The loss of the Curse Altar made Damon say, "If I hadn’t set up the Life Array on the Curse Altar or if I had decided to cast the curse myself instead of using the Curse Altar, I would be toast by now."
Then he chuckled and said, "More like I will be a skeleton like the others."
"But jokes aside, who is that person whom Skarg is targeting so much? He or she is at least at rank 4 and is exceptional too. They also seem to be a sword cultivator. Both of these are a bad combination."
His eyes glanced at Skarg briefly before he went back to picking bone shards of his Curse Altar all over the ground. While he was doing so, he said to himself, "To think he said the person isn’t rank 4. He definitely lied to me."
"While I am not surprised that he lied to me, I still can’t believe that he will lie to me. Why would he do something like that? Isn’t it a better idea to tell me what I am dealing with?"
"Is it that he didn’t know that he was targeting a rank 4 being? Even if he didn’t know, he surely knows now, but he is still targeting them."
Then he shook his head in disapproval as he said, "As if being at rank 4 cultivator isn’t bad enough, it is also a sword cultivator? The sword cultivator can also fight curses. How did he encounter such an enemy?"
"If their curse attack is so strong, then I can be sure that their normal physical attack will be much stronger. Maybe I should rethink my strategy."
"I should just make the tracking device for him and leave. Whatever he does with the tracking device will be his business. As for me, my business will be to run away from Skarg as far as possible so that I can preserve my life enough to enjoy the money I’ve earned."
A lot of things went through his mind as he worked to gather the materials he needed. He had to think about his situation and his future after he realized that this job might be the end of him.
Once he did a lot of thinking, he came to the conclusion that he couldn’t continue to be tied up with Skarg, or if he fell, Skarg would bring him down together.
He made this internal decision without telling Skarg, though. What he did was to finish collecting the materials and feed them to the Curse Worm.
Then he went to the market to get another Curse Altar, which is something he doesn’t need, and some other auxiliary materials that he needed to cast the tracking device.
He doesn’t need a Curse Altar to make the tracking device because he is only tracking, not attacking the origin of the curse. There shouldn’t be any danger in making the tracking device, but Damon refused to do it without a Curse Altar.
He wanted to be safe rather than sorry. So he got a Curse Altar, and he got a very good one, too. The Curse Altar that he bought was better than his previous one, which made it also more expensive. But since he wasn’t the only one paying for it, he didn’t mind the premium price.
The Curse Altar is also made with the bones of rank 4 cultivators and rank 4 beasts. But each bone was also infused with a fragment of the soul of a rank 4 being, which makes the altar more powerful.
The infusion of souls into the bones also made the bones possess a green tint. This green tint became more obvious when the altar began to glow during the process of using it to forge the tracking device.
The Curse Altar was as large and as tall as a table, but the eerie green glow that was coming from it made it look bigger. As for Damon, who was standing in front of the altar and working diligently on it, the eerie green glow made him look like a ghost.
Damon was very satisfied with his new Curse Altar. He was also satisfied with the tracking device that he had forged with it. The two of them brought a smile to his lips, and this smile grew wider the longer he admired the altar and his handiwork.
His handiwork is a skull with its back open to the world. There is a white candle made of bone ashes standing in this hole in the skull. There is a small translucent white flame on the candle.
The small flame on the white candle is pointing in a certain direction as if the wind were blowing it in that direction. But there was no wind blowing on the candle. There was only a cold breeze swirling around the pale flame.
Damon held the skull in the palm of his hand while he admired it. The sight of his work impressed him greatly. Since there was no one around to admire his handiwork and praise it, he took it upon himself to do so.
But he had to put an end to the admiration session when he saw Skarg’s stoic and cold face. Then he went over to his employer to hand over the tracker.
As he gave Skarg the tracker, he said, "I did my best, but I couldn’t track the person you’re looking for. I could only track the location from which the curse backlash came. So if the person has moved from that location, you won’t be able to find them."
When he saw Skarg glare at him, he quickly added, "But this is not a waste. As long as you can find something related to that person in the location this tracker leads you to, I can make a better tracker that will be able to track the person directly."
He stopped there and didn’t say this, "I can also use the material you find at the location to curse the person again. But I won’t do that, no matter how much you pay me."