By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 16 - Chapter 16

Chapter 10, Episode 16: Forbidden Hexes and Optimization

“It’s wonderful that our lessons are going smoothly. I did not expect you to face practically no challenges in practice so far.” Rosenberg let out a chuckle, both impressed and unsure of how to proceed as my tutor.

To be honest, I felt the same way. Even though hexes were just another form of magic, they clicked more than others. Eleonora and I had discussed last night that I was learning things quickly, but this was on another level.

“Not to doubt your talent, but have you studied hexes before?” Rosenberg asked.

“My introduction to it was when Miss Remily Kremis gave me pointers after I was cursed for doing something ignorant and reckless,” I answered. Actually, I hadn’t had much time to study magic in general, like Eleonora was saying. Maybe I had an advantage after spending a few decades being exposed to works of fantasy fiction in my previous life. “I grew up reading my grandmother’s books. Some of them featured...stories with hexes in them, which could explain my predisposition for it.”

“Hm... What sort of hexes?”

The first to come to mind was the straw-doll curse. Other famous examples I could think of were kodoku and inugami, which were dangerous methods. Kodoku involved placing a colony of venomous creatures in some kind of container and waiting until they killed each other and only one was left. The surviving specimen would be used to poison the target. Inugami involved burying a dog alive up to its neck and placing a bowl of food just out of reach. Just before the dog would starve to death, it would be brought out of the ground, only to be decapitated as it reached for the food. The spirit of the dead dog would be used to kill the target. There were several variations to all of these methods, and some of what I knew about them could have been fiction. Still, I felt like these were all examples of dangerous curses.

I explained all this very loosely...and watched Rosenberg’s face grow ever more grave. “Are these curses I shouldn’t know about?” I asked.

“No, knowledge of them alone is not a problem. Those kinds of curses were not uncommon long ago, and through studying hexes intensively, one is expected to hear of them at some point. However, those curses—ones that are cast with sacrifice, torture, or killing of living beings—are now considered forbidden. Never use them,” Rosenberg warned, and explained why they became forbidden. Sacrifices were basically substitutes for magic crystals. Magical energy coursed through the veins of every living being, so these ritual killings were done for a warlock to boost their own magical energy with that of the sacrifice. Torture was inflicted upon the sacrifice in order to convert their magical energy. Just like using a magic crystal that matched the element of the spell it was meant to power, torturing the sacrifice until it was filled with negative emotion made their magical energy better suited for hexes.

“Now the story of the merchant’s son isn’t too surprising,” I said.

“Warlocks had often lost control of curses cast this way, which is why they are forbidden now. Still, there are those who succumb to the temptation of great power, and some warlocks harm themselves physically or emotionally to heighten their negative emotions and power as part of their practice,” Rosenberg said.

Casting a sacrificial curse left a lot of evidence behind in the form of records of acquiring the sacrifice, and in the aftermath of the ritual itself. Warlock or no, casting one against another person was a crime that could lead to an arrest. However, no law forbade warlocks from harming themselves. By gradually accelerating those self-mutilations, it wasn’t difficult for them to accept it as part of their training. Furthermore, it was difficult to tell if a warlock’s trauma—physical or emotional—was self-inflicted. These reasons were why self-harm was very much discouraged among warlocks, but not outright forbidden.

“Self-harm isn’t good, of course, but it’s also impossible to live a life without ever experiencing hardships... Regardless, attempting to amplify one’s negative emotions through pain is a dangerous affair. If you ever meet a warlock who invites you to partake in such methods, I hope you never take them up on it,” Rosenberg said.

“I won’t. What does a normal warlock’s training look like?” I asked.

“Meditation and introspection, mostly. For example, when I feel a negative emotion like anger, I face it. What am I angry about? Why am I angry about that? What can I do about it? And so forth.”

It was like therapy—or more accurately—self-care. Maybe because of his particular example, which reminded me of an anger management seminar I’d been forced to attend when I was an office worker. “I’m not sure if it’s the exact same thing, but I remember being forced to do something like that. I’m also familiar with meditation in the context of martial arts.”

“I see. Regulating emotions and taking care of our mentality is a skill everyone needs, after all. Some warlocks offer courses for nonwarlocks as well. Perhaps you have been trained in hexes, Ryoma, without even realizing it,” Rosenberg said, apparently happy with that explanation.

It surprised me to learn that some warlocks specialized in counseling and self-care. I supposed it made sense to have a wealth of knowledge about healing emotional scars when many warlocks suffered them as a by-product of their craft of handling negative emotions.

“Which brings us back to your training,” Rosenberg said. “Now you have learned the curse to be used after cleansing cursed energy. Luckily, I did prepare for you to practice curse breaking.” He gestured behind me.

I turned and spotted Sebas at some distance, standing by a table and set of chairs, producing box after box from his Space magic. There were far more boxes today than there were yesterday, all varying in sizes.

When I took my seat at the table, Rosenberg lifted the lid off the largest box, showing how it was packed full of smaller boxes. “Each of these boxes contains a cursed object,” he said.

“In all of them? There have to be at least fifty of them right there,” I said.

“Cursed objects can have unpredictable effects when they are left alone. By law of this country, cursed objects must be appropriately treated on the spot or collected and properly stored,” Rosenberg explained. If the item’s owner paid a warlock or disenchanter to cleanse it, they were allowed to keep the object. But if they felt like the object wasn’t worth the money, they would relinquish the item. In that case, through the guards or guilds, the object will be stored in a specialized facility of the landlord so that a warlock or disenchanter could cleanse or destroy it. What was terrifying was that cursed objects could rarely be detected by the naked eye, so it wasn’t uncommon for them to appear in flea markets or secondhand stalls.

“I pulled these from Duke Jamil’s cursed object storage, claiming them for training my new apprentice. Cursed objects are sent to storage on a daily basis, so they are chronically overstocked and understaffed. The workers of the storage facility were very happy to see these go.”

“Isn’t the overstock a problem?” I asked.

“Duke Jamil’s facility still has some room, relatively speaking. Besides, although it would be ideal to process them all within territory, landlords can arrange to send each other objects before their storage facility reaches capacity.”

Warlocks could work for the storage facility by working the day cleansing objects on-site, or checking them out and cleansing them of their own accord as Rosenberg had done. Warlocks were paid out by the object, so green warlocks treated it as a convenient way to earn some extra income.

Once Rosenberg had finished explaining, I tried cleansing the first object by Curse Transfer, and it worked as well as if I’d been doing it for years. I had plenty of magical energy, and there were plenty of cursed objects on the table, so I began cleansing one after another, getting into the groove of it. It kind of reminded me of doing homework when I was a student, and I enjoyed this style of work. Still, there were so many objects to go through. Rosenberg had brought far more than fifty.

“There is no need to overextend,” my mentor said. “If we don’t get through them, I can simply return them to the storage facility. Since Mister Sebas was accompanying us, I figured I’d bring more than we’d need.”

“It’s nice that I don’t have a quota, but I can’t stand having unfinished work that I can do so easily. I think it’ll be good practice, so I’d like to keep at it until lunch, at least.”

“If you’re motivated to do so, I certainly won’t stop you,” Rosenberg said.

Cleansing them one at a time seemed inefficient, but leaving a bunch of cursed objects together could sometimes cause a sort of chemical reaction of curses, so it was not recommended to cleanse multiple objects. Can slimes use hexes? I wondered. If my dark slime could use hexes, that would mean an extra pair of hands (or appendages, at least).

There was only one way to find out, so I summoned my dark slime with Rosenberg’s permission. I placed a cursed ring and a magic crystal to transfer the curse into.

First, I’d model the process. “Watch this,” I told the dark slime. “Curse Transfer.” I enveloped the ring’s eerie magical energy with my own, and drew it out of the ring. Once it was completely extracted, I moved the magical energy to the magic crystal. After double-checking that there was no residual magical energy in the ring, the job was done. I placed the next cursed object on the table and asked the dark slime, “Can you do it?”

The dark slime stretched two appendages and fiddled with a cursed pair of earrings and the magic crystal. Although the slime was giving off a tiny bit of magical energy, there was no sign of the curse being transferred to the magic crystal.

“Maybe not...” I muttered. Because they showed all kinds of reactions and trained on their own, I often forgot that slimes were monsters driven by instinct and had very little sentience. Maybe they don’t have enough emotions to power hexes, I was thinking as the dark slime gently placed the earrings and magic crystal on the table. When I picked them up, however, I noticed something. “Lord Rosenberg? I don’t think the earrings are cursed anymore.”

“You are right. I didn’t think the curse was transferred, though. Where did it go?”

“I believe...my slime ate the curse. Curses are dark magical energy warped by negative emotion, and dark slimes like to consume dark magical energy,” I said. Even though it hadn’t gone as expected, the dark slime still took away the curse. “Let me try something.” Imagining a slight flu, I released a trickle of cursed magical energy towards the dark slime in the same way I fed elemental slimes magical energy of their preferred element. Sure enough, the dark slime happily extended its appendage and sucked up the magical energy from my hand. This confirmed that dark slimes consumed cursed magical energy.

Come to think of it, it was consuming the magical energy in the air even back in the City of Lost Souls. That was when we were digging up the demon lord fragment, so I thought it was just feeding. Of course, that spot in particular had been filled with cursed energy. Even without the fragment, the former execution chamber must have been a pit of negative energy that could have easily been rife with cursed magical energy. It was entirely possible that I could have learned about this then and there by being more observant.

“Shame on me!” I blurted out.

“Master Takebayashi?!”

“Are you all right? What happened?”

Eleonora and Rosenberg whirled to me in alarm, confused by my outburst. Meanwhile, Sebas remained completely composed, apparently having tracked my train of thought.

“Oh, sorry about that. I just realized I’d failed as a slime researcher.” With a mental note to not alarm Eleonora and Rosenberg again, I turned to my tutor. “Lord Rosenberg, can I use some of the other cursed objects?” Now that it was confirmed that the dark slime consumed cursed magical energy and enjoyed it, I wanted to give it more and see if it would evolve.

After a while of doing just that, it happened. “Here we go!”

Having absorbed a bunch of cursed magical energy, the dark slime evolved!

Curse Slime

Skills: Dark Magic 3, Hex 3, Dark Magic Resistance 8, Hex Resistance 5, Absorb Dark Magic 2, Absorb Hex 3, Jump 1, Consume 1, Absorb 3, Split 1

“No change in appearance,” I noted. “Same matte black color, no sheen, same size. I won’t be able to tell a dark slime and a curse slime apart by looking at them. Ability-wise, the curse slime has the skill set of a dark slime plus the abilities and resistances for hexes. Is it using Absorb Hex when it eats curses? Even though I didn’t have a chance to use it in practice, the dark slime could eat Dark magic and lessen its impact. Interesting,” I rambled on.

It would still take me some time before I remembered my original purpose of being out here, and noticed the three adults watching me with a look of resigned acceptance in their eyes.