Death March kara Hajimaru Isekai Kyusoukyoku (LN) - Volume 20 - Chapter 2.1

The Cursed Hero

Satou here. Some big CEO once said that it’s best to reduce individuality so that any employee can be easily replaced. But in reality, they certainly don’t reduce the workload of any of those individuals.

“Let’s go, quickly!”

I took off into the cathedral without waiting for an answer.

“What’s the matter, Tama, sir?”

“Meeew…”

I looked back and saw Liza lifting Tama, who was reluctant to enter the cathedral.

She probably didn’t want to get any closer to the black smoke coming out of Hayato.

As much as I sympathized, I couldn’t just ignore his plight.

Leaving Liza and the others to handle Tama, I hurried toward Hayato the Hero.

Luckily, the cathedral was in so much chaos that nobody stopped us from running up the stairs to find him.

“Why won’t you call His Grace for us?!”

“The pontiff only just healed the injured and ailing citizens. It will be several days, if not more, until he can use his power again.”

Two women were protesting at a high-ranking priest.

I recognized them as Hayato’s party members: Princess Mariest of the Saga Empire, and the archer Weeyari of the long-eared tribe.

“Hayato must be treated with Remove Curse.” Weeyari backed up Mariest. “We need a mage more skilled than Loleiya.”

“Mari, where’s the pontiff? Loleiya can’t suppress the symptoms much longer!”

“Standin’ around here ain’t gonna get us nowhere. I’m gonna go grab that pontiff by the scruff of the neck and drag him here myself!”

Two wild and glamorous women ran out of the room. It was the tiger-eared Rusus and the wolf-eared Fifi, more members of Hayato’s party.

“J-just a moment, hero’s attendants! We Temple Knights won’t allow such violence!”

“Hmph! You think some fake-ass knights who can’t even use their skills probably will be able to stop us?!”

The pair looked ready to draw their swords at any moment out of extreme concern for their hero.

At that moment, I realized that Rusus’s left arm was missing from the elbow down. She must have lost it in the fight against the demon lord.

“Lady Mariest!”

I called out to the imperial princess from across the crowd.

Everyone turned to look at me.

“Satou…? What are you doing here?”

“I received a divine message from the Goddess Parion.”

I used my “Fabrication” skill to give a believable-sounding reason.

While I wasn’t sure who that mysterious blue-haired girl really was, there was a good chance that she really was Parion, since she sent me here to save Hayato.

“I have an elixir, too, although it’s only a lesser one.”

I’d used my best elixir to save Lady Ryuona the Grass Cutter of the Shiga Eight when she was burned by dragon fire in Vistall Duchy.

I would have to go back to Bolenan Forest soon to make more elixirs. I had all the ingredients for it, anyway.

“You do? Really?!”

“Please, use it on Hayato!”

Rusus and Fifi grabbed my hands and pulled me into the center of the room.

“Rin! Loleiya! Satou’s here, and he brought an elixir!”

This was apparently the pontiff’s private room. Hayato the Hero was lying on a guest couch in one corner of the large room, looking deathly pale. My AR display gave his condition as “Corrupted,” which was slightly different from the “Cursed” condition.

Lady Ringrande, the Witch of Heavenly Destruction, and another of Hayato’s attendants, was in front of the couch, along with the quiet priestess Loleiya.

“A-an elixir?!”

“Give it here, quickly!”

Ringrande reached out toward me.

There was a fresh scar on her face and an eyepatch over her right eye. Their battle with the demon lord must have been really rough.

I reached into my breast pocket and pulled out two lesser elixirs, placing them carefully in her hand.

With her and Loleiya turning toward me, I was finally able to catch a glimpse of Hayato.

His armor had been stripped away from his right arm. Its muscle fibers were laid bare, as if the skin itself were missing, too, and blackened blood vessels rose to the surface, writhing around like they had a mind of their own.

The black smoke was coming out of his arm, crackling with black lines like lightning.

Something about it was deeply unsettling. No wonder Tama didn’t want to get any closer.

On top of that, those black lines looked familiar…

They were just like the vestiges that tried to creep under the sky dragon’s scales when we defeated the Evil God’s Spawn in Shiga Kingdom.

“Hayato! Open your mouth—we’ve got elixirs.”

Miss Ringrande poured the lesser elixir into Hayato’s mouth, and a magic circle appeared around the wound, scattering the black smoke and restoring the arm to a healthy state.

“Aah, Hayato…”

Ringrande whispered his name, overcome with emotion.

But then, as if in mockery of her relief, the lightning-like black lines regained their strength and turned his arm back into its grotesque form.

“No…!”

She gave him the second elixir right away, only to repeat the same results.

“Satou! Don’t you have any more elixirs?”

I did, but it would only hurt Hayato more.

I stepped up close to him instead.

“Satou, ‘Miasma Vision.’”

Mia called out a suggestion from behind me.

Once I lowered my head so that Ringrande and Loleiya wouldn’t see my eyes and activated “Miasma Vision,” I saw countless black lines splitting off the lightning and wrapping around Hayato.

It reminded me of the curse that was tormenting the half-ghost Reiaane, who we met in the Lalakie incident.

Unlike the structured and orderly curse that had been carefully cast on her, this seemed to be more of a primal kind.

Well, I had experience with that.

I reached out my hand toward the black lines…

“Wait!” The priestess Loleiya grabbed my arm. “A knight who touched that died earlier. It’s a curse so powerful that it’s visible to the naked eye.”

The memory of monsters that were betrayed and killed by the black lines during the Evil God’s Spawn incident flashed through my mind.

“Don’t worry. I’ve seen this before.”

I pulled out a prop glove from Storage by way of my pocket.

I’d created it for performance purposes. The back was embroidered with a magic circle in orichalcum thread, which glowed and raised when charged with magic.

I put on the magic glove and filled it with magic power, channeling the same energy I used to make Sacredblade.

“A blue magic circle…?”

“Yes, this is a Holy Tool for dispelling curses.”

Thanks to my “Fabrication” excuse, the priestess finally let go of my arm.

Now that the other members of Hayato’s party seemed willing to let me try, too, I reached out toward Hayato again.

Goose bumps prickled my skin.

This was no ordinary curse. My “Sense Danger” skill was screaming at me not to touch it.

I was tempted to pull back my hand, but I couldn’t give up now.

If I did, my friend would suffer and die before my eyes.

Trusting my “Curse Resistance” skill, I focused my “Remove Curse” and “Reverse Curse” skills as I grabbed the black lines in an effort to save Hayato the Hero’s life.

Immediately, visions of an undead army screaming toward me ran up from my fingertips toward the top of my head.

I covered my arm in Sacredblade, purging them all.

My fingertips felt cold. The curse must have been starting to afflict my hand, too, though I couldn’t see it through the glove. I didn’t have long to make this work.

With the help of my “Remove Curse” skill, I started to pull the black lines away from Hayato. The curse fought back, trying to deepen its roots in Hayato’s body and spirit.

“GAAAAAAAH!”

As it dug into Hayato, the curse tormented him.

I used my “Magic Heal” skill to wrap my own magic power around the roots of the curse. Hayato’s expression eased slightly, and the screaming stopped.

But the roots of the curse grew thornlike protrusions, thrashing around to break through my magic’s protection.

“NNGHHHHH…!”

Hayato clenched his teeth, blood dribbling from his lips.

This can’t go on much longer.

Like before, I transformed the magic power around the curse roots into holy power.

The layer of Sacredblade burned away the thorns that had sprouted from the roots, and they began to wither.

That’s it.

One by one, I carefully stripped away each of the roots that were digging into Hayato’s body.

“AAAAAAAAAH!”

The roots of the curse made one last desperate struggle.

Hayato the Hero let out a scream, blood gushing from his body.

Ringrande sprinkled magic potions over him without my needing to say a word, and Loleiya used the Holy Magic she had been storing to heal his wounds.

The miasma that remained in his body seemed to be slowing the healing, dampening the effect of the Holy Magic.

In order to get rid of it, I let loose my spirit light that I normally kept suppressed. Since there was no one in this nation with the “Spirit Vision” skill, I turned it on full throttle.

That seemed to do the trick; Loleiya’s Healing Magic started to work in earnest.

Now!

Thankful for the help, I focused on pulling out the main root of the curse, which was wrapping around Hayato’s heart.

The black lines writhed in my fingers. Evidently, pulling it out completely wasn’t enough to destroy it. This was one stubborn curse.

I focused on the core of the curse that was still struggling in my hand.

Dousing it in spirit light still wasn’t doing the trick. The black lines spread like a net and attempted to ensnare me; I undid my cloak and wrapped it around the bundle.

Of course, that wasn’t going to do anything to stop the non-physical form of the cursed black lines.

But that’s not what I was after.

As soon as the cloak was covering the black lines, I took out an unsheathed Divine Blade from Storage directly inside.

The moment it touched them the black lines let out a hiss like water droplets on a hot frying pan, and were sucked into the blade.

I quickly put the Divine Blade back in Storage and let the cloak fall to the floor.

Then I wiped away the sweat that had gathered on my forehead and let out a breath.

“Is it over…?”

I nodded at the stunned-looking Weeyari.

“We’ll need to wait for Lady Loleiya’s diagnosis, but I don’t sense any evil coming from Sir Hayato anymore.”

Given his strength, he would probably recover from his weakened state soon enough.

“Go to him.” I gave the archer a gentle push, and the rest of Hayato’s party ran to his side as well. I stepped away from the circle around him and discreetly checked under my glove.

Black.

The tips of my fingers had blackened down to the first joint.

My arm had turned black the same way after I pulled the Fragments of the Evil God’s Spawn off the sky dragon.

Just as I suspected, that curse was similar in nature to the vestiges left behind by the Evil God’s Spawn.

“You okaaay?”

“Master, what in the world happened?!”

My own party came running up to me, noticing something amiss.

“I’m fine.”

I already knew how to fix this.

I’d just have to cut off the fingers and regrow them with an advanced potion—hmm?

The black color had moved from my fingers to my fingernails.

However it happened, one thing was certain—removing a fingernail was a lot preferable to losing the whole finger. Turning my “Pain Resistance” up to the max, I plucked the fingernails off and regrew them with “Self-Healing.”

It still hurt a little, but it was no worse than the momentary dull pain of stubbing one’s toe. Nobody was likely to notice.

I stashed the nails stained by the cursed black lines in Storage and returned to the hero and company along with my friends.