Blessed be the Bomdidour entire bloodline for their strong trust in their defences to the point that they did not bother with more security asures on the inside! Well, considering that all of their servants were bound by several curses, it made sense that they would have faith in attacks not coming from inside the manor… That was their mistake, though.
I quickly slipped into the storeroom, closing the door behind before bearing witness to the most glorious buffet of my entire life. I had been to parties with a nice assortnt of food before, but it simply did not compare.
The sheer volu of goods. The sheer quality of so of them… And of course, it was a buffet that only I was to enjoy. As a strong and tall girl, I had always had a bit of an appetite. It was easy to see the difference compared to other girls.
When I was younger, I thought for sure that girls my age were starving themselves. It turned out that I was just the only one who ate like two and a half grown n whilst my age was still in the one digits.
I may be made of steel and useless clumps of flesh now, but my strong appetite was still going strong. After making sure that the doors were properly shut, I pushed the closest heavy thing in front of them.
It would be suspicious if soone tried to enter and noticed sothing in the way, but considering what I was going to do, there would be no hiding my larceny if soone got in anyway. So, might as well confuse them a little bit instead.
Frankly, it wasn’t unlikely that they wouldn’t think too much of it anyway. One should not underestimate the sapient’s mind capability to rationalise and play things down. During my slaughter through the countryside, I had witnessed many tis how people would rather go to the nicest or simplest explanation for sothing.
Blood on the floor? Must have been the work of so animals.
Wife is missing? She must have gone to sleep early.
The front door is wide open? Must have forgotten to shut it, letting the wind open it.
I wouldn’t say that they were stupid, just that they were pleasantly optimistic.
As such, I felt that it was not unlikely that if a guard pushed the door to find it obstructed, they would just assu that sothing had fallen from one of the huge shelves instead of thinking that an intruder had evaded every single obstacle seamlessly and gone into the storeroom.
The forr was wrong, but it was still the most logical and plausible one. Funny how that works, doesn’t it?
In any case, once that was done, I instantly went to gorging myself like I was a duck soon to produce foie gras. Cursed items of all kinds were crushed in my maw. Pieces of debris soon littered the floor around , as many of these items were not made of steel or flesh, so they couldn’t be devoured and absorbed by .
Such debris included many shards of glass, as a lot of the curses were also stored inside glass vials.
I moved as quickly as possible to consu as much as I could in the shortest amount of ti possible. The room was large, and the shelves had to be scaled to get everything possible out of them.
Though the shelves were also cursed themselves, with what sort of curse? I had no clue, but once one was cleared, I would eat it as well. There was no rcy for the furniture.
It did not take long for Nara to inform that I could pick a new upgrade, but I did not pay much attention to this for now. I always thought long and hard about the upgrade I picked, but there was no ti to waste right now. I needed all this food to get in my belly.
Still… So of those cursed items were a bit bizarre. It made wonder if they had been naturally cursed over ti, as was apparently often common with objects, or if mbers of the Bombidour bloodline had just trained on random items, ending up just stashing the results in the storeroom.
I was literally holding a cursed spoon right now… A spoon cursed to never be loved…? There was no way that sort of thing naturally occurred. A specific curse had been thrown at this thing–Wait a minute, did I just casually identify the nature of the curse by just looking at it?
Oh boy… It’s working. I am getting better at curse slinging!
I looked around the main storeroom.
I had been at it for four hours at this point, and large swats of the room were now empty, the floor covered in a thick layer of glass shards, splinters, and other remnants of materials that I couldn’t ‘digest’.
By now, night had thoroughly fallen, and if my calculations were correct, it should be two hours past midnight right now. At this point, the odds of a stay guard or servant coming by were extrely slim. They all needed to sleep after all, and the few that would still be around would have better places to be than the storeroom.
For another two hours, I endlessly devoured until the main storeroom was left deserted, the once sprawling labyrinth of shelves and stacks of cursed objects was no more, and throughout this all, I clearly felt the fruits of my labour.
I was able to clearly sense individual curses around , and even without looking at them, I was capable of getting a good feel of their purpose and specific capabilities. Not to ntion that partway through, I beca capable of drawing the curses toward .
It was rather subtle, but it seed that my constant feasting had sohow made into an even more ravenous creature to the point that I naturally pulled curses toward for consumption, and if I focused, the effect was even stronger.
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This allowed to eat even quicker and get done with the main storeroom ahead of schedule.
That went without ntioning the upgrade opportunities I acquired thanks to the dire amounts of experience this was all bringing . I was going to co out of this a changed woman–Well, it depended on the sort of upgrades I would be given a choice to pick. There might be nothing too groundbreaking.
Anyway… I moved on to the smaller storerooms containing more precise curses. I had been worried about dealing with them since Heltna had told that they had a small amount of protection, but as it turns out, being able to draw curses toward was an incredible boon since everything was curse-based in this place.
The cursed magic circles and whatnot were disard and gobbled easily, allowing to stuff my face with curses strongly aligned with various elents. I could feel the heat radiating from the fla-aligned curses, the cold from the frost-aligned curses, and even the breezes from the wind-aligned curses…
Nothing was spared.
It seed that I truly did not have a limit, as even now, I felt insatiable. I could tell that the lesser curses were no longer as nourishing as they once were. They are only beneficial in great amounts, and even the greater curses lost so of their splendour.
Things were not so easy, it seed. The only curses that seed to truly retain their value regardless of their ‘quality’ were the more unique ones. It seed like the effects of a curse were taken into account alongside their overall quality.
So, the more original, the more nourishing.
But the vault containing the Living Curse, who had caused the death of Heltna’s mom, remained as attractive as it was before to –Rather, the Living Curse itself remained just as tantalising to my imaginary taste buds.
Breaking into the vault area was more arduous, but I still had plenty of ti to spend, so I slowly peeled down the curses stacked around the place, and I devoured the steel that was supposedly incredibly effective at restraining curses of all kinds.
Unfortunate for you, but I was a Living Curse who treated all manner of iron as a snack.
Mmh… Seed like her father had lied, the vault only contains the Living Curse… The rest that I was sensing were actually the curses that were working to ensure that it wouldn’t be able to leave, even if it left its… Seal, I guess?
To , it looked like a mundane bottle, just like those I had seen before, containing nought but weak maledictions and lesser jinxes.
The instant I took a step toward the bottle, everything around turned dark and red. I recognised the sensation, it was just like when I was transported to a nightmare to deal the final blow to an unsuspecting victim…
This was no nightmare, however.
“Ah… At long last, soone is here!”
“Welco, my fellow! I am yet to bear an official na, but the human has referred to as Anathema due to the way I use my powers. I don’t know why we suddenly got dragged into so sort of cursed realm, but I appreciate being able to speak!”
In front of , there was what looked like a shadow given form. Said form was that of a short, young girl wearing a puffy dress, but everything was uniformly dark like ink. The only things that cut into this blackness were dark red eyes that popped out randomly all over… Anathema’s body.
I looked down at my own body. I looked very much the sa, the only difference was that I was taller and… Didn’t get to have shadow clothes for so reason? My hair was long and floated about randomly. My body was rather lithe and petite as well, much different from my human self.
I was shorter as well, it seed, even if not by much. Unlike the one in front of , though, my purple eyes were present and glowing right where they should be.
Is this… The ‘Pure Curse Form’ I theorised existed after being introduced to the ‘Pure Spirit Form’?
I am… So damned hot like this! Holy moly!
Hold on. I need to focus… The Living Curse, Anathema, seed to be under the impression that I was here on friendly terms.
“I was not expecting to be having a discussion today”
I simply responded, but the little curse simply started speaking. Clearly in dire need of social interaction.
“How did you grow so big? I was only able to kill a few people before that handso guy trapped in this bottle!”
“You only killed a few?”
I was fairly certain that I had heard that she had used so absolutely insane abilities and techniques. So why was she speaking like she was a young Living Curse who had barely gotten to do things before being sealed?
Are Living Curses supposed to be powerful from the get-go? Did I get cheated or sothing?
“Yup! I totally could have slaughtered everyone. I got very lucky with the handso man, but he was too experienced and beat up pretty badly… My ability is to cast curses that take on the form of a weakness of the target, hence why he called ‘Anathema’. I suppose you could tell that’s the na of my personal curse”
“I started with that knight lady, I was just a newborn when she stumbled upon , a little girl… The form the weakness, my curse, and I, as an extension, took was annoying as hell! I was able to trick the people who tried to diagnose into thinking that she would die at a specific age, but really, the curse was that she would die at the mont she reached the height of her happiness and fulfilnt”
“I was stuck with her for so damned long, it was obscene! And the mont I finally took care of her, I just had to end up stuck with an expert curse slinger! Man, I was with your wife the entire ti, do I not have a spot in your little heart or sothing?”
“I was only able to rack up so more kills because his ‘Anathema’ was to have to face himself, you see? I got to be so strong for a little while… Alas, he was more experienced with his own abilities than I and kicked my ass… Here I am now”
“Co on! Break this damned bottle, and together, we’ll curse the very gods! We are a superior existence! We should be worshipped, don’t you agree?”
I walked–Floated, actually–Closer to Anathema.
“I must tell you sothing first. It is of dire importance”
“...What is it? Do you really need to whisper it in my ear?”
Anathema was completely relaxed and not on her guard at all as I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her closer.
“Anathema. You’re so cute I could just gobble you up…”
“...Pardon…?”
She barely even had ti to react as her inky form began to just sink into mine. I only heard her muffled and distant voice before silence.
When I ca back to my senses inside the vault, the bottle was still intact, but no curses were to be found within.
I didn’t devour her completely in one go… It might take a while to fully digest this one.
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