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The familiar stinging sensation in his right eye made Asakura quickly put his glasses back on, stopping the continued operation of Truth Vision.
Although the entire process took less than two seconds, the basic information was already mostly known.
"It's the Human-Faced Sore."
He said to Yukino.
"Human-Faced Sore? The one from 'Konjaku Monogatarishu'?"
Yukinoshita Yukino, while helping her older sister get dressed, asked with a frown, "I remember in that story, the noble who suffered from Human-Faced Sore was because he had committed many murderous evils in the past, and the vengeful spirits of those he killed had attached themselves to him, wanting to torment him to death to exact their revenge... Although my sister isn't a good person in the strict sense, she certainly hasn't committed such a grave mistake that would lead to Human-Faced Sore."
"Legends are just legends. Anomalies that can truly achieve 'evil begets evil' are very rare."
Asakura waved his hand, "No reason, no purpose, no good or evil, right or wrong; it just latches on when a certain condition is met. That's what an anomaly is."
Yukinoshita Yukino couldn't help but fall silent for a moment upon hearing this.
For ordinary people, anomalies are indeed like a localized natural disaster, a manifestation of fate that, once encountered, leaves one with no choice but to resign themselves to bad luck.
"And these Human-Faced Sore are different from the ones in the story."
Asakura continued, "The conflict between your sister's inner thoughts and her outward expressions has created a discrepancy between her image in others' eyes and her actual inner self."
As Asakura spoke, he picked up a sandwich cookie from a half-eaten box of cookies, probably left by a visitor, on the table. He held the top and bottom chocolate cookies with both hands: "When the discrepancy is too great..." As he applied a little force, the cookie immediately broke in the middle, the two pieces easily distorted apart, leaving only the incomplete filling: "a 'discontinuity' will appear. This situation, in Curse, would be judged as having a tendency towards 'separation' and 'cleavage,' making it very easy to peel off certain things from her spirit, and even her very existence."
Asakura licked the filling, found no milk around, and could only regretfully stuff the cookie into his mouth. Chewing, he mumbled to Yukino, "As for the Human-Faced Sore, judging from the cases that have already appeared, what's being stripped from the patients is probably something like life force."
The reason why the authorities likely believe that Human-Faced Sore are not contagious is probably because this thing specifically selects hosts similar to Yukinoshita Haruno, who suppress their inner selves, or those with severe internal contradictions. Furthermore, each Human-Faced Sore can spread to the next through diffused malice, and its capture radius is terrifyingly large. Modern technology is also fundamentally incapable of completely isolating 'malice,' a semi-mystical entity, so misjudgment is very normal.
"Can it be cured?"
Yukino asked worriedly.
"Super easy."
Asakura snapped his fingers.
Flames more than ten feet high shot out from behind Haruno, who had not yet turned over, and then quickly extinguished and disappeared: "Done."
Yukino was dumbfounded: "That's it?"
"What else?"
Asakura spread his hands.
"Once it's cured, it won't be contagious anymore, right?"
Yukino asked expectantly.
"Human-Faced Sore are an anomaly, not like smallpox or something that produces antibodies. You'll still get infected next time if you're supposed to."
Asakura shattered her illusion.
"Then, for others who have contracted this disease..."
Yukino pondered.
"Don't even think about it."
Asakura waved his hand, flatly refusing.
"But it seems like there have been quite a few cases of this disease recently... Does that mean my sister has to stay at home forever and never go out?"
Yukino said with concern.
"Before that, worry about yourself first..." Asakura said, "You've already been hit too."
"Huh?"
The girl was dumbfounded again: "But I clearly..."
"Clearly already activated the [Scale]?"
Asakura looked at her amusedly: "Don't forget that the Human-Faced Sore' spread radius is measured in kilometers. It's just that the closer you are, the higher the success rate of transmission. You probably got infected the moment you walked into this hospital. By the time you activated the Curse [Scale], it was already too late. It's just what's called the incubation period right now."
Yukinoshita Yukino hung her head and remained silent for a long time before reluctantly bowing to Asakura and saying, "Please help me..."
Apparently, for the girl, having a face grow on her body was even harder to accept than surrendering to Asakura.
She had no intention of learning Wood Release.
"Well said, but I refuse."
Asakura said with a smile.
"Ugh..."
Yukino gritted her teeth, looking at Asakura's mischievous smile.
She knew Asakura wasn't a bad person; even if she really got Human-Faced Sore, he definitely wouldn't just stand by and watch her die. But this feeling of being easily manipulated truly made the girl feel helpless from the bottom of her heart.
Then she realized another problem: regardless of what would happen to her after getting sick, if her sister didn't develop immunity, would that mean she wouldn't be able to get close to her own sister anymore?
Seeing the girl's face truly darken, Asakura stopped his plan of watching the show.
"It's too troublesome to burn these one by one..." He said, "So we have to defeat the mastermind."
"Mastermind? This kind of thing has a mastermind?"
Yukinoshita Yukino was stunned. Until just now, she had thought that Human-Faced Sore was just a disease with anomalous characteristics.
"Yes, this thing itself doesn't have the ability to infect. Its rampant spread is entirely man-made. After all, the Human-Faced Sore on your sister's body doesn't contain anything that was stripped from your sister."
Whether it was life force, personality fragments, or whatever else, it was clearly packaged by the Human-Faced Sore into a conceptual form and sent out with malice.
The Human-Faced Sore itself does not have the ability to emit such intense malice; all the malice it emits comes from another entity.
Probably to prevent the Human-Faced Sore from getting out of control, the current Human-Faced Sore also lacks organs to sustain its activity. The energy it can operate on is probably also derived from the network of malice. And as the number of Human-Faced Sore patients increases, the malice emitted by different Human-Faced Sore intertwines and overlaps, making this network of malice stronger, until at some point, it causes all of Togawa to sink into malice and turn into a demonic realm.
But that also meant one thing.
Asakura stroked his chin and said with a smile, "As long as we deal with the guy hiding behind the scenes, the problem of the Human-Faced Sore should be easily resolved."
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