Soon, Kamihara Hajime found a large hall. This was originally where the orphanage held events, and its original location wasn't here, but in this strange environment, it appeared here.
After running into the hall, Kamihara Hajime quickly scanned the surroundings to find an escape route and prepared for the enemy's arrival. Soon, the strange sounds drew closer.
The large door creaked open, and a large mass of strange things surged in. Upon closer inspection, they were the same little ghosts he had encountered before, but this time there were more of them.
These varied little creatures made inexplicable, eerie noises, rapidly crawling towards Kamihara Hajime. Their tangled numbers made Hajime's scalp tingle for a moment.
Although he could use his Cursed Energy to strengthen his body, his stamina was ultimately limited, and Hajime was still a child, making dealing with these quite challenging.
"I'll try to eliminate them first. There's no escaping this place. If my stamina starts to fail, I'll have to find a way to hide."
Then, after eliminating more than a dozen, Kamihara Hajime decisively made a tactical retreat. These ghostly things kept increasing, how was he supposed to play? As everything around him quieted down, Hajime ran out of the hall from among the statue-like little ghosts.
By the time those little things resumed action, Hajime was long gone from the hall. After a chaotic commotion, these oddly shaped little things resumed their aimless wandering.
"Hmm? What's that sound?"
Hajime, who was cautiously moving forward, seemed to hear something, but when he listened closely again, there was no sound. Then, a piercing tremor drew his attention; it sounded like a house collapsing.
"And… it sounds quite close to me? Should I go take a look?"
Logically, Kamihara Hajime wouldn't take such a risk, but at the moment, he truly didn't know how to escape this place. He could only seize every possible opportunity to test it out, and he was confident he could escape quickly anyway.
So Hajime cautiously made his way over there, and the sight he saw next almost made him curse out loud. In his view, a colossal creature was moving.
It was a terrifying baby monster enlarged countless times, with eyes that were black voids, and a mouth sewn shut with blood-black thread, yet it could still emit low whimpers. This monster, nearly three stories tall, was crawling towards a small building.
"Is there someone there?"
Hajime saw from afar that there seemed to be a figure in that small building, trying to escape in panic. After a brief thought, Hajime decided to get closer and take a look. This massive monster in front of him seemed very likely to be the source of this place. If he eliminated it, could he get out?
The massive monster quickly approached the small building, tearing it to pieces with a few swipes of its hands. When it pulled its hand back, there was an additional figure in its grasp—a relatively young woman, who was screaming in terror as she was being sent towards a gaping maw on the monster's abdomen.
"That's…"
Hajime recognized the woman; she was an employee at the orphanage. She was usually very kind, a truly loving person who treated all the children equally, and was deeply liked and respected by everyone.
"Damn it, put her down!"
Hajime, still some distance away, bent down and picked up a stone broken from a collapsed house. He then threw it towards the giant monster. The whistling stone hit it but caused no damage. Hajime, still running towards it, could only watch as the woman was swallowed by that giant maw.
Anger instantly surged into Hajime's heart. At this moment, he so strongly wished he had enough power to kill this monster, but the difference in size between them was too great. Even if he used that extremely fast state, what damage could his fists and feet inflict on this thing?
As all sorts of negative emotions erupted, Hajime suddenly felt his Cursed Energy surge. He even felt for a moment that he couldn't sense its limit.
Then, a thought suddenly arose in his mind: the damage from fists and feet was too small, but he could hit these monsters by attaching Cursed Energy. What if he directly used it to attack this monster?
Hajime had also tried to release the Cursed Energy within him before, but its influence on the outside world was limited, so he mostly used it to strengthen his body. Now, this might be one of the few ways he could effectively harm this massive monster, and he had to try it.
Then Hajime gritted his teeth, staring at the monster which had now shifted its attention to him, trying to consciously mobilize the Cursed Energy within his body. Seeing the giant monster seemingly move slowly but actually closing a considerable distance in a few breaths, Hajime, feeling anxious, suddenly realized that the Cursed Energy within his body had begun to move.
Exerting all his strength, he guided it to his right hand. Then Hajime extended his right arm, palm facing the giant monster rushing towards him, and grabbed his right wrist with his left hand, trying to steady it.
"Die!"
With a childish roar from Hajime, a blue light flashed. Then the giant monster's body paused, and more than half of its body suddenly shattered, the wound smooth and round. The upper half of a building behind it even disappeared, as if some columnar object had instantly pierced through both the monster's body and the building behind it.
And from the shattered monster's body fell a figure, none other than the orphanage worker. From the outside, she didn't seem to have any major injuries, but she was unconscious, her life currently unknown.
Feeling utterly drained, Hajime almost lost his footing. He steadied his dizzy head; the giant monster had already fallen to the ground. Perhaps near death, it even tried to struggle to get up, but it was futile.
Feeling the Cursed Energy within him recovering at an eerily fast speed, Hajime, supported by this power, stood firm. Looking at the giant monster, which had lost three limbs and was unable to move on the ground, Hajime raised his foot and walked towards it.
Hajime felt very strange now; his genuine anger and other emotions were surging intensely, almost abnormally strong, yet deep down, he could experience all of this from a very calm perspective.
This feeling had an ineffable wonder; it was clearly contradictory, yet in Hajime's perception, it felt incredibly harmonious, as if someone found it awkward to draw a circle with their left hand and a square with their right simultaneously, but when they could do it effortlessly, they would feel it was nothing, as simple as eating and drinking.
Hajime was in a similar situation now; he knew deep down that his current state was abnormal, but these emotions truly arose from his heart.
Fortunately, a part of him remained clear-headed, preventing these surging emotions from overwhelming his reason.
The giant monster lying on the ground was still trying to wriggle and crawl over. Hajime watched it while feeling the heightened emotions within him.
"Kill it!"
It was as if a voice kept repeating this thought in his ear, an uncontrollable urge once it appeared. Hajime took a few steps closer. Cursed Energy converged towards his clenched right fist. At first glance, his right hand seemed to be burning with an unusually dense blue flame.
The monster's body had already begun to disintegrate, but the rage in Hajime's heart drove him to just want to punch it hard, pouring all the churning anger into this one punch, to kill it!
So Hajime raised his small fist. To an ordinary person, it might even seem amusing or cute, but in the eyes of someone with talent, the blue light flame on his right hand at this moment was outrageously dense.
As Hajime swung his fist, that state of time seeming to slow down appeared again, and he clearly saw the blue light flame on his right hand gradually turning black.
A miraculous feeling surged into his heart. At this moment, Hajime could clearly and precisely feel every bit of Cursed Energy flowing towards his right hand, fluctuating with the movement and exertion of his right hand muscles.
Breathing! Yes, just like breathing. At this moment, Cursed Energy and Hajime achieved an unprecedented sense of synchronization. At this moment, they were the pulse of breath, the surge of blood. There was no need to deliberately urge them; Cursed Energy was already cooperating with Hajime in the optimal state.
As Hajime's fist landed on the giant monster's head, the external, now black, light flame effortlessly tore through everything, and a massive roar erupted.
Hajime clearly saw the monster's body being annihilated inch by inch by the fluctuations brought by the black light flame, and that roar was the wail of the large area of ground beneath it shattering and being crushed.
As the monster's remains gradually dissipated, Hajime's emotions also slowly calmed down. After dispersing his Cursed Energy, a strong sense of weakness surged over him, and Hajime sat down on the ground. Besides that, his right hand was particularly painful, making him grimace for a moment.
"Tap, tap…"
A clear sound of footsteps rang out. Hajime looked over warily, only to see a graceful figure emerge from the darkness. She had long white hair, tied into a ponytail at the back, and a black uniform that couldn't conceal her beautiful figure.
Seeing that the newcomer was a person and not one of those bleeding-from-seven-orifices monsters, Hajime finally breathed a sigh of relief. However… she seemed a little familiar? Before he could think further, he saw the beautiful white-haired woman approach with a look of confusion and shock.
The woman's voice was somewhat magnetic, well-matched with her appearance and figure. She looked at the somewhat dejected but still wary little boy sitting on the ground and said, "You can call me Mei Mei, little one. Why are you here? Have you seen anyone else?"