"Young Girl Brutally Murdered in Broad Daylight!!!"
The newspaper was pinned to the most prominent wall in the living room. Several crimson, bold characters highlighted the severity of this vicious incident. It occupied the front page of the evening news.
"According to sources, the victim was a local high school student. She showed no signs of life when discovered."
"The methods used were extremely cruel and violent, causing a severe negative social impact. The culprit has currently been apprehended and brought to justice."
To gain more clicks and attention, the unscrupulous newspaper had completely ignored the feelings of the victim's family, choosing to publish photos of a blurred but still visibly mangled torso on its pages.
The victim of this incident was Kenmyo Isayama's sister—Sakura Isayama.
According to the newspaper's description, she was brutally murdered by a "slasher" in an alleyway. Passersby discovered the scene while the killer was dismembering the body and called the police, which stopped the crime in progress.
As he re-read these articles and stared at the images, Kenmyo felt something eerie: his heart couldn't summon even a flicker of anger or the hatred that would normally trigger it. It was as if something had forcibly strangled those emotions.
This was highly abnormal. His sister, with whom he had depended on for survival, had been cruelly murdered. How could he, as her brother, remain indifferent to the killer? As a normal human, it would be natural to want to inflict the most sadistic torments imaginable upon the culprit.
But anger and hatred—the two emotions that cause one to lose control—no longer existed within him.
In the parlance of the Jujutsu world, the phenomenon occurring within Kenmyo could be categorized as a variant of "Heavenly Restriction."
Simply put: an equivalent exchange. A massive price paid for a massive benefit.
The most famous example in the current Jujutsu world is Fushiguro Toji, dubbed the "Heavenly Tyrant." A former member of the Zenin clan, he traded all his cursed energy at birth for a physical body that broke the limits of human potential.
However, Kenmyo's situation was different. His was acquired, not innate.
What was the power he unlocked by trading his "Anger" and "Hatred"?
The Warhammer Simulator.
On that night when he learned his sister's condition was caused by an unknown, terrifying curse—one that modern medicine and Jujutsu were powerless against—Kenmyo told her he wanted to go for a walk alone.
In the cruel world of sorcery, the siblings had leaned on each other, exhausting all their strength just to stay alive. Just as things were looking up, illness had come to torture his sister, and now it threatened to strip Kenmyo of his only family.
His experience as an orphan in his previous life made him cherish this hard-won familial bond immensely. But the preordained ending made his heart ache more than a knife wound.
His eyes were bloodshot, his expression predatory. "Damn this world!" he spat. "What did my sister ever do wrong?"
As his emotions reached a fever pitch, Kenmyo failed to notice a blood-red mark emerging on the back of his neck. The chilling cursed fluctuations coming from it were no less intense than those on Sakura Isayama.
This mark had been dormant; now, it was fully activated. Its function seemed to be to further incite and agitate Kenmyo's resentment and spite, magnifying his negative emotions a hundredfold, a thousandfold.
Unknowingly, he felt the void in his chest grow wider. Anger and hatred filled his brain. The eerie mark turned from deep red to black, becoming increasingly ominous.
Finally, with the snapping of a mental chord, Kenmyo felt a sharp pain in his head and lost consciousness. He remembered nothing after that.
Cursed energy stems from negative emotions. Because of the unknown crimson mark, Kenmyo's emotional collapse was sufficient to trigger an incredibly powerful surge of cursed energy.
Then, the anomaly occurred.
"Detected extreme negative emotions: 'Anger' and 'Resentment.' System awakening..."
A black-hole-like object appeared on Kenmyo's body, acting like a bottomless abyss that frantically devoured his cursed energy. The curse on the back of his neck seemed sentient; it transformed into a hideous scarlet skull, roaring in an attempt to resist and tear apart this unknown interloper.
But it soon let out a shrill wail of despair and tried to flee Kenmyo's body. It realized that the two entities were not even in the same league. No matter how much the curse resisted, it couldn't escape this terrifying presence and was absorbed along with it.
[10%... 30%... 70%... 100% Awakening Complete!]
[Loading...]
[Loading Complete!]
When Kenmyo woke up again, he found himself lying in a hospital bed. Sakura Isayama, her eyes swollen from crying, immediately threw her arms around him and sobbed when she saw him wake.
Kenmyo sat there in a daze, held by his weeping sister. Was it an illusion? Because before his eyes, five burning, golden characters appeared that only he could see:
[WARHAMMER SIMULATOR]!
At his first glance at the simulator, Kenmyo was drawn to a line of small text at the bottom of the minimalist interface, heavy with the weight of history. It was written in a language that didn't exist in his world, yet he understood it perfectly.
It was written with majestic force:
"No great sacrifice shall be in vain."
From that day on, Kenmyo lost the emotions of anger and hatred. In exchange, he gained the power of the [Warhammer Simulator].
He didn't know where this thing came from or why it had descended upon him. It might have been a joke by the gods or a mockery of fate, but it was the final straw he grasped at. He had discovered that the key to exorcising the curse on his sister lay within this simulator.
But no one knows which comes first: tomorrow, or a sudden accident.
The news report made it clear that fate had toyed with him once again. While he had been running himself ragged day and night to meet the requirements to start the simulator, the nightmare had struck.
When the medical examiner led him to see his sister covered by a blood-stained white cloth, Kenmyo thought bitterly: why did the awakening only strip him of "Anger" and "Hatred"? Why didn't it take his "Sorrow" and "Despair" too?
The examiner caught him just in time to prevent him from collapsing. In this second meeting, their roles had changed drastically. One was the living, the other the dead. One was the victim, the other the bereaved. The weight of these roles did more than just bring despair; it felt as though the sky had collapsed.
He shook off the hand trying to stop him from lifting the cloth and rushed forward. He had to see her.
Lifting the cloth caused him to break down instantly. The mangled state of the body was the real reason the examiner had tried to stop him. Kenmyo stared, eyes wide, not even realizing he had fallen to the floor. He curled up powerlessly by the mortuary table, covering his eyes and weeping silently.
In that moment, he knew he no longer had a home. That small, happy home belonging to him and his sister was gone.
As he cried, a red glint flashed through his eyes. He realized something.
The news reports, the TV, the radio—every single report regarding Sakura Isayama's death was fake.
It was all a lie.
In the information bar of the [Warhammer Simulator], Kenmyo saw it clearly. The moment he had lifted the cloth, a system notification popped up:
[Absorbing Cursed Energy, Points +100]
Points were the key to starting the simulator, and points came from cursed energy. Since he was well-versed in handling such energy, he understood immediately: this was not a common murder. It was a Jujutsu murder.
"The killer brought to justice"? He didn't know the Japanese police had become so efficient.
In other words, the real "culprit" was definitely still at large. Whether it was a Cursed Spirit, a Curse User, or a Jujutsu Sorcerer—it didn't matter. Kenmyo would make that person regret ever coming into this world.
Revenge! There had to be revenge! Losing hatred and anger didn't mean his desire for retribution had vanished.
However, to Kenmyo's surprise, his deceased sister returned to accompany him in another way.