Tenebrael stood at its center, arms spread wide, while his cultists formed a ring around the circle. Each knelt in fervent supplication, chanting in low, guttural tones that seemed to grind against the very air. Their voices merged into a droning harmony, feeding power into the runes as their resonance deepened.
“Gimmel-tier curse spell formation… complete,” one crimson-robed Magus announced, his voice trembling under the strain.
Tenebrael’s eyes blazed like coals as he lifted his staff, the skull atop it igniting with violet fire. “Excellent. Tonight, the heretic who dares defy us — who dares erase our precious pawns — shall be drowned in despair.”
The ritual circle flared to life, lines of light converging into a singular nexus of power. Within its heart, a phantom image flickered to form: Victor Asteriscus, seated calmly in his meditation chamber, oblivious to the eyes fixed upon him from afar.
Tenebrael’s lips curled into a cruel smile. “You think you can run scot-free from me? Ha! Even if you hide at the edge of the world, distance means nothing. Not to me. Not to us.”
He began the incantation, each syllable dripping with venom, each word reverberating like the toll of a funeral bell. Power surged through the circle, fed by the cultists’ life force. One by one, their bodies convulsed, bleeding from the eyes and mouth as their vitality was consumed to fuel the curse.
Above the circle, the phantom of Victor shuddered, threads of black energy slithering toward it like snakes. The mark of Tenebrael’s malice sought to brand itself onto Victor’s soul.
“By the abyss that devours the stars, by the chains that bind the void, I curse you, Victor Asteriscus,” Tenebrael intoned, his voice booming like a verdict passed down by the hells themselves. “Your path shall be plagued with misfortune. Your power shall wither into nothingness. And your destiny shall rot from within until all that you build crumbles to dust!”
The circle erupted in a torrent of light and shadow, the cavern trembling under the force of a completed Gimmel-tier ritual spell — the Soulrot Curse.
Tenebrael collapsed to one knee, blood dripping from his nose, but his smile never faded. “Let us see if he can cling to his power now. The curse is already upon him, and even as a Nexus Temporal Magus, he will not last a month before he turns into a mortal and dies. Hahahahaha!”
“Now, all that remains is for me to recover and then crush his academy with the strength of other Magus forces,” he muttered with glee. Tenebrael would never have resorted to such a spell had Victor not advanced to the Nexus Temporal rank. After all, it injured his foundation and regressed his meditation progress. But since the man now stood on his equal, Tenebrael refused to take any further chances.
Everything that he did was for his God, the one who would bring salvation.
Victor was still sitting cross-legged in the depths of the meditation chamber, still deep in his meditation as mana coursed through his channels in steady, deliberate cycles. The magic circle beneath him glowed faintly, resonating with his cadence as he worked to stabilize the volatile strength of a newly ascended Nexus Temporal Magus while simultaneously converting the intermediate- and advanced-grade mana crystals arranged around him into infused mana.
Then it struck.
A sudden, bone-deep chill wrapped around his core, violent and invasive. His breath hitched. Threads of mana that had been circulating smoothly just a moment ago buckled as though seized by invisible chains. Victor’s eyes snapped open, only to see nothing but darkness bleeding into his vision.
What… is this? Ngh!
Agony tore through his veins. The mana that once surged confidently within him now shrank away like frightened prey, leaking away into some unseen void. He slammed a hand against the floor, forcing his mind to steady, but the runes of the magic circle sputtered and dimmed, refusing to answer his command.
A black, serpentine mark flashed across his chest before vanishing, leaving only a phantom ache in its wake. Instantly, he understood what was happening.
“A curse…! I was struck with a curse!” His voice came out as a hoarse rasp.
He probed both his body and his sea of consciousness and nearly froze. His core, where a moment ago it had brimmed with the vast energy of a Nexus Temporal Magus, was regressing. The seven sigils that were once filled with infused mana were collapsing, deflating like balloons pricked and popped. If this trajectory continued, he would fall back to the rank of Elemental Adept within a week. Worse still, the curse was siphoning his very essence. In less than a month, he would be no different from a mortal — before death claimed him outright.
Victor clenched his fists, blood seeping between his teeth as he bit down hard. “Who… who dared curse me? Was it the Arcane Radiance College? No… this isn’t their style. Their methods are nothing like this. Then… who?”
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He forced his turbulent thoughts into order. Since inheriting the academy, he had amassed a lot of enemies: the Merlin family, the surrounding Magus factions… and then there was the Doomsday Cult. The more Victor considered it, the more the pieces aligned. The source of this curse could be none other than the Cult.
“Damn it! Who would have thought it would come down to this!” Victor clenched his teeth.
The meditation chamber trembled faintly as he forced himself back into stillness. Panic was useless. The best path he could take here was to identify the curse and erase it no matter what, or else.
He drew in a sharp breath and began manipulating the surrounding Cosmo elemental particles. They gathered swiftly, orbiting his body before seeping through his pores and converging at his chest. With unwavering will, he shaped them into a miniature black hole, a singularity meant to devour the phantom ache festering within him.
The curse reacted at once. Like ink dispersing in water, the mark twisted into writhing coils of serpentine darkness beneath his skin. The instant the black hole touched it, the tendrils multiplied, slithering deeper through his channels and gnawing hungrily at his seven sigils.
Victor furrowed his brows, sweat dripping down his face. “So… the more it’s disturbed, the stronger it grows.”
Refusing to yield, he poured more Cosmo energy into the assault, forcing the black hole to expand and smother the corruption with sheer might. For a fleeting instant, the darkness receded, dragged toward oblivion by the voracious pull. But then it surged back, swelling with twice the ferocity. Even the black hole itself was being devoured, consumed as the curse dug in like barbed hooks, drinking greedily from both the Cosmo elemental energy and his own infused mana.
Victor coughed blood, the metallic tang flooding his mouth. He had thought himself nearly invincible upon ascending to Nexus Temporal Magus, but he couldn’t be more wrong. Truly, the Magus craft was far more mysterious and unfathomable than he had dared imagine.
However, he refused to collapse. Victor bit down on his lip, the taste of iron sharpening his resolve.
“No, wait… this isn’t an ordinary curse. It isn’t even a Magus craft. This feels like something… entirely different,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
Even the esoteric Cosmo element was being devoured by the corruption. No ordinary magic should have been able to overwhelm it with such ferocity. Unless… its origin came from a being vastly stronger than himself. This left him with one final gambit.
How about the Chrono element?
He steadied his breathing and began manipulating the Chrono elemental energy within his core. Time itself seemed to slow, each heartbeat stretching into an eternity as he guided the golden currents toward the curse.
The reaction was instantaneous. The black tendrils stiffened as though frozen in place, their relentless writhing briefly arrested by the temporal force. Victor felt a flick of hope for a second. Unfortunately, the moment he tried to push the curse back, it began to retaliate, twisting through the cracks of time itself, bleeding forward as if unbound by causality. The instant his Chrono element pressed harder, the corruption retaliated with renewed vigor, latching onto his core with even greater hunger.
Victor’s face was drained of color. “So even time can’t restrain it…”
Sweat poured down his skin. His breathing came in ragged gasps, but his mind remained razor-sharp. He understood now that no amount of direct force could purge this curse.
“The best I can do… is seal my own power to delay the inevitable,” he concluded bitterly. Damn it. Is there truly no other way? He exhaled sharply, forcing the thought aside. “Whatever… I’ll seal the curse first and figure out how to erase it later.”
With grim determination, Victor prepared to suppress his core rather than fight a battle he could not win. At the very least, this way he would buy himself more time to figure out what to do and solve the issue.
He placed his palm over his chest and closed his eyes, summoning the last remnants of his Chrono energy. He wove it into delicate strands that intertwined over the curse like threads of molten gold. Slowly, the shimmering filaments enveloped the darkness, freezing it in time. The raging pain dulled, and the malignant energy froze. The black tendrils that had once thrashed violently now hung almost motionless, suspended within the confines of the temporal seal.
When it was done, Victor exhaled shakily, feeling drained. “This will have to do for now… I’ve bought myself a year instead of a month, but if I use my power, the curse will activate again and that time will shorten.”
Shaking his head, Victor opened his status screen to check if anything had changed.
Victor Asteriscus
HP: 95%
MP: 14/63
Power Rank: Primal-stage Nexus Temporal Magus (Sealed) | Ki Sentinel
Elemental Affinity: Cosmo (99%) | Chrono (96%) | Anemo (82%) | Pyro (57%)
Dreamforce Affinity: 12%
Mana Aptitude: Inferior shining grade
Meditation Technique: Omni-Elemental Fusion Method (second level, first sub-level, 7%)
Breathing Technique: Harmonic Resonance Art (second level)
Status: Cursed (Soulrot Curse)
Power Decay Countdown: 365 days 4 hours 23 minutes
Strength: (60 → 48)
Agility: (61 → 48)
Vitality: (60 → 48)
Magical Power: (74 → 20)
Infused Mana (total): (9883 → 63)
Spell Repertoire:
- Aleph: {Blink Step}, {Spatial Mirage}, {Slicing Wind}, {Zephyr Dash}, {Tempest Burst}, {Wind Guard}, {Flame Whip}, {Flame Dart}, {Flame Prison}, {Ember Shield}, {Heat Wave}, {Demonic Eye}
- Bet: {Warpblade}, {Prism Divide}, {Blink}, {Gap Hole}, {Ethereal State}, {Nova}, {Space Fold}, {Gravity Hammer}, {Time Reversal}, {Time Prison}, {Eyes of Space-Time}, {Volcanic Spear}, {Tempest Gale}, {Blazing Burst}, {Curse of Dreamland}, {Curse of Nightmare}, {Indomitable Will}, {Mind Programming}
- Gimmel: {Cosmo Lock}
“My physical strength has reverted to that of a peak Elemental Adept Magus with my power sealed… and my magic power and capacity are barely on par with a second-stage Initiate Attunement acolyte,” Victor mused grimly.
Unless he unsealed the curse, the strongest spell he could cast would be Aleph-tier at most. In other words, he was now weaker than the very players who once stood as mere ants before him.
As his gaze continued scanning the readout, something caught his attention. “Hmm? What’s this — Soulrot Curse?” He frowned. He’d never seen this kind of curse in books he had studied in the past. Even the database within his Master Shadowlink Mark turned up nothing.
That left only one option. He would have to make a trip to the citadel and scour its grand library for answers. And if even that yielded nothing… then his only remaining hope would be to consult Valeria.
In any case, he would have to go there first before he could do anything. Just as Victor was about to leave the basement to begin his search for information about the curse, a melodious chime echoed in his mind, followed by the sudden appearance of a blue holographic screen.
Volume 1 and
Volume 2 and
Volume 3
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