''So what's your plan now?'' After getting done with cursing the monster wave, Aella sat down on the floor and asked June about their next step, just out of curiosity.

''Rest, heal and then we think of getting out.'' June was tired so she gave Aella a short answer. The mana potion had stopped working some time ago before she summoned Aella, and summoning her had exhausted June's last mana reserves. If she had more mana for summoning then it would be probably someone stronger standing in Aella's place.

Seeing June lying exhausted on Grefured, Aella decided to do her own thing. Now she needed to decide if she wanted to go back or to stay and see what happens with this party.

The decision wasn't hard, she decided to stay, and see how the party plans to get out. But while she waited she decided to absorb the monster core that she was holding in her bloody hands. So she started to absorb the core, and slowly the core's mana flew into her body, she could feel how she got full.

Then a feeling of her body slowly expanding filled her. Her actual body didn't display any physical changes, but that didn't stop the feeling of getting blown up like a balloon to its limits. Slowly and carefully she inflated that balloon until she felt little pain coming from the inside, and without hesitation, she stopped absorbing the core.

Now she had to wait a bit for the fullness feeling to go away and then she can continue with absorption. While waiting Aella decides to again look around and see what's happening.

She pushed her black strand out of her face to take a better look, leaving a little bit of blood on her face and hair, but it didn't bother her. Her dark eyes looked around and see what this adventuring party was doing.

June and Grefured were just relaxing, the brown-haired beastkin was looking at the fire thinking about something while he sat on the ground. The red-haired giant who had full metal armor on him, was just lying there with his eyes closed. And the catkin was talking with the human whose leg was in the process of healing while coming through the brown hairs of his with her fingers.

*tap, tap, tap...* While looking around Aella was tapping her fingers against the mana core, making a rhythmic sound. She looked down while tapping her fingers and saw that they left little blood marks where they tapped, even though the blood was slowly getting dry.

So she turned the core a little bit to get a clean canvas and tried to paint a face on the core. With little effort, she succeeded in drawing a simple face on the core.

After she had done that she decided to have a staring contest with Grefured. She just started to stare at the wolf until he returned her gaze and then Aella made eye contact and just started. But it didn't last long, the summoned beast stared at her for a while in confusion before turning his head away and continuing his rest.

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Before Aella could think of anything else to keep her boredom away, she felt that her body was ready for another absorption session. So she again concentrated on absorbing the monster's core. And similar to the last time she absorbed until she felt a little bit of pain and then stopped. Aella could tell that she needed only one more session until something would change.

Again bored Aella decided to test her ability. She already knew a few things instinctively, mostly how to use it and its range, but there were plenty of things she didn't know.

The first thing she wanted to know was dose her curse can work in non-living things. So she put down the monster core in her hands and grabbed a small rock that was lying near her, and activated her ability. Black smoke tendrils came out of her palm that was holding the rock and entangled the rock. And in a few seconds, the rock had the same cursed chain markings, indicating that the curse worked.

Aella wasn't that surprised about the outcome, she already kind of knew. Her instinct told her that it should work on inanimate objects, but it wasn't 100% sure before she tested that. But it still was good to know and Aella was happy that her ability wasn't restricted to only living things.

The next thing Aella wanted to know was, whether she could curse only certain parts of things, not the whole thing. So she grabbed another rock, this one was slightly bigger and it had more corners.

So like the last rock, she took it in her palm and activated her ability, but this time she willed so that only a small part of it gets cursed. The smoky tendrils again came out of her hand, but instead of engulfing the whole rock, they started to engulf only part of it.

It looked promising and Aella started to think she had succeeded, but that didn't last long. Suddenly the tendrils that were only engulfing one part of the rock, split and engulfed the rick fully. It was so fast that Aella didn't have time to react. And she didn't even know what went wrong, it looked like her test was going well until it wasn't.

So Aella tried a few more times, and see if anything changed. But nothing changed, at the start, it looked like it was working but the same as the first time the tendrils splinted and wrapped around the whole rock, no matter what she did. Every test was the same with some lasting longer than others, but the end result was the whole rock getting cursed.

In the end, Aella concluded that it was probably her lack of control over her ability, she just needed to train until she was able to do these kinds of things. The only thing now was to train her ability and get more used to it. But before that, Aella was ready to absorb some more of the monster's core.

Grabbing the core in her hands she started to absorb the core the same way past the last two times. Slowly she felt herself getting full, the mana flowed in her until it reached the limit. But this time Aella didn't feel the pain as her limit expanded, but it expanded more and more until she felt a warm gentle feeling envelop her.

Suddenly a mist appeared from nowhere and enveloped her like a cacoon, shielding her from the outside world, the mist itself looked similar to the mist that appeared when she got summoned.

Now there was a cacoon made out of flowing mist in the same spot where Aella was just sitting and absorbing the core.