The Rampage of the Disaster-Class Curse
The air reeked of something foul and rotten, but it wasn’t a vengeful spirit.
It was sal (煞), not sal (殺). A vicious curse.
Crack. Crunch. Snap!
The instant the name Chairman Kang Rokgi left his lips, the nurse’s body began to twist in grotesque ways.
The sound of bones snapping was horrific.
Black energy crawled up her arm.
All the way to her neck.
Her body slowly inflated like a balloon.
It looked ready to burst at any second.
Master. This is an incredibly powerful curse. You should dodge it.
Suho unfolded the yellow post-it notes and wrapped them around himself like armor.
Flying Talisman Armor.
No one was watching, so there was no harm in using it now.
It looked ridiculous, but its performance was top-tier.
Oh. As expected.
Respectable, isn’t it?
Yes.
That was when it happened.
A figure came sprinting up the stairs.
She spotted them on the second-floor landing and shouted.
“Kang Suho! What the hell is this spiritual energy? …What is that? Kyaa!!”
It was Samada Miku.
She took one look at Suho wrapped in yellow post-its and started screaming.
“Kyaaaaaaaak!”
Was the sight of him wearing post-its on his head really that shocking?
Her gaze darted back and forth between the nurse on the verge of exploding and Suho.
Miku stood there frozen, completely dazed.
“Hey. Defend yourself. It’s dang—”
Boom!
The nurse exploded.
With a dull thud, her body disintegrated into black smoke.
The smoke didn’t dissipate.
It crept up the stairs, slipped through wall cracks, seeped into floor fissures, and spread throughout the entire villa.
Samada Miku had taken the full force of the exploding curse.
She hadn’t even bothered to create a defensive barrier. How stupid.
Was the sight of him covered in post-its really that surprising?
Master, this is a disaster-class curse. If you breathe in that smoke, you’ll be afflicted!
I can tell that much myself.
……
Don’t curse at me inside your head.
Yes.
Miku’s eyes began to turn pitch black.
“Aigoo… you idiot… are you a stalker? Barging in out of nowhere. Tsk.”
She froze in place.
Her expression vanished.
It looks like Miku inhaled the smoke properly, Master.
“It exploded right in front of her.”
Master, the way her killing intent is thickening after inhaling the smoke… it appears to be a curse that drives anyone who knows the target’s information to kill them all.
Intense murderous aura began radiating from Miku.
And it was all aimed at Suho.
“Goddammit…”
If he opened the first-floor entrance door, the smoke might escape outside and cause even greater damage.
A disaster-class curse was no joke. One had wiped out an entire city in Mexico the year before last.
Suho shook the motionless Miku.
“Hey. Miku. Snap out of it.”
Her black pupils grew darker as her face twisted into a frown.
Even with a first-class shaman’s spiritual power, she could only resist the curse for a moment.
Black drool leaked from between her plump lips.
If he left her like this, the curse would consume her completely and turn her into a human bomb.
As the murderous intent pouring from her grew thicker, a powerful spiritual energy appeared and gently wrapped around her.
A halo of spiritual power materialized above Miku’s head and began enveloping her in golden light.
“Oh? So she had a guardian spirit?”
Dueokryeong. I beg you, please allow me to protect my granddaughter.
The spiritual power sending him telepathic messages was quite formidable.
It was a Spirit-class vengeful spirit in the shape of an old man. Or perhaps something even greater?
“Sure. Do whatever you want.”
Thank you. I shall keep your secret.
Not many beings knew what Dueokryeong was.
How had he realized Suho was using the power of Dueokryeong?
Master, Miku is more impressive than she looks. She had a Spirit-class vengeful spirit as her guardian?
Yeah. So that’s why she was so cocky. She’s been drowning in love from this guardian grandpa.
The appearance of the guardian spirit hadn’t worsened the curse, but it didn’t seem to be curing it either.
A disaster-class curse was truly no ordinary threat.
Thud… Thud. Click.
More presences began emerging from the second-floor hallway.
Doors opening.
Room 201. Room 202. Room 203. All at once.
Residents poured out into the corridor.
Their eyes were completely black, proving they had been cursed.
They had become evil spirits desperate to kill him, flailing their arms as they charged toward Suho.
Their killing intent pricked at his skin.
“Feels like I’ve become a celebrity stalked by paparazzi.”
They seemed to have some kind of radar on him, knowing exactly where he was.
It looked like every resident in the villa had been driven mad with the urge to kill him.
If they got outside, it would become a real disaster.
Suho tucked the frozen Miku under his arm and climbed the stairs.
Crash! Bang!
The sound of people bursting out on every floor.
It appears the entire villa has been cursed, Master.
Everyone who had inhaled the smoke was now afflicted.
It was a far more troublesome curse than he had expected.
Smoke that turned living people into zombies.
Smoke?
If the curse took the form of smoke, it might be easier to resolve than he thought.
The building was only five stories tall, so they reached the rooftop quickly.
If the curse was smoke, he could simply disperse it into the air, thin it out, and let it rise into the sky.
Bam—!
With Miku still tucked under his arm, Suho kicked the rooftop door open violently and stepped outside.
The beautiful Cambodian sunset sky felt paradoxically stunning.
“Come on, everyone! Follow me up to the rooftop!”
He had become the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Only instead of rats, what followed him were the villa residents with eyes completely blackened, howling like beasts.
“Graaaaaah!!”
“Kiiiek!! Kiiieeeeeek!”
An uncle in pajamas, a student in school uniform, even a hunched old grandmother.
Everyone who had inhaled the black smoke of the disaster-class curse poured through the rooftop door with murderous intent, as if they would tear him apart.
Master! They have already lost their minds. The curse has seized their brains and even paralyzed their sense of pain!
“This is a new one for you too?”
Yes.
Suho stopped at the center of the rooftop and carefully laid Miku on the floor.
The golden light surrounding her—the Spirit-class guardian old man—was desperately trying to block the black curse spreading through her body.
Dueokryeong. Please protect my granddaughter. With this old one’s power, delaying the curse is all I can manage.
Don’t worry, old man. I won’t let your granddaughter get hurt, so just keep that barrier tight.
After leaving Miku in the care of Mongsil and the old man, Suho slowly turned toward the thirty-or-so infected rushing toward him.
“Alright. Shall we shoot a zombie movie?”
The infected scratched at the rooftop floor like beasts and charged at him from every direction.
The butcher from the third floor burst out first, reaching out with bloodshot hands to strangle Suho’s neck.
Suho didn’t dodge.
His body was perfectly protected by the Flying Talisman Armor.
Thud!
The butcher’s fist flew at his chin but bounced off the talisman.
“Graaaaah!”
Even with an impact that could shatter bones, the man felt no pain. He immediately swung his other hand to tear at Suho’s shoulder.
Dozens of cursed people swarmed him in layers, biting like wild animals and hammering down with their fists.
But every attack slammed uselessly into the post-its covering his entire body.
The blade-hardened talismans moved organically, automatically thickening the defensive wall wherever attacks came from.
“Whoa. This really is like feather armor. The actual performance is insane.”
Even surrounded by the relentless sounds of impact, Suho stood with his hands clasped behind his back, completely relaxed.
He focused his overwhelming spiritual power into his eyes.
His Spiritual Eye opened one level deeper.
At the same time, he began to sense exactly how spiritual energy flowed through the bodies of the cursed.
The black smoke they had inhaled—the particles of the disaster-class curse—were different from ordinary poison that entered the lungs and circulated through the blood.
“It’s reversing their meridians?”
The human body contained twelve meridians and acupoints that circulated life force.
The black curse clung to those points like leeches, contaminating their clear vitality with pitch-black filth and forcing it into a violent rampage.
The turbid energy of the curse, starting from the dantian, climbed the spine and completely blackened the cerebral cortex that governed reason.
Pain suppression, excessive adrenaline secretion, and brainstem stimulation to maximize the attack instinct.
And rage.
This curse was touching the core of human nature.
The thin veil of reason and morality that normally covered it had vanished.
Humans without that filter had become raging beasts.
It was the perfect proof of the theory that human nature is inherently evil.
“Graaaaaah!!”
They were moving with the single purpose of killing Suho, the one who possessed information about Chairman Kang Rokgi.
In that case—
Wouldn’t it be enough to simply hide his life signs?
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Using his spiritual power and the Flying Talisman, Suho concealed his very existence.
Thump. Thump.
More precisely, he completely blocked his heartbeat, body heat, scent—everything—using the talismans.
Thump.
With the final heartbeat, every sound from his body was cut off.
“……”
Ooh… Master, their movements are stopping. Incredible?
His prediction had been correct.
They were like beasts without reason.
Creatures that followed only the simplest instincts and judgments to kill their target.
Believing their target was dead, they stopped their violent thrashing and slowly began retreating the way they had come.
The hunched grandmother. The student in uniform. Even the ferocious butcher.
After the last child disappeared through the rooftop door, Suho quietly closed it.
Master, your situational judgment was perfect.
“Whew…”
He let out a deep sigh and created a chair with the Flying Talisman before sitting down.
Making a yellow chair out of post-its seemed to surprise even Mongsil.
It stared at him, blinking all eight of its eyes.
You can even make benches with Flying Talisman? Master, you truly transcend imagination.
“Enough with the ass-kissing. This curse… it’s the work of Shaman No. 1, the managing director protecting Chairman Kang Rokgi, right?”
Yes.
At least your answers are fucking refreshing.
Yes.
A shaman capable of casting disaster-class curses… Suho couldn’t even begin to guess what level he had reached.
If they clashed, he would likely become the most dangerous enemy yet.
Kang Rokgi.
At the end of all this chaos stood Chairman Kang Rokgi.
“Then what the fuck is Park Taejun?”
Whatever. He would just crush them one by one as he climbed.
At that moment, the guardian spirit’s telepathic voice rang out pathetically.
Dueokryeong. Please… my granddaughter.
Suho looked down at Miku collapsed on the floor.
Her tiny skirt had ridden all the way up, shamelessly exposing her firm, round buttocks. Her Adidas jersey jacket was half open, revealing deep cleavage.
The sweat-soaked silk bra was practically nonexistent.
Gulp.
Mongsil, reading Suho’s expression, narrowed all eight of its eyes.
This little shit.
The guardian spirit old man, sensing his gaze, looked at Suho and immediately prostrated himself.
Dueokryeong… My granddaughter is a promising heir to the Samada ninja clan of Japan. If you save her… I will never forget this grace.
“Why should I?”
At Suho’s cold reply, the old man flinched.
If you save my granddaughter… while she sleeps, this old one will become a subordinate who obeys Dueokryeong’s every command.
A ninja subordinate controlled by a Spirit-class vengeful spirit?
It meant the old man would control her in place of the virgin ghost that had once possessed Kang Minah.
A beautiful Japanese girl.
And a ninja.
Honestly, it was tempting.
Images of the big-breasted ninja girls from the erotic games he had loved in his youth flashed through his mind.
She can assassinate any enemy. Please… my granddaughter…
The guardian spirit old man knew how to strike a decent deal.
Suho kept swallowing involuntarily.
“If a Spirit-class vengeful spirit controls her, your granddaughter’s lifespan will burn away quickly, won’t it?”
It will shorten her life if I control her, but it is still better than dying now.
That was when it happened.
Mongsil hopped off Suho’s shoulder and landed on the floor.
In a smug pose.
Hey, old man. There is exactly one reason our master came from the Underworld to the human realm. Do you know what it is?
Mongsil. You keep circling around the words “I want to die,” don’t you?
