Chapter 101: Beachside Date.

We arrived at Berry’s small family home, and I observed the minimalist carvings on the wood of its fence. Depicted on its exterior were various objects and animals in varying sizes and intervals, which I soon realized to be a message written in Morsian.

Three older crustecars bowed to us in way of greeting once we reached the front of the house. Their carapaces were scarred, same as a lot of their people, for obvious reasons. It wasn’t rare to see crustecars missing whole arms and legs, but that never stopped them from living their lives, even if they sometimes needed some help.

The people in my orbit didn’t really have a problem with scarring despite being veterans of many battles, because magical healing typically healed in such a way that didn’t leave a mark. But those who lived outside the walls of Orila didn’t get the healing that they deserved, and scars typically did remain if left alone for too long. The same went for permanent wounds, they did become even harder to heal the longer one waited.

“This is my mom, Lena,” Berry gestured to a red-shelled crustecar, and I smiled back at her. “This is my dad, Rob,” she pointed to another one with a purple shell, before turning to someone with the same blue color as her. “And he’s… my new dad! I did know of him before, and his name is Larry.”

“It’s nice to meet you all,” I said. “Is polyamory common here?” Monogamy was the norm in the empire as a whole, and while some people could have their relationship be open, marriage could only legally be done between two people, and it was irrevocable.

“It is,” Lena answered. “It’s a bit strange that you guys restrict yourselves like you do, but we do not.”

“Hey, as long as everyone’s happy,” I replied, the offense I took perfectly concealed. “No need to be dismissive.”

“Oh, of course! I meant no offense. Even among us, there are people who want different things. Between two people, no one at all, open relationships… and some others that I forgot.”

“That’s my favorite one!” I laughed as we all entered through the door in the fence. The outside was already decorated, but the inside was full of art. From pottery and paintings, to weavings, sculptures, and more. I took a moment to appreciate the love and care that went into creating this space with my girlfriend, until she finally decided to pester the people who lived here about their inspirations and techniques.

Our hosts graciously and passionately answered her questions, and I watched on warmly as they began examining pieces in detail. I decided then that I liked these people. Berry had grown up in a nice family.

Two of her parents had died in her absence, however, and many more of her friends and relatives had died, both during her time away and long before she had ever left Orila. I got to hear just a little bit about who these fallen people were as we looked at the sculptures and embroideries that they’d left behind. It was customary for the artworks made by a fallen crustecar to be given to the many people and families that they loved in life.

Berry took out a bunch of accessories which she carelly and almost reverently gave to her parents. They were the last things Billy had ever made, and each one gave a sense of familiarity and nostalgia.

“I helped him with some of those. Even when we’ve all but given up on our dream of someday making a living out of our true passion. It was still something that we could never give up.

Her parents masterfully rearranged their furniture and decorations, quickly finding the perfect place to hang and display their fallen child’s last creations.

“He was such a sweet boy… We sent them there so he would be safe…”

“But he was forced into battle anyway, so did we make a mistake?

“I… I was never his father. But I knew Billy, and this world is truly cruel for taking away such a bright child.”

“My brother saved my life when it should’ve been me!”

They wailed, and the rest of us shed tears for this tragedy that we were never there for.

“Hey Berry,” I sat beside my friend, right by the fence and overlooking the outside. It was nighttime, and the moon and the stars twinkled upon us for this house did not have a roof. The tides had risen, and the shore had come closer, submerging plenty of the cursetaceans that waited outside, but the water remained far from reaching the moat. It was almost as if the ocean was taunting them, so close yet inaccessible, for it was too dangerous to even try. They couldn’t even do their common funeral rites anymore, to return their fallen to the great Leviathan.

I too wished to have fun on the beach, but alas, even that simple pleasure was robbed from me by the imperial scum.

“Yes?” Berry looked back at me, her voice calm but raw. Everyone else was fast asleep in piles of pillows and cushions on the floor, save for Moonwash who had woken up because I did.

I took out two bracelets that spelled the words ‘Freedom’ and ‘Victory’ in morsian, a language that they knew.

“These are yours, isn’t it? From you, and another.”

Her eyes boggled as she beheld my two favorite accessories in confusion. “W-what? Where… where did you get this?”

I smiled, and this time she could see it for my mask at least had been removed.

“It happened a long time ago, when I was but a wee child. I traveled around the city with Granuel and his mother Fiya. We came across this stall, illegally manned by two crustecars. I… I forgot what their names even were, but I loved little trinkets they made. They were shunned and bullied by everyone else for simdaring to go against a mold that they made up, and it broke my heart when they were taken away by the guards for the simple crime of to achieve their dreams. It was terrible.” I looked her in the eye. “I consulted my memory core, and those people were you. You even introduced yourselves to me as Billy and Berry, but I never made the connection. I never remembered. It’s good to see you, after all this time. And I’m sorry for how Billy had perished, and how I could do nothing at the time.”

Berry was silent. Her gaze bore into me. After a long time spent just processing, she finally spoke.

“It’s you! It’s really you!” She jumped in joy, and did a little dance with her six feet. “I didn’t realize! I’ve honestly forgotten about that event too. You were so small back then! And, you know… different from what you are now. A human girl. But I remember how happy that encounter made me and Billy feel. That was the last time we ever tried, but I’m happy that you were our very last customer. Thank you. Thank you!”

“Aww. That’s sweet Berry. I’m happy to have met you and your brother back then.” I gave her a hug, and she returned it as if I was the last port at sea. “These bracelets here are literally my favorite accessories.”

She wheezed in the crustecar equivalent of a sniff. “It means a lot to hear that. I’m sure Billy would be happy, in whichever life he now lives.”

It was the next day, and I found myself manning the perimeter yet again. Cursetaceans fell, I gathered their lower-right pincers, and gathered their remains to be burned later. Moonwash healed the injuries I suffered, but only to the bare minimum extent. Might as well give my regen heart a workout while we were in this safe and peaceful circumstance.

“Thank you for this,” Larry said. He was Berry’s new dad. “Thanks to you, my people are able to get a small respite.”

Moonwash was also healing some of the crustecars who fought and got injured.

“Not a problem. But does it not bother you? I’m aware that I might be taking your bag, your work, your money here.”

“It be a problem, but not a massive one. You’re only here temporarily, and we so rarely have anyone that actually wants to do this. We’ll have less money, yes, and that’s already tight, but a respite is worth it nonetheless. Fewer new injuries for us to grapple with, no one who would be crippled and no longer able to work, and no deaths since you’ve started helping. That is worth everything.”

“Huh. Well, fair enough. I’ll go throw you guys a feast or two later as thanks.”

“You know…” he began, after a pause in the conversation, and the crunch of cursed carapace yielding against unyielding metal. “You seem so unbothered, yet there’s no way this exercise does not bother you. How are you able to remain so calm through the pain?”

“You mean this?” I raised my bleeding gauntlets for him to see. I took damage for every cursetacean I killed. “I’ve had worse. Much worse.” In this life, and another.

He was satisfied with that answer, and left shortly after.

I observed my many cursed enemies, and tried to feel exactly what was happening when they dealt their infamous retaliatory damage. I could very vaguely feel that the greater magic was at play, the same concepts that allowed me to make rituals and even mini-rituals, but how were they able to affect an entirely different and adversarial person with such an effect? I could not influence my blood the moment it was properly ingested by someone, yet they could do so much more, and seemingly automatically.

What was I missing?

I suddenly shouted after minutes of just standing there and pondering in the thinking pose.

I didn’t think the crustecars were actively casting any spell. It didn’t even seem like they were passively maintaining a certain image in their head. I knew my own menace mana, and now wrath mana, could be heavily flavored by me. They could act on their own, and that behavior could be changed, hence why I was even able to push my hyperdemon gland to the limit when I was an imp. So were the cursetaceans able to enact instant retaliation through the use of that same concept, at least in part? It didn’t answer the question of how they could manifest effects without a trail of mana, as if able to just influence the greater magic that suffused all of existence, but…

My legs exploded into motion, and I splattered a cursetacean’s skull with great and overwhelming force. The expected backlash lashed against my arms and the rest of my body, for what I did was overkill. But I hardly noticed the pain, as my focus was on something else. I I felt a flare-up of the thick curse magic that held my opponent’s body together, just before it died.

I had to test this theory more.

So I did. I ran around the moat and killed every cursetacean in sight, exerting all of my senses to understand the way the thick mana that suffused their bodies reacted. My movements became sluggish, but I forced myself to keep moving with my wrath magic. I was nearing a breakthrough, and I couldn’t stop now!

“Haell. Haell!”

“What!?” I snapped at my girlfriend, and immediately deflated. “Sorry. I got lost in my head there. Didn’t mean to shout at you. But what do you need?”

“I don’t need anything right now. But you do. You are heavily injured.”

It was only then that I noticed the crowd of crustecars that were staring at me with perplexed, awed, and just outright confused expressions. My arms were in pain, and blood flowed liberally out of my armor.

“Right…”

Moonwash summoned a dense collection of trees and plants, not only to heal me but also to hide us from prying eyes. I took off my armguards and deposited the peeled-off flesh in some ditch, after which it was burned by Moonwash to make sure no traces of demon flesh remained. And then my arms were healed of their many missing chunks, and so were the plethora of injuries across my body.

“So, what happened?” Moonwash asked. The nature magic ceased, and was replaced by a sound barrier. “What caused you to get in such a trance? What did you discover?”

“Well! These cursetaceans are just so fascinating! They have so much curse mana in their bodies, but they don’t have a single organ for producing it. They leak it all over, so they’re clearly always making more! It’s like they have a heart like mine, and they’re even able to hold a lot more mana in their flesh than a goblin of the same level, but then what is this mana there for? Their vengeance thingy, that’s what! I’ve confirmed earlier, I was confirming it earlier, and their mana absolutely roils in activity whenever you attack one! I think that’s how they interact with the greater magic. Mana rushes out of them when attacked, but then it just disappears! I’ve heard from Luine how mana be hidden, some better than others, but you would never feel the spell of a good illusion mage be cast for example. But I have another theory! There are already states of magic… I’ll call them frequencies of magic, that we cannot feel! It’s always around us after all, in great quantities that we could barely tell is there at all. So what if the magic of these cursetaceans are just changing frequencies, and then disappearing from our perception? But then it’s too fast! Even those who attack with projectiles suffer their vengeance nigh instantly, no matter how far away they are! So then… so then… I guess they just influencing the greater magic through the use and sacrifice of their curse magic? Is it possible to torture a cursetacean to the point that they run out of mana to retaliate with!?”

“Let’s find out,” Moonwash immediately said, and I stood up to do just that. I surveyed my surroundings, found the many crustecars who lived here, and the many soldiers who watched us with a keen… and bored eye.

“On second thought, this isn’t the best place for experiments.”

Experimenting with cursetaceans or anything curse-related was highly illegal. They were to be burned on sight, and woe be to the mage that had to suffer that pain.

“Oh. That’s fine. If that’s the case, then I want to observe the cursetaceans and their reactions to being killed. I’m interested in those theories of yours.”

“Of course.” I offered her my arm, and she took it. “Shall we?”

“Yes.”

We had a fun and lovely date by the moat of endless horrors.

“What if I make an armor out of this?”

“Hmm?”

“Their carapace,” Moonwash pointed out as we were having a nice picnic by the battlefield. She was keeping up a sound barrier as always. Mana was even more expensive to grab ahold of here. “I can make you an armor out of them. They already retain a small part of their retaliatory properties even after death. What if you thread your wrath mana through the armor like you do for your sword?

“Moonwash you’re a genius!” I jumped and kissed her on the lips. We were still eating some sandwiches, so I kind of made a mess… “I like it! Why didn’t I think of that! We’ve written off cursed armor because the associated elements just aren’t good for protection, but this could work! It work for the cursetaceans!”

“I’ll make it when we get back then,” she squished herself against me, and I against her. If my hard exterior bothered her at all, then she didn’t show it.

“You’re right,” Moonwash declared, her hand bleeding after shooting a stone spear toward a mid-level cursetacean. The use of magic was traced back to her wand, and the magical apparatus now showed small signs of damage. She exchanged it for a wind wand, then separated us from all outside sound. “I think their curse effect works like rituals, rather than somehow becoming invisible, and then crossing vast distances instantly.”

“I knew it,” I said haughtily. “But yeah. It can’t just be the mana being imperceptible, because it’d also have to be insanely fast, and that’s just not how curse behaves.”

“That’s true. I also couldn’t feel any transition to becoming imperceptible. I just disappeared all at once.”

“Right when I feel the great magic at work,” I finished.

That was one question answered, at least.

A cursetacean was struggling out of the muck, gradually snapping the many vines that had clung to its form. Moonwash just crouched before it, watching, deep in thought.

“These things produce mana all by themselves. There is precedent for this happening elsewhere, such as your cursed greatsword, or more broadly, infused items as a whole. It’s not much, it’s usually miniscule, but it has happened. Maybe that’s all that’s happening here, but greater somehow.”

“Huh. You’re right.” I chewed over that thought for a moment. “We also don’t really know or mana founts and mana hearts produce mana. They just do with every beat. But who says you need a specific organ, or one that , at all? Maybe it’s possible to have Mutations that passively generate usable mana, and if the entire body is acting as a fount…”

My words suddenly trailed off as a memory resurfaced in my mind.

“MENACE MAGIC! I STILL HAVE MENACE MAGIC! IT’S EVERYWHERE!”

“What do you mean?” My girlfriend asked, uncaring of my sudden outburst, and more interested in what I’d discovered. I immediately searched through my memory core for the event that I wanted.

It was when I had just evolved from an imp to a demon. I had asked to be left alone in the basement, and then I scrolled through the many notifications that were waiting for me after my evolution.

There was one in particular that I should not have allowed to be buried for this long.

“Wow,” Moonwash said blandly. “This is amazing. We need to figure out what this means immediately.”

“Yeah. I was going through a tough time back then, and that kinda just faded into the background. It didn’t seem immediately relevant, and I thought it might even be just flavor text. I hope it’s not though! It would be awesome if it went beyond a mere passive effect that could hardly be noticed. I need to figure out how to harness it!”

Moonwash squeezed my armored hand. “Yes. I’m with you. Let’s do this.”