Klaus didn't feel anything strange; he didn't even know he had disappeared from that room when he suddenly felt that he was standing on something. A cold breeze hit his body with softness and determination, causing him to open his eyes.
In front of him was a Dark World, with trees swaying to the rhythm of the wind whipping around and a growing undergrowth beneath his feet that bowed to the power of the wind. He was at the top of a small hill.
Everything around was darkened; even the green leaves of the trees and undergrowth had a dark tint staining them.
An enigmatic and curious world made Klaus bend down to grab a leaf. "What a curious place. Everything is cold, and I feel like there are rather cold particles everywhere that somehow seem to emit light." He ran his fingers over the leaves as he said this.
His curiosity was aroused when he felt those small particles, like tiny grains of sand, that could be easily felt when mixed in large quantities.
After checking some nearby leaves, he touched a tree trunk, and everything was full of such particles.
'They feel like little grains of salt. Could it be salty?' He thought.
Curious, he grabbed a nearby leaf and ran his tongue over it after checking that it had that particle. Soon, his tongue had a strange powder there. It had no taste, but it was terribly cold, so much so that it managed to numb his tongue quickly.
Though he frowned, he tried to taste it a little.
'Not salty, not sweet either. And... Huh?' He was stunned when he realized those little grains disappeared in his mouth.
They hadn't melted or anything like that; they had literally disappeared, or that's what he could feel. But although his mind wanted to work quickly to find logic in it, in the end, he couldn't do it.
So he tried several times but had to sigh in the end.
"Forget it, let's better focus on the mission."
He slowly turned around to look towards a city at the bottom, quite far, of the hill.
This city was lightly lit in the streets and buildings. It didn't look like a modern city, but the buildings had a peculiar and exciting shape. He assumed that this would be the central meeting place of the mission.
But suddenly, he stopped moving.
Several system messages appeared in front of him.
[Welcome, Aspiring Sorcerer, to the First Bath of Cursed Energy]
[Your mission is simple]
[9 people besides you entered the same test. Your mission is to Survive the Cursed Energy and Domain the Hill. If you kill, no one will penalize you; you might even receive rewards like Cursed Cores or items. But if you don't Domain the Hill, you will be penalized accordingly]
[The penalty for failing to Domain the Hill is death]
[Rewards will be given to you as you receive Cursed Energy Baths. The Baths are random, but if you do things and attract the attention of the Cursed Energy, you will be able to receive them more frequently and may even receive an Endless Bath. Be careful]
[Good luck]
As these messages appeared, his head moved unconsciously towards a Hill... Or more precisely, a Mountain, in the distance, beyond the city.
The mountain was quite large and had much mist around it.
'So much Cursed Energy. That's dangerous; is that the Hill I must Domain?' He thought. As if his thoughts had moved something, he could see how a surge of Cursed Energy suddenly created near him and flew rapidly towards him, as if it wanted to swallow him up.
It was so fast that he didn't have time to react; he was suddenly hit fiercely by this Cursed Energy, and a spurt of blood came out of his mouth.
"Buagh!" he couldn't help but be sent backward, his expression in shock. He quickly got up after this and stood on his guard. Then, he immediately realized the danger he was in.
"That pain... I had forgotten that this place is very dangerous because the Cursed Energy is highly corrosive and could kill me if I'm careless."
He could feel the cursed energy inside him, and even though his body had been reared in a Cursed Mist, he was still affected by it. Although the impact of how corrosive it was was not what damaged him, it was that he received the attack unprepared. This cursed energy didn't go in and out; it all stayed inside his body.
'That will be troublesome; I hope it won't attack me from inside later when I'm fighting.' He sighed.
After that first encounter with the Cursed Energy, he took a deep breath and started walking again. But, looking at the distant Hill he was to domain, he frowned and looked up some more.
The sky was darkened all over, meaning it was night, but...
'No stars? Is it cloudy?' he thought.
Even though it was dark, there wasn't a star above it. Not even a glow or anything. It's like a dark curtain covering the sky and preventing him from seeing beyond that. But no clouds were visible.
'Maybe it's an effect of the Cursed Energy?' he thought.
If he looked around, he could tell that the Cursed Energy was in large quantities here. So it may be as he thinks.
He sighed. Everything seemed stranger to him than the last, so he stopped thinking nonsense and started walking towards the city.
Still, once again, he had to stop.
'Oh?'
In front of him was something that increased his curiosity to the top.
A strange, small figure was standing there. It was like a small, five-foot-tall, pale blue monster that walked on two legs and had three strangely developed hooves. It was pretty hunched over, and its jagged hands, one larger than the other, protruded close to its chest.
These hands were not just anything. They were developed differently than any other hand. One of them looked like his fingernails were sharp knives that glistened even on this starless night. The other, the smallest, was a malformed hand with backward fingers.
A strange drool was falling from its body, making it look really disgusting, and its aura increased that feeling of disgust even more. Its eyes were yellow like snakes, staring at Klaus with a strange curiosity.
Klaus's beautiful purple eyes glowed brightly. "A Curse?"
Although he had never seen one before and had not even participated in its creation, he was sure it was one. His instincts told him so.
A strange smile formed on his face as interest piqued.
"Hehe, come, little one... Let me see what kind of existence you are." He squeezed his hand a little and gently approached the Curse, who was looking at him. This one growled and suddenly jumped swiftly toward where Klaus was.
The speed was terrific, forcing Klaus to move his head to the side to dodge the first attack. 'That fast?' He tried to punch the curse in the stomach, but it let out a kick while it was in the air and managed to push him off before the blow hit it.
"Oh... You're strong."
Klaus looked at his chest and noticed a small hoof mark there. The blow he had taken wasn't particularly hard, but he couldn't explain how it had managed to turn around so quickly to hit him with a blow like that in that position.
'Maybe it used the cursed energy?' Klaus supposed.
After steadying itself on the ground, the curse turned to stare at him. Its snake-like yellow eyes were still curious, and that curiosity was a bit annoying.
'It feels like a child.' Klaus was a bit confused by this, but at that moment, he was again attacked by this thing, and this time, he wouldn't make the same mistake.
'If I'm not wrong, that's how I think it was done...' He thought while remembering the training of the last month.
He made the Positive Energy inside him run a little through his body, but not being very skilled, he did this very slowly, and soon, the Curse was already in front of him.
Klaus quickly judged that he had no time, so he decided to do something different.
Just before being hit, he ducked and lunged towards the monster's stomach, hugging it. "Where I come from, wrestling wrestlers loved to do this. Try it." He then managed to position himself well, and soon, his body fell to the ground, ferociously slamming the monster back to the ground.
"KYAAA!"
The terrifying scream, mixed with the strange drool coming out of its body, almost made Klaus vomit up the food he didn't even have in his belly.
'Tsk, gross.'
Still, he soon sensed something dangerous coming up behind him. 'What?' Confused, he tried to look behind. Suddenly, a surge of energy rushed into his body and hit him, causing his grip on the monster to soften in pain.
He looked back to notice another surge rushing into his body; he endured the pain as long as he could.
'Cursed Energy? So this is why the bath is so complicated...' Although his body was used to the Cursed Energy, he could feel that it could still corrode internally, increasing his pain.
"Fuff..." He began to suck in air forcefully to endure the internal pain and cling to the monster, but that Cursed Energy gave the monster time so that it could strike Klaus' face, causing blood to spurt out of it.
"You bastard, don't even think about hitting me with..." He hadn't even finished speaking when he noticed the monster's longer arm coming hard towards one of his eyes. That arm had knives on it, sending energy storms into his body.
He managed to raise his hand and hit it a little, deflecting its trajectory, and these sharp knives partially cut his hair by his neck, barely scratching him a little. Still, the next attack would not miss, and his current position was disadvantageous, so he was forced to jump back and get up to avoid it.
He quickly backed away, feeling some blood on his face. "Hah... You bastard, you're very tough. I've decided that since you want to kill me, even if your flesh is naturally disgusting, I'm going to eat you." He growled.
It was at that moment that, finally, his right arm was surrounded by Positive Energy.
Curse stood up and no longer looked as curious as before. It even looked angry, but strangely. It was like a terrifyingly angry baby, looking at Klaus with whimsy or disdain.
Klaus reached down and grabbed one of the nearby rocks with the hand that didn't have Positive Energy.
"Come here, you bastard. I told you, you were going to be my food tonight. Did it scare you?" Klaus started walking towards him. His current appearance was disheveled from the earlier scuffle, but he didn't care.
And neither did the curse. Shortly after, it walked towards Klaus and started running, rushing to meet him.
The curse was the first to strike, as its speed was terrific, but Klaus managed to step aside and hit its chest with the hand that had positive energy in it.
"The attack pattern is easier than level 1 monsters in virtual reality games." Klaus sneered.
His blow unleashed a howl of pain, which was drowned out soon after as Klaus slammed the stone hard into the side of its head, disorienting the little monster.
The latter fell to the ground, disoriented, looking away. Klaus would not miss this golden opportunity. He ran towards this monster, threw the stone a few steps behind, and immediately jumped up and held on tightly like a koala with his chest on its hunched back, hugging it with his hands tightly from behind.
At that instant, two waves of cursed energy hit him simultaneously, making him grit his teeth. 'If I do it right and calculate well enough, I'll be able to kill it.'
He clenched his legs to the ground, and his teeth seemed to want to pierce themselves. He endured all the pain from the Cursed Energy and jumped backward, using all the strength in his legs.
"It's John Ce... I mean, die, you bastard!"
His body bowed in the air under the weight of the curse and soon fell backward. The head of the curse hit right on the tip of the previous rock and shattered from the impact.
Bits of flesh and blue blood were strewn all over the place, including Klaus' face, which had been stained by the blood with a rotten smell.
If it weren't for his past, he would possibly have puked his guts out at the slightest contact with this.
He took a deep breath when he saw that this guy was dead and pulled him aside to sit nearby, quickly wiping the blood on his face with a piece of his shirt.
His uneven breathing showed that he was exhausted.
"Haahh... God, I didn't know using Positive Energy was so exhausting. Good grief, what ridiculously small amount of energy did they inject me with? I mean, if they were going to kill me anyway, they would have at least injected me with a little more." He complained.
However, he wondered: 'Why did they inject me with Positive Energy if I had lived my whole life with Cursed Energy?'
Cursed Energy creates Cursed Class Sorcerers. So why not inject him with that energy to see if he would awaken as that type?
'Maybe the Soft Class ones are more powerful?' he thought. 'I didn't have much to do with it when the novel was being created, and I think they added a lot of stuff at the end that I didn't hear about because I was busy. Sigh, forget it.'
After resting for about 30 seconds, he went to get up, but suddenly, a System message appeared before his eyes.
[Congratulations, you have killed a 'Calamity of Disgust' Curse in its Birth Phase, and the first stages of the Cursed Energy Bath have passed. You have unlocked a Birth Ability]
[You have unlocked the Soft Ring, but it is inactive due to lack of fuel]
[You have unlocked...] The system suddenly went silent before sending another message.
[Your body has awakened]
[Be careful; the Cursed Energy has taken an interest in you]