Flights of Fancy [JJK Reader Insert]

Chapter 12: Clearing an Infestation

It was as if that was a trigger, and the dark ooze in the dark jolted violently into the air, growing into something bigger and sturdier.

Its body bubbled into shape, with two thick arms that seemed to ooze and legs that resembled that of spiders. It also near-instantly grew a face, with eyes the size of your head and a mouth large enough to swallow you and your shikigami whole.

With a garbled cry, it lunged towards you, arms almost stretching out to grab either of you three, but all of you were quick enough to maneuver away.

Famine stretched out her tails to grab hold of some debris and random objects that littered the hall to throw them at the curse.

It was obviously going to do little to no damage to it, but it bought time for Conquest to charge up and send a high voltage of lightning toward it while you ran to try and cut off an arm.

You had been pouring cursed energy into your tanto for about a week since Maki had gone on her mission. She had texted you not to imbue too much at once, as it would shatter the blades. Too little, and it'd also be susceptible to breaking like any other standard weapon. While you think it would take about a month or longer to make your blades a pair worthy to wield, you think you were making substantial progress. You probably would have made more if it weren't for your blunder all those years ago.

"Seriously...?!"

While the blade did slice through the arm, leaving the butchered appendage writhing on the floor, the curse only gave an irritated garble before growing a smaller arm to take its place.

That alone nearly had your head throbbing with a headache.

With the curse regenerating its arm, even if it was smaller than its original had been, it left you to think that the only way to get rid of the giant blob monster was to cut it down as much as you could. It didn't seem to be made all out of black goo.

The curse barely gave you a moment to conceptualize this, deciding that simply reaching for you wasn't enough but that it could also use its huge mouth to swallow you whole. You used the wall as leverage to push off and jump over its head, barely clearing it to land on the other side.

Worried about your shikigami, you called out to them, only for you to shield your eyes as a bright flash engulfed your vision. With a click of your tongue, you used the flash of electricity to cut off some of the curse's legs. You could clear away most of its legs on its left before jumping back as a murky hand swiped at you.

The curse tried to eat you again, and you merely took a sizable step to the side. A water jet cut through the curse down the middle when you moved. The water jet also damaged the end of the hall, and some of the floor, leaving behind a gap the thickness of your arm.

The corpse of the curse split apart, no longer being held together by its now missing tissue.

With a scrunch of your nose at the stench, you sheathed the tanto back at your side.

"Famine. Conquest," you called out to the two.

The sounds of squelching flesh filled the hall. It didn't take more than a few seconds for you to find the two shikigami already feasting on the remains of the curse. Famine ate more voraciously, while Conquest ate happily as you squinted at them with slight disgust.

"At least eat with your mouths closed," you muttered.

You figured you'd give them a minute or two to savor their meal and use that time to study whatever was left of the curse that had just been slain. While not often, there were sometimes cases where similar or the same type of curse would proliferate at a location. It was more common when the curses were very low-level, as they tended to use their large numbers as their strength. Given how your shikigami quickly took out this curse, you could put this curse between grades three and two. Famine and Conquest could be considered grade-two curses, but you haven't really put much time into assigning them such a denotation. You had to consider too many bothersome factors to even grade them.