She looked at him in shock.
"Are you eating Cursed meat?"
"Yes, it's all I have. It tastes horrible, but it's better than nothing."
His calm reply and subsequent bite of the disgusting meat surprised the woman.
'This... There are such strange people.'
The smell of the cooked meat was so bad that she couldn't help but bring a hand to her nose.
'It's even from the Calamity of Disgust... How can he take bites out of that?'
She couldn't help but walk over to him and take the meat out of his hand. "Give me all that. Don't you know anything about this world? You're eating a Curse of Disgusting Calamity. That's terrible for your body, you know?" She complained and ripped all the pieces of meat from him before throwing them in the trash, wrapped in a bag.
Klaus looked at her in shock as she threw down his food. "Hey!" He even wanted to complain, but she shot him a stern look.
"What? Answer my questions, and then I'll let you eat. Don't you know anything about this world? No one who knew the least would choose to eat Curses, let alone one of disgust."
Klaus stared at her for a moment. He seemed to want to see right through her. But after a moment, he sighed. It's not like she wasn't right. Besides, he saw a way to get information from this place. So, he sat back down.
"There was nothing I could do. I was hungry and needed to replenish my strength to escape the city. The guys who sent me here did it against my will and didn't even give me food."
He looked past her and looked at the garbage.
"Besides, people who were born into a good family might not understand, but for us, people in the slums, food from the garbage isn't that it's something disgusting. It's not like we could afford to eat delicious things, anyway."
Although he said that, he wasn't talking about this body's past.
He was remembering his childhood on earth. How many times didn't he have to eat from garbage, or not eat at all, to get to where he was?
As a scientist, he understood better than anyone else that this kind of food was not good for the organism, but he could not do anything about it.
He was born and raised in extreme poverty. His father died when he was born, and his mother and brother died when he was about to enter school.
Since then, he has supported himself on his own. Eating disgusting meat was nothing new to him.
The good thing is that he knew that fire killed many of the microorganisms dangerous to his body. That's why he had no fear of eating something disgusting if it was passed through fire.
'If the world wants to swallow you alive, you must be prepared to live in the most pitiful way possible because when the world opposes you, the only way out of it is to go against the world. And my life has been a constant misfortune since my birth, a constant going against the world and its cunning current; what's a little beast in the face of that?'
'Even better, if I have flesh of those things inside me, I can study them later, looking inside my body. This is the best, but I guess I can't tell all this to her.' Klaus smiled.
Although he didn't say anything about his past, the woman before him could see it; she wasn't stupid. So, her countenance softened a little, something unusual.
She sighed. She took out pieces of meat that looked delicious and put them near him.
"Here, eat that."
After saying this, she sat beside him to cook meat, although she seemed in a bad mood.
Klaus looked at her curiously, wondering what she was thinking. But the sight of such appetizing meat made his stomach growl. 'I won't object if I get something so delicious.' He smiled.
Soon, the two were eating, albeit in silence.
A while later, she spoke again.
"Can I ask you something?"
Klaus nodded to her.
"The people who sent you here, are they a government? How much information did they give you about the Curses and the first bath?"
Klaus frowned. "It is a government, though I don't know exactly from where. Of the Curses, I was only told they were powerful monsters. Of the first bath..." He then told her what he had been told without revealing anything he knew.
She frowned conspicuously.
'Tsk, those damn bastards are tested with humans again.' She stared him up and down, noticing something odd.
'But he doesn't have the mark... Did they fail to try to put it on? How many are they trying to kill this time? It looks like there is a Big Clan behind the scenes.' She sighed.
"If so, then get ready. I will help you. Even if you don't pass the bath test, you should at least know how you will die and why."
"Are you sure?" Klaus' beautiful purple eyes glowed looking at her. She nodded at him, returning the gaze.
"Eat quickly. If you want to pass your First Bath, you must be as fast as possible because your current strength won't allow it. I think you haven't even understood how to use the energy inside you, which is unfortunate, so you have a long way to go. Your talent will determine whether or not you can pass this test." She said, and then she got up to go into the basement.
"Follow me when you're done."
.
An hour later, Klaus was standing before her.
"First, I must tell you that you must never eat curse meat again." She scolded him, but she sighed after remembering what he had said earlier about her condition. "At least don't do it while you're inside this world."
"The cursed energy here is highly aggressive, much more so than that of our world, but at the same time, it is very friendly to Curses. If you eat one, all the cursed energy that enters you will become more aggressive inside you and will very quickly consume whatever nutrients you have in your body. That will lead to your death, even if you are a Reared in the Mist."
'I see. It's no wonder the nutrients inside me have been consumed so quickly. So it's due to that.' He had seen it before and thought it might have something to do with it, but the reality was that he didn't care.
If something external could kill him, then at least he could find a way to defend himself, and it wouldn't be his fault; if he were starved to death, then it would be his fault.
She continued.
"Also, when you burn a curse, its ability is watered into the scent, which will enter your body and make all the people of this world aggressive towards you. You should know that the inhabitants of this world have powers associated with curses; you're rarely going to find one that will openly murder them. Even more so because many of them are tamers."
Her words made sense and explained why Klaus was being chased. He figured it would be something similar, though he didn't expect having eaten the curse on the mountain to be the main reason.
'Tsk, those bastards didn't tell me any of this.'
Even in that book, there was no mention of it. They practically sent him to die in this place.
"The second thing you should know is that there are several types of Curses with different abilities. The types of Curses are called Calamities. The ones you will encounter in the First Bath can only be Curses born of the Calamities of Fear, Anger, or Disgust, although if you are unlucky, you will encounter one of the other types of Calamities and die."
"Luckily, there are no such Curses here, although the overall strength of the first 3 is quite a bit higher than it should be for a first bath. But you should keep in mind that the abilities of those curses are associated with the Calamity they are born from. If they were born of fear, they'd have abilities to instill fear, and it's not like there's only one way to do that; no one knows how many ways these things use to instill fear."
Klaus nodded. 'So that's why that thing could disgust me so much. It's because it belongs to the Calamity of Disgust.'
But she hadn't finished speaking yet, so Klaus listened attentively.
"Still, there's something you should keep in mind."
"In the Cursed World, the Curses are not the most dangerous. It's the inhabitants of this world. Didn't they tell you where you would get to?"
Klaus shook his head; though he was thoughtful about what she said, the reality was that they had not given him any information from this world, and he needed it.
If it weren't for the fact that those of this world weren't so cunning, he wouldn't have gotten away so easily from those guys.
And even though she was indifferent and arrogant, ever since she met Klaus every situation with him made her feel sorry for him. Maybe some of her was too soft, so she wanted to teach him, or it was simply a whim to thwart the plans of those who play with fire.
Or perhaps it was due to something else.
"Then I'll start there. You must know that this world has only one ruler: the Cursed Empire."