Sophia and Skarg looked at each other, wondering how much they could tell Serge about Loki without revealing the identity of who they were looking for to Damon.
But before they could decide on what to say, Damon spoke up, saying, "I am confused too."
Damon now had a frown on his face as he said, "By my calculations, even a rank 5 cultivator should succumb to the curse in a maximum of one week. That is, unless they have a special resistance to curses."
"But this person has lasted three weeks now. It is too much. In fact, it is an unreasonable amount of time to survive. So I have to ask, I hope you haven’t made me curse a divine being?"
To this silent accusation, Skarg snorted and said, "How many times do I have to tell you this? I am not after a divine being. Or do you think I will intentionally seek out my own death?"
After asking all of these reasonable questions, he said, "I’ve said again and again, the person we are targeting is not even a rank 5 being. In fact, I doubt if they are at rank 4. No, I am sure that they are not at rank 4."
At any other time, Damon might have chosen to let the matter go now. But this time, Damn refused to back down.
He said, "If what you say is true, then it makes this matter even more unreasonable and incomprehensible. How can a rank 3 cultivator withstand this much curse power for so long?"
In defense, Skarg said, "Isn’t it slow acting?"
In response, Damon shook his head as he said, "It is only slow-acting after the first few days. After everyone else died, the curse reached the peak of its power, so the curse has been raging at full capacity for 20 days now."
What he said was reasonable. Unfortunately, Skarg didn’t have an answer to his inquiries. He doesn’t know how Loki can survive for so long under the power of the curse, so he shrugged and said, "I don’t know what to tell you. I am as confused as you are."
Then he pointed at Damon and said, "If anything, I should be asking you why this is the case. Aren’t you supposed to be an expert on curses?"
Since Skarg had turned the matter around to make it look like he was at fault, Damon had to come clean. He coughed and said, "There is something else that I remembered. There is another option in which the power of the curse can be transferred to someone else or delayed by a protective talisman."
The explanation he gave made him Skarg narrow his eyes at him and say, "If you knew this, why were you questioning me?"
Damon couldn’t admit that he had become curious about the identity of the person and wanted to use trickery to force Skarg into telling him about the person.
So he said, "I just wanted to make sure that you are not hiding anything that could endanger us."
He knew that wasn’t going to satisfy Skarg, so he quickly added, saying, "For example, if the person is also a curse cultivator like me, they would be able to fight and resist the curse for so long, which would explain why they can survive for so long."
"But if that is the case, then we are also at risk of being cursed because they can trace back the source of the curse to fight back. If this is possible, I would like to know so that I can prepare. After all, the foundation of the power of curse cultivators like me is ample preparation."
He had exaggerated a little bit about his claims of a curse cultivator being able to trace back the curse to attack them. He didn’t lie, though. Such a thing is possible, but only for highly skilled and highly powerful curse cultivators.
However, those kinds of cultivators are very rare. Besides, they will need to break his curse first before they can attack him through the link.
And finally, even if they retraced the curse and attack him through the link, he has nothing to be afraid of because he has the Curse Altar and the Life Array on it to protect him from any backlash. So he didn’t need to question Skarg like that.
But Skarg didn’t know all of these and was easily fooled by the explanation that Damon provided. He was so fooled that he began to worry that Loki might be a curse cultivator. After all, he doesn’t know what kind of cultivator Loki is.
But he didn’t show that he was fooled, though. Instead, he snorted and said, "Even if it is a curse cultivator, you have to be prepared to fight them. It is what I have been paying you for all this time."
This wasn’t exactly true, but Damon didn’t argue with Skarg. He only smiled and said, "I’ll do my best."
The four of them were sitting around the Curse Altar watching it and waiting expectantly for something good to happen. They also had nine rank 3 and three rank 4 subordinates surrounding them.
They were waiting for someone to come and try to stop the curse, which was why they had formed a protective circle around the Curse Altar.
Skarg and the others will handle external attacks, while Damon will handle curse attacks. They are clearly prepared for any kind of attack. As for whether their preparation will be enough, only time will tell.
As luck would have it, that time to tell arrived soon. This arrival was late, but it was better than never.
The attack started with the black, thick candle cracking from top to bottom. The cracks also split the blood vessels in the candle, so blood came spilling out of the candle onto the altar.
The next thing that happened was that the white ghostly flame burning on top of the candle billowed into the air and became a giant flame. The flame grew so large very quickly as if it were about to lose control.
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A/N: Please, don’t forget to vote with your power stones and golden tickets. Thank you.