Chapter 527: Change
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 527: Change
After absorbing the memories of the Belmoras executives on Avalon Island, I had been constantly searching for a way to break the curse on Anastasia.
At first, I ran into difficulties.
That was only natural.
It was unrealistic to think I could break a curse that even Duke Winchester and the Pope couldn't.
Still, I didn't give up.
If only to prevent the scenario where the White Tower Lord becomes an enemy of humanity and invades in the distant future.
As time passed helplessly, I found the answer in a truly unexpected place.
It was during a time when I was refraining from using Tam in the Tower, avoiding the eyes of the Constellations and the System.
I woke up in the middle of the night, thirsty, and heard a strange sound coming from under my bed.
-...What are you eating?
-...Kiek.
Unable to bear its hunger, Tam had secretly slipped out of the sword and was eating a stray ghost hiding in my room.
Seeing that, I felt a strange emotion.
How should I put it...
I felt like a piece of trash who'd starved their pet dog.
Anyway, I'd seen Tam eat ghost-type magical beasts a few times before.
But I never thought it was particularly strange.
Maybe that's why I didn't think much of it at first, but upon careful reflection, something didn't sit right.
A creature that devours the magic power left in corpses, memories, and even ghosts—was there any reason it couldn't eat a curse?
To test the hypothesis flashing in my mind, I continued experimenting by casting curses directly on my own body.
Thanks to that, I thought I was really going to die, but the reward was as certain as the hardship.
For one, the WP sponsored by the Constellations who watched my eccentric behavior with interest was quite substantial, and I even succeeded in establishing a new curse-breaking method that only I could perform.
To use breaking the Tower Lord's curse as an example, the first thing to understand is that the one breaking the curse isn't me, but Tam.
There's only one thing I have to do.
Use my body as a stepping stone so that Tam, sealed in the Heaven-Shattering Demonic Sword, can reach the curse residing in the Tower Lord's uterus.
Naturally, Tam cannot leave the Heaven-Shattering Demonic Sword.
However, through my experiments, I learned that it was possible for it to inhabit my body as an exception.
Though only a very small part of it.
When I first realized this, I shouted 'Eureka!' and immediately went to Lucifer for advice. Since she was the one who told me Tam's identity, I hoped she might know something more.
But contrary to my expectations, I got the shit beaten out of me.
-Are you fucking crazy?! Do you have a death wish?! I told you it was dangerous!!
Tam is a primordial beast.
They say that the moment even a fragment of its true form enters a body, the intelligent being's mind collapses, and they die.
In the end, nothing happened, but Lucifer lectured me all night, saying I could have really died if things had gone wrong.
But I only made the attempt because I was sure I'd be fine.
Well, I had no proof, but still.
Anyway, I aimed for the exact moment of ejaculation, with the head of my penis pressed against the cervix, and had Tam, which had entered my body, devour the curse residing in the uterus.
That was the gist of how I broke the Tower Lord's curse.
Of course, some might think, 'What if it turns into a bloodbath?'
To get straight to the point, there's no need to worry about that.
First, the Tam that enters my body has no physical power.
Even if it wanted to rampage, it has no teeth, let alone hands or feet. What could it possibly do?
Normally, it creates a temporary body using the demonic energy from the Heaven-Shattering Demonic Sword to tear at corpses, but recently it's grown so large that even that has become impossible without the demonic energy I supply.
In other words, I was the one with absolute power in this relationship.
Besides that, I've set up double and triple safety measures, so there's really no need to worry.
Of course, looking at it this way, it might seem like a flawless method, but it was by no means without risk.
That's why I said the probability of successfully breaking Anastasia's curse was low, and why I went as far as to plant the one and only Spirit Tree in the greenhouse.
‘I hope this goes well... but I keep getting a bad feeling about this.’
This, too, is baseless.
It's just a gut feeling.
But for someone like me, who fights with their life on the line day in and day out, there's nothing more important or certain than intuition.
Of course, just because I felt uneasy didn't mean I was going to give up on Anastasia.
Even if the Tower Lord's wrath rained down on me as a result, I intended to do everything I could.
“It's done.”
“Wow...!”
When I handed her the puppy I'd sculpted from ice, Anastasia's eyes sparkled.
After enduring nothing but the Tower Lord's cold gaze for days, receiving a look full of respect was strangely thrilling.
Don't they say that praise can even make a whale dance?
“Sir Hyun-woo, are you perhaps an ice mage?”
“My specialties are fire and ice.”
“What? But my mother said it's incredibly difficult to skillfully handle opposing elements...?”
“I'm just a bit multi-talented.”
At first, even making a single flower was a chore.
But after sculpting this and that at Anastasia's request, I can now create high-quality sculptures with my eyes closed.
In truth, as she said, handling opposing elements is an extremely tricky business.
Fire and ice, in particular, are the ultimate opposites.
While elementalists who could handle fire and water simultaneously existed, albeit rarely, there hasn't been a single one in history who could handle both fire and ice.
So how did I do it?
Ironically, the curse on Anastasia helped.
“Lady Ana. Could you give me your hand?”
“M-my hand...?”
Hearing my words, Anastasia's eyes trembled slightly, and soon even her earlobes turned red.
“It's necessary for breaking the curse. If you'll just permit me for a moment.”
To emphasize that I had no ulterior motives, I looked at her with the gentle smile of a doctor examining a patient.
Anastasia seemed embarrassed and immediately averted her gaze, but thankfully, perhaps because she'd built up some trust in me, she quietly extended her hand.
I gently kneaded her hand.
‘Hmm, it's soft, but...’
It was a beautiful hand, just like the Tower Lord's, one that deserved to be called delicate and slender.
But perhaps because of long-term exposure to the curse, it was so gaunt that her bones were faintly visible.
If the nuns from the orphanage saw her, they would have undoubtedly wiped their tears and launched a food defense.
Anyway, the important thing right now was that her hand was as cold as ice.
It was strange.
The hellfire residing in her uterus was constantly draining Anastasia's yin energy.
In other words, her body temperature should have been boiling hot.
This contradiction existed because the mechanism of hellfire is completely different from that of Earth's fire.
According to Iris, Hell is also called the 'Yin Dimension,' and its flames are said to have rather peculiar properties.
Flames that hold deadly poison, flames that burn invisibly, flames with a will of their own.
There are even flames that steal all surrounding heat, taking on the property of extreme yin (極陰).
The curse on Anastasia also possessed such a property.
I was inspired by that property to become proficient in handling the ice element. After all, fire is my greatest specialty.
Of course, watching the Tower Lord's magic up close and being hit by it directly also helped a lot.
Anyway, one might think that a flame with the property of extreme yin would be a fortuitous encounter for Anastasia, a member of the Ice Fairy race, but there's no way a human body could handle hellfire.
Above all, extreme yang and extreme yin can only exist by extorting the energy around them.
The Tower Lord must have fed Anastasia the core of a Millennium Hwari to neutralize the curse and, at the same time, supplement her yang energy even a little.
Even as a member of the Ice Fairy race, she is, after all, a living being.
‘You ready? If this goes well, I'll let you eat your fill of magical beast meat.’
‘Kit, kiik!!’
Tam, inside my body, cried out as if to say, 'Just trust me!'
It was worth feeding it until it was full at the Gate.
Holding Anastasia's hand, I slowly closed my eyes.
To completely eliminate the source of the curse, a part of my body would have to be in direct contact with her uterus, but just removing the curse's byproducts floating through her system was possible with this level of contact.
Removing the curse with Tam. No, to be precise, before absorbing it, I slowly infused her body with yang energy drawn from my dantian to avoid putting a strain on her.
Hwaaak—
As a gentle halo of light spread in all directions, the chilly air of the bedroom seemed to soften considerably.
“It's warm...”
With dazed eyes, Anastasia stared blankly at the halo of light spreading before her.
The human body has a total of 365 meridians.
What I had to do now was to follow those meridians and selectively absorb only the curse, without touching Anastasia's innate yin energy.
‘Easier said than done.’
The difficulty felt comparable to reorganizing five boxes of Lego that my younger cousin had spilled all over the floor.
Of course, I wasn't the one doing it directly.
-Nom nom, chomp chomp, slurp.
That little guy sure is eating well.
Maybe because it was a highest-level curse cast by a demon, Tam was putting on one hell of a mukbang.
However, it looked a bit frustrating, like trying to eat with a toothpick instead of chopsticks, but I had no intention of catering to its every need.
How much time had passed since it began absorbing the curse?
“Hoo...”
I opened my eyes, wiping the beads of cold sweat from my forehead.
The direct removal of the curse was Tam's job, but to assist the process, I was constantly infusing Anastasia with yang energy and Tam with demonic energy.
Even for me, it was bound to be exhausting.
Still, my efforts paid off, as Anastasia's complexion improved noticeably.
Color began to return to her pale face, and her skin grew warmer.
On top of that, the Tower Lord, who was standing across from the bed, was glaring at me with murderous eyes.
‘...? What? Am I dreaming?’
Jjuap—
I pinched my cheek hard, and a tear trickled out.
I guess this isn't a dream.
Click!
To prove my innocence and purity, I took a pair of handcuffs from my inventory and snapped them onto my own wrists.
Thanks to her, I had awakened a technique for handling the ice element, but being abruptly trapped in ice wasn't a pleasant experience.
Just because I was immune to cold and heat didn't mean I was completely immune to the cold.
In the strange silence, the Tower Lord stared at me without a word, her lips parting and closing repeatedly as if she had something to say.
It might have been my imagination, but for some reason, she didn't seem angry.
“...You, just now—”
“M-Mother...!!”
At the sound of Anastasia calling for the Tower Lord, both her head and mine turned at the same time.
?!!
In that moment, the Tower Lord's eyes shook more violently than I had ever seen before.
Miracle and coincidence.
To some, the words might not be so different, but for the Tower Lord, this moment was a miracle that could not be compared to anything else.
“A-Ana...?”
Her gaze fell upon Anastasia, who was standing on her own two feet.