone pole like a stick, sweeping across the battlefield.

Maki jumped directly off the roof, touched the ground with her toes, and then soared into the air again, gripping Yuuko and slashing down with all her might from mid-air.

The blade collided head-on with the concrete pillar, splitting the entire utility pole in two.

The moment Maki landed, she twisted her toes and slipped between the giant beast's two forelimbs, while Yuyun struck the beast's abdomen heavily.

Then she instantly left, avoiding the giant beast's trampling.

The giant beast looked down at its abdomen, a pained expression on its face.

"Human, you are not an ordinary human."

"You only realized it now? Too late."

Maki stood up, hoisted Yuuki onto her shoulder, and saw in her pupils the six-legged behemoth flailing its limbs furiously.

It was clearly enraged by the human who had repeatedly slashed it, and a deafening roar came from its massive maw.

"You insect! I'm going to smash you into a pulp!"

Enrage drove the behemoth to its last shred of reason. It yanked the telephone pole down again, and Maki rushed forward, using the help of Yuuki to pull the pole to the side.

She smashed the utility pole into the building next to it, causing half of the wall to collapse with a roar, sending bricks and dust flying. Taking advantage of this moment, Maki had already crawled to the front of the giant beast.

Youyun seemed to come alive in her hands, unleashing dozens of attacks in a mere second, turning the giant beast's forelimbs into a pulp, and causing its massive body to instantly lose its balance.

The enemy is out of balance!

Xia Xi pressed her advantage, gripping the end with both hands, leaping into the air like a falling meteorite crashing down from directly above the giant beast's head.

"I've already said it, you beasts... don't bother ordinary people's lives!"

The cloud slammed into the center of the giant beast's head, causing green liquid and bone fragments to explode simultaneously.

The behemoth's massive body twitched, then tilted backward and crashed to the ground, kicking up clouds of dust.

A moment later, Maki emerged from the dust, and the green bloodstains on the clouds were slowly fading away.

She put Youyun into her weapon pouch, wiped the blood and ash from her face with the back of her hand, and turned to walk towards Nanako and Mimiko.

"Top-tier cursed spirit... successfully removed."

On the other side, Nanako shook her aching wrists. She and Mimiko had cleared away all the cursed spirits on their side, and the two smiled at each other.

"Sister, we've got this sorted out. Let's go find Maki-nee." Mimiko turned around, and just as she took half a step, Nanako's pupils suddenly contracted.

Behind Mimiko, a level-two cursed spirit that they had beheaded was silently getting up from the ground.

It wasn't dead; its two sharp claws were already raised high, aimed at Mimi's back.

"Watch out, Mimiko!"

Nanako just raised her phone.

A long blade descended from the sky, piercing through the level-two cursed spirit. The nearby asphalt road surface cracked from the terrifying impact, with the cracks extending several meters in all directions.

The level-two cursed spirit was pinned to the ground, its claws less than half a meter from Mimiko, before its entire body began to disintegrate from the cut, turning into black smoke and dissipating.

Maki landed on the rooftop next to her, her shoes landing on the cracked pavement. She bent down, gripped the hilt of her sword, and pulled the long sword out of the shattered ground.

She slung the knife over her shoulder, glanced at the two of them, and said, "Be careful. If you had been a step slower, something bad would have happened."

"This place is clean now, let's go to the next town."

Nanako and Mimiko jogged to catch up, and the three of them quickly disappeared at the end of the street.

……

In the desolate forest, the moonlight was fragmented by the layers of tree canopy, casting dappled shadows on the ground.

The woods were unusually quiet; there wasn't even a chirping of insects.

Higashido Aoi strode ahead, his imposing figure carving a path through the bushes.

Kamo Kenki, Nishimiya Momokazu, and Shinkichi.

Apart from Nishimiya Momo, the other three are all level two sorcerers.

Singi looked down at her mechanical arm, a pale blue screen embedded inside the wrist armor, displaying real-time monitoring data of nearby magical energy fluctuations.

He shouldn't have been standing here. Before setting off, Duanmu Yan said he would play a very important role, and that entering a battlefield of this scale was too risky.

He stood in front of the chairman and said that he didn't want to stay in the rear, but wanted to fight alongside his comrades.

He had spent too many years in that dark basement. He had finally been able to stand up, walk on his own two legs, and protect others... He didn't want to stay in a safe place and watch others fight for their lives anymore.

Duanmu Yan remained silent for a long time, so long that he thought he would be rejected outright.

Then the chairman patted him on the shoulder and said, "How can a man stop another man from achieving his own desires?"

His strength is not as weak as it appears on paper. In a short period of time, he even has the explosive power to fight against a Special Grade. In addition, Higashido Aoi's Rogue Game is almost unbeatable in close combat. This team's survivability is far stronger than the data suggests.

On the screen, countless red dots were moving slowly. Their team had entered the very center of these red dots, but looking around, there were only trees and not a single cursed spirit in sight.

"Hey, Mechanical Maru, is your thing broken?"

Without turning his head, Toudou Aoi called out. He called Sinji "Mechanical Maru" because when they first met, he introduced himself to Sinji as having a combat form based on puppet manipulation called "Mechanical Maru," and Toudou Aoi never changed his name after that.

"The detector will not malfunction. It was calibrated this morning, and the error is within 0.3 percent. Moreover, it will only be the position; the quantity will absolutely not be wrong."

Without looking up, Singi's fingers moved rapidly across the screen. "These cursed spirits must be nearby."

Kamo Kenki stopped and slowly scanned the ground with his eyes. There were no signs of disturbance nearby.

He frowned slightly and turned to look at Dongtang Kui: "Neither in the sky nor on the ground. That leaves only one possibility."

Higashido Aoi looked down at the soil beneath her feet, and a slow smile spread across her face.

The two men exchanged a glance and said at the same time, "Underground."

Nishimiya Momo spun around in mid-air on her broomstick, looking completely bewildered. Just as she was about to ask...

Singer suddenly raised his mechanical arm, and a cannon hole popped out from the center of the arm armor. The cannon was aimed at the ground not far away, and with a loud bang, the cannonball accurately hit the soil.

Soil and rubble were blasted into the air, revealing several shattered limbs of cursed spirits that were slowly turning into black smoke and dissipating.