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The next morning after Ervas and Veronica healed the souls of the young bear-kin and harpy kids that were being controlled through a special curse by the Necromancer, Ervas and Veronica were preparing things out while also training the new Skills they acquired. More than training, they were simply trying them out to experiment.
?
The several Bear-kin that made most of the village began to quickly pack things up as they slowly got ready to move towards the Igni kingdom through what Ervas and Veronica called the 'Veronica's Express', a giant, floating train that would lead them there in around a day of flying through the sky.
This train was made up of hundreds of Veronica's Clones, which were all assembled through the various skills she had, such as Engineering, Construct, Legion, Architecture, Crafting, and even Blacksmithing. Such complex construction was not possible before, but now that she had gotten so many Skills to help her through this, it was now finally a reality.
If it was not her own main body, Veronica couldn't create a single Clone capable of becoming this big, this was because of the various restrictions that her Clone Creation had, such as only being capable of reaching a certain size (not more than one and a half meters) and not being able to harbor all of her power.
However, by simply sticking together many Clones through all these supporting Skills, while also slightly converting them into golems for more durability, Veronica managed to create larger Clones that could take upon many roles now, and this capability would simply keep growing and becoming better and better from now on.
A perfect middle point between a golem and her clones, these were called 'pseudo clones', and could harbor a bit of Veronica's Mana and powers, while also having more durability, and resiliency of the golem.
But even then, Veronica knew very well her limits, her mind simply would collapse if she were to make so many clones, and even more as she fused them with golems, making her mind have to merge with many dead spirits.
However, she was capable of managing at least a giant Veronica's Express aside from her main body before her focus was to collapse and Veronica's Express were to end up becoming a pile of scrap, or a twisting and formless golem without an idea of what to do.
Golems were way too stupid, it was impossible to entrust them with complex tasks such as flying above the air and reaching the certain coordinates that led to the Igni Kingdom, all while protecting the people inside of them while defending themselves from any threat, such as flying monsters.
But it was possible as long as it was a pseudo-clone, with Veronica's split minds within, they were able to harbor a part of her power, and also her intelligence, making the travel smooth while also being able to attack in various forms to defend against threats.
The train was already waiting for the people, as they all slowly got in, one by one. Many of the bear-kin were amazed by the structure of the 'carriage', and would only wonder if what they were experience was real life.
There were even a few Bear-kin that attributed such construct to a divine being, calling Veronica, its creator, a goddess.
Amongst the people that stayed, there was Ragdaz, Gaius, and Azra's father.
Most of the bear-kin and harpy kids were also sent to the Igni Kingdom to be attended by the many reliable people there, such as Mysticia, Riaan, the Squirrel-kin Elders, and many more.
However, Azra decided to stay in here when he woke up early today, which also came with a big apology from his side…
Aside from that, Ragdaz and Gaius also apologized to him for what they did, as none of them had been completely innocent, the three of them admitted that they committed various mistakes, and apologized to each other until things finally settled down.
Veronica and Ervas main bodies were sitting cross-legged as they practiced many flashy powers. The rest of their allies that were having breakfast glanced at the two with contempt.
Veronica glanced at her hands as she slowly produced a ball of dark energy.
"Curse… Synthesis…" she muttered, as she began to conjure a type of curse through the black lump floating in between her hands.
Veronica had been practicing Curse Synthesis, the newly acquired Skill of hers and Ervas that both got after eating the giant lump of curses they extracted from the souls of the Necromancer's young pawns.
Veronica suddenly generated a curse, one of the few ones available to her since the Skill was only Level 1, which was Fear Curse.
They unleashed the Fear Curse into a roaring goblin that was captured by the bear-kin, the creature was savage and devoid of any intelligence, roaring and struggling like a ferocious beast instead of anything else. It might be a humanoid monster, but it surely did not act like one.
Flash!
The lump of darkness entered the goblin's body as its soul was suddenly enveloped in this darkness. Unlike Veronica's Fear Aura, this Fear Curse binds itself into the target's soul, affecting the soul to a greater extent, to the point that the monster began to not only feel simply fear for its life but a twisting pain. After all, its soul was being pressed upon by the power of a curse, and not simply an external aura.
"Grryyyaaaa!"
"I wonder if it could be possible to merge this with other techniques, I already have Cursed Wounds too, which make my attacks leave curses that inhibit regeneration and lower stats by a small amount… Alongside Fear Aura and Fear Curse, I might be able to pull out some crazy moves," Veronica said.
"Curses are rather interesting, they might simply seem like something completely negative, but if we can edit them like this, we can make them something positive too, isn't it?" asked Ervas, as he grasped the Goblin's Curse, the enveloping force entangling the soul, and then infused it with a different effect.
The blackness changed to bright yellow gold, as the Goblin felt its body healing constantly, it was now filled with vitality.
"Gyyhh! Gyyyyaahaha!" it laughed, trying to attack Veronica and Ervas but failing as it was trapped inside a Telekinesis barrier.
"Ungyah! Gyagyagbuh!!!" it roared.
Curses were a specific type of spell that engraved special magical runes within the specific target. The target could be a body part or the soul, and the effect infused within the runes would activate almost immediately.
Through such logic, it was possible to manipulate curses and infuse effects that were not originally negative, such as Healing from part of Ervas, who changed the structure of the curse in the goblin's soul and made it into a Healing Curse.
"The development of Curses is not as widespread because such spells are rare. Although every attribute is capable of learning curses as spells, spells are very hard to 'edit', so the curse is usually left as it is. There are certain attributes with better affinities with curses, such as Light and Death. The dark spectrum of Light is capable of having a few dozens of Curse Spells, while Death seems to have a ton, but because the people who had them through history were so little, it's hard to know which curses were these…" said Ervas.
"It is convenient that Curses are already premade runes that can be infused into anything. Of course, the normal way to use them is for negative effects, such as Burning Curse used by some Fire Sorcerers, or Dehydration Curse used by Water Sorcerers… and it's often hard for them to change the already made spell without having to reconstruct the whole spell again, and for people, its often very hard to actually create spells aside from the ones that they can learn more naturally, even if you're given an attribute, there is still the affinity to certain types of spells there. A Fire Mage does not always mean that it will be an offensive mage… But with Curse Synthesis, we can actually edit Curses, giving us the ability to easily generate runes that we can infuse elsewhere as 'curses' and then simply change their effects to any spell we have, even Spirit Spells work," said Veronica.
"Indeed. This has a lot of potentials, especially if we can infuse it within the equipment, if we could infuse equipment with many runes like this… it would be certainly amazing. Infusing runes with spell effects is already hard and takes time, but through curses… its almost instantaneous, as long as the curse has something to drain from such as Mana, the runes will be kept infused within the cursed item," said Ervas, freeing the goblin as the little green man ran away for its life, after experiencing the horrors of both of them, it didn't want to have anything to do with them for the rest of its life.
"Curse Synthesis needs a lot of practice though… But well, there are also these other two…" muttered Veronica, as her body suddenly unleashed a Phantasmagoric, dark, blue-colored aura.
"Hm, this one is also pretty good, Aura Skills… Aside from Fear Aura, Phantasmagoric Aura seems to be something closer to an enhancement-type skill," said Ervas.
"It's amazing how much you two know about everything, I would have never thought about making Curses into positive effects," said Azra from the distance.
"Indeed, hearing both our lords speak is like hearing the wise words of ancient magic researchers," said Lilith.
"It's not that, and we aren't that old!" said Veronica.
"Well, we lived our previous lives, if we count them, we are a bit old…" muttered Ervas.
"Oh? I remember Veronica saying that she was an old woman all the time, now she doesn't like to be called old?" asked Anna.
"Geh…!" muttered Veronica.
"Perhaps she likes to use that as an excuse!" said Shade.
"Gah…!" muttered Veronica.
"Please have mercy in Veronica…" said Ervas.
"Come on, stop doing what you're doing and come have breakfast. Ervas, Veronica," said Jason.
"My father will end up eating everything if you don't hurry up," said Gaius.
"And he's not lying! Gahahaha!" laughed Ragdaz as he voraciously ate many plates at the same time.
"Hey, Ragdaz, don't go overboard!" roared Veronica.
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