Curse Returns: What did the human-shaped wishing machine do wrong this time?

"Sir! These people..."

Early spring has not yet arrived, and the dry ginkgo branches are covered with ice flowers.

On the edge of the snow-covered village, the cold wind carried a nauseating smell of blood.

The scene, resembling purgatory, caused even the silver-haired youth, who was accustomed to seeing corpses, to change his expression upon seeing it.

In front of him was a pink-haired boy with slightly messy hair, wearing a white kimono. The two of them had just come from Aizu, and their clothes were still stained with blood that had not yet dried.

Not long ago, they had fought a fierce battle with that hideous monster and were looking for food in a nearby village when they unexpectedly encountered this scene.

The cracked earth was divided in two by two colors.

A hazy crimson, and snow-white with messy footprints.

One after another, the ugly corpses, seemingly strung together and twisted like thin hemp ropes, were piled up in a scattered manner.

Countless crows, drawn by the scent of death, circled low beneath the blood-red sky.

The pink-haired boy lazily raised his eyelids and casually glanced at the dozens of grotesque and twisted corpses.

"An eyesore."

His voice was low and indifferent, devoid of any emotion.

"My lord, I will clean these things up immediately." Rimei bowed respectfully.

As the cursed power solidified, a biting, frosty wind enveloped the corpses, and everything in sight, including the crows circling in the air, was quickly covered in silvery ice.

"Rime, your ice can't cover up these ugly things."

The pink-haired boy glanced at Yan Mei casually, and with a slight movement of his fingertips, an invisible blade sliced ​​the rope figure under the ice in front of him into several pieces.

The fragments were covered in frost, and even when cut open, no blood flowed out; only the congealed crimson blood fell into the snow on the ground.

"I apologize, sir. It is my incompetence. I will go find fresh ingredients immediately."

Rime bowed slightly, feeling very apologetic.

They came to this village in search of food, but not only did they not find any ingredients, they also saw these disgusting and ugly things, which really affected the adults' appetite.

"No need, it's already here."

The pink-haired boy lazily propped his chin up with his hand, his scarlet eyes casually glancing at something not far away.

A short while later, a group of warriors clad in rattan armor appeared in the snowstorm.

"What are you two doing! Slaughtering civilians?!"

The samurai leader, a man with a mask covering his face, showed a slight change in expression when he saw the scene before him. He spoke righteously and rebuked the two people with their backs to him.

The armor of this group of people was all imprinted with the hidden patterns of the Teng family.

The family's sorcerer, who was in charge of communications, sent a message using a spell, instructing their team to investigate whether the monster in Mutsu was still there.

Their team searched the mountains where the monsters had recently appeared, but unexpectedly, the creatures seemed to have vanished into thin air. They only found large pools of dark red blood on the snow-covered plains at the mountaintops.

Not knowing the connection between those marks and the monster, they were looking for a place to rest before contacting their master using paper cranes imbued with magic. But as soon as they came down the mountain, they discovered two strangely dressed passersby and a red block of ice covered with corpses.

But when the two men turned around, the samurai all took a step back in fear.

How come this person has two faces...?

"idiot."

The boy's scarlet eyes swept casually over the people in front of him, and he sneered disdainfully. He haphazardly tore open his kimono, and two arms emerged from behind his armpits.

"Four...four hands?"

To the horrified gazes of the samurai, the two arms made strange gestures, and countless invisible blades sliced ​​the squad in front of them into pieces.

A paper crane gracefully flew into the air before the leader died, quickly drifting away into the distance.

"Sir, that thing..."

Rime wanted to use an ice-condensing spell to knock the paper crane down, but she didn't because of the pink-haired boy.

"How could there be other ingredients if we didn't inform them?"

The pink-haired boy slowly tucked his hands behind his armpits into his white kimono and kicked the deformed samurai sword at his feet.

"Yes."

Rimei responded meekly, secretly relieved that she hadn't gone to all that trouble.

——Heian Jing——

The captain of the Sun, Moon, and Stars team compiled the information from his subordinates and submitted it to his superiors.

Recently, the advance team they sent to investigate was killed by someone, and the only messages the squad leader sent before his death were a few scattered words like "two-faced" and "four-handed".

When they sent men to investigate again, they found scattered corpses and fragments of armor bearing the Fuji clan crest in a remote village.

The Fujiwara clan chief looked at the contents of the secret letter with a strange expression.

The disappearance of the monsters in Mutsu was within their expectations.

They didn't make any wishes during the last ceremony for fear of something going wrong, and the shrine priest really hasn't made a mistake before.

But that village...?

He remembered that it was the place where one of the previous sacrifices came from. Logically, those commoners should have become rope people, so why were they cut into pieces? What does that have to do with the phrase "two-faced and four-handed"?

Could it be that a new monster has appeared there, besides the one from the Sugawara family?