Plaf!
With a shrill noise, a sliding classroom door burst open completely, drawing the attention of all the students.
The curiosity in their eyes turned into fear as soon as they saw that it was a young person.
"Wh-who is that?"
"A transfer student?"
"Impossible! The numbers do not add up again!"
While everyone was whispering, they also looked toward the front, where a brown-haired teacher with glasses stood, with a kind appearance.
Knowing what everyone wanted, the woman stood up and walked toward Kaito.
"Excuse me, do you need something?" she asked.
"Are you the teacher of this class?" Kaito asked, looking at her.
"N-no, the main teacher is busy right now, I am just an assistant teacher," she replied nervously, feeling something strange coming from Kaito, and instinctively stepping back.
"That is fine."
Kaito ignored her and walked straight to the center of the classroom, disregarding the teacher's gaze.
"Someone posted online that this class is cursed and asked for help. Did I come to the right place?"
Kaito decided to get straight to the point.
The reason he came here was that, after a whole month of searching on the internet, he had only found garbage and more garbage, nothing useful, except for rumors about the other objects he had already obtained.
Finally, after checking again for a while, he found someone asking for help, saying that their class was cursed. It was not that Kaito especially believed it, but he had been visiting every place said to be cursed or where similar objects might appear around the world. However, in this era, most people with internet access were university students or global companies, so similar rumors were only a few thousand.
However, this time Kaito was optimistic, because just by approaching this rural town, he could feel a strange sensation, a feeling that grew stronger the closer he got to the classroom.
And as soon as he entered and saw the students, he felt that the chances of it being here were at least ninety-five percent.
Meanwhile, outside of Kaito's mind, as soon as he spoke, the students began whispering again.
In reality, this was a town almost completely isolated from the rest of the world, so someone with internet access probably came from outside.
Everyone fell silent, as if they knew who it had been, but chose not to say anything and consciously ignored the culprit.
At that moment, a student with short brown hair and a somewhat melancholic appearance stood up, although everyone there looked similar, perhaps because of the lighting or the general atmosphere of the town.
"It was me. I am the one who asked for help. Can you really fix it?" he asked excitedly.
"Wait!"
Before Kaito could respond, another student stood up and spoke, ignoring the previous student.
"Who are you? You cannot just come here talking about curses like it is nothing."
"That is right, curses do not exist."
"Yeah, stop saying nonsense and leave."
"Yes, do not interfere in other people's business."
As if it were a signal, as soon as the first one spoke, everyone began nodding, telling Kaito to leave.
In response, Kaito took a calm breath before speaking.
"Silence!"
The pressure released when he spoke immediately fell upon all the students.
"I even tried to pretend to be kind, but it is better to get straight to the point," Kaito decided, no longer maintaining the appearance of someone who did not know the situation.
"You."
Kaito pointed at a girl sitting in the back, with short black hair and an eyepatch.
"M-me?" The girl who was suddenly called pointed at herself in confusion.
"Yes, you. What is your name?" Kaito asked with a slight smile.
"I-I am Misaki Mei," she replied.
"Good, Mei, I will need your help. You have some abilities, right?"
Mei flinched at Kaito's words. She had not expected him to know something like that, but feeling that lying would end badly, she answered honestly.
"Y-yes, I can see something related to death" she replied after hesitating a little.
"Good, come with me."
Kaito called her to the front, and she nodded and went like an obedient puppy, not daring to raise her head.
However, Kaito, who had never stopped releasing his pressure, knew that it was not obedience, but fear.
Once Mei arrived, Kaito finally reduced his pressure, allowing everyone to breathe in relief, although they still stared ahead in confusion, not knowing the goals of the mysterious individual who had burst into their class.
"So, Mei, I came to this place for an object. If I am not mistaken, it is what created the curse of this class. Once I find the dead person, there is probably something connecting them to the object I want. Can you track it?"
"A-as long as it has something to do with death, I should be able to," Mei nodded, with many questions in her mind, but not daring to voice any of them.
"Good."
After hearing her answer, Kaito looked at the teacher who had greeted him earlier, and without saying a word, a shadow spike emerged from the ground and pierced her, lifting her into the air and killing her instantly.
"Kughhh!"
"Teacher!"
"Aunt!"
Everyone acted shocked, but it only lasted for a second, before they all behaved as if they had not seen what happened, or as if they did not remember it, and obediently sat back down.
Kaito could see how everything around him changed compared to a second earlier. Every photo or mention of the teacher disappeared from everywhere, from the entire town, as if she had never existed.
"Do you see it?" Kaito asked, looking at the black-haired girl.
Mei no longer had the eyepatch over one of her eyes. Instead, both eyes were perfectly visible and staring into the distance.
"I saw it, for a second. There was a thread connecting the teacher to something underground in the distance... Wah!"
Mei was startled and let out a scream when Kaito suddenly picked her up in his arms.
"Guide me" Kaito said, ignoring it.
"That way."
Kaito followed her directions and jumped straight out of a window before spreading his wings in midair and flying in the direction she pointed.
"Waaaah! We are flying!"
"Where to?" Kaito repeated.
"Th-that way."
Kaito followed her directions and arrived at a bridge that crossed a small river.
"W-who are you? Why do you have wings?" Mei asked once they reached the ground, instinctively stepping back when Kaito set her down.
"Lucifer."
"L-like the devil?" Mei's eyes widened.
"Just a coincidence" Kaito dismissed it before looking toward the river.
"Is it right under the river?" he asked, making sure.
"Yes, underground, deeper than where the river flows."
Kaito nodded and moved his hands toward the river.
Before Mei's astonished eyes, not only the water, but also the earth beneath it began to rise and levitate, following his path through the air.
Kaito kept pulling out meters and meters of water and soil until he finally found something. He smiled in satisfaction and spoke.
"I got it."
Kaito stopped using magic, and everything fell back to its original position, but before it touched the ground, his body flickered, moving at high speed and returning to the same spot with an object in his hand.
Unfortunately, Mei could not clearly see what it was before it completely disappeared.
"Done" Kaito nodded in satisfaction.
"Done? What is done?" Mei asked.
"The curse is gone now" Kaito replied.
After all, the object itself had vanished from reality and turned into points for Kaito.
Whether it was the clones created by the nameless mirror or the curse generated by the soul orb, as Kaito called it based on what he felt before it disappeared, everything vanished along with it.
And these objects from a mid-level world were not like those from a low-level world, which would reappear once Kaito left the mission world.
Knowing this, Kaito was quite calm.
"Thank you very much!"
Kaito, who was lost in thought, was startled when the girl in front of him suddenly bowed.
"There is no need, I came for the orb, ending the curse was just a side effect," Kaito said.
"Still, thank you. I... I will not have to be isolated anymore," Mei said through tears.
Kaito saw this and frowned slightly.
"Now that the curse is broken, the others will realize it and will never need to isolate anyone again. But that does not erase what they did to you. This is an isolated rural town, and your reputation ends here. My advice is that you go to the city and start over, new school, new neighbors, new friends."
"B-but..."
"You do not have to listen to me if you do not want to, you have a friend here after all, do you not? Even though he also comes from the city."
Without giving her time to respond, Kaito flew away from the place.
"That sounded like I was against towns and in favor of cities," Kaito realized while returning home.
But after thinking about it so much, he came to the conclusion that, in fictional terms, cities were much safer than towns, especially isolated ones, since fiction was full of horror stories and supernatural events that happened in such environments.
Thinking about that, Kaito could not help remembering the original plot of the place he had just left.
It was an anime, Another, which was about a curse.
A long time ago, in a class, a student loved by everyone suddenly died, and literally everyone went into denial, pretending that he was still with them and alive.
That collective feeling ended up creating a curse, and every year it chose one dead person from the same class and brought them back to life.
At the same time, it altered reality and everyone's memories, adding that person to their memories, photos, and mentions so that everyone believed they were alive.
However, from that point on, the students began to die tragically in accidents, similar to Final Destination.
The solution to the curse was to find the dead person and remove them from the class, so that the deaths would end.
However, since they could not achieve that, the class resorted to an alternative method, completely ignoring a random student, pretending that they did not exist, so that the total count would remain correct and the deaths would not occur.
This method was extremely difficult, since any glance, any mention, or any whisper toward the ignored student would cause the deaths to start again.
In addition, it was terribly unfair to the isolated student.
As for the anime's plot, the transferred protagonist arrived at that school, discovered the curse, and eventually stopped it. It sounded quite simple, but as a short horror and suspense anime, it was quite entertaining.
However, this made Kaito think about something else.
"System, is this really fine? Is this not a mid-level world? Death Note, Detective Conan, Final Destination, Another, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Chucky, are they not too simple for the difficulty?"
[...]
[This difficulty is quite high for most Lords, you know. The average Lords are already dead, only one percent are still alive. Do not judge based on your own strength, please.]
Kaito was surprised by the answer, but accepted it fairly quickly, thinking that it made sense, at least for a moment.
"Wait, that still does not make sense.
Imagine Chucky trying to face Mashiro, she would either destroy him with magic or get scared and throw a meteor at him, destroying him along with the city.
Freddy appears in front of Kaguya and she would turn into a Shinigami and kill him instantly.
Ai would use her abilities and take out Charles's eye before he could do anything.
Ryuk would not even be able to touch Megumi.
Kirito would probably take advantage of the mirror's clones to train against himself.
There is no way this is a fair fight, it is clearly too easy."
[...]
[Where in 'average Lords' do your subordinates fit? I think you have a very wrong impression of their strength.]
"Is that so? I guess since I have never seen them fight without me in something big, I do not know how strong they are compared to the average" Kaito muttered.
______________________________________
Hey, I just published the first chapters of a new fic: To Love Ru: Chaos.
If you're interested or want to support me, go read it and leave some Power Stones.
But it's literally the complete opposite of this series, so I recommend reading the 'Before You Read' section to see if you'll like it.
+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)