Curses are an exceptionally troublesome power.
Depending on the price paid by the caster, even the gods cannot escape their influence.
Mythology is filled with stories of deities tormented by ancient curses.
Demigods and epic heroes frequently found their tragic fates inextricably tied to them.
"It is a pity that Truth Seeker is not working right now. Otherwise, I would be interested in analyzing how a curse actually works," Noah joked to Hephaestus when they were finally alone.
But unlike him, the goddess was in no mood to laugh.
Over the centuries, she had raised many Familia members, including brilliantly shining children whose radiance could dazzle even her divine eyes.
Yet, even those incredible children could fall.
They would often collapse under the weight of things that seemed trivial from a god's perspective.
Since then, Hephaestus had changed.
She began to care deeply about the things her children cared about, striving to align her own values with theirs.
She did it all to ensure she never had to watch her beloved children succumb to despair ever again.
She believed other deities had gone through the exact same painful experiences.
"Noah, there has to be a way to fix this," Hephaestus declared solemnly. "This is Orario, the Dungeon City blessed by the gods. If you are looking for a miracle, there is no better place in the world to find one. Believe in me!"
Noah had not expected the goddess to be so deeply shaken on his behalf.
She was acting almost pessimistic.
So, he countered with a question. "Hephaestus, in your eyes... is everything I am right now entirely because of my skills?"
For the mortal races, the idea that a single skill could completely alter a person's destiny was not an exaggeration.
But if a person's fate was dictated only by their skills, they never would have had the drive to discover those skills in the first place.
The goddess immediately shook her head.
"Of course not."
Noah remained silent. He simply raised his hand and slowly clenched his fingers into a firm fist.
"Available resources should be used to their absolute limit. To me, my skills are just like my hands and my feet. Since they belong to me, I will naturally use them without holding back—because they only have value when I actually use them!"
Noah looked her in the eye. "Curses are merely another form of magic. Blaming the gods or other people for my bad luck is not my style. If this is fate, I will change it with my own strength. If someone harmed me, I will return the favor twice over. That has always been my way of doing things."
"And that is how it will always be."
"Even without a Falna, and even with a frail body... as long as you have the determination and the drive to take action, you can still forge steel."
Hephaestus watched Noah, unconsciously awestruck by the astonishing burning willpower radiating from his soul.
Yes.
This was exactly why the gods had descended to the lower world to build Familias.
Witnessing the shining, unbreakable spirits of their children moved the gods to their core, giving them a sense of fulfillment.
This boy would never fade away.
Even though he liked to stay low-key and cautious, he was inevitably going to bloom with a dazzling, unstoppable brilliance.
...
Night fell over Orario.
Noah sat on his bed, repeatedly examining the Grimoire in his hands.
Having fulfilled its purpose, the ancient book had turned completely blank.
No matter how many times he flipped through the pages, no new magical text appeared.
Even the signature page listing the previous owners was now empty.
He tossed the unremarkable book aside and roughly summarized the mysterious glitch affecting his body.
First, for some unknown reason, all of his basic stats had stagnated at the maximum limit of E499.
They refused to level up no matter how much he trained.
It felt like he had hit a dead end.
Next was his magic.
The spell he discovered from the Grimoire was corrupted and could not be translated into sacred text.
Because of that, its specific abilities and effects remained a total mystery.
Then came his skills.
Not all of them were broken—only Truth Seeker and Weaver had been corrupted. The stat boosts from his development ability still worked perfectly fine.
Finally, his ultimate trump card, Denier, still seemed to be in a normal working state.
"There is no other way to be sure... Hah." Noah's smile turned somewhat sinister.
His eyes widened as cold sweat unconsciously broke out all over his body.
He was sweating because what he was about to do next was utterly insane!
Noah listened closely to confirm that Haruhime had already gone to sleep in the other room.
Then, he pulled out a basic steel dagger he had forged for practice.
This dagger had no special magical effects—it was just a sharp, ordinary blade.
Still, it was more than enough to inflict a fatal wound on a human body.
"If I cannot activate Truth Seeker to check if this is a curse, there is no better way to verify the truth than this."
Noah gripped the dagger's hilt tightly with both hands, pointing the razor-sharp tip directly at his own heart.
The cold steel pricked his skin the moment it made contact.
'Haa—'
'Stay calm, it is fine, just stab it... i will not die, so it is perfectly okay...'
[Denier]
Negates one instance of lethal damage.
Removes all abnormal status effects upon activation.
Cooldown: Once every 24 hours.
By exploiting its mechanics, Denier was essentially the world's strongest curse-breaking ability!
He did not have to wait for an accident to trigger it.
He could trigger it actively!
At the cost of enduring one fatal injury, it would wipe away absolutely every abnormal status effect on his body!
The "Abnormal Resistance" development ability only worked against basic poisons and paralyzation found in the Dungeon.
But Denier was an ultimate rule-breaker capable of cleansing anything and everything.
If his glitched status truly was a curse, stabbing himself would force Denier to activate and instantly cure him.
"Even though I have faced many life-or-death crises before, just aiming a blade at my own chest is terrifying enough to scare me to death," Noah muttered softly.
Then, he abruptly thrust the dagger deep into his chest!
The cold blade sliced through his skin, severed his muscle and plunged directly into his beating heart!
Agony.
In that agonizing instant, Noah finally understood what it felt like to have his heart gouged out.
He desperately struggled to breathe, but the excruciating, paralyzing pain exploding from his chest made it completely impossible.
'I am going to die!'
The very moment that panicked thought flashed through his fading mind, Noah suddenly felt a massive surge of power erupt from deep within his body.
Instantly, his vision cleared, and his thoughts became crystal sharp.
After what felt like an eternity of suffering, Noah finally gasped, regaining the ability to breathe.
He collapsed to his knees, greedily gulping down mouthfuls of air.
The bloody dagger clattered onto the floor beside him.
The fatal wound on his chest had completely vanished.
"The auto-recovery took effect," Noah gasped.
Drenched in cold sweat, he wore the exhausted expression of a man who had just narrowly escaped the grim reaper.
Even though his wound was fully healed, his hands and feet still trembled violently from the phantom pain.
After taking a few minutes to calm his racing heart, he attempted to activate Truth Seeker and Spell-Weaver.
Nothing happened.
After a few minutes of trying, he finally reached a conclusion. It was not a conclusion of failure, but rather a realization.
"Just as I thought. It is not a curse."
Noah stood up on shaky legs and secretly peeked out the door toward Haruhime's room.
He sighed in heavy relief when he realized the little fox had not woken up during the night to witness his insane experiment.
If Haruhime had walked in and seen him plunging a dagger into his own heart, she would have definitely screamed and fainted on the spot.
After quietly scrubbing the blood off the floor and changing his ruined clothes, Noah lay back down on his bed.
Holding the blank Grimoire in his hands, he stared blankly up at the ceiling.
A massive wave of mental and physical exhaustion washed over him.
The encroaching drowsiness allowed him to temporarily set aside his complicated, racing thoughts, and he gradually drifted into a deep sleep.
...
After an unknown amount of time, the boy opened his eyes once more.
This time, he found himself standing in a pure white space.
Within this endless, blank void, there was absolutely nothing except a strange door frame.
Noah looked around carefully before stepping toward the frame. He gently ran his palm over its smooth surface.
"It is solid."
The tactile feedback against his fingertips confirmed that this object was physically real.
"It seems this is not just a dream," Noah murmured.
He felt strangely calm—almost as if he had been to this exact place before.
Furthermore, the door felt intensely familiar to him, even though he could not recall a single memory of it.
The swirling chaos inside the door frame was too dark and murky to see through.
After hesitating for a long while, Noah finally decided to test it out.
'Here goes nothing!'
He extended his left hand straight into the door.
The moment his palm touched the layer of swirling chaos, he felt a subtle, strange resistance.
It felt as if the barrier both existed and did not exist at the exact same time.
Ultimately, it failed to stop his hand from passing through.
Then went his wrist.
Then his arm...
"Wait, what is this?!"
Once his arm passed fully through the threshold, Noah suddenly felt a bizarre overwhelming force grab hold of him.
It felt like he was being dragged down into a thick swamp.
He was being sucked in!
Unable to resist the massive pulling force, Noah was yanked forward, vanishing entirely through the door.
Crossing the threshold took only a fraction of a second.
To Noah, it felt like taking a single, clumsy step forward through a thin doorway.
He nearly stumbled and fell flat on his face from the sudden momentum.
"Where is this...?"
Still half-stumbling, Noah frantically tried to observe his surroundings to secure his footing.
But this was no place that could be described with words like "surroundings" or "environment."
'The universe?'
The boy's mind briefly froze, completely unable to process what his eyes were seeing.
Everything before him was way too surreal.
Even the existence of Dungeon monsters, magic spells, and living gods walking the streets of Orario had never made him feel this completely detached from reality.
He simply could not accept what he was witnessing.
At this exact moment... he was floating in the dark, endless depths of outer space.