[V9C8] Melted Curse
Translated by Jodas 9: Battle for the Tower“The doors of heaven shall not open to those who fail to execute their duty.”
That voice echoing through the gardens in the middle of night felt colder than the late-night breeze.
Sophie and Rose’s shoes were frozen to the ground by a layer of ice magecraft. Magecraft cast by Assistant Headmaster Miriam.
Miriam was a beautiful woman beneath her nun’s habit, but her beauty belied a quiet, threatening nature.
It was unlike the toughness that someone like Sevil had on account of overflowing passion and bluster.
It was the fierce and threatening nature of a person who was willing to sacrifice everything in the name of her faith.
“Sophie Schwarzenberg. Do you intend to discard not only your duties at the Wedge Tower, but your duties as a Shaman as well?”
That was not the voice of someone giving an enraged lecture.
Miriam spoke quietly and dispassionately as she skewered Sophie’s insecurities.
“I– I don’t want to make people suffer…”
“You do not understand the essence of a curse, then. Curses exist to punish sinners and force them to repent for their sins. Those who have committed a mistake must receive a lashing. Should that duty be abrogated, a man will only repeat the same mistakes.”
“B– But…”
No matter how she responded, there was no winning. It was useless. Of that, she was confident.
As she stayed silent, she felt like crying. Whenever she was scolded, all Sophie wanted to do was to shrink back and cry.
“All things have a duty. A knife exists to cut, a cup exists to hold water, and curses exist to make people suffer. How can one claim to find value in something that fails to live up to its duty? You must, here and now, show your value.”
Curses exist to make people suffer.
The Schwarzenberg Family curses were ones that made people die painfully. That was something she had been told ever since she was a kid.
Unable to say anything in response, she bit her lip and hung her head. But then, Rose spoke up.
Despite everything that was going on, he spoke in the same gentle, Rose-like tone as always.
“Sophie, do you know? There’s all kinds of interesting curses out there. There’s curses that make your body glow, ones that make you always stub your pinky toe all the time for some reason, ones that make bugs swarm around you…”
“What use is there in repeating such trite, second-hand knowledge?”
The emotion suddenly drained from Rose’s face.
Reflecting the lantern light, his green eyes glowed faintly.
“The Abyss of human hearts is a font of unfathomable depth. If Monsters are born from therein, then one may say a curse is an amalgamation of that Abyss, closer to the true Abyss than Monsters themselves.”
His voice was as smooth as velvet, with an intoxicating allure that drifted from her ears to her heart.
“Thus, in the broadest sense, one may consider Shamans to be those who control Monsters.”
His voice, that sounded almost like a Classical Magecraft incantation, suddenly switched and returned to his usually sunny, and masculine voice.
“Did you know, Sophie? There’s this place called the Forbidden Archives with mountains of books with Monsters sealed inside, and all of those Monsters are always making a total ruckus. Yet when a Shaman walks in, all of a sudden the Monsters go silent like they’re bowing to him.”
What was Rose talking about? She couldn’t understand one bit of it, yet she could feel a strange confidence.
“Your power is an amazing thing! I think it’s way too soon to decide that it’s only for making people suffer or whatever!”
The coldness of Miriam’s gaze intensified.
She clearly registered Rose as a foreign object that must be eliminated.
“…So the spy has seduced the daughter of the Schwarzenberg Family.”
(Eh? You think Rose is seducing me now!?)
‘No way, gross!’ Sophie wanted to shout, when she heard Miriam voicing a short incantation. The bitter cold of a winter wind changed into the kind of cold that felt like it was tearing her skin apart.
The ice clinging to Rose’s feet grew upwards, covering the lower half of his body in ice.
“Rose!”
Rose touched the ice around his body with his palm, then made an expression of frustration as if he had just failed to do something.
Then, he quickly pulled his head up and stuck his hand — his left hand with the ring on it — out to Sophie.
“Sophie, please!”
‘Please what?’ She was about to ask, then Sophie realized.
Remove the curse. Rose was asking her to remove the curse on the ring.
Sophie reached her right hand out as far as she could and touched the ring on Rose’s left hand. Miriam probably wouldn’t be able to figure out what they were doing just based on that alone.
But removing the curse required an incantation. If she chanted, Miriam would notice for sure.
‘What do I do?’ She panicked, but as she did, Rose raised his voice.
“This kind of ice is nothing to me! I’m all muscle, so the cold doesn’t bother me!”
He was buying time. While Rose spoke in a thundering voice, Sophie hurried to chant the incantation for curse removal.
(Please, don’t notice!)
Sophie focused her mind like she never had before. She drew out the power of the Abyss within herself and shaped it into the form she desired.
Normally, that would be the form of a curse that killed a person painfully. But removing a curse was different.
Each Shaman had their own way of removing curses, but in Sophie’s case, she envisioned it as absorbing the curse from the cursed item and melting it.
(What’s up with this curse, it’s super scrunched up… Multiple effects? Interfering with the wearer’s body, restricting mana output… It even has the curse pack into the chambers that store his mana and restrict his maximum mana reserves? What in the world? Wait, hold on… Aren’t his mana chambers way too big? Who in the world is Rose really?)
Sophie was bewildered. Not only was the curse insane; Rose, the one who had the curse put on him, was even more insane.
The curse was way too complicated and sophisticated, and Rose’s mana organs were so abnormal she could hardly fathom them.
(Calm down, focus. It’ll be okay. First, I just need to remove this curse… It was made to be removed.)
Miriam made the ice swell to cover Rose. It rose from his waist up to his chest. If his arm froze over, this would be all for nothing.
“I don’t care how much ice you put on me! I’ll break it all, you hear me!”
(Curse removed!)
The moment the curse disappeared from the ring, Rose spread the palm of his hand out wide and grabbed on to the clump of ice. He made no incantations. Regardless, cracks formed in the ice. With a sharp ‘crack,’ the ice shattered into pieces.
(Eh? Huh? What did he just do?)
Unlike Sophie, who stared on in confusion, Miriam showed no signs of shock on her face.
Her eyes only glared at Rose with a furious glow.
“Your immense mana reserves speak for themselves. To break through restraining magecraft purely by emitting mana… I have an idea as to who may be capable of doing that.”
“I don’t need to introduce myself… then!”
Rose dashed up to Sophie and touched the ice binding her feet to the ground with the palm of his hand. That alone, just like before, was enough to make the ice shatter.
She had no idea what was going on anymore. All she knew was that Rose had been severely restricted by that curse up to this point.
“Rose, who the heck are youuu!? How did you do that!?”
“Um… I’ll tell you later…”
The moment Rose’s words drifted off, she heard the clanging sound of metal sliding against metal.
The sounds of ‘clang, clang’ got faster, layering over each other.
Sophie and rose found themselves surrounded by a series of floating chains. Each chain was about the thickness of the circle she would form by putting her thumb and index finger together. And at the other end, they all led to Miriam’s wrist.
From the bracelet around her elegant wrist emerged the voice of a young girl.
“Requesting target information.”
“Two targets: the red-haired man and the black-and-purple-haired girl. Capture them.”
“Commencing capture.”
In an instant, the chains rushed forth with terrifying speed, ensnaring Rose and Sophie.
Rose tried to stick his hand in his pocket and chant something, but the chains were faster than his hand.
A bracelet that controlled chains. Sophie knew it very well.
“The Ancient Magical Artifact… ’Despina, the Chain of Fools’…!”
Rose, who had been trying to break the chains with his strength, gasped. “Huh?”
“Isn’t that the one the Library Office Director is supposed to have!?”
“Assistant Headmaster Miriam was the one who used it before her!”
One of the three Ancient Magical Artifacts at the Wedge Tower, ‘Despina, the Chain of Fools’ was an artifact specialized in restraint and sealing.
Sophie was said to have the aptitude for it, and she’d been practicing to use it, so she knew very well how terrifying it could be.
“Rose, can you make this go ‘boom’ like the ice earlier…?”
“Nah, I think an Ancient Magical Artifact is a little too much for me…”
She wished he would stop saying those kinds of things in such a laid-back tone. No, wait, even if he was more on edge, that wouldn’t change anything.
This was the end of the road. There was no saving them now. Ancient Magical Artifacts were weapons that could turn the tides of a war in an instant.
As Sophie despaired, she saw someone running towards them out of the dark of night.
‘Could it be, another one of the Apprentice Mages has come to rescue us?’ She thought, but she was mistaken.
Out of the darkness of night, she could faintly make out the silhouette of a man with frizzy hair…
“…Mr. Armster?”
Rose muttered in shock.
The one running towards them was one of the Instructors for the Apprentice Mages, the always weak-willed Armster.
She wondered if he had come to support Miriam, or maybe he had come to save the Apprentices, but something about him seemed off in either case.
Armster’s attention seemed focused behind him, as if he was running away from something.
“…Eek! H– Help me…!”
Behind Armster, she heard a voice that sent a chill down her spine.
—AWWOOOOOOO—
The howl of a wolf.