The Crowd's first strike hit like a wave breaking against a seawall.
Dozens of half-formed arms crashed forward in overlapping succession, designed to crush a single point of defense through sheer volume.
Adrian's reinforced forearms caught the first three. The fourth cracked through, slamming into his shoulder hard enough to spin him half around.
He didn't fight the momentum. He rolled with the impact, resetting his feet six feet back from the shifting mass.
It has coordination across dozens of limbs simultaneously. Reinforcement alone isn't going to solve this.
Behind him, the panic was spreading in ugly, dangerous ripples. Mourners screamed and shoved—a terrified mob trying to flee in every direction at once. People fell. Others trampled forward blindly.
I don't have time to play it safe. I need the core. Now.
Adrian pushed his Six Eyes to their absolute limit, ignoring the sharp migraine throbbing behind his temples.
He looked past the churning surface of limbs and faces, searching for the structure underneath. Hundreds of expressions blurred together until his perception finally locked onto a pattern—a single, static face buried at the creature's center, appearing and vanishing beneath the churn.
A middle-aged man's face. Exhausted. Frozen in an expression of desperate, futile determination.
[TARGET IDENTIFIED: CORE ANCHOR]
[ORIGIN SIGNATURE: SINGLE INDIVIDUAL, DECEASED DURING INVASION]
[LIKELY CAUSE: CROWD-CONTROL FATALITY]
Someone who died trying to control a panicking crowd during the attack, Adrian realized. And his death became the seed for the exact nightmare he died trying to prevent.
The core was buried deep, guarded by a dense forest of shifting limbs.
No time for a tactical detour. Straight through it is.
Adrian gathered every drop of cursed energy into his legs and launched himself directly into the beast's center. He ducked beneath a sweeping arm and drove his shoulder into a gap between two overlapping torsos.
The Crowd shrieked—hundreds of voices merging into a single, deafening wail.
Limbs caved in around him from every side, clamping down with crushing force.
[WARNING: STRUCTURAL COMPRESSION DETECTED]
[ESTIMATED FORCE: EXCEEDS CURRENT ENDURANCE THRESHOLD]
CRACK!
Ribs snapped under the pressure. Pain flared white-hot across his chest.
Adrian gritted his teeth through the agony, shoving his hand into the dark until his fingers found the core face by touch alone.
This ends now!
He unleashed a final, concentrated pulse of cursed energy directly into the core—not a physical blow, but a surgical strike aimed at severing the trauma thread anchoring the curse to the plaza.
The pressure vanished instantly.
Adrian dropped six feet, slamming onto the cold stone floor, gasping for air. Above him, the twelve-foot monster convulsed and unraveled, its mass dissolving into harmless black mist.
[ +67 EXP ]
[LEVEL UP!]
[HOST IS NOW: LEVEL 6 (GRADE 3 SORCERER)]
[GRADE THRESHOLD REACHED! HOST HAS ADVANCED TO GRADE 2 SORCERER]
[GRADE 2 ACHIEVEMENT REWARD UNLOCKED!]
[YOU HAVE ACQUIRED A SILVER REWARD CARD]
Grade 2. Finally.
Adrian lay on the plaza floor, clutching his broken ribs, watching the black mist drift away into the cool September air. Around him, the panic broke. Mourners slowed down, confusion replacing the unnatural terror.
He didn't even have the strength to open the card.
Twenty minutes later, Sophia dropped to her knees beside him in the dispersing crowd, her voice raw.
"Adrian!" Her hands hovered over his chest, terrified to touch him. "Oh my God, your ribs—"
"Broken. A few of them," Adrian offered a weak, exhausted grin. "But it's dead."
Reyes arrived moments later, clearing a path through the delayed security perimeter. He crouched beside them, his face set in a hard line.
"Ambulance is on the way," Reyes said quietly. "The cover story is already set—barricade collapse and a sudden crowd surge. Official channels won't hear about what actually happened."
"Good," Adrian muttered, letting his head rest against the stage. "I don't have the energy for an interview."
Sophia gripped his hand, her knuckles white. "You could have died in there, Adrian. I watched that thing pull people in... I couldn't see you."
"I know," he said softly, squeezing back. "I'm sorry. But three thousand people get to go home tonight. That counts for something."
Sophia blinked back tears and nodded. "It counts. Just... don't do that to me again."
Three days later, locked in the apartment bathroom, Adrian opened the Silver Card. His ribs had healed enough under Todo's passive recovery that he could stand without wincing.
[SILVER REWARD CARD OPENED]
[YOU HAVE ACQUIRED: NOBARA KUGISAKI'S RESONANCE TECHNIQUE (PARTIAL)]
[EFFECT: STRAW DOLL TECHNIQUE FOUNDATIONS GRANTED]
[REQUIRES PHYSICAL ANCHOR AND TARGET CONNECTION FOR RESONANCE-BASED DAMAGE TRANSFER]
Adrian stared at the glowing blue text. A slow smile spread across his face.
An actual innate curse technique. Not just physical reinforcement or deflections. A real tool.
He opened the bathroom door. Sophia was waiting outside, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed.
"Well?" she asked. "What did the card give you?"
"Something new," Adrian said, his tired voice filled with genuine hope for the first time in weeks. "Something that's actually mine to master."