Loki looked inwards and saw that one of the Curse Mirrors was breaking. He also saw that there was a faint white flame within the cracks of the black mirror.
This made him frown and say in displeasure, "So I couldn’t avoid it at the end of the day. How did he do it anyway? I thought I burned everything he could use to curse me. I even burned down his farm."
Then he shook his head and said, "I guess I am still green behind the ears. Thankfully, I have the opportunity to learn from my mistakes."
He thought that he had done everything needed to prevent Skarg from cursing him, but it seemed that he was wrong to believe that. Be that as it may, he was only a little bit panicked.
He was only a little bit worried because the rate at which the Curse Mirror was breaking was slow. It looked like the mirror wouldn’t break for another month. This helped him relax a lot.
He sighed in relief and said, "Fortunately, I prepared for this. And it seems my preparation is more than enough too."
He felt that his preparations were good enough, so most of his fears were alleviated. He even lost interest in watching the slow-forming cracks and went back to fusing energy threads.
Unfortunately, things took a worse turn when the speed of the cracks increased. What he thought would take a month to destroy the Curse Mirror actually took one week, which is four times faster than he expected.
When the first Curse Mirror was destroyed, the second one took its place. This one lasted one week too.
This made him say, "It seems the curse has stopped growing stronger. It should grow weaker from now on, right?"
That’s what he hoped for. But the curse didn’t become weaker as expected.
The curse didn’t grow stronger, but it didn’t ease off either. The white flame continued to burn steadily until the third Curse Mirror was also destroyed one week later.
As the final Curse Mirror crumbled away into dust, he cursed, saying, "Fucking shit. Is this what I paid 9 million energy stones for? I hope that it cost Skarg far more to curse me like this."
As he said that, the curse descended on his body. The white chilly fire spread all over his body, but the Pristine Sword Metac pushed it back.
The two forces began a back-and-forth across his body. The curse wanted to spread, but the Pristine Sword Metac didn’t want any unclean thing to latch onto his body.
But as dedicated as the Pristine Sword Metac was to its job, it simply wasn’t capable enough to stop the curse. So the white flame kept gaining more ground across his body.
Since the power of the Pristine Sword Metac alone wasn’t enough to block the curse, Loki immediately employed the help of the other pathways.
This was all he could do. After this, he would either die or live.
The power of the curse was at 3(Status) × 4(Cultivation Rank) × (4(Soul) + 4(Curse Worm) + 50% (Energy Well)) × (4(Death Flame) + 4(Curse Altar)) × (350% Overdrive + 50% Energy Nexus), which is 3,264 units.
This curse is more powerful this time around because it is being enhanced by the Curse Altar and being cast by the death cultivator, not from a consumable item.
As for Loki’s defense, it was 3(Status) × (3(Sword Heart) +3(Reversal Metac)) × (3(Soul) + 3(Mind) + 5(Will) + 450% Energy Well) × (3(Pristine Sword) + 3(Sword Edge))× (265% Overdrive).
He is fully combining the Dual Cultivation Pathway with the Sword Pathway using Fenrir, which is why both his Mind and Will are working together.
All of these worked together to produce an output that was far higher than normal. This is why his power output is as high as 4,436 units.
As it turned out, the power of his defense is greater than the power. Thanks to the Reversal Metac, he was able to do more than block the curse.
The Reversal Metac absorbed the power of the curse and combined it with the power of his defense. Then it sent it back to its source.
Loki felt a great weight disappear from his body when the curse disappeared. He sighed in relief and said, "I hope that’s the end of it."
Then he chuckled and said, "Somehow, I doubt that."
On the other side, the death cultivator, Damon, was busy counting how many days they had spent maintaining the curse on his fingers while his mind worked, calculating how much Skarg owes him now.
What he calculated caused a wide smile to appear on his face. It also made him say inwardly, "We are at 22 days now. That makes 15.4 million energy stones worth of work."
But he quickly reined in his smile so as not to appear too happy to the three of them. However, he still said to himself, "Fingers crossed that the other person can continue to hold on."
Contrary to expectations, this delay didn’t make Skarg angry or unhappy. He actually had a smile on his face, too.
When he checked the time and realized that they had entered the 22nd day since they activated the curse, he grinned and said, "It seems this Loki is the real deal. He will surely know how to advance to rank 5 with this kind of power."
He was happy because the longer Loki survives, the more it proves that Loki is worth the investment of so much money and time to coerce into telling him how to advance to rank 5.
Serge understood this, but there was something else that he couldn’t make sense of, so he said to Skarg, "Father, I don’t understand why he is this strong. You were affected by the curse right on the first day and needed it to be removed immediately, but he has been able to withstand the burning on the death flame for more than three weeks now. How is he so strong?"