Caim gasped, his eyes widening in surprise.
“I came here today as a doctor to visit you as my patient,” Faust said with a friendly smile. “I’d like to see how far the curse of the Poison Queen that was transplanted into your body thirteen years ago has progressed. Would you let me examine you?”
“The Poison Queen...? Transplanted...?” Caim frowned, not understanding anything.
Faust smiled wryly in understanding when she saw the lack of comprehension on Caim’s face. “How much did your parents teach you about the curse eating away at you?”
“...Nothing much.”
“Could they just not bring themselves to tell you, or...did they fear you’d blame them?” Faust searched in her luggage and took out a lamp. Then she lit it, illuminating the pitch-black room with orange light. “Well, sit. I’ll teach you about your curse,” she declared, sitting down on the wooden board.
“This is my house, you know,” Caim complained, frowning at how she just naturally acted as if his makeshift bed was hers, but he did sit next to her. He didn’t trust the suspicious woman, but he did have a great interest in learning more about his curse.
“Ah, do you have any tea? I’m a little thirsty.”
“You have no shame! There’s some in that bottle, so just serve yourself!”
“Oh, you actually do have some? I kinda wasn’t expecting anything.” Faust picked up the bottle that sat on the ground, opened it, and sniffed at the liquid inside, which made her blink in surprise. “My, what an interesting tea. Did you make it?”
“It’s not actually tea. I just used herbs I found around here. It tastes gross, but I feel great when I drink it.”
“Of course you would—it uses healing herbs that are common ingredients for potions. You have great taste, drinking medicinal tea made with them.” Without hesitation, she took a swig of the muddy water that could hardly be called tea, squinting as if enjoying the bitterness. “Yup, it is gross, but I don’t mind. After all, they do say that good medicine is bitter and everything that’s good for you tastes bad. So, thanks for your hospitality.”
Caim didn’t say anything, as none of this had been his intention—this woman had arbitrarily entered his house and just as arbitrarily drunk his tea. However, he couldn’t stay silent forever.
“So...what was that about examining me?” he asked bluntly. Faust had called herself his parents’ friend. While he could trust someone who was close to his mother, he couldn’t open his heart to a friend of his father. “And you also mentioned the curse being transplanted into my body. What does that mean?”
Caim couldn’t just ignore these words. He had been born with the poison curse and had always thought that he had just been unlucky and contracted it by coincidence, like someone would an ordinary epidemic disease. But if what Faust had said was true, it had actually been transplanted into his body intentionally.
If that’s the case...then I won’t ever forgive the one who did it!
If someone was responsible for all the hardships in his life, Caim would show them no mercy.
No matter what I have to do, I’ll kill them!
“Don’t throw so much bloodlust my way. One of the reasons for my visit is to explain everything.” Faust gave a troubled smile as she placed the bottle on the ground.
Caim felt like she was dodging the issue, slipping through the cracks in his heart with her carefree attitude.
“Well then, back to your curse,” Faust went on. “Its source is a Demon Lord-class monster called the Poison Queen.”
Caim stayed silent. The Poison Queen... Faust had said the name earlier, and now that he thought about it, he’d heard the villagers who persecuted him mention her a few times.
“Your parents really didn’t tell you anything. How irresponsible.”
“What do you mean?”
“While the Poison Queen is the source of your curse, your parents weren’t totally uninvolved. Of course, that’s also true of me, so I, too, share some of the blame.”
Then Faust began to talk about what had happened a little more than thirteen years ago, before Caim and Arnette were born.
Back then, the Demon Lord-class monster called the Poison Queen had appeared in the northern part of the Jade Kingdom. Monsters were divided into classes to indicate their strength, and starting from the weakest, the order went: Commoner, Knight, Baron, Viscount, Count, Marquis, Duke, and Demon Lord. Demon Lord-class monsters were said to be calamities that could destroy entire countries.
And the people who had defeated one such calamity—the Poison Queen—and saved the kingdom were a party of adventurers who were known as the strongest on the continent at that time: the Divine Iron Fist. To be more precise, the party had been the core of an entire group of people who had worked together to subjugate the Poison Queen, and their victory had only been earned after many sacrifices. In the end, Kevin, as leader of both the Divine Iron Fist and the group as a whole, had been granted a peerage as a count, and the other members had received various rewards as well.
“However, misfortune struck in exchange for the glory they earned. The Poison Queen cursed the woman who dealt the final blow—Sasha,” Faust explained calmly, her voice slipping inside Caim’s brain the way water soaked into sand. “The Poison Queen’s last curse was powerful, and Sasha grew so weak that she was on the verge of death. No doctor or mage could find a way to cure her—not even me. So instead, I suggested to them that I could save Sasha by transferring the curse to one of the twins in her womb.”
“Then you mean that...?”
“Indeed. I’m talking about you, Caim Halsberg. Your parents intentionally transplanted the curse into you to save your mother and your twin sister.”
Caim gasped, speechless. If what Faust had just said was the truth, then it wasn’t his fault that he had been born as a cursed child, nor was it because he had been unlucky.
Then it’s actually Mother and that man’s fault?!
Did that mean the reason Sasha had always apologized to him while she was alive, as if repenting for something, was because she had pushed the curse on him?
“Isn’t that... Isn’t that totally unfair?!” Caim unconsciously raised his voice and stood up, fierce emotions raging in his chest. “I’ve been blamed for being cursed since I was born! And you’re telling me it wasn’t my fault but my parents’?! I can’t possibly believe something so unfair! Why is everyone blaming me, then?! Why are they throwing stones at me and scorning me?!”
“You did nothing wrong. Everything is your parents’ fault, as well as mine.” Faust accepted Caim’s sorrow and bowed. “As a doctor, I tried my best to save as many lives as possible. However, I do feel guilty for forcing you to carry that burden. I’m truly sorry.”
Caim gritted his teeth at Faust’s sincere apology. He was already thirteen, the age when children started to be able to make their own judgments. In his head, he realized that she wasn’t a bad person, but his heart couldn’t forgive her that easily. Lowering her head wasn’t enough to erase all the malicious things that had been done to him.
“And so, as your attending doctor, I want to take responsibility. I came here to save you.”
“You came to...save me?” Caim repeated her unexpected words.
Faust lifted her head and looked straight at him. “There’s a way to dispel the Poison Queen’s curse afflicting your body. It wasn’t possible thirteen years ago, but it is now. So please, would you let me save you?”
〇 〇 〇
“What I’m going to say might anger you, but...back then, thirteen years ago, I had planned to transplant the poison curse and just let you die.”
Caim’s hut didn’t have any furniture, so whenever he went to sleep, he would lie on the wooden board and cover himself with animal pelts. And, right now, he was lying down half naked on it with Faust on her knees next to him, examining his body.
“The Poison Queen was the strongest monster on the entire continent. As her name implies, she had the power to control poison and used it to kill thousands of people thirteen years ago. The scars of her atrocities still affect the northern parts of the kingdom to this day, and this is also why people living around here hate you unfairly. Anyway, what I want to say is that I didn’t expect you to survive such a curse.”
Faust slowly caressed Caim’s body with her palm, palpating the purple bruises scattered across his skin. These marks were proof he was afflicted with the poison curse, as well as the reason the village’s kids avoided him and pelted him with stones.
“And yet, you did,” she continued. “Your organs may be ravaged by toxins, causing you to often vomit blood, but the fact that you can still move—that you can actually live with the Queen’s curse is abnormal. After all, even Sasha, who was extolled as the Sage, was brought to the edge of death after only half a year.”
“So...what’s your point? Just tell me what you want to say already.”
“Your body has some resistance to the Queen’s curse. I don’t know if you were born with it or acquired the resistance a posteriori, but thanks to that, you may be able to overcome the curse,” Faust explained, looking down on Caim.
She raised her right hand, and a magic circle with a geometric pattern appeared in the air.
“This is a spell to influence your mind and allow you to confront the curse. I couldn’t use it thirteen years ago, and even if I could, Sasha probably wouldn’t have been able to endure it. This spell will force you to face off against the curse inside you, and if you win, you should be able to make its power your own.”
“So...I won’t be a cursed child anymore? I’ll just be a normal kid with no eerie bruises, and I won’t vomit toxic blood anymore?”
“The poison itself won’t disappear, but at least it’ll stop ruining your body. You won’t vomit blood anymore, and your weak constitution should be improved.”
Caim stayed silent.