’Is it the effect of the curse as well?’ Vritra wondered, his eyes widening in shock. Then it is quite terrifying. It took over a dozen hours to take effect and no one seemed to have noticed anything.
"Hubby, y- you... why are you bleeding as well?" Yasmine’s bewildered and worried voice sounded in Vritra’s head, jolting him out of his thoughts.
"..." Vritra touched his upper lip and indeed there was blood, though there wasn’t as much as the others. Only a few drops of blood had leaked from his nose, while for others, it was as if a blood tap had been turned on, as blood began to pour down faster.
"Huh? W- Why am I bleeding? What’s going on?" Soon the people began to notice the terrifying changes. They didn’t feel any pain, but they were terrified as they held their noses, yet blood continued to pour out from the space between their fingers.
"S- Sir, did you punish us—?" All the eyes were first drawn towards Vritra. They wondered if he had punished them all for failing their task, but they saw a few drops of blood trickling down on his face as well.
"What’s happening? Ughhh s- so much blood is leaking!!! I am going to die, all of us are going to die. We should never have stepped into this cursed place. What are we going to do?"
All the people panicked. They screamed and prayed. Good and evil had mixed at this point; the fear of death remained the same for both.
"Calm down, everyone. I know what is going on, and I have a plan to get us all out of here." Vritra’s loud voice filled the space, and all the hopeful gazes were drawn towards him, as more sin points poured.
{Sin Point Gained: Revered +11,002}
{Sin Point Gained: Praised +11,002}
{Sin Point Gained: Liked +11,000}
...
Vritra watched the messages flash by, and as the number of sin points decreased, he spoke:
"Sorry, I lied to everyone. I have no plan and I don’t know a damn thing about this place. All of you are really going to die—a very painful and gruesome death, like a rabid dog’s death."
"..." The whole place fell silent for a few seconds, and only the sound of blood dripping down on the ground like constant rain remained. Everyone stared at the masked man, number 0, and couldn’t help but want to curse.
Though they were all too afraid of him to curse out loud.
{Sin Point Gained: Cursed +11,002}
{Sin Point Gained: Hated +11,002}
{Sin Point Gained: Baffled +11,002}
...
Yasmine rolled her eyes in exasperation as she spoke in shock: "I can’t believe you are still trying to earn sin points when your life is literally in danger. Let’s first find what is the cause of all this."
Vritra stopped playing around with the two groups. He focused on his surroundings and tried to find the possible cause behind this all.
It certainly wasn’t because of the curse, since he wasn’t affected by that. It was either some kind of aura that was slowly showing its effects or some kind of poison that filled the air.
He was less affected than the others, which meant his body was somehow able to fight against this strange cause—though not completely. And there were only a few resistances that his body currently possessed.
As Vritra thought of this all, he quickly came to the realization that there was a high chance that poison was the cause of this and it might be spread in the air.
"I think there might be poison in the air," Vritra said as a frown appeared on his face. The amount of blood leaking out of his nose was gradually increasing.
While the others were in much worse conditions, they had started to bleed from their ears as well.
"No, it is not the air but the space itself that is having this corroding effect," Yasmine shared her thoughts, as the two came to a realization.
Space. There was a high chance that it was also related to the two BOBs.
Vritra ignored the two groups as his body blurred and he ran towards the location where he had killed the two Myriad creatures.
Within a minute, he arrived there. He paused and looked around carefully, even activating the third eye to not miss a single thing.
[Nether Eye Activated.]
But he found the changes rather easily. At the exact places where the two creatures had fallen, two small flowers were growing out of the ground. They definitely weren’t there before.
They must have grown after Vritra had left. Walking up to the flowers, Vritra looked at them carefully and asked:
"Do you know what this is?"
Yasmine replied almost immediately: "Yeah, it is the Red Sorrow Lily—a flower which only blooms upon the death of the person who had swallowed its seed. It constantly releases corrosive spatial fluctuations, whose effects get more terrifying than any poison in the world.
It is extremely rare. Even I had only come across one in my lifetime, and that sight... I could never forget that. An entire village of thousands of snake people were slaughtered by a single flower within a month in another continent. They all died very painfully.
Their bodies rotted, blood seeped out of their skin, their organs and bones melted. Sigh It was a brutal and cruel memory—very inhumane. I don’t know how there could be two of them in this place, and they are growing much faster too."
Her voice was solemn and full of worry as she explained, unlike her usual playful self.
{Sin Point Gained: Bewildered +1}
"Oh!!" Vritra was shocked and took a step back. The flower looked completely harmless and beautiful. Calming his mind and wiping the blood, he asked:
"So should I just pluck it out? Burn it? Tell me how to destroy it."
"No, don’t pluck it at all. That would increase the corrosive effect by several times. The only way is to break the rock around it and then you’ll have to store it in your inventory entirely," Yasmine said hurriedly, worried that he might pluck it out in panic.
"Ah, okay... Damn it. First making me fight these two crazy creatures and giving a quest to kill them. And now that I’ve succeeded with the impossible, the path still leads to death? What kind of wretched place is this?" Vritra cursed as he glanced around.
The stone with which the ground and walls of the cave were made was far from ordinary. Even when the two BOBs had struck the ground again and again with so much force, no crater was formed.
At most, cracks appeared on the ground. There was little chance that with his strength Vritra would be able to do anything in a short time.
"Bob, Bobby, get to work. And no matter what, you can’t hurt these two flowers. We just need to pull out the entire stone surrounding the flowers. Go!!" Under his command, the two balls flew out of his shadow.
Their size increased and became the same as before. They could grow even bigger, but that would make movement harder in this cave. The spikes around their bodies grew and then...
BOOOOOOOOOM!!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!
______________
Thanks for reading...