"The principle behind crafting a curse is not difficult. The challenge lies in choosing the appropriate ritual materials and the correct formula."
Old Vasily addressed Annan, who had just finished setting up the ritual space, offering his close guidance beneath the altar: "Following a certain formula, ritual preparation involves adding ’base materials,’ ’influences,’ and ’curse materials’ into the mix and performing the ritual.
"The base material itself cannot participate in the ritual, or it will be destroyed by it. The so-called ’curse recipe’ determines which base material will not be consud under the effects of certain curse materials and influences.
"If the base material is chosen correctly, you will obtain the cursed object after the ritual concludes."
Following old Vasily’s recipe, Annan drew a heptagram on the ground in one stroke—Annan’s power ensured his hand did not tremble easily, making the lines straight.
But even so, to et the standard, each angle of the heptagram had to be larger than 24 degrees. Even though Annan had practiced drawing it dozens of tis on scrap paper... he could not guarantee success this ti.
If I can’t get it right this ti, I’ll have to call on the players to help with the drawing...
Annan complained inwardly.
anwhile, as he focused on his drawing, old Vasily continued to explain:
"Influence determines the nature of the cursed object, which may or may not be consud but generally serves as a catalyst for a fixed domain. The strength of the curse, however, is directly dependent on the concentration of curse left unused after the ritual. Based on this principle, to improve the quality of the cursed object, one must either use more potent curse materials or perform rituals that have as low efficacy as possible.
"When crafting a neutral domain curse like ’Blade,’ the most frequently used rituals belong to Miss Luck’s series that centers around the number seven.
"Since Miss Luck is both the goddess of good fortune and accidents, all rituals within the Luck domain have a constant 7% failure rate per minute during execution. What we need to do... is to trigger the ritual successfully, contact the deity, and find a way to prolong the ritual until it fails and terminates itself.
"Utilizing ’Initial Influence: One Step Ahead’ as an offering, one must sacrifice ’uncoagulated fresh blood from a Transcendent that provided the influence’ as a guide. The curse materials are ’extract of rust from a copper sword that has rusted and seen blood,’ ’seven dried heart valves from any Transcendent creature,’ ’the bloody saliva from a pigeon that has just been beheaded,’ and ’a patch of skin from the nape of a mountain cat that lived for more than ten years.’
"First, coat the center of the altar with one’s own fresh blood, then stack the heart valves on top of the blood, using the pigeon’s saliva as the adhesive between the valves. A layer of pigeon saliva goes over that, topped with the old mountain cat’s neck skin.
"Then drop the rust extract over the top to fix the ritual space. Once fixed, the ritual can last for half an hour. To prevent failure, imdiately pierce it with any sharp object to start the ritual. Since the ’Blade’ must remain vertically fixed until the ritual’s end, it should be conducted on soft ground to help fix the blade more easily.
"If everything goes well, you can perform ’Ritual: Sanctuary of Fortune,’ a simple sanctuary ritual through which you can designate three consecutive hours over the next week. If you were to be assassinated within these three hours, coincidences would continually occur around you to evade the assassin.
"However, this ritual is only effective against those who try to kill you ’using weapons.’ If it’s poison, curses, or other indirect thods, it won’t trigger. And if soone hires a hitman, Your Highness... this ritual can only reveal the hired assassin, not the mastermind behind it. It serves more as a warning, telling you that you have been targeted by a killer."
Old Vasily reminded fluently: "I’ll repeat it once more, Your Highness. In this ritual, the base material that can participate without being destroyed by the ritual is the ’Bloodstained Weapon’ used in the final step. Even your cursed object can serve as a base material—as long as a weapon’s blade has been tainted with blood before it cos in contact with the two liquids, it won’t be destroyed by the ritual until the blood dries.
"Your Highness, when you make the connection to Miss Luck, rember to maintain silence. Wait for the ritual to fail automatically, and the curse will be complete."
"I understand."
Annan nodded, carefully covering the seven dried heart valves with the mountain cat’s neck skin—Transcendent materials could be provided by old Vasily, but the saliva from the pigeon had to be fresh.
To collect the saliva from the dead pigeons, he had to urgently purchase a large quantity of at pigeons from the traders on Greenwater Street, enough to hold a pigeon feast at night so that everyone in the Viscount’s estate could eat their fill...
As for the bloodstained blade—
Annan indeed had a weapon that could be used as base material for "forging."
It was the cursed object he had obtained from the Nightmare: Gallery... the Bloodstained Cleaver.
Following the guidance of Old Vasily, Annan dripped the extract onto the back of his neck.
Before this mont, Annan had not experienced any special effects. If Old Vasily hadn’t shouted, Annan would have even thought that he had already failed sowhere...
But after the extract fell, Annan suddenly felt a strange sense of heat.
A burning sensation ca from the back of his heart, but it wasn’t pain. It was more like the warm, tingling sensation of soaking in a bath of Sichuan peppercorn water.
The heat stabilized quickly and then began to flow upwards, to the base of Annan’s neck.
In the strictest sense, this was the first ritual that Annan had perford.
"Quick, Your Highness!"
Old Vasily reminded loudly.
Without a mont’s hesitation, Annan thrust the "bloodstained kitchen knife," which he had prepared earlier, through eight layers of material and directly into the ground.
Thump.
The stable stream of heat at Annan’s neck suddenly skipped and broke apart. It was as if a blade had pierced his abdon... A warmth spread from the back of his neck throughout his body.
And the part of the heat that surged into his brain caused odd hallucinations to appear before Annan’s eyes.
Images flickered before him at breakneck speed, like a series of slideshows.
Even though Annan’s perception was already one step into the Transcendent realm, he could only barely make out a few fragnts:
The ground in front of a wandering child lted and collapsed;
A delectable Feng goose squatting in a dungeon, with a withered old man before it;
Annan stood in front of Kafney, reaching slightly forward with his right hand;
Philip Noah ate sugar in big mouthfuls;
And...
The final image settled on a girl Annan had never seen before.
She carried a square drawing board on her back, fit for plein air, and held the hand of a young Annan who reached just to her chest.
As if noticing the prying eyes, she frowned slightly and looked back.
Annan noticed she had ice-blue vertical pupils, and smooth silver-white hair without a single stray strand or impurity, her features bore so resemblance to Annan’s, but her aura was sowhat more chilling.
But what caught the eye the most—were the two white dragon horns on her forehead, slanting upwards like lightning.
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