After I finished telling her my story, Rhea was looking at me worriedly.

  “All these years…” She put a hand on my cheek; I was honestly at an impasse. I didn’t know how to feel after this emotional rollercoaster, but she was taking it much better than I expected. Well, I never spoke of my real feelings, so her view was tinged by her belief, still… I wasn’t one for taking pity or compassion. I wanted solutions, but in this moment I was indulging in probably one of the most humane interactions I had ever experienced in my life. Despite the use of my skill, I was sure now that Rhea would have kept my secret anyway; she had a good heart, too good even.

  “What can we do?” We?

  “I need to check on my manual; there are hundreds of rituals outside of just the theoretical parts. I’m sure I’ll find something about how to remove curses!” She exclaimed, sitting up to face me better.

  I shook my head. “In the description it said that I was born with it and it wasn’t something that could be dispelled by conventional means… I tried, I tried so many times with the skills at my disposal, but it is rooted in my soul…”

  “This… this has so many implications!” She said. “It means that the soul really exists, and some magic was present back on Earth too…” In her face I was seeing sadness, not for me, for something else; her thoughts were clearly being swept away by something I said.

  “Rhea”, putting a hand on her own, she came back to her senses. “You know if you have something you want to take off your chest, I’m here for you too, the same way you are for me. I can swear an oath if you want.” I said the last part while smiling, attempting to lighten the mood.

  “No, it’s not necessary in my case, but thank you…” Then she continued. “I understand why you wanted to hide it; if someone who wants you harm knows of this, they can basically control you… it’s… terrifying.” I gritted my teeth at her words; of course I knew, and some people tried anyway despite not knowing the way my curse worked. It had been a hassle to get rid of them in the past, especially my exes…

  After composing myself I grinned, “It’s not so easy to get ahold of me, especially now. I have gained a high degree of resistance to curses since we came here, and I know how to break it.”

  “You do? How? I mean, how do you know?” She was visibly excited at the prospect.

  “I asked a question to Aurelia; she said that there were opportunities here, so I asked how to get rid of my curse in the tutorial.”

  “And? What did she tell you?”

  “The bare minimum, to evolve my curse resistance trait three times, and after that I’ll have to wear the crown of the tyrant of Aaranor.”

  As I finished speaking, her mouth hung open in disbelief. “Three times! It’s impossible! Even evolving a trait one time is extremely hard; how are you going to manage three evolutions?!”

  “Rhea.”

  “We need to think of something… and the crown!”

  “Rhea…”

  ”It’s tied to one of the seven kings for sure; these requirements are absu—”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Rhea!”

  She jolted. “Yes?”

  “I have that covered, don’t worry. I evolved my trait two times already, and one of the achievements I got provided me with a trait evolution token, so I can get the third evolution whenever I want, even if I’m trying to get that one on my own and use the token on something else.” I sighed. “But first I want more information about everything; to make an informed decision, we need to find another safe zone…”

  She looked at me incredulously. “H-how did you manage to… the potions… you improved it by drinking a ton of cursed potions. When did you evolve it again?”

  There was no reason to keep things secret with her anymore. “Yesterday, I tried to curse the mask spirit with the curse I created for the dodder, but its defences were much harder to pierce than expected. In the end, the curse was redirected to Mary’s body, so I took it first on myself, and then I put it here.” I showed her the mace. “But this thing was really on another level compared to the curses I took out from the magical items I bought; I had to use my aura to help with the trait evolution. For a moment I thought I had to waste the token.”

  Rhea looked more and more shocked at my retelling. “What do you mean you used your aura? That is like… very, very advanced stuff.”

  Oh boy, this was a never-ending series of questions, as another monster stumbled on us, and I had to despatch it. I got up, offering her my hand.

  She took it but was surprised.

  “Let’s walk as we talk; we have still a good deal to cover before exiting the valley.”

  “Ah, ok. So? How did you manage to use your aura? It was covered only in passing in my book, but it was implied that it was the way to interact with magic on a more profound level than just skill use, but I don’t know the specifics, just that it will be required to master for the most advanced rituals…”

  I was surprised by her knowledge. “I know your book is thick, but I didn’t know it covered so many subjects. Anyway, after I drank the potions, I got my trait upgraded, but I developed another trait too, Cursed Aura. I think that is why I can feel it; otherwise I wouldn’t even know it’s there. But it’s been helpful with my curses; even if I still have not really managed to train it well, I have too much to do.”

  She got silent as we walked side by side in the forest; the monsters were a constant annoyance. There were mainly spiders now, but the occasional eldir still approached us at full speed. After a few minutes of silence, Rhea turned to me.

  “You are… pretty unique; I don’t have any other words for it – your curse, your feats, the way you manipulate your spells and the use of aura… I’m sure there is more, but I’m afraid to ask.” She chuckled at that. “I thought I was doing good with my progression, you know, being technically a non-combat class and everything, but I have no idea how to reach your level…”

  “With all the monsters you killed, you should already be near, if not higher than, my level.” I told her.

  “Wait, what? What level are you?”

  I dispatched another spider; given that she didn’t ask to fight them, they were just above level forty, and their carapace was getting hard to pierce. The more we moved forward, the higher level the monster became. How much would they be in a bit? I knew I could take them, but it didn’t bode well for the group.

  “I’m still sitting at level 25; I don’t want to evolve my class before getting all the achievements I can and getting the best class I can. I avoided evolving my skills too for the same reason.” I made a barrier appear to protect Rhea from a glob of web launched from the canopy; that was new… “Be careful, please…”

  She looked at the trees as I snipped the offending spider and shivered. “I need a skill to deploy instant rituals…” She started mumbling to herself about evolution, how it was impossible that I wasn’t over level 25, and a lot of other things that I wasn’t getting.

  “What level are you then?”

  “Ten,” she said before returning to her mumbling.

  Ten? I had an idea…

  I started changing course as we resumed our talk about skills, traits, levels and every kind of magic-related topic; we avoided the more personal stuff. We had already had our moment, and now it didn’t feel like we should delve into emotional stuff anymore.

  As we progressed into the forest, she started dealing with more and more spiders; her experimentations were giving their fruits. She developed some pretty nasty combinations of rituals that were fucking with the spiders particularly well. As the level of the monsters climbed higher, I spotted what I was looking for.

  A giant cave opened its mouth at the base of the mountain, and a myriad of spiders were coming out of it. I was sure that I could find a baron for Rhea to kill; now, I just needed to clear the way and convince her…