I stopped in front of her and stayed silent, letting the tension settle.

"…I see," I said with a small nod, pretending I had just realized she rejected me. "I'm sorry for pushing this on you."

Inside, I didn't feel anything close to heartbreak.

Her rejection or acceptance didn't matter.

The entire story about watching her for years was an act.

A lie to paint myself as harmless.

A lie to keep her guardian from killing me on sight.

In fact, a rejection worked better for me.

If she accepted, the guardian would monitor my behavior every second, at least while I was around her, to make sure I treated her well.

That kind of attention was dangerous.

'Now I should focus on the real reason I approached her.'

"Olivia, I know it's—"

"O-okay," she said suddenly, voice soft.

She lowered her hands, showing a flushed face that looked like she had made some dramatic internal decision.

"If you've been watching me for years, then… it means you're serious. I should at least try to g-give you a chance."

I looked at her with surprise.

Shouldn't her reaction be disgust? Anger? Anything other than this?

'I didn't interact with her in my last life, so I couldn't have guessed she… had a personality like this.'

The words "kind personality" almost slipped into my thoughts.

I forced myself to erase the idea.

No Cursed Spirit was kind.

And no Cursed Spirit could coexist with any sapient species.

Their relationship was like predator and prey.

Cursed Spirits were the carnivores. Humans and every other sapient species were the herbivores.

They would always be hunted.

Friendship between us couldn't exist.

Anyway, it was a surprise she accepted my proposal but I was not worried much.

After escaping this domain, I had no plan of meeting her again.

So I didn't need to worry about her guardian either.

"That…"

I took a slow breath and put on a gentle smile, the kind someone might show after hearing something unexpectedly touching.

"Thank you. I promise I'll treat you the best I can."

"Y-Yes…" she nodded quickly, her face turning even redder.

The guardian chuckled.

The sound echoed faintly around us like a ripple of air.

Then its presence vanished.

I let out a breath I had been holding.

The pressure lifted from my shoulders.

My attention returned to the inngirl.

She was still trying to recover from the heated atmosphere, fidgeting with her fingers and looking anywhere except at me.

"Y-You said something earlier. Something about using Cursecraft on you. What was that about?" she muttered, trying to change the topic.

"I want you to increase my bad luck for the next thirty minutes," I said.

She blinked. "Why?"

"It's to escape this place."

Before she could ask anything else, I added, "Please use your cursecraft. We don't have much time."

She nodded, still flustered but obedient.

From the moment I met her, I had acted confident, calm and in control. She trusted that image and accepted my words without much hesitation.

She stepped back and lifted her hands.

Small threads of dark-blue energy gathered around her fingers.

The strands twisted like smoke, forming runic shapes that flickered before sinking against her skin.

"This one will sting a bit," she warned. "The curse I'm usin'… it absorbs one month of yer bad luck and squeezes all of it into the next thirty minutes."

She paused to let me process that.

"So… anything that can go wrong will go wrong during that time. Yer own accumulated misfortune will crush ye for half an hour."

I nodded. "Makes sense."

She continued, voice steadying as she focused. "But after the thirty minutes end, ye'll have no bad luck left for a long while. Bad things could still happen to ye, sure, but the chance will be tiny. Ye'll probably get neutral or good outcomes instead."

"That works. Go ahead," I said.

I needed bad luck to escape this place, so I had thirty minutes time limit before the effect of her cursecraft ended.

She inhaled and pressed her palms together.

The runes on her hands flared.

A cold wave washed over me, settling deep inside my bones.

It wasn't painful, just uncomfortable like someone whispering a warning in the back of my mind.

My heart skipped once.

The curse settled.

"It's done," she whispered quietly.

I turned to the forest in front of us. "Good. We have to regroup with the others."

I held out my hand to her.

She tilted her head, confused at first, then hesitantly placed her hand in mine.

Before she could ask anything, I moved my other hand behind her waist and lifted her off the ground.

She yelped. "W-Wait—what are ye—?!"

"Dante, pick us up," I called.

The large figure stepped forward and lifted me onto his shoulder with practiced ease.

I held the inngirl securely in a princess carry so neither of us fell.

Behind me, I felt the guardian's presence return for a moment. It hovered like a silent glare.

The gaze was warning me.

It wanted me to know it was watching. That every move I made around the inngirl had consequences.

The inngirl, meanwhile, had turned red enough to rival a tomato.

Her breaths came in small, uneven bursts.

She kept her hands close to her chest, not knowing where to place them.

"I'm not flirting," I said calmly. "Dante is going to carry us because he's much faster. He'll have to clear trees and obstacles, so he needs one hand free. That leaves only one hand to support whoever's on his shoulder."

"Oh…" she muttered, finally understanding. "Right. That makes sense."

If Dante used both hands to stabilize us, we wouldn't be able to break obstacles ahead.

We'd be slowed down, maybe even forced to stop.

That wasn't an option in a cursed domain where we were on a time limit.

Dante moved.

The world blurred.

Leaves whipped past us. Branches cracked and snapped as Dante cleared a straight path through the woods. He didn't slow down once.

In a few minutes, we reached a clearing where everyone had gathered.

They turned toward us immediately.

Dante lowered himself so I could jump down.

I touched the ground and helped the inngirl stand steadily beside me.

One of the crewmates whispered, "Why's the lass so red? Did she catch a fever?"

Another crewmate elbowed him. "Oi, look at her. She's steamin'. Ye sure she didn't see somethin' she wasn't supposed to?"

The group joked and rambled on.

The inngirl's face went even redder. She hid behind her hair, or whatever was the eldritch river like streams were supposed to be, trying to disappear.

I stepped forward before the teasing got worse.

"So, did you find anything about the exit method?" I said, looking at the group.

"Yes. However, several among us are guaranteed to die if we attempt it," Saint Maverick replied.

I frowned, keeping it natural even though I already knew what he meant.

"What do you mean?"

Saint Maverick turned toward Judy.

The round automaton whirred, gears shifting inside her.

A small compartment opened on her side, and she printed a thin stack of documents.

She extended it to me.

"This is everything I know about the Rank 4 Cursed Spirit we are trapped inside," Saint Maverick said.

I took the papers and flipped through them.

The pages were filled with data, hand-written notes, and references only someone from upper echelon of the System Church would have access to.

"As the Saint of the Church, I have access to information brought by our spies about the records and research that Exorcist Clans try to hide. This includes the identity and history of the Cursed Spirit known as the Blackout Priest."

He took a breath.

"This domain is a reenactment of a tragedy from the past."

Maverick stepped closer and tapped one of the papers.

"Years ago, during one of Japan's worst blackout events, a chain of earthquakes struck the mountain regions. People fled their homes and gathered in whatever structures were still standing."

His voice lowered.

"One of those structures was a small mountain shrine. The priest there, Saeki Ren'un, tried to calm the frightened evacuees. He performed an old ritual using lanterns and festival chants to ward off disaster."

The clearing went silent as he spoke.

"But in the middle of the ritual, a massive aftershock hit. The lanterns fell and set part of the shrine on fire. Beams collapsed. In the chaos and darkness, the tallest man in the group died when a beam crushed him."

He closed his eyes briefly.

"The people panicked. They blamed the priest. They said his ritual angered the god of calamity instead of calming it. They believed the priest caused the disaster."

He lifted his head again.

"In the darkness, they dragged him outside and executed him by beheading him on the broken festival altar."

A breeze swept the clearing.

I nodded quietly.

The pieces aligned.

The blackout that beheaded Valen—the Vampire Prince—was a reenactment of the priest's execution.

While what Saint Maverick said wasn't how exactly the event had gone, it was roughly correct.

The tune we heard before the blackout was the ritual chant Saeki Ren'un had been singing. It marked the arrival of the blackout that led to his — and now ours — beheading.

The shadowy figures in the market were the reenactment of the people who condemned the priest.

Bowing had saved us earlier because bowing was seen as appeasing the god, not angering it.

And the massive 'God' in the sky, the one that stared down at us before the hammers hit was the god the priest had been trying to calm.

Everything matched.

"So," I said, looking back at Saint Maverick, "what's the method of escape?"

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