“Ugh, I’m gonna throw up.”
The following morning, I exited the mansion alone, covering my mouth with my right hand as I muttered weakly to myself. My head was killing me, I was nauseous, chilled, and my joints ached. My symptoms were so severe that I couldn’t even walk straight. If anyone saw me right now, they’d probably think I looked like a walking corpse. The guards were definitely regarding me with concern as I passed.
It felt as though I’d come down with some nasty cold, and normally, I would have stayed in the mansion to rest. But my joints hurt so bad it was like they’d been torn off, and I couldn’t even go to sleep with the pain. It hurt like crazy to walk too, but going outside for fresh air seemed a more preferable option to writhing around in bed all day. So I decided I’d walk around the royal capital for a bit and see how I felt after that.
“Guh...I didn’t expect the reaction to be this severe.” Of course, I meant my body’s reaction to my experiment last night: donating part of my soul to Lunamaria. The experiment itself had been a success—a huge one, as a matter of fact. Upon receiving a portion of my soul, Lunamaria had leveled up from 19 to 20.
That meant I now had the ability to raise other people’s levels at my own discretion. And it didn’t even need to be said just how terrifyingly powerful that ability was. Were I to publicly announce I was capable of such a thing, simply imagining the commotion that would ensue sent a chill down my spine.
To be honest, I’d been elated at first. The higher one’s level, the higher the quality of their soul. In other words, I could raise Lunamaria’s level, then eat her soul to raise my own, then rinse and repeat for a perpetual motion machine. I’d be invincible! Or so I’d thought at the time. But when I checked my own level, my excitement cooled down in an instant. For whatever reason, even though I’d reached Level 9 upon feasting on Iria’s soul, my level had reverted to 8. The headache, nausea, chills, aches, and other feverish symptoms plaguing me right now were apparently from the physical burden of going down a level.
A soul was a highly potent vessel of experience. However, it still took a great amount of soul energy for me to level up. If you compared the amount of experience Lunamaria would need to reach Level 20 and the amount I’d need to reach Level 9, mine would definitely be higher. There was already a huge imbalance between Lunamaria’s required experience and mine, and yet Lunamaria’s level had gone up and mine had gone down! I wanted to shout out in indignation, but I was the one who had carried out the experiment in the first place, so the blame lay entirely with me. I would just be directing any complaints and shouts of anger at myself.
Regardless, the simple fact remained that as a result of my soul-donating experiment, Lunamaria had gone up a level and I had gone down one. And there was nothing I could do but accept reality.
“Well, at least now I know how I can save Miss Tomboy.” The pain assailing Claudia was most likely the result of her soul being drained. So if I filled her vessel with a larger amount of soul energy than what was leaking out—level her up, in other words—I could negate the effects of her curse, or at the very least, drastically reduce her pain.
And that wasn’t all. I’d said this before, but a person’s level was a measure of their potential. A vessel of Level 10 couldn’t be filled beyond that, but as one’s level went up, so did their vessel’s capacity. Put simply, a person’s vessel grew alongside their level, and I was planning to use that to my advantage. By leveling Claudia up, I could seal the hole in her vessel. Not entirely, of course, but I could reasonably expect it to become much smaller.
If I could successfully pull this off, I’d be well on my way to solving her problem completely. Raising her level two or three times might even be enough to cure her for good. Of course, my own level would likely decrease to 7 or even 6 in exchange...but I could still hear her scream at dinner last night in the back of my mind.
I’d heard the curse had started affecting her a year ago. That meant she’d been dealing with the pain for an entire year now. A twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl had been struggling that long against pain that could hit her at any given moment, and yet her spirit hadn’t broken. If there was a chance that admirably resilient girl would never have to scream and cry in pain like that again, losing a few levels was a small price to pay! I’d just have one more thing I could announce with pride to my mother resting in her grave once I made it back to the island. And besides, I could always regain the levels I lost!
However, I was only shouting all of this loudly in my heart to convince myself that it was the right thing to do. The truth was, there was a part of me that was reluctant to give up my own soul for Claudia’s sake. Right now, my highest priority was to become as strong as I possibly could, and whatever part of my soul I gave up would put me that much further away from my goal. I even found myself hesitating to save her. And perhaps it was just my imagination, but whenever I thought about helping Claudia, I thought I could hear the dissatisfied roar of a beast coming from somewhere.
“Still, I’ve already made up my mind. I’m going to help her... Blegh!” Feeling a sudden urge to vomit, I raised my hand to my mouth once again. Normally, I would be heading to Claudia right away, but it was hard for me to even walk in this state. I doubted I could successfully transfer my soul to her like this. In fact, I was almost certain it would fail if I tried. So for now, I’d have to prioritize my own recovery.
According to what I’d heard as I was heading out, the tanashia had managed to dull Claudia’s pain. Once some time had gone by and the worst of her pain had passed, they would use the Jirai Ao Ochs to remove the side effects of the tanashia. At present, her condition was stable. This process repeated every time her pain flared up, and she’d made a gradual recovery every time thus far. But there was no guarantee that’d be the case this time. If her pain really could come back with a vengeance to attack her at any moment, I couldn’t be negligent. I had to do what I could to recover so I’d be in proper condition to transfer my soul energy to her. Therefore, I’d decided to walk to town today to find some sort of potion or temple’s healing magic that might cure me.
To make a long story short, none of it turned out to be effective. Apparently, this was an incurable condition caused by my soul-donating. In other words, I would just have to endure until my body naturally recovered.
I guess it was too much to hope for something that convenient, I thought with a sigh.
As I turned back toward the mansion, a minstrel’s lute reached my ears.
“Um...before Claudia collapsed, you say?”
“Yes. Lunamaria mentioned she heard a strange noise just before Claudia fell on the table. Did you notice or hear anything at the time?”
Upon returning to the mansion, I headed to Seele to ask her about what Lunamaria and I had discussed. I would have asked her yesterday, but I’d felt so bad after the soul donor session that doing so hadn’t even crossed my mind.
Seele scrunched up her eyebrows as she tried to remember. “That was right before the sound of the plate breaking on the floor, wasn’t it? You know...now that you mention it, I thought I heard a voice like someone crying.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and it sounded female. My...ocelot ears are really sensitive, you see, so I hear sounds from neighboring houses and nearby streets quite often. And the shrill voices of women or babies carry especially well over the wind, so I hear those even from far away.”
Her head drooped in apology, as if she was ashamed of herself for not having the information I required. Of course, I wasn’t going to blame her for that, so I told her to raise her head and not worry about it. Besides, the information she’d given me was indeed intriguing. If all she’d heard was a crying voice, then Seele would’ve been right, and it was something I could have ignored. But Lunamaria, an elf, had heard an unusual noise at the exact same time, and intense pain had assaulted Claudia immediately afterward. Therefore, I felt like this “female voice” Seele had heard was significant.
Some undead monsters had the ability to damage their enemies with their screams. I couldn’t rule out the possibility that an undead had caused the curse. But then, why hadn’t the monster’s screams hurt anyone else in the room? That doubt kept me from being sure, but the possibility was enough to make it worth investigating.
Fortunately—if you could call it fortunate—I was sick right now, and it would take some time for my body to recover. So while I waited for soul donation to become possible again, I decided I’d take a little more time to roam the capital.