280 Soul curse I
The agony seemed like it would be endless, yet Nero did not allow himself to get lost in the pain. He kept his mind sharp, and studied his pain despite how miserable it made him feel. Despite the burning sensation, he did not feel his body being harmed. In fact, it was as if he was removing a malignant tumour.
Barely a minute went by, though to Nero it was like an eternity, and the burning sensation within his body suddenly vanished. He felt as good as new, without any lingering sensation of pain at all. It was as if it had all been in his mind.
He opened his eyes, and discovered that at some point he had fallen to his knees, his body covered in cold sweats. Throughout the excruciating experience, he had resisted screaming, but the severity of his state was obvious to everyone as they observed him from afar.
"What… the hell… was that?" Dave, the guy with the danger sense innate ability, asked through clattering teeth. He was nearly as pale as Nero, even though he was not the one who had been targeted.
"It's a Soul Curse," Vanessa said, walking up to Nero and using a card to check his condition. "They're not easy to resist below the Arcanist level, although it's not impossible."
In truth, Vanessa was underselling how genuinely disastrous Soul curses were. Unlike other curses, which just appeared or infected things with aether, Soul curses were an entirely different type of curses altogether.
They were curses that required living beings to actively cast them, and required preparation as well as a significant cost. Knowledge about Soul curses was actually taboo because in the early days of man, before Eldrim cards became common, Soul curses were very common.
To avoid paying the cost of the curses they cast themselves, they would often hold sacrifices, use the souls of others, blood rituals and do many other unsavoury acts. There were many names for such people back in the day. Doomcallers, Blightbringers, Curseweavers and more. But the point was, they could actively inflict a curse upon others, and were extremely dangerous.
In the modern day, their existence was not tolerated and exterminated by most nations on sight. But the profession of wielding curses was something that was actually copied from other, more powerful curses.
The weakened hornets had to pay the price of their lives to cast a Soul curse on Nero. Although Soul curses took many forms, the one that inflicted Nero seemed to be the most basic. Even so, resisting it at merely the cost of some pain…
Vanessa's eyes flashed as she buried certain thoughts deep within her heart. It was unlikely anyone else realised the severity of Nero's actions, and even if it was reported outside later, it would be tough for anyone to judge how serious the attack on him had been.
"You're fine," Vanessa finally said after thoroughly scanning Nero, confirming that he had no lingering problems or injuries.
"This is an unexpected threat," Nero said, trying very hard to not focus on the memory of the excruciating pain he had just suffered. Not even immense discipline could let him just ignore what he had been through, nor would its memory fade so easily.
"The cursed insects used some kind of suicide attack. We need to report this back and figure out some kind of countermeasure in case this is a common phenomenon. Such an attack in the middle of combat could very well be fatal."
"I concur. Gather any hornet corpses we can find, as well as any broken pieces of the hive, and anything else of value," Vanessa said. "We'll take it back and conclude our first expedition into Perilith."
No one else argued, for the sight of Nero suffering had truly startled them all. He was a monster through and through, and if even he had been brought down to such an extent, then they did not want to test anything else here themselves - at least until they came up with a way to avoid such attacks in the future.
Fortunately, there was no other danger nearby as this area had previously been thoroughly cleaned out by the hornets. The team gathered all the samples they could. An unexpected benefit of freezing everything solid was that the things which weren't shattered remained perfectly preserved in their frozen state.
Nero also participated in the clean up, and though he was feeling physically fine, he could not help but feel that he had become mentally exhausted. But that wasn't accurate either, for his mind was still sharp. The situation was unusual, and he was looking forward to returning and getting checked out more thoroughly.
Fortunately, everyone was in agreement, and after collecting samples, they exited through the tavern even though there was still over an hour's worth of daylight left.
Their early return clearly took everyone by surprise, especially since none of them seemed to be harmed, but no one said anything. Instead, a team of doctors rushed towards them, ready to check each of their conditions upon returning from Perilith. This was a standard procedure considering the unknown state of Perilith.
"Follow me," Vanessa told Nero, dismissing the doctors and quickly leading him towards the field hospital. As if she was completely familiar with the layout of the building, she led him beyond the emergency room and the admittance ward, and to a very senior looking doctor who apparently recognised her.
"This is Private Nero," she directly told the doctor. "He just resisted a basic level Soul curse that directly targeted him. Please have him checked out thoroughly."
The doctor was clearly startled, and then turned to look at Nero with confused eyes. Clearly, the sight of him walking behind Vanessa so calmly didn't match her expectation of a patient who had survived a Soul curse.
"Follow me, and do not resist. We will be putting you in an artificially induced sleep while we run out tests, but you do not need to worry, we have many Mystics on duty. You'll get out of this just fine."
Nero was beginning to realise that he may have underestimated the seriousness of what he had just experienced, but he did not reveal it. Instead, he just followed the doctor, who instructed him to remove his armour and skintight gear, change into a patient's robe and lay down.
Oddly enough, the moment Nero lay down, he didn't even need the doctor to induce sleep as he felt it naturally taking hold. His last thought was how odd it was that he didn't feel tired at all, yet could not resist sleep the moment he lay down.
Vanessa, who had stepped aside for a short while to change out of her gear as well, returned to Nero in a few minutes and looked towards the doctor.
"What's the prognosis?" she asked solemnly. She was mentally ready to hear devastating news. But she was definitely not ready for what she heard.
"He is completely healthy," the doctor said. "It's just that his Spirit was nearly entirely drained. As a Neophyte he can't recover that on his own, but by morning we should be able to have him as good as new."
Vanessa did not respond, nor did she show any change of expression. Instead, she kept to herself the extraordinary nature of the feat Nero had accomplished. It was best if knowledge of what he had truly done was buried here. After all, she was beginning to take his offer for partnership more seriously.
On the other side of the base, after undergoing his examination and confirming he was without issue, Dave separated from the group of Neophytes who were going to have dinner together, claiming he was too exhausted.
Yet when he returned to his room, he began pacing nervously. Dave's innate ability was danger sense, and it allowed him to sense the extent that anything was dangerous to him. Although Nero did not know it, since Dave treated Nero as an enemy, his ability gauged him as well, and judged that he was exceptionally dangerous.
That was the reason why he had been so nervous back at Fordham. Yet today… today his ability had gone crazy. When he looked at Nero, his ability told him that facing Nero as a foe would spell his certain death.
The feeling was so unnerving that Dave had acted preemptively and triggered the contingency plan they had in case the poison failed, and induced the cursed insects into targeting Nero with a Soul curse.
It had worked, for a while, but then Nero just shrugged it off and continued to work like nothing was wrong. When Dave had asked what had happened, he wasn't referring to the curse that had struck Nero, but to how Nero had resisted the curse!
No, this was really bad. Nero was certainly going to be a problem, he was sure of that, especially considering some kind of relationship he shared with Vanessa.
In that case… he had to take even more desperate measures. After all, in the temporary base, he couldn't even get in contact with him.
December release schedule