Even though I’m holding Solace’s head in place to stare straight into her eyes, she still keeps refusing to look back at me. How boring.

This is much more annoying than I thought it’d be. I don’t have experience with forcing information from people, but even I know that torture is the main method of doing so normally.

Yet, I can’t torture this girl! I can’t kill her, since it’s likely that her master - as an expert in Soul Law - would be able to tell that I did it, and would promptly get revenge. But it’s not like I can just leave her alone either, since she knows too much now.

Shade, I have no idea what to do in this situation. In the end, I can only ask Shade for help. In the meantime, I knocked Solace out so that she wouldn’t overhear anything.

And its response came quickly. Well, since you’ve taken the power of the Curse Creed, you can use the Sealed Lips Curse to make sure that she won’t reveal anything about you.

Its words caused something to pop into my mind, though it wasn’t about the current situation. While leaning back against the wall, I looked at Shade. “Before, you wouldn’t tell me about the three paths of Devil Law because I’d only be using one of them. But since I took the power of all three, now there’s no reason for you not to.”

Shade nodded, and I continued. “Then, you said Curse Creed. Is that different from a path, or just another name for it? Like calling them Schools of Thought?”

They’re mostly the same thing. Paths, Creeds, Schools of Thought, Principles, they’re all words used by different groups and regions to refer to the same thing - groupings of spells within a single Law that have similar traits. If there was to be a difference, it’d be that Creeds tend to not be limited to just spells.

“So, it’s the special benefits of a Devil having the power of one of the Creeds?” Shade had mentioned that part before, so it did make sense.

Exactly. As for what each does… Well, I’ll start with the Curse Creed. Curses are a unique type of spell. Even a singular spell can last an incredibly long time, due to them being able to absorb sin power from the surroundings to replenish power lost over time.

So it’s a method of extending the effects of a spell. So the Sealed Lips Curse that Shade mentioned would probably be a spell that prevents the target from speaking about me? Or more likely just whatever thing I forbid them from saying?

When I checked with Shade, it shook its head. It has a similar end result, but what you’re talking about would be a duration Curse, not a singular one like Sealed Lips is.

“What’s the difference?” Is it because I’m now a Devil that I’m so interested in the mechanics of spells? No, that doesn’t seem right…

Maybe it’s because I had a taste of modifying a spell not too long ago. The reason I was able to adjust Blood Chains so much was because I was familiar with the seals and essence flows. But despite that, my instincts tell me that I’m incapable of creating a new spell, even though reason tells me I should be able to.

So there must be something else when it comes to spells. I could just ask Shade, but I feel like it wouldn’t say. Therefore, learning more with this chance will help!

Is that really necessary? Despite its grumbling, Shade still explained when I maintained my stare at it. All Curses can be considered duration, so the difference is that a singular one will disappear after taking effect, while a true duration Curse will take effect the entire time until it disappears.

“Hmm- Wait, what can cause one to disappear?”

If it runs out of sin power, it’ll disappear, obviously. Power gets used up merely by the Curse existing, whenever it causes some effect, and some methods, such as Solar Law’s Purification path or various means from Holy Law, can also cleanse the sin power. It laughed, Here in the Wasteland though, there are very few ways to get rid of a Curse. You can only wait it out in an area where no sin will appear.

That makes sense. If I remember correctly, there hasn’t been a single Holy Caster in the last century at least, perhaps even longer. As for Solar Law… I don’t know anything about it, but it definitely sounds rare. And the rarer a Law is, the harder it is for people to create spells for it, obviously.

“What about the special benefits of being a Curse Devil?” There were still many questions I had, however. “And what about the other two Creeds, Possession and Sin?”

Unfortunately, Shade shut me down this time. Those don’t matter right now, Shadow. What you need to do is learn the Sealed Lips Curse as soon as possible, because every moment this girl is capable of revealing your new identity, the more likely it is to happen.

Well, when it’s put like that… Still, learning a new spell for a Law and path that I’ve never learnt about before will definitely take some time. I can’t just keep Solace knocked out all the time; I have to make sure she won’t be starving or the likes when I’m done.

For the same reasons I can’t hurt her too much, I also have to even take care of her… Ugh.

I looked over at the black-haired girl lying on the ground and sighed. So I need to mentally deal with her, to make her unable to think of running or spreading information. But I can’t go so far as to break her, for obvious reasons, or even make her overly fearful of me, since I want to enter the city lord’s mansion one day in order to be with Flare.

So, what are my options then…

The first thing that comes to mind is acting, since it’s something I’m good at. But I can’t act like a friend or something, since she already knows I’m a Devil who sacrificed someone for power.

No, before anything else, I need to figure out her personality. It’s important to know what I can take advantage of, what things will work well, won’t work, or even work too well. Only then can I deal with her effectively without letting her know that I don’t dare kill her - since I’d lose my greatest threat.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

She’s stubborn, I can already tell that. And also overly confident. It’s obvious from the events leading up to this point, and what happened earlier. Instead of letting the officials know that I was the one who killed Copper, she waited until she could attack personally.

She revealed herself clearly, tried to convince Coal, and ignored me once her spell took effect. Also, she was visibly proud when revealing that she was the student of Alera…

Is there anything I can exploit here? If she’s afraid of death, this would be much easier. Ah, that’s it!

As soon as the idea popped into my head, I decided what I’d do. Once Solace wakes back up, I’ll go through with it, but for now I need to focus on this spell.

After a deep breath, I began. “Shade, tell me the hand seals.” Under its guidance, I learnt the hand seals of the Sealed Lips Curse from start to finish.

First was the initial hand seal, which actually tested the flexibility of my fingers for the first time. My middle finger bent over my pointer, lower than even the second joint. The same was done with my ring finger, this time bent over the middle finger, and then the little finger was bent over the ring finger.

The first one wasn’t that bad, the second was already painful, and the third was horrible. In the process of trying to get my little finger into position, I almost thought it was going to break.

Such an unnatural position for the fingers… Finally, the tip of my thumb was pressed against the tip of my pointer finger. Is the meaning behind this seal the idea that everything is focused into oneself? But wouldn’t it then be contradictory to release the spell like that? How strange.

At the same time, Shade taught me the essence flow that was paired with this seal. It was simple; very, very simple - because it was only one flow, not multiple.

And then came the second seal, which also contorted my fingers in ways pushing the limits of the human body. Alongside it was yet again just a single simple flow.

I’m starting to see the pattern here. The time taken to learn this spell is not in learning the essence flows, but in mastering the odd hand seals. For the first time since I’d become able to cast Blood Spike, the time limit for each seal would be the obstacle in my way.

Even after just three seals, my hand is already starting to hurt. If I let that stop me, this will take more than a week to cast, and there’s no way I can keep Solace contained for that long. Eventually, even if I somehow manage to convince her to stay by me and me only, she’d still be summoned by her master.

But if I push through, only stopping when my fingers physically cannot move to the next shape, I should be able to learn this in only a couple days!

I don’t know how long I’ve spent practicing the hand seals while waiting for Solace to wake up again. But it was painful. If it took me a dozen seconds or so to do the first hand seal, and then half a minute for the second one, well it only makes sense that I’ve still not gotten the eighth seal after four minutes.

It’s not that they’re getting hard- Ow…

That’s enough for now, Shadow. Any further and you’ll overstretch your fingers, which will make it difficult to use normal seals. Shade’s words were a relief. Even though I do have the desire to learn this as quickly as possible, it really fucking hurts.

All of the seals are about the same difficulty if I were to form them from a normal hand position. The issue is that each seal stretches my fingers one way, and then the next makes me do something completely different, which makes things worse.

And to think that this spell has twenty-seven seals. “Are all Curses like this? Extreme hand seals but basic essence flows?”

No, it’s just that low-rank Devil Law spells have such traits. Oh God… All three paths have these? Is it possible for me to take back becoming a Devil?

Well, I’m not being serious, but I just want to complain. Though I do wonder, am I disrespectful for using God’s name now that I’m a Devil? It’s not like I’ve stopped being a believer. In fact, I’m even more convinced that God really exists.

Void Curse, the original of all Devils… In other words, ‘the’ Devil, right? Then the Devil in the Black Book refers to Void Curse and therefore God should be based on something real!

Hmm, not just those two. The Red King who carried out a slaughter across the entire plains, such that blood fell as the Red Rain, and even the heroes who survived it; did they all exist as well? But… Is the limit of strength really so high that an entire half of the living world can be destroyed by one person?

I don’t know, and I get the feeling that Shade wouldn’t explain to me either. It seems to limit what it tells me; nothing too soon, but also not too late. Of course, there are some things that if I didn’t ask about, it definitely never would tell me, so I have no clue anymore.

There’s no point in thinking about all that anymore, since Solace seems to have woken up while I was in my thoughts. She’s pretending to still be unconscious and remain still, but it seems she doesn’t know that holding your breath is an unnatural thing to do.

Well, it makes my plan easier to carry out. I walked over, purposefully making my steps loud and then began casting Blood Spike at a modest speed. Of course, I made sure I made plenty of noise while doing so.

This can easily go wrong; if she doesn’t open her eyes or react until the very end, I’ll have to quickly move my hand so that the spike doesn’t actually kill her. The goal is to test which is more important to her - taking me down, or her own life. In other words, is she afraid of death?

Even though she seems stupid, I can’t afford to underestimate her intelligence. That’s why I can’t just threaten her with death, it’d be easy to figure out that I won’t go through with it.

Thankfully, she eventually opened her eyes due to the noises that I was making. As soon as she saw me making seals, she began speaking in panic. “Wait wait wait, are you actually going to kill me? You know, my master will definitely hunt you down if you do!”

I further slowed down my casting, to the limit of what I could do without letting it actually fail. As I did that, I narrowed my eyes at Solace. “I’ll die if I leave you alone, and I’ll die if I kill you… Since the end result is the same in both cases, then I think I’d rather make sure you die as well.”

The panic in her eyes grew further, but she was still unable to escape even as she struggled. My skill at tying people up has grown quite a bit in the last two months, after all.

Well, this should be enough. I finished casting Blood Spike, but fired it at the ground just next to her head. By grabbing the collar of her robes, I barely managed to drag her up to my eye level.

After forcibly controlling her head motions by grabbing her chin with my other hand, I stared into her eyes like I had earlier. She still refused to look back at me, but that’s fine since I now know it’s from fear and not from a desire to not give in.

“Since you don’t want to die, and I also don’t want to die, how about we strike a deal, Solace?” As expected, her eyes locked onto mine finally.

I let go with both hands, but she remained standing and didn’t try to run- not like she could do anything without falling over, though. She was silent, but I continued, “You see, I have a spell that can make sure you won’t be able to say anything about me, or you’ll die.”

“...That doesn’t sound like a deal.” Hah, she’s actually glaring at me.

Her words are accurate, though. “Yes, because I can’t cast it yet. So the deal is, I’ll let you go free once I cast the spell on you. So until then, try anything funny and I’ll make sure you die alongside me.”

The sound of her teeth grinding was audible because of my better hearing. But eventually, “Fine.”

Ah, the smile on my face probably seems a bit wicked right now. “Then I’ll hold you to it, Solace.”