All consuming fire/End of mission

A cursed technique designed to trap sorcerers in a game of chance, effectively making combat ability completely irrelevant. That was the curse's ability.

It was simple really, by leaving it up to chance, the curse created a double edged, double ended sword pointed straight at its heart. If the curse (house) won, the opponent would be sapped of their cursed energy and pass out, leaving them completely defenseless against the physically weak curse. However, such a large benefit would come with an equally large drawback. That drawback being that if the sorcerer won the game of chance by any metric, they would be freed from the game and the curse would be sapped of cursed energy instead. When it came to a large number of sorcerers, all of them needed to win to seal away the curse's cursed energy. However, if an individual won, they would still be freed.

By implementing only the sure hit part of the domain expansion and discarding sure kill, the curse managed to create a technique which allowed it to completely circumvent combat ability. This, of course, comes with the caveat that a sorcerer with a stronger domain expansion can override theirs.

The curses especially watched Hakari's bet with bated breaths as the benefit a sorcerer can receive from a game is equivalent to the amount they bet. Therefore, had Hakari won his gamble, the curse spirit would've been forced to exorcise itself.

But of course, to every rule, there is an exception.

"Spin." The floating chameleon cursed spirit urged Naoko.

"Hm, you want me to gamble?" She asked.

"Spin."

"I'm not really one for gambling." 

"Spin." 

"Do I have to?"

"Spin!" 

"Shut up!" She yelled as she snapped her fingers in the direction of the chameleon.

The curse expected her cursed energy to go right through it without harm, however that was not what happened. 

As the wisp of fire energy hit the curse, it instantaneously combusted. It screeched, squirmed, and yelled, all the common symptoms displayed by those being burnt alive, but no one would save it. The ruthless flames burnt it off the face of the earth in one fell swoop.

'I'm in a domain expansion. But my cursed energy still seems to set things on fire. Then…' She thought.

Naoko snapped her fingers again towards the curse floating near Hakari and within two seconds, it too perished to nothingness.

Despite the curse being gone, Hakari's cursed energy did not return to him and the two sorcerers still couldn't communicate.

'Dammit what the hell is happening. And why is that idiot passed out?' She thought, looking  at Naoya passed out on the slot machine. 'That other idiot passed out on the blackjack table and idiot number three has no cursed energy, how useful.' 

She pushed up her glasses and looked at the spirits disappearing into the floor. 

'Now what?'

The curses moved through the floor and converged into one spot in the middle of the room. Slowly, an amalgamation of cursed spirits began taking shape, first slowly with the legs, then rapidly with the torso and head.

'All the little curses combined to make one big curse. No, maybe this was their original form and they only split off to handle more people.' Naoko thought, pushing up her glasses again. 'But seriously, what kinda twisted power rangers shit is this?'

The Frankenstein curse took the shape of an 8 foot muscular being. She couldn't call it human looking, it had two legs and two arms, but its face was nothing resembling a human's.

"Chameleon through and through." Naoko laughed.

With a high pitched screech, the creature threw a punch into the air in front of it. Naoko didn't even have time to be confused by this action as she instantly found herself several feet from where she stood, right in the path of the cursed spirit's punch.

Naoko decided not to dodge the weak looking attack and go straight for a counter. She used her legs and twisted her hips to generate momentum as she summoned flames to gather around her closed fist. 

Just as her fist was about to collide with the enemy's ribs, the curse's fist collided with her skull first, knocking her away.

"That hurts!" Naoko yelled as she crashed into a wall. 

'What was that? The punch looked weak but it just hurts like getting hit with a serrated bat.' Naoko thought, licking the blood coming out of her nose. 'If it had this kind of cursed energy, why does it need to rely on a chance domain?'

Then, she looked over at Hakari who was leaning back on his chair with sweat beads dotting his face. Putting two and two together, she realized that his missing cursed energy must've gone somewhere, and that somewhere was probably the curse itself.

'That aside, this is the first time I've met anyone with a unique cursed energy. I guess I'm not alone.'

Naoko shrouded her feet in flaming cursed energy and amplified it several fold, charring the ground beneath her feet and burning off her shoes in the process. 

The burst of concentrated cursed energy beneath her feet propulsed her towards the cursed spirit at a speed near mach 1. She moved her hands in front of her and shot out a burst of flames just strong enough to instantly stop her movements in front of the curse.

The cursed spirit didn't even react, from its point of view, Naoko simply vanished from where she stood and reappeared in front of it, hands and feet doused in flames.

"Sorry, your domain is impressive, but anything made of cursed energy will burn." She said as she placed her open left palm on the cursed spirit's torso.

Then, without a word or as much as a protest from the curse, she gathered an enormous amount of cursed energy in her palm and suddenly discharged it. 

The explosion of concentrated firepower blast a hole through the cursed spirit, flames penwtrating through its body and spreading throughout the room. The explosion was strong enough to reduce the massive 8 foot curse to an arm and a head. But even those loose parts were burned away soon enough.

The victory belonged wholly to Naoko.

With the special grade gone, the barrier of the domain expansion quickly fell, and with it, the passed out people began regaining their consciousness.

Hakari was the first to recover as his stolen cursed energy returned to his body.

'Shit, I went overboard.' Naoko panicked as she scanned around for any collateral damage caused by her flames. She let out a sigh of relief when she couldn't find any.

As everyone woke up, Noaya and Kirara included, they were deeply confused about what had just happened.

No one witnessed the fight between Naoko and the special grade. No one apart from Kinji Hakari.

Naoya Zenin snapped awake and activated his innate technique to run towards the door frame, from which he observed the scene. Noticing that it was over, he looked confused. When he saw Naoko's burnt shoes and lower pants, he frowned.

'Dammit.' He slammed his fist against the door. 

Naoya simply got unlucky in the encounter. Not all chance games are created equal, this rings especially true for the notoriously rigged slot machine games. If Naoko and Hakari had a 50% chance of winning their games, Noaya had practically 0%. 

However, all Naoya remembered is that he spun a slot machine and then suddenly lost consciousness. 

'I need to be stronger.' He thought. 'What good is an older brother if his younger siblings are more powerful.' 

In the eyes of the Zenin family, Naoya is a much more valuable asset than Naoko. However, he realized that those were just the outdated beliefs of a withering clan, he knew that when it came to pure, god given talent, Naoko surpassed him. Even so, he would not want to swap powers with her, after all, her powers are a curse as much as they are a blessing.

Hakari only continued leaning back in his chair as he thought about what happened.

'How? What the hell are those flames?' He recalled the fire that completely ignored the domain's rules. 'They're hot, but it's not only that, it looks like they feed off cursed energy. I'll have to ask Satoru about this, he can figure it out.'

Naoko pushed up her glasses that kept slipping down her nose again and looked around to see everyone staring at her.

"What?" She asked the onlookers.

"Ma'am, your shoes…" An employee spoke out hesitantly.

Not only was she standing in the middle of the gambling floor like a lunatic, but she was completely barefoot while her expensive suit pants were burnt up to just under the knees.

Naoya quickly activated his technique and brought Naoko to the staircase. Hakari and Kirara quickly followed suit.

"That was impressive um… Naoko, right?" Hakari said. "You feel it too, right? The fever." 

'What a lunatic.' Naoko thought.

"I can only set myself on fire, it's nothing special." She said.

"That's exactly why. Every time you use your ability, you feel a rush right? You fight your enemy while you yourself are on fire." Hakari explained. "If that's not it, I don't know what is." 

Naoko simply looked at him.

"Our mission is over. You two should return to school as well." Naoya said, dragging Naoko down the stairs by her collar.

"Question. Wouldn't we get home faster if you just ran?" Naoko asked.

"It's not classy." 

"Is that so?"