First Customer

A/N: here's a pic of Shuichi.

Image here:

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It did not take long for Shuichi to reach the graveyard. With the speed that he was going at, he reached the graveyard in a little less than 5 minutes.

When he reached the graveyard, the sun was already way down the horizon. The only source of light in the graveyard was the moon that shone brilliantly in the sky.

Shuichi wondered why people never install lights in such places. Why make such a generic horror scene?

Shaking his head out of these useless thoughts, Shuichi went ahead into the graveyard.

He was already beginning to see some grade 4 spirits, along with a couple of grade 3s.

'This is gonna be fun!' He thought with a smile as an ethereal katana had seemed to be lit up in magnificent blue flames appeared in his hand.

And with that, he began his massacre of cursed spirits.

***

Turns out, it was not fun, in fact.

Who could have guessed hunting curses in a graveyard would not be fun?

Certainly not Shuichi... Anyway, this wasn't his thought just because something went wrong. Not at all.

On the contrary, things went smoothly. Too smoothly. So smoothly that he didn't even encounter a single curse above grade 3.

Shocking right?

He could not find even a single grade 2 spirit in a graveyard of all places! One had to know that graveyards were essentially the breeding places of curses. Wait... no, that's not a good analogy, cause that would mean curses are capable of breeding in the first place.

Anyway, graveyards were places which were extreme cursed energy density. The cursed energy build up was to the point that even first grade cursed spirits could form out of nowhere.

But he didn't even encounter a grade 2.

Although the sheer number of grade 3 curses that were gathered gave him some trouble, it wasn't worth mentioning. With how refined his cursed energy control had gotten these days, it could barely be considered as a challenge. Whenever a curse was about to hit him, he would simply create a barrier between them, if a curse ran away from him, he would rain down spears. If the curses surrounded him, he would quickly dispatch them by making extremely thin threads of cursed energy.

Either way, at least he got to test out the current extent of his powers.

Now he was fairly certain that he would not have any trouble dealing with multiple curses of grade 3.

As for grade 2, he was also confident in dealing with them.

"Now, I can be considered a semi-second grade curse." Shuichi muttered with a smile adorning his face as he entered his room.

'Still though, I don't know what to make of my luck. Do I have good luck or bad luck?' He thought as he slumped down onto the bed, not understanding if he should be happy or sad about the fact that he didn't find more powerful curses.

'That being said, my curse energy reserves have suddenly shot through the roof.' He thought.

If his previous reserves could be compared to a grade 3 sorcerer, now, his cursed energy was equivalent to that of a semi-first grade sorcerer. The sheer number of grade 3s in the graveyard made such an extreme jump in power level possible.

Once again, Shuichi was baffled at his own opness.

Getting the remaining cursed energy of any curse that he kills. How is that not just overpowered?

Still, he didn't sweat about it too much.

'I guess I'll just be happy about it. Sounds like the better option among the two.' It was not only that, he had leveled up 2 times, bringing his level to 8 and giving him 20 more skill points. Making the point counter reach 30. Now, he had 600 points of proficiency that he could allocate in any type of skill he wanted.

Along with that, his cursed energy control had now reached 800. An exponential increase unlike anything he had previously seen.

Shuichi have the credit to his second technique [Hard to Kill].

Sure enough, the most growth came during the time of a fight. His cursed technique which had been laying dormant until now showed a burst of power during combat, amplifying his parameters and improving his cursed energy control to better ensure his survival.

'Maybe I should rob a bank...' An intrusive thought came to his mind.

'I'll hold that thought until I don't have any other choice...'

And with that thought, he let the realm of dreams take him in.

***

The next day, Shuichi again opened up his shop.

Today, he was feeling a bit optimistic about recieving customers, so he opened the doors to his 'House of Supernatural' pretty early in the morning.

Keeping everything in place, which was not a lot of stuff, he sat inside and meditated to get better control over his cursed energy.

Although his control had increased, the magnitude of his cursed energy had increased exponentially. As such, his control which was just above the level of an average sorcerer was not enough for him to be as efficient as he could with his techniques.

While he waited for customers, he could always just try to improve his own powers.

And so, he continued to meditate...

For about 4 hours, after which he was interrupted.

And not by a customer, not a single soul had walked through the door yet.

He was interrupted because of a prompt from the system.

[You have gained some pieces of enlightenment about the nature of cursed energy!]

[Cursed Energy Reinforcement has increase by 100!]

[New derivatives of Cursed Energy Control can now be unlocked!]

[Once an action relating to the unlockable skill has been performed, the skill will be unlocked!]

[Notice: The skill cannot be unlocked using skill points]

Carefully looking at the various notifications, Shuichi opened up the status screen.

{[Status]} [Skill Tree] [Inventory]

[Name: Zenin Shuichi

Level: 8

Class: Sorcerer

Cursed Technique: Cursed Heart; Hard to Kill

Innate Skills: Cursed Technique Creation; Corrupted Mind

Skill points: 30]

Opening up the skill tree, he checked the proficiency of the ability tree.

And sure enough, cursed energy control had now reached 1000.

Cursed energy Reinforcement was at 595 after his midnight escapades now reached 695!

Other than that, 2 more boxes which were grayed out until now were connected with the [Cursed Energy Control] using green strings.

Shuichi could vaguely see the name of the two boxes that were connected, those being: [Black Flash] and [Spiritual Protection].

The skills themselves were not available for upgrade. It seemed that if he wanted to raise their proficiency, he would need to unlock them through conventional means. Meaning he can't just use skill points to unlock them, which was different from what the various forms of media would have you believe.

As such, he had to somehow unlock the two skills himself.

Now he understood the theory behind the skills completely. He had read and memorized all of the books he had. Black Flash even had a 700 page book dedicated to itself.

On the other hand, Spiritual Protection was the protection of one's 'soul' from damage, which was a pretty high level application of cursed energy Reinforcement.

In theory, they were hard to do. In practice?

It was a nightmare trying to complete these two.

Black Flash was a phenomenon in which the time difference between the attack and the application of cursed energy was as short as one trillionth part of a second. Pulling off such a great required one of three things. First was extreme and borderline ridiculous amount of focus. Second was an extremely fine control over cursed energy.

And third was pure luck. Some sorcerers might just spend their entire life without experiencing a Black Flash and not without reason. It was one of the most mysterious and most rewarding phenomenon of the jujutsu world, for anyone that can perform a black flash gets a new viewpoint of cursed energy.

And Spiritual Protection, while not as difficult to perform as black flash, was not dependent upon luck at all. It required pure skill, which related to a broken level of cursed energy control. Anyone experienced sorcerer with satisfactory levels of control could perform it. If not, it could only be described as a skill issue.

'Hmm... I understand being able to add proficiency to Spiritual Protection, but why would I be able to add proficiency to Black Flash?' Shuichi mused while holding his chin.

The power of a black flash directly depends upon the initial power of the blow and the amount of cursed energy provided. If the Black flash was successful, the attack power would be squared.

One could not increase the power just by being better at it. So, what was the point of adding points into it?

'Don't tell me...' Shuichi's eyes widened in bafflement, and an image of him swinging his fists performing Black Flash after Black Flash came to his mind.

"...I need to unlock this fast." He concluded.

Just then, the door to the room opened with a small bell sound.

Ding~*

Shuichi was broken out of his thoughts and he turned his head towards the door, a small and polite smile on his face.

'Come on Shuichi! You can't mess this up! It's your first customer!' He cheered in his mind but maintained a calm look on the surface.

"Welcome~ How may I help you?" He said in a polite tone.

The door opened up completely to reveal a middle aged lady holding some grocery bags.

"Ara~? I was not expecting this." The middle aged lady said. "I noticed a new shop had opened, and with quite a peculiar name too, so I decided to check it out. Who would have known such a young man would be here?" She walked inside of the shop as he spoke.

"Hello, ma'am!" Shuichi didn't mind her commenting on his age. He was quite young after all, only 15 years old(though he looked to be 17).

"This is the 'House of the Supernatural'! We help people who are experiencing weird and supernatural phenomenon! It must be the threads of fate that brought you to his shop, meaning that you have predetermined fate with us!" Shuichi immediately went into his 'supernatural' master persona and began to spout out the exact lines that he had repeatedly practiced when at home for this exact moment.

Though he wasn't sure if it would be effective. Depending on how he worded it, he might come out as a weirdo, a chunnibyou, an idiot, a cringe teenager, or even a pervert, depending on the type of customer he was dealing with. His past life had given him many valuable lessons, one of which was: People can be unreasonable for seemingly no reason at all.

"Ara~ You seem to be about my son's age. Also, you mentioned 'we', are there many people that work here?" She asked while looking around the place, her gaze stopping briefly at the talismans that were hung from the wall.

Yes, I could draw talismans now. Not to say that they have that great of an effect. They're just barely passable. My control is not good enough to weave cursed energy into them effectively.

"...Ahem* That's right ma'am! There are people that work here! In fact, this shop is a branch of a big company, of the same name, that monitors supernatural phenomenon all over Japan!" He lied as naturally as he breathed.

It could come to bite him in the ass later. He was planning to use this woman to get some publicity outside so more people would visit his shop. And most people would undoubtedly try to search up the Company.

And well, that was exactly why he had set up the internet website!

(A/N: No he didn't...)

In the current age, only the big companies had enough competent individuals to make full time running websites, but considering that Shuichi had learned a bit of programming in his old life and the fact that programming itself was lagging pretty far behind from what he was used to, making a website was child's play!

Now, even if people were to search it up, they would be able to see the website, which would crush all forms of doubt.

And even if someone did have some dissatisfaction with him using false publicity... what could they possibly do to him?

Obviously, nothing.

"Hm? You're a good speaker, did you practice this beforehand?" The lady said while putting a hand on her cheek. Hearing this, Shuichi had a bead of sweat pour down his face.

'She knows!'

"I have some experience working in the other branches of the company, that is why I was assigned here as the head of this new branch in Tokyo!"

'He seems... excited? He keeps screaming, he's full of energy like an overcharged battery...' The lady thought amused.

'I'm not screaming too much am I? Should I tone it down? No, that would seem too unnatural! Come on Shuichi, bring out your past life experience!'

"You seem happy being appointed the head of the branch."

"Ah- Yes! The company is very big after all!"

'What the hell do you mean by 'the company is very big!' Why am I so awkward at this! Is my predecessor affecting me by any chance?'

"Fufu~ Ara ara. Aren't you full of energy."

"It is only natural."

"Ara~, then care to tell me what kind of services you offer?"

"Of course!"

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To be continued~~