Chapter 67: Chapter 64: The Curse of Valcas
The Medical Practitioner was right.
The Blood Moon Judgement was indeed the only opportunity for death row inmates to trade Technique Spirits.
Ash looked at the three Technique Spirits in his hand, as if he could still see Valcas’s thin and cold face.
The sword that pierced his throat contained five Technique Spirits that Valcas had just released from their contracts.
Had Ash been a little slower, had his consciousness faded a bit quicker, these three Technique Spirits would have escaped at top speed. Even though Ash was as quick as possible, two Technique Spirits still got away; who knows whether they are now surfing freely in Shattered Lake on finger sharks.
As for why Valcas would do such a thing, there were too many reasons.
Because Ash had defeated him,
because he wanted revenge on Selin,
because he was grateful for Ash’s care during his final moments,
or maybe just because he enjoyed watching the chaos unfold…
A dying elf would do anything, and nothing would surprise Ash, except for the fact that Valcas stabbed him in the throat—Ash strongly suspected this was an act of harboring resentment for the throat cut he received during their duel.
But in doing so, Valcas had presented Ash with a dilemma.
Although his time in this world had been short, Ash clearly realized that he did not fit in with this world.
However, he had no intention of blending in.
He could not change this world of mages, nor did he plan to let it change him.
There were no family members here for him; everyone he met from now on would be strangers.
Although the mage’s power was unpredictable and bizarre, it was not certain that there was no Technique Spirit that could create a miracle to send Ash home, but he held no such hope.
He was not the kind of person who needed to rely on hope to survive.
Moreover, with the life-threatening Blood Moon Judgement and the suffocating absolute control of Shattered Lake Prison, Ash had always had a subtle mindset of ‘earn a day’s living for every day alive.’
Besides, if he could cross over once, it wasn’t necessarily impossible to do so a second time. If this time he came to the world of mages, perhaps next time he could end up in the world of technicians; Ash was blindly optimistic about his journey through the worlds.
It was precisely because of this optimistic mindset, possibly brought about by the sudden absence of workday routines, that Ash approached everyone he met with an ‘Observer’ attitude. He would empathize with others’ experiences, lament their life and death, but soon forget—just as if he had watched a movie.
Observer was actually a fitting name for him.
Watch but not act, watch but not speak, watch but not remember.
He was like a roaming skiff, adrift on the waves, facing the vast land with apprehension.
And now, an extra burden had been added to the skiff, and a mark had appeared in his memory.
Although mages did not need to sleep, Ash felt sure that in his midnight reveries, he would dream of Valcas’s last look.
Of course, he wouldn’t think he bore any responsibility for Valcas’s death, but Valcas’s parting gift made Ash feel obligated to do something in return for him.
He didn’t like being indebted to others, nor did he like owing them.
He had to escape from prison, he had to find Professor Selin, he had to survive.
Otherwise, it would feel like a betrayal of Valcas’s kindness, a betrayal of the three Technique Spirits he had given.
Perhaps, this was his real revenge?
At the cost of life, with death as the ritual, silence as the spell, and Technique Spirits as bait, Valcas exhausted everything to curse Ash to survive.
For them, the inmates of Shattered Lake on death row, there was no curse more evil than ‘surviving.’
“He was a true Sword Master.”
After listening to Ash’s bizarre experience of the Blood Moon Judgement tonight, Sonia couldn’t help but exclaim and then added, “And he was a generous elf.”
“He was generous, but definitely not a ‘good’ elf; he was rightfully imprisoned in Shattered Lake Prison for his actions,” said Ash. “But whether an elf or human, neither can be simply classified as ‘good’ or ‘bad’; only Divine Beings or Demons can be purely good or purely evil… It’s humans who fluctuate between them.”
“So many reflections, is this the first time you’ve seen a dead person since losing your memory?”
Amnesia? Right, the previous Heath had created many deaths… Ash nodded: “You could say, this is the first time I have seen someone die in front of me.”
“So you don’t have any information about the Heart Sword stance either?”
“Damn it!” Sonia looked at the Heart Sword Technique Spirit in Ash’s hand with discontent: “Such a good Technique Spirit wasted in your hands… But now, does this mean you’re only one Technique Spirit short for your Behead Me Miracle?”
“That’s right, if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll be able to collect all the needed Technique Spirits tonight.”
Ash took a deep breath: “Only then will there be a glimmer of hope for escaping.”
The Behead Me Miracle required three types of Technique Spirits, each with several subordinate options, not specific to a particular one. Most miracles could achieve a similar effect by substituting similar types of Technique Spirits, varying mostly in strength and range.
If Technique Spirits are like building blocks, then a miracle is a building with a specific appearance. As long as you can construct that building, whether your blocks are cubes, triangles, or cones, you are considered to have performed a miracle.
Heart Sword and Substitute were two of the required Technique Spirits; Substitute was middle-of-the-road, while Heart Sword was like using a cleaver to kill a chicken. It’s likely that even the creator of the Behead Me Miracle never imagined someone would go so far as to use one of the ‘Unparalleled Secret Sword’s Five Spirits’ as a constituent Technique Spirit.