Curselock

Chapter 123: Daily Steps

Leland, Harbinger’s Halo floating soundlessly above his head, tapped his chest with his pointer finger. Previously, Touch of Regeneration caused a green blossoming glow to appear from his finger, but now, after ranking up and specializing, his contracts took on a new aspect. His aspect.

Harbinger Halo: Binding

Type: Curse (Self)

Rank: 11 (Specialization: A)

Strike a dark accord with a presiding Lord, calling their aid.

Contracts last up to 20 minutes. If ended early, the cool down period is decreased.

Up to 2 contracts may be acted upon at one time.

Contracts that produce direct spells, curses, abilities, incantations, and/or passive effects that deal with mana, may have lifeforce partially supplemented. Effects may vary.

The last line of the curse’s description was what did it, what changed Touch of Regeneration. Leland wasn’t quite sure what the new healing spell fully did, but as a baseline, it still healed him and anyone he used it on.

From natural green, a wellspring of regrowth and life, the spell now took on a violet aspect. With lifeforce and mana as the fuel, the spell now sparked with purple flutters of pride. It resonated clearly through the air, preening itself to all of those who watched. The spell was changed, and it wanted all to see.

In a way, Leland changing another Lord’s spell was… worrisome. He had already dealt with other Lords and renegade Legacies and killed said Legacies under contract. Would the Lord of Nature do something similar? Augmenting spells, especially those not of one’s Legacy, was grounds for blasphemy.

That was if the legends were true.

It was a tale from the starting struggles of mortal life. The origins of the first Witches, those who wished to defy the divine. No Witch would be able to kill a Lord, not with the feeble excuse of power that was a Legacy. Scraps, the first Witches thought before forcefully finding their own magic and augmenting their Lord’s spells.

The tale ends with the first blood of the Witch Wars – a war in which countless mortals died and not a single Lord.

Leland didn’t think what he was doing was sacrilegious, however. After all, the Witches of old found their own ways to change Legacy spells. All he was doing was following along his Legacy and the specialization paths left to him by the Lord of Curses.

So, in the end, if the Lord of Nature had an issue, he’d just have to take it up with the Lord of Curses.

The spell flowed into Leland’s burning chest, cooling his inflamed lungs and causing his breath to go cold. Still with his halo above, he pushed himself to run. Touch of Regeneration did wonders, allowing him to move through the forest’s underbrush for minutes longer than previously. Every step was important, every step was another attack to be dodged later.

Eventually, however, Touch of Regeneration’s healing properties couldn’t keep up with the sheer carnage Leland was forcing on his mage body. It was a shame, but great progress from his last attempt in the courtyard of the smokey inn.

Glenny revealed himself, dropping his invisibility. “That was good. How many steps was that?”

Leland, hunched over and trying not to puke, allowed his grimoire to flip to the contract’s page. He ignored everything else on the page, only reading the important part.

Total Steps: 61

“S-sixty o-one.”

“Much, much better than fourteen. At this rate, you’ll catch up to Jude in another year or two.”

Leland glared at the rogue as Jude made his presence known. The berserker leaped from a tree branch, crashing down into the dirt before sprinting off like a bat escaping a fire. He ran, snaking through the trees while chasing a magical lemur.

The thigh sized lemur jumped from branch to branch, rushing through the forest with magically presenting feet. A dull blue eclipsed its toes, latching on to tree bark before sending it flying to another point in the canopy. All in all, it ran circles around Jude, never letting him near.

Leland watched with interest, trying to gauge just what the animal was doing. Realistically, a magical animal was a few steps below a monster, meaning the magic they could use was severely limited. In this case, the lemur’s magic acted like an anchor and spring, allowing it to grip trees and jump far.

“Ahh!” Jude complained, yelling up at the lemur. “You win!”

The primate made a farting sound with its mouth before hopping down, landing on Jude’s shoulder. It then headbutted him, gently leaning into its new human friend.

“You’re pretty speedy,” Jude cooed.

The lemur responded with a jumble of audible syllables. It was nowhere close to real language, but that didn’t stop Jude from nodding in turn like he understood. The lemur, however, seemed to know what it was doing and pointed to Leland.

Leland felt somewhat affronted, especially as Jude laughed.

“I agree!” Jude said, wiping away tears.

Glenny and Leland looked at each other, shaking their heads.

It took an hour but eventually Jude said farewell to his new friend and the trio ventured out of the forest and into the final stretch of their travels. The Royal Dream would officially start in just over a week, but everyone knew the true festival lasted the entire month. So in that regard, they were late.

Walking over the hill leading into the city, Ruinsforth came into view. For the boys, this was the second or third time any of them had visited. They were young back then, but the city was a massive expansion of an already thriving adventuring hub. Deemed the Adventuring Guild’s home, the city was larger than the empire’s capital, Ivory Reach.

Nestled amidst the sprawling artificial plains of the Mirror Flatlands, the city of Ruinsforth rested safely at the edge of what was once an ancient civilization. The city itself originally rose from the first outer stretches of ruins, encircling the true delving points with houses and buildings alike.

The ancient civilization of Reflection Kingdom, what was left of it at least, was home to endless streams of riches and danger. Once a metropolis that pushed the boundaries of what was scientifically and magically possible, it was now nothing more than a graveyard of dust and lost treasure.

Ruinsforth, in a way, acted as a defensive hold against the monstrous dangers that spawned from the raw hatred that consumed the Reflection Kingdom. The dead, and the monsters they controlled, sought to destroy as happened to them so many millennia ago.

The gates of Ruinsforth were far into the start of the city’s life. With the growth of the city over the last few decades, expansions were set and forgotten about. New walls were planned but never built. That didn’t stop the migrant citizens, however.

They stayed beyond the city’s walls and gates, setting up temporary homes in the flatlands leading into the city and ruins. Strangely enough, monster attacks from the neighboring lands were rare, a collective theory speculated that the centralized ruins of the Reflection Kingdom marked its territory so to speak. The dead still needed a home, and no monsters from the outside would get in unless they were permitted to enter.

So, for the most part, the delayed city expansions didn’t affect the city’s growth. Walls would eventually be erected but were postponed until after the Royal Dream.

Leland, Jude, and Glenny took their time moving through the outer city. There was plenty to see and do, shops to peruse, food to eat, even a few magical duels to watch. In the end, Glenny walked away from betting on a fighter with a heavier pocket while Jude grumbled about losing nearly his entire coin purse.

“Don’t worry,” Leland said. “We still have to sell everything we got from Floe and Gelo. You’ll make your money back.”

Glenny smirked, deciding to play evil. “Yeah, then he might as well give all his earnings to me. He’s just going to lose the next time we bet, might as well just do it now.”

Jude stuck out his tongue. “How was I supposed to know that fighter had a bad knee?”

“Because he was favoring his one good leg significantly. Not everyone can fight through the pain like you.”

Leland chuckled at that. “Come on, before we get robbed.”

They soon left the over populated outer city, entering the inner. What they found surprised them. Besides a few extra festival decorations, the inner city looked exactly like the outer. Shops were crammed together, people were walking through the streets nearly touching, it was loud, it was stinky. There was, however, a greater number of guards walking about.

The sun was just passing midday at this point. “Come on, all that exercise left me hungry. Let’s eat lunch then head to an appraiser and get to selling.”

Lunch that day was overpriced bread, cheese, and roast hen.