Chapter 73
Chapter 73
Ch. 73 .｡.:✧ The Transcontinental Train (3) ✧:.｡.
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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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“Eh? Eh? What’s this?!”
The centipede, suspended in midair, kept making surprised noises.
It was even a centipede as large as Undecided.
Seeing it wriggle its many legs in the air while speaking in the human language was more than a little creepy.
“What should I do with this?”
A talking centipede…
He racked his brain, searching through his mental settings book, but nothing in particular came to mind.
Moreover, a centipede that could use curses and speak.
He wondered if such a vicious thing should even be allowed to exist in this world.
‘Is it a curse caster’s avatar?’
The most likely hypothesis was that it was the avatar of some named curse caster.
If so, it made sense that no weak points were shown when he used Weak Point.
An avatar wouldn’t have the concept of death in the first place, so it wouldn’t have weak points either.
Had that curse caster disguised the centipede as a human to hide their identity?
There was a high possibility of that.
“P-please spare my life!”
“What about you is pretty enough to spare?”
“But when I was in human form, I was quite…”
“Look at your current form, you fool. After seeing this disgusting sight, do you think I won’t imagine a giant centipede every time I see your human form?”
“…”
Vicious and dangerous, and on top of that, disgusting?
If it had been an alluring gumiho or a cute baby dragon, there might have been a chance for leniency through a special pet consideration.
But an unsightly centipede wasn’t even worth that much.
“You tried to devour hundreds of people. What part of you could possibly look pretty?”
“That wasn’t trying to devour them!”
“Enough with the excuses. Just tell me the location of your main body.”
“…?!”
The centipede’s long body trembled, and the movement of its rustling legs stopped.
Though its expression wasn’t visible, its shock seemed apparent.
It probably wanted to ask how he knew it was an avatar.
Come on, how many years of experience did he have dealing with curse casters?
“I have no choice…!”
At that moment, the centipede’s body began to twist and swell grotesquely, as if about to burst.
It was the common ultimate technique of poisonous insect monsters.
A poison explosion.
He’d be disqualified as a game addict if he couldn’t anticipate this much.
“Undecided.”
“…Okay.”
The moment he called softly, Undecided snapped her fingers.
Suddenly, flames engulfed the centipede’s body, wrapping it entirely in fire.
It was 1st tier magic, Ignition.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”
The centipede’s legs crumbled and fell off all over its body.
Soon its mouth tore and melted away too.
Its entire body began to burn and shatter into pieces.
This was now beyond recovery.
As he released the telekinesis, the creature, now in 10 pieces, fell towards the strait below, still screaming.
“That torch performance was killer.”
“…Peace peace.”
Undecided flashed double peace signs.
He roughly patted her head, then picked her up.
The wind was so strong, he was worried she might fall.
‘Even 1st tier basic magic has decent performance.’
The fire attribute basic spell, Ignition.
At first glance, it might not seem much different from the non-attribute spell Spark, but they were distinctly different.
Spark would only create a spark and do nothing if there was nothing to burn, but Ignition could create fire even in a void with nothing to burn and no oxygen.
As a result, Ignition alone had quite strong firepower.
Its weakness was that it was completely ineffective against objects saturated with water.
But it wouldn’t make sense for basic magic to have no weaknesses at all.
‘But I can’t learn any of these attribute magics.’
The problem was, he couldn’t learn any of these basic spells that started from 1st tier, with solid foundations and decent performance.
Of course, Telekinesis was good too, but…
It lacked a certain flair.
It didn’t even have any special effects.
Objects just moved in midair, and that was it.
To be honest, it didn’t seem very helpful in combat.
He had thought he might be able to use Telekinesis to restrict an opponent’s movements, but using Telekinesis required a lot of concentration, making it nearly impossible to wield a sword and fight at the same time.
And Telekinesis wasn’t powerful enough to crush and kill an opponent.
It might work on a fragile ordinary person, but anyone with some training could probably advance while resisting Telekinesis.
It was an ambiguous spell in many ways.
‘Well, it’s fine. I should be grateful I can learn magic at all.’
Thinking about it would only make him sigh, so he put aside his laments and climbed down from the roof of the train.
There was a time when he thought he couldn’t use magic at all.
Compared to then, being able to learn even non-attribute magic was something to be thankful for.
Although all non-attribute spells seemed to have a screw loose somewhere, he had to be satisfied with that.
Come to think of it, the healing magic Jill used was also non-attribute.
Even the Saintess had acknowledged the performance of non-attribute magic, so he should use it with confidence.
“Come down now.”
“…No praise. I’m angry. Yoo-jin. I’ll make things, difficult for you.”
Even after coming down from the roof and returning to the compartment, Undecided still clung to him with no intention of letting go.
Even when he let go, she wrapped her legs around his waist and held on, supporting herself.
He felt like a koala mother.
“Alright. Do as you please.”
Did “That torch performance was killer” not count as praise?
This one was getting more and more arrogant by the day.
He had praised her as a multi-purpose tool, and now she was treating her master like dirt.
It seemed she was trying to embarrass him by clinging like this, but it had no effect on him.
After all, no matter how she clung, it would just look like he was carrying a clingy little sister.
He was confident.
“Eww. Look at that.”
“How shameless. Why are they going around like that?”
“What’s the age difference? What trash.”
I, I am…
Confident.
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“Ah, aaaaah…!”
In the dark freight car,
A girl’s agonized groans echoed.
The girl in the nun’s habit writhed her entire body, finally managing to catch her breath after expressing extreme pain to the point of bloodshot eyes.
“Haa, haaa!”
She had to feel the pain of her entire body burning like dry kindling.
Until the moment all her nerve connections to her avatar were severed by burning.
Centipede nerves were tenacious.
Even when the body was cut and torn apart, the nerves survived and writhed.
So she essentially had to feel all that pain entirely until the moment her entire body turned completely to ash.
“You damn human!!!”
The girl gritted her teeth and muttered.
It had been a month since the Great Druid Kali died for unknown reasons and she escaped from her dungeon.
Though she had the body of a centipede monster, unlike her kin, she was born with high intelligence.
Thanks to that, she quickly mastered shapeshifting.
She met a beast-folk teacher and learned curses too.
The innate trait of the centipede girl was ‘Division’.
It was a trait that allowed her to create avatars by dividing her body.
“I just wanted to brew some tonic! And some trash dares to interfere with me!”
This time too, she had used her avatar to secretly install a totem as usual.
She had successfully activated the curse and was planning to replenish some energy from the sleeping people, but things went wrong.
If the totem had been destroyed and the curse lifted, she could have understood.
Or if the curse had failed from the start.
Unlike magic, even skilled curse casters often failed with curses.
But this time it wasn’t like that.
The curse was canceled while in effect.
The totem was fine and the caster was fine.
The demonic energy spreading the curse suddenly disappeared and the curse was lifted.
“How on earth did they break my curse? By what means? What kind of person were they?”
Even for a skilled curse caster, it would take quite some time to break a curse encountered suddenly.
But that human had broken the curse in just about 5 minutes.
There was no way to explain this bizarre situation.
Although she hadn’t learned curses for long, she prided herself on having such excellent talent that she surpassed her teacher in just ten days.
To have such a curse of hers broken so easily…
No matter how she thought about it, she trembled with frustration and anger.
“How handsome does he think he is! How dare he say such things about my appearance!”
He even sent a look of contempt after seeing her true form.
An inferior species that couldn’t even divide itself had no way of understanding a superior species like her.
The girl tried to console herself with such thoughts.
“Aaaah!!! How long will it take to recover from this damage!”
But soon the heat rose again, and she let out a roar.
The more power she divided to her avatar, the stronger the avatar became, and the weaker her main body became.
And if an avatar was destroyed while divided, all the power given to it was completely annihilated.
The power she had poured into the avatar this time was about half.
All of that disappeared.
It melted away cleanly into the strait below.
Moreover, losing energy also made her physical age regress.
Because she lost as much as half, her height shrank considerably, turning into the form of a young child.
Such a small body would be inconvenient in many ways.
“Ugh! So annoying, so annoying, so annoying!”
The more she thought about it, the more annoyed she became.
To rebuild the power she had accumulated, how many people’s energy would she have to absorb…
It seemed insurmountable.
Especially now that the Great Druid Kali, who had provided fresh humans, was gone.
Having to replenish energy all alone would significantly slow down the process.
Never let those who harm you go unpunished.
You must always take thorough revenge.
That was the Great Druid’s teaching.
“Do you avoid dung because you’re afraid of it? You avoid it because it’s dirty. Ptooey. I’m avoiding it because it’s dirty.”
It was a teaching that crumbled in 1 second.
The girl shuddered at the still-vivid sensation of burning alive and turned away.
This wasn’t running away.
It was a tactical retreat.
A reverse charge.
The girl thought this to herself as she opened the freight car door.
By now the train had crossed the strait and entered the northern continent.
“They won’t chase me, right? Since they’re human, they won’t go to a dwarf city… I’ll go to the Clockwork City!”
Surely that human wouldn’t go to the Clockwork City.
The girl giggled and jumped off the train.
She had succeeded in shaking off the human.
…At least, that’s what she believed.
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