Chapter 25 (Patreon)

The sky was overcast, and rain fell steadily, soaking the streets below.

【Grade 1 curse user eliminated. Cursed Energy +500】

Cursed Energy: 2540 / 2540

Ragnar Kagenou casually kicked the corpse at his feet aside.

“With skills like that, you still thought you could ambush me?”

The body belonged to the Grade 1 curse user who had slipped into the shadows earlier.

So that was the level of the man who thought hiding in someone else’s shadow made him untouchable.

How nice it must be to be young.

You could just lie down and sleep forever.

He still had one of Ragnar’s Noble Phantasms stuck in him.

What a greedy little bastard.

Ragnar picked up a glass of brandy, swirled it slowly, then glanced toward the trembling middle-aged man nearby.

“Don’t you think so, Employer-san?”

“Y-Yes… that’s right…”

Ragnar took a small sip.

“By the way,” he said evenly, “what exactly are you doing here?”

The middle-aged man’s face went pale.

“W-Who… who are you really…? Ahhh!”

A golden longsword shot forward and pierced straight through his arm.

His scream tore through the room.

“I’ll talk! I’ll talk!”

Clutching his arm, the man trembled violently as cold sweat ran down his face.

“It’s… it’s the higher-ups in the organization. They told me… told me to come here today and… stir something up…”

Ragnar looked at him without expression.

“Independence Square?”

“Y-Yes… that’s right…”

Ragnar let out a quiet sigh.

“That’s it?”

“I was expecting something a little more impressive.”

“W-Wait, I still ha—”

Thud.

Another corpse hit the floor.

Ragnar did not even spare him a second glance.

“There are still two more walking piles of Cursed Energy waiting for me.”

“It’d be rude to keep them waiting.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere—

The salaryman curse user’s expression shifted.

He had felt it.

The death of the shadow user.

The office lady beside him frowned immediately.

“What happened?”

“…He’s dead.”

Her face darkened.

“That fast?”

“How is that possible? Unless it’s a Special Grade—”

She cut herself off.

No.

That should have been impossible.

There were only a handful of Special Grade sorcerers in the entire jujutsu world.

The salaryman kept his gaze on the crowd.

“I don’t know.”

“But he’s dead.”

“We need to be careful.”

The two of them immediately hid themselves among the protesters.

In Kyiv, a massive crowd had already gathered in the square.

Standing at the edge of it, Ragnar looked over the sea of people and calmly judged that the remaining two curse users had to be somewhere inside.

Then a familiar blonde beauty walked up beside him.

“Ragnar,” Yuki Tsukumo said, “how many are in there?”

Ragnar answered without looking at her.

“Two Grade 1 curse users.”

At that exact moment, the crowd began to scatter outward.

The sky dimmed.

A barrier descended.

Curtain.

Yuki folded her arms.

“Curse Users won’t be able to leave once they’re inside this Curtain.”

Ragnar glanced at her.

“Let’s make this clear. You don’t interfere.”

Yuki shrugged.

“No problem.”

“Why would I bother when I can stand here and slack off instead?”

Ragnar was genuinely wary of one thing.

Not the enemy.

Yuki stealing his kills.

As the civilians cleared out of the area, the two curse users revealed themselves fully.

Their expressions were grim, tense enough to make the air feel heavier.

There was no pointless exchange of words between the two sides.

No taunts.

No drawn-out declarations.

Only a suffocating silence before the killing started.

Then the office lady moved first.

Strange, ominous markings appeared within her irises.

Almost at the same time, she drew a razor-sharp dagger from behind her back.

Beside her, the salaryman curse user released a vast mass of black mist from behind his body.

The mist writhed like some grotesque beast, baring phantom fangs and claws as it surged outward.

A moment later, it rushed toward Ragnar like a tidal wave and swallowed him whole.

At the same instant, the woman’s arm flicked.

Several pitch-black daggers shot forward like arrows loosed from a bow.

The blades slipped through the black mist, impossible to track clearly because they reflected almost no light at all.

From every angle, they came for Ragnar’s blind spots and vitals.

A coordinated kill.

Fast.

Clean.

And completely useless.

Ragnar did not panic in the slightest.

He snapped his fingers.

Ten brilliant golden ripples bloomed open around him in an instant.

Within them, Noble Phantasms slowly emerged, suspended in the air like divine weapons waiting for judgment.

And then—

They fired.

The blast tore through the space ahead like an artillery barrage.

With a series of metallic cracks, the black daggers were shattered mid-flight before they could even reach him.

The golden weapons kept going, their momentum completely unbroken, and rained toward the office lady’s position.

Seeing the attack coming, the salaryman hurriedly manipulated the black mist to intercept them.

It was useless.

His mist, which had looked so imposing a moment ago, was nothing in front of the Noble Phantasms.

It could not stop them.

It could barely even slow them down.

“What?!”

A scream burst from the woman’s throat.

One of the impacts crashed through her defense, and the force running up her arm numbed it instantly.

Her entire limb nearly lost all sensation on the spot.

Ragnar looked at her calmly.

“Nice trick.”

“You can die now.”

Twenty golden ripples unfolded behind him.

The office lady’s expression changed.

A moment later, Noble Phantasms shot out again.

Her limbs were pierced first.

Then the rest of her body.

By the time it ended, she was pinned in place, bloodied and skewered from multiple angles, looking less like a fighter and more like a corpse being displayed.

The salaryman grit his teeth and drove the black mist forward in one last desperate attack.

Ragnar turned his eyes toward him.

“What are you staring at, mutt?”

“You can go keep her company now.”

Golden ripples opened once more.

From within them, Ragnar drew Gáe Bolg.

Yuki, who had been watching from the side, narrowed her eyes.

“That spear…”

“It feels dangerous.”

Even without the Star of Creation, Ragnar still knew how to invoke the release of certain Noble Phantasms.

He tightened his grip on the demonic spear.

Crimson Cursed Energy erupted around it.

“Pierce.”

“Strike.”

Red lines of Cursed Energy locked onto the salaryman curse user like a death sentence carved into reality itself.

The man’s face twisted.

“What is this?!”

For the first time, true fear broke through him.

It was not the fear of injury.

It was the instinctive certainty of death.

More Cursed Energy poured into the spear in Ragnar’s hand, coating the entire weapon in scarlet light.

“Gáe Bolg.”

The crimson spear tore across the ground in an instant, streaking toward the salaryman curse user.

Driven to the brink, the man tried to force his body away with the black mist, desperately twisting aside to evade it.

Whoosh—

The spear passed him.

His eyes widened.

“…Did I dodge it?”

Then something warm spilled from his mouth.

He looked down.

The spear that should have missed him was already piercing straight through his chest.

Through his heart.

“Pfft—how… how is this possible…?”

His eyes were wide with disbelief.

He had dodged.

He was sure he had dodged.

And yet the result had already been decided long before his body moved.

Thud.

He collapsed.

No one answered his question.

There was no one left who needed to.

A few beats of silence passed before Yuki began clapping.

“Impressive.”

“That Cursed Tool of yours is something else. I’ve never seen one like that before.”

Ragnar closed the Gate of Babylon and glanced at her.

“You’ll see more of them later.”

The true-name release of Gáe Bolg had consumed 300 points of Cursed Energy.

But that was hardly a problem.

Not with what he had just gained.

【Two Grade 1 curse users eliminated. Cursed Energy +1000】

Cursed Energy: 3210 / 3540