Cursed Heroine

Chapter 70: Frightening revelation

“Finally!”~me

“I’ve been a bit busy with the new dungeon items.”~Kat

I’d been pulled into Kat’s divine realm for the first time in a while.

“So, first, the greyed out traits. What’s up with those?”~me

“I’ve migrated most of your attire functions over to using those two traits instead of having a system of its own. The three weapons you’ve used up till now will be in your inventory when you wake up. You’ll have to upgrade or replace them yourself from now on.”~Kat

“Why change it?”~me

She then showed me a couple of glassy orbs with dark splotches on them. One was nearly covered, while the other had about forty percent covered.

“The less visible one is what your soul looked like when you first incarnated in this world, the second is your current appearance now that you’ve gotten rid of some of your curses. This third one is what it’ll look like after the changes I’ve just told you about.”~Kat

As she was saying that last sentence she made another orb, this time with only about twenty-five percent covered.

“Your curses might have been necessary and fun at first, but they have also hindered your progress. While getting rid of your remaining curses won’t really change the amount you can cultivate every day, each day’s cultivation will be quicker and it’ll feel less like a chore. Heroes are typically much faster at cultivating, but yours has been much slower than others. Mary and Alice have already reached stage five in mind and body cultivation respectively.”~Kat

“What about high energy body and monster bait? Shouldn’t those have increased it?”~me

“Those particular curses only affect the physical body, not the soul. Before you ask, yes, mute is also a curse on the soul since it has been with you as you came into this world. I advise you to remove it when you can.”~Kat

“Will this change how effects work?”~me

“Some will change, but you will continue to have access to each of the clothes and effects you’ve used until now. A few of the effects will be substituted though. Things like sensual will become motion correction(sensual 1). Just like with a living armor, the quality of your gear and number of effect slots is limited by your body cultivation stage. Likewise, the level of an effect is limited by your mind cultivation. Spirit cultivation would normally determine how well a living armor can manipulate or boost its host body, but that doesn’t apply to you.”~Kat

“And if I want new effects I’ll have to use assimilate on something with the desired effect first? Seems simple enough.”~me

“Next topic is energy pathways. Like the living armor’s tendrils are used to move energy as needed for it, you’ll need some as well. As such, I’ve unlocked energy tatts for you, but it would be better to do it the natural way using your body manipulation trait to shapeshift your body a bit to produce them yourself. That reminds me, I changed how living armors work a bit. They can also do make-up and tatts now as well. Just have it assimilate some cosmetics and ink, then you’ll be all set.”~Kat

“Advantages and disadvantages?”~me

“Tatts would be non-intrusive, but easily interrupted by small cuts on the skin. They also glow as you transfer higher amounts of energy. Shapeshifted energy pathways would be similar to what a living armor makes in its host, except I intend to make separate paths for each of the energies for you. You’d end up with qi channels, mana veins and spirit conduits in your body, basically an upgraded version of the tendrils. The real disadvantage to this system is that it requires that you have a core near your heart to centralize it and you would have to get used to the new way of using your energy.”~Kat

“Getting used to a new way of using my energy seems that it would be necessary with either method anyways. Talk more about the core. Would having one mean that I could be tamed with a soul brand?”~me

“Yes and no. You could potentially be tamed, but just your body would be under the tamer’s control since your soul would not be housed within the core unlike others.”~Kat

So it would be like how slavery is now that Kat had changed how contracts work. Not that anyone would be able to overwhelm and tame me in the first place. With this in mind, I agreed with the second method. There’s no need to ask why divinity didn’t have its own pathway. Divine energy is like a blanket on the soul and the soul permeates the entire body making it readily available wherever needed. Spirit energy is produced by the soul permeating a body and does need a pathway.

“Now that I’ll have a core, does this mean I can safely consume monster and beast cores?”~me

“Nope. Eating them would taint your body with monster energy like before and cultivating with them would cause deviation backlash. You could however absorb them to refill your energies once you’ve unlocked that other trait. The one you got from the slime.”~Kat

“If I unlocked that trait, wouldn’t my whole digestive system become unnecessary?”~me

“Not entirely. Your body would still need a way to get nutrients. You could finally get rid of those two waste voiding plugs though, since your body would automatically absorb and convert any waste or excess material into energy.”~Kat

“Oh, you know I love it when you talk dirty.”~me

“Bah. You scoundrel.”~Kat

Or so she says, but I still managed to get a little blush from her. We continued to chat for a bit longer before the morning.

My control percentages dropped significantly due to the changes in my body that Kat had made while I was sleeping. I’d lost nearly ninety percent from my intelligence attributed control percentage. In other words, my ability to manipulate my energies was severely affected.

I started my daily routine before Scarlet woke up and we had breakfast together while I told her about my conversation with Kat I had during the night. She had been surprisingly okay with wearing the cat onesie pajamas I picked out for her last night and she looked adorable in them.

“Don’t you find it kind of strange?”~Scarlet

“What do you mean, Mistress?”~me

“Every time your curse is downgraded a bit, you’re changed in some way that fills in the gap. Like this latest change with the attire. You now have a trait that acts pretty much the same way, but is no longer part of your curse. It’s like you are slowly becoming what your curse forces you to be as the curse is slowly removed.”~Scarlet

I felt a cold shiver run down my spine as Scarlet spoke. Is it weird that I can totally see myself being okay with always being someone’s servant? Only girls, of course. I can’t help but to wonder if this is all just one of Kat’s schemes. Setting aside my worries before I can scare myself silly, I decided to ignore the terrifying possibility for now.

“I’ll keep that in mind the next time Kat speaks with me. For now, we’ll go to the auction house to pick up various low grade items with different effects on them so that you can feed them to your familiar. Since we have no real problem with money, it will probably only take it a few days to hit stage two and maybe another month to hit stage three.”~me

“Shouldn’t you have a bunch of that stuff in your inventory already, especially since you visit the upper levels of the dungeon pretty often. Say, exactly how many lowlifes have you killed in the dungeon?”~Scarlet

“...”~me

“What was that?”~Scarlet

“I lost count. Well, I didn’t really try to count in the first place. They earn their deaths by either trying to steal from me or by intending to rape me.”~me

“Don’t you think that you are somewhat to blame for strolling around the dungeon alone. I mean, when someone sees a beauty walking alone in a dark place…”~Scarlet

“That’s stupid! The victim is never at fault for the crimes committed against them!”~me

“Any survivors? Did you at least let the ones who ran away go?”~Scarlet

“Zero. If they try to ambush me or refuse to leave when I warn them, that’s it. Letting them go after that point is just asking them to either try again when you’re less prepared or to call for reinforcements.”~me

*sigh* “You’re quite merciless, aren’t you? Let’s head to the auction house.”~Scarlet

It turned out that she had fallen in love with the goth dress from yesterday. Being a clothes designer herself, she even made some improvements to the design. Her previous black dress now had a pink color to accent it with bows, ribbon and other trimmings added. Mine was similar with red accents, making hers cuter and mine sexy. Even though the effect on her mind was gone, the child-like body must affect her somewhat. Her good mood due to the clothes had her humming, and...I think I saw her skipping a little?

Although we still stood out a bit, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the pink princess dresses from before. We made it back in time for lunch and Scarlet got started on having her familiar assimilating her share. As for me, Rosy was here once more to pick up the new slime. She evaluated that it was highly likely that she could produce some new medicines from it. Definitely one for exfoliating the skin and maybe one that can purge the body of toxins. The price I agreed on for this slime was that we would be able to buy some of her products at nearly their cost price.

Rosy also gave me some information that could give me a lead on finding the last ingredient for my beauty potion recipe. A succubus named Devora is the de facto leader of all the succubi in the city. I was told that she would know who to go to for the ingredient and that I should be able to find her in her club, Domoania(dom-moan-ia), basically every night.