“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.