This was one weakness of Cursed Speech, fast to take effect and fast to fade. To be fair, the Cursed Spirit was not that quick, but with its size, even Panda’s speed was not enough.

  One step from the Cursed Spirit matched ten of Panda. It was about to catch up.

  A sharp shout came from above. A girl with a single ponytail and glasses leapt down from a higher point, swinging a long polearm and striking the Cursed Spirit’s head.

  The result was poor. The Cursed Spirit was simply too big and too thick.

  The surface split open, but the blade could not go deeper through the layers of fat. Instead, it was bounced away by the elastic mass and flew from her hands.

  Below her was the Cursed Spirit’s wide open mouth, at least five meters across, like a bottomless pit. It was about to swallow her whole.

  “Maki!!!”

  Panda stopped running and shouted in panic. The shortest boy in the distance forced his mouth open to scream, but no full sound came out.

  He coughed up blood instead, his throat pushed to its limit by the backlash of Cursed Speech.

  In midair, the girl called Maki turned pale. Her expression was helpless, but her eyes burned with refusal.

  She was only sixteen, at the age when life should be at its best. No one wanted to die like this.

  “So this is my end? How ugly. I have not even become the head of the Zenin Clan yet… Mai…”

  The pain she expected never came. Even the sense of falling was stopped.

  Instead of dropping into the mouth, she was pulled farther and farther away from it, away from death itself. Narrowly saved, Maki opened her eyes wide and looked around for her savior.

  She saw a figure in white floating in midair, elegant like a queen wearing a crown. She also saw a handsome boy at the center of the field shouting, “Nice job, Little Sha,” his face full of confidence despite standing amid dense cursed energy.

  It was them who saved her at the last moment. She had no memory of anyone like them, yet they were clearly powerful.

  As she thought about it, Maki was set back on the ground, right beside the Cursed Speech boy, Inumaki. He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and forced out two syllables.

  “Big… salmon.”

  “It’s fine. Don’t worry about me now, be careful.”

  The last warning was directed at Gardevoir. Enraged that its prey had escaped, the Cursed Spirit focused all its fury on her, its malice, Cursed Energy, and massive body surging together.

  Just as its thick arm swung out, Gardevoir vanished from sight. She reappeared behind Akira in an instant, like a shadow.

  Teleport was more about utility than combat in games, but in reality it was a true battlefield skill. It was also the reason Akira trusted Gardevoir to stay on the front line.

  After regrouping, Akira gave his order at once. “Gardevoir, use Calm Mind.”

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  Gardevoir placed a hand over her chest and closed her eyes. The psychic waves around her did not spread outward but instead drew inward, shining with rich colors.

  This was a skill she had only recently mastered, allowing her to focus her mind in a short time and boost her psychic output. Akira did not want a drawn out fight with a clear endurance monster.

  He wanted the highest burst and the shortest battle. Calm Mind needed a little time, and he would buy it.

  The caterpillar like Cursed Spirit turned its bloated body and charged forward, crushing the ground with the force of a collapsing building. Akira showed no fear and even raised a middle finger.

  “Hey, you there, look at me.”

  Step one was taunting. Useful or not, he needed to draw aggro.

  After shouting, he moved straight to step two, Uproots the Weeping Willow. His position had been chosen in advance, with a roadside tree right beside him.

  With his trained body and the boost from Cursed Energy, Akira uprooted the tree and hurled it like a spear. It slammed into the charging Cursed Spirit and knocked its body off balance.

  While it struggled to recover, Akira launched step three. Take this road roller attack.

  With campus repairs underway, having a road roller around was perfectly normal. Using it to crush a Cursed Spirit was also normal.

  It could not kill the enemy due to its size, but it stopped it from getting past Akira and reaching the meditating Gardevoir. By the time the enraged Cursed Spirit made the right choice and started tearing apart the road roller, Calm Mind was complete.

  A clear shout of “Kill” signaled the start. Akira raised one hand and made a finishing gesture.

  “Use Psychic Power.”

  Gardevoir raised her hand as well, mirroring him exactly. Solidified psychic power wrapped around the massive body of the Cursed Spirit and compressed inward from all directions.

  In front of Gardevoir’s wide area psychic attacks, size offered no advantage. Her body was small, but the output was not.

  “Use Dazzling Gleam!”

  All the brilliant light around Gardevoir gathered at her chest. The sheer force twisted even air and light.

  A flash passed, and a huge hole opened in the body of the Cursed Spirit. Psychic Power was a versatile skill combining control, damage, and movement, while Dazzling Gleam focused on pure destruction.

  This was the strongest attack Gardevoir could use at her current stage. With Calm Mind enhancing it, the condensed psychic power destroyed the Cursed Spirit faster than it could regenerate.

  When the energy faded, the once massive Cursed Spirit was reduced to less than a meter. Gardevoir used the remaining Psychic Power to slam it into the ground, right into the pit it had made earlier when striking Panda.

  Akira followed up with a kick to the front wheel of the road roller. The heaviest part of the machine slowly turned, carrying Akira’s Cursed Energy with it and erasing the Cursed Spirit’s final trace.

  It stood there like a strange gravestone. The kill was complete.

  After setting up a marker for the Cursed Spirit, Akira turned away with an easy stride and did not look back even once. A real man never looks back at a falling Road Roller, or so the joke went. His experience jumped sharply, and Gardevoir leveled up again, which only happened when the enemy was truly finished.

  Feeling satisfied, Akira relaxed and high-fived Gardevoir in celebration. “You really worked hard today, Little Sha.” She had cleared the field first, then unleashed an output far beyond anything before, and even though she said nothing, he could still see the fatigue in her movements.

  By the way, Pokémon skills here worked more like the animated version rather than the game. In games you could only equip four skills, but in reality, any learned skill could be used, and there was no fixed PP system. Instead it was closer to a Mana Bar, where different skills drained different amounts, and pushing them harder extended duration at the cost of faster depletion, until nothing could be used at all.

  “Sha,” Gardevoir shook her head cutely to show she was not tired. “Alright, alright,” Akira said, giving her the usual daily pat. Only after that did he lead her toward the two people and one Panda who had regrouped nearby.

  The girl called Maki Zenin was the first to step forward, bowing deeply. “Thank you for saving me. I am Tokyo Jujutsu High first-year Maki Zenin. I do not like being called by my family name, so please just call me Maki Zenin.” Her tone was straightforward, without any hesitation.

  “I am Panda,” said the second speaker, the Panda. “He is Toge Inumaki. The three of us are first-years at Tokyo Jujutsu High. Because of Jujutsu, Toge usually only speaks in rice ball fillings, so please understand.”

  Akira nodded and did not ask further. He knew the details already, including Maki Zenin’s situation in the Zenin Clan, which was even worse than Noritoshi Kamo’s past standing in the Kamo Clan. He also knew about Inumaki’s speech habits, and about Panda’s background and role as both strategist and emotional anchor.